Norway's govt is not usual.... there are articles/books written about how Britain had access to even more "free money" from the North Sea oil but just lowered current taxes and spent the money as fast as it came in. Only Norway has seemed to operate with an unusual discipline to not SPEND every cent the country has ever brought in and actually save for the future.

But Norway is very homogenous and most of it's 5million inhabitants have much more in common than the typical diversity that you see in most other western countries. That allows for much more consensus on how to govern for sure.

In that they apparently serve their citizens instead of corporations? That is a novel concept.

Your misplaced belief that govt can do anything as profitable and efficiently as private enterprise is the fundamental flaw in your argument.

Please point out where I argued otherwise. You appear to by trying to build a straw man.

Source?

While current Federal royalty rates are lower than 'market' at 12.5% (a rate that has remained constant since Warren G Harding was President), it's not excessively lower than what oil companies pay to state and private landholders. There's a recent GAO report that proposed different royalty rates, the top being 22.5%. Still, calling 12.5% 'next to nothing' is an exaggeration.

The decline in federal royalties from mineral rights over the last decade is due to lower energy prices which has decreased production on federal lands; it's not due to any change in royalty percentages.

It's not the "rate" that we were discussing, it's the fact that the US FEDS tend to spend every cent (plus borrow more to spend) as it comes in vice what the Norwegians have accomplished by setting up a trust fund that now tops $1 Trillion USD and will continue to spin off income for the Norwegians to enjoy for the future generations.

The rest of the world, US included, spends everything and then some on current expenses.

That ship has sailed since the '50's though and our future generations will have to pick up the tab.

Erm, did you even read the post I quoted? Once again:
It's clear that he seems to think that the government is giving away mineral rights for nothing (he's incorrect), which is a tangential subject.

As for the US spending everything plus some since the 1950s - that is an incorrect statement. President Eisenhower is the last President in power when the US ran a federal budget surplus - you should have stated since the 1960s, since the US has run a federal budget deficit every year since JFK took office. Clinton had a unified budget surplus, but when the Social Security Trust Fund is removed from that, he ran a federal budget deficit.