Maybe you should choose your words more carefully, Walter Bright. To eviscerate means to disembowel. Nobody is pushing to physically hurt the rich. But people are upset that their standards of living are declining while every opportunity to give more money to the rich is executed.

Bernie Sanders asked for taxing the rich and the corporations. Taxing someone does not mean disembowel.

The "Nordic model" refers to the socioeconomics common in Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden), not just to Norway.

It's about how you approach commons and common wealth. Any commons will do. It does not rely on oil resources per se.

Let's say for the sake of argument it does depend on oil wealth, though.

The US currently has something like 30x the proven oil reserves that Norway does (>200 billion barrels vs ~7 billion). It has already produced at least 200billion barrels since the 1850s. What if the US had treated the wealth from past oil production the way Norway has? What if it treated the next 200 billion that way?

And oil is only one of many commons resources to choose from.

> See Bernie Sanders!

Yes, I addressed Sanders proposal in my earlier comment: "single digit taxes on hyperwealth which might not have impact beyond stabilizing it and certainly wouldn’t make anyone not-wealthy."

A single digit wealth tax is unlikely to fully offset even conventional yearly returns, hence the "might not have impact beyond stabilizing" the wealth of those subject to it.

Even if we assume no yearly returns though -- simply a 5% bite out of net worth -- a wealth tax will not make anyone in that economic strata unwealthy (there's a billions-floor beneath which it wouldn't apply, leaving the worst case still radically prosperous).

There's no reasonable basis to characterize that as "evisceration."

But repeating loaded terms like that as part of an ideological rosary is a common religious and rhetorical strategy.

> Also, if you die in Washington State, your estate is taxed at 75% (40% federal, 35% state).

My understanding is that estate taxes generally have thresholds that have to be met before they kick in. Federal threshold is on the order of 10million, WA is 3 million.

Having dynastic wealth flows limited over a few million dollars is also not reasonably described as "evisceration" (especially with all the other vehicles for transferring wealth).

May as well complain to God that you can't take it with you as that you might have to loosen your grasp at death to render unto caeser.