Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jake Scott
“When I was at school, learning about the privatization waves of the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, my teacher made a comparison between our own fortunes in Britain, and those of our North Sea neighbors in Norway, that stuck with me. In Britain, we used the proceeds from re-privatizing key industries like British Petroleum to fund the tax cuts that were considered necessary to revitalize the economy. The story is well-told: by liberalizing the economy, the initial shortfall in direct income would be offset in the short-term and exceeded in the long-term from the proceeds of an energetic private sector, and a free-market economy would provide the future prosperity, built on a broad and reliable tax base, necessary to keep Britain afloat. In Norway, on the other hand, such future prosperity was secured in a different way: through a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF).” (12/17/25)
https://fee.org/articles/sovereign-wealth-funds-and-the-west/