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Alaska: The Only US State Where Everyone Gets Free Money
merbs writes: Alaska’s Permanent Fund was established in 1976, in the midst of a black gold rush; the massive Trans-Alaska pipeline was in the process of being built, and the state had reaped $900 million in revenue from the sale of drilling leases in Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in North America, in a matter of years. In a matter of a few more, it’d spent it. Alaskans soon recognized that their enormous oil reserves were nonetheless limited, so, with a kind of longterm forward-thinking rarely seen in politics today, they voted to add an amendment to the state constitution to establish a fund that would protect a portion of all incoming oil wealth for future generations. In 2014, the net income of the fund was $6.8 billion dollars and the dividend doled out $1,884 to 640,000 citizens, despite a decline in oil revenues that year.
And Alaska living isn't easy or cheap.
But I guess they needed more money for gas...
While not the same, I wish we had a Basic Income nationwide.
For citizens and permanent residents only.
21 and younger: $250/month/person
22-66: $500/month/person
22-66: $750/month/couple
67 and older: $750/month/person or Social Security, whichever is larger
67 and older: $1125/month/couple or Social Security, whichever is larger
Adjusted annually for inflation.
Not a replacement for foodstamps, otherwise increase the per person value by $200/month.
While it isn't a true Basic Income, it would be helpful, even if four adults had to uncomfortably live together in a small living space to survive. But it'd definitely would benefit homeless families. Two adults, two child, that'd be $1250/month.
Any thoughts as to my idea?
Every day I come home from work, they're still out on their porches drinking beer like when I left in the morning. Life's a big party if you can get on disability or welfare.
The bizarre thing about the dividend is how holy it is. People here seem to think that everyone is entitled to free money from their government, not that it's an aberration for a state to write you a check just because it has some valuable resources.
It's only a matter of time here before the dividend is repealed. We've made a lot of decisions lately (tax wise) that favor the big corps, that have drained income from government/education budgets, and were supposed to, you know, JOBS! The dividend won't stay sustainable with government expenditure.
Not everyone, dummy, and residents pay abundant stealth taxes on oil which is used in abbundance for just getting to the next town or heating the home. Alaska has one of the highest overall costs of living and the PFD barely makes a dent. Something like 40% of california's population gets "free money" that comes close to meeting expenses so where is the headline about that?
They are royalties for resources held in the ground which are government property, not free money. Who else has a better claim to it, than the owners of the land, i.e., the people.
We paid for it when purchased under President Johnson, at the behest of Seward.
Feel the Bern peasants while Alaska lives the good life.
Cute. The 640,000 citizens received in total $1.2 billion dollars.
If this had happened in Texas (another state that produces a lot of oil, though in general doesn't have all the natural resources Alaska has), those $1.2 billion would amount to... less than $45 for each of it's 27 million inhabitants.
Now it doesn't look as cool, does it?
Confessing ignorance, I wonder how Alaska's method compares with what other oil-rich governments have done and with what effect : for example, Norway, or the Canadian province of Alberta.
A lot of natural resources go to Agriculture, which doesn't benefit the majority but costs to the majority in at least water shortages.
We could use wealth distribution from agriculture earnings to make up for the destruction of the state's water supplies and the resulting impact on the population!
Alternatively, we could buy out low-revenue high-water users and do something else with the land that would benefit the population.
I think diet soda tastes much better than regular
If this had happened in Texas those $1.2 billion would amount to... less than $45 for each of it's 27 million inhabitants.
Now it doesn't look as cool, does it?
True, but using it for infrastructure/schools/etc. and giving a tax reduction might work too...
How can the reader tell when a word is a Proper Noun, Trademarked, etc; or when it is an Ordinary Word? I've complained about this before and some have claimed that the slashdot way is always used by journalists. Well that's not true and here is proof. Slashdot's way is stupid and unconscionable. Look at this summary extracted from today's headlines at Google news. Note the familiar publisher's names and how they handle capitalization in titles:
Dozens of coalition troops die in Houthi missile strike in Yemen ... ...
CNN
Finnish PM's offer to migrants: Take my spare house
STLtoday.com
Protests Continue in Southern Syrian City
Voice of America
47 dead as rebels battle IS in north Syria: monitor
Financial Express
Vast, stubborn Fresno wildfire expected to rage through long weekend
Los Angeles Times
What have Bush, Clinton learned from voters attraction to the outsiders?
Washington Post
Police pay respects to slain Texas lawman
Brownsville Herald
Plainclothes cops keep eye out for Times Square hustlers
seattlepi.com
No more union coal mines remain in Kentucky, home of the deadly battles of
Fox Business
Jobless rate falls to 5.1%, a 7-year low
NWAOnline
New England's ports, long past their prime, seek comeback with niches in
Fox Business
Advisory Group Says BofA Should Split CEO and Chairman Roles
New York Times
Apple will show a lot more than iPhones at its September event
Mashable
Google may return to China with Android app shop: report
Livemint
Uber Expires Share Your ETA Links After 48 Hours
I4U News
Destiny composer Marty O'Donnell wins court case against Bungie
Load The Game
Farthest-ever 3.2-billion-years old galaxy detected
The Indian Express
Scientists hunt for clues in mysterious deaths of 60000 antelopes in four days
Christian Science Monitor
Predator population grows slowly in crowded environment: Study
NYC Today
University of Kansas Researchers Discover Quark-Gluon Plasma
NYC Today
Legionnaires' disease outbreaks in three states, 8 people died in Illinois
The Standard Daily
Scientists working on making a gadget to cure seasickness
Nature World Report
CDC is funding to help state health department to eradicate painkiller abuse
The Standard Daily
Take Aspirin to boost your immunotherapy treatment during cancer
PPP Focus.com
...omphaloskepsis often...
Something else Texas doesn't have: a state income tax.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Is that why she kept complaining about seeing the ruskies from her backyard?
Of a lower 48 payout of FCC spectrum leases, US forest logging revenue, and mineral royalties.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Many invest their children's PFDs to put them through college ..
Some piss it all off at walmart, etc
I usually invest mine in my home.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
If any of the oil operations are on federal land, then every citizen hould get a cut.
What Texas does have is the 3rd highest property taxes on owner occupied homes as a percentage of home value (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/03/21/cheat-sheet-high-property-taxes/24990145/)
and the 11th highest sales taxes in the USA
(http://taxfoundation.org/article/state-and-local-sales-tax-rates-2014).
> like you do in Texas.
Never been to Alaska, eh?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"Explain, please."
"Whay I can see Russia from my house!"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Yes for non_americans reading this they are properly addressed and not called Indians like the rest of the lower 48. Alaskan English at it's finest :-)
Since we are stealing their land we compensated them for it. That money will greatly help them out where jobs are scarce in the arctic villages and prices and supplies high in cost. During a good year the PFD can be as high as $3,000 a person. If you are a family of 4 in a village on the arctic coast up north that money will buy fuel for the winter and a new snowmobile for the kids to get to school .... no folks I am not exaggerating that last one :-)
http://saveie6.com/
Plus in Alaska you don't have 27 millions assholes like you do in Texas.
Oh look another texan with a 1" penis driving a Ford F550 pickup jacked sky high and rilling coal.
?? Have you been to Alaska? It is loaded with gun loving conservatives who own trucks and Suburu's (because they are all wheel drive). Not bashing the state but it is as red as Alabama due to it's military presence and those who hate society and go to get a more minimalist approach.
http://saveie6.com/
The Permanent Fund was originally conceived by Gov. Miller (R) and brought to fruition by Gov. Hammond (R). At the time the state legislature (dominated by Democrats) wanted to keep the money in the general fund where they could decide how it would be spent, but the residents of Alaska preferred the idea of distributing the money.
You poor lost soul.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Diet Dr Pepper does taste more like regular Dr. Pepper, you insensitive clod.
giving a tax reduction might work too...
It's still only $47 per person.
If this had happened in Texas (another state that produces a lot of oil, though in general doesn't have all the natural resources Alaska has), those $1.2 billion would amount to... less than $45 for each of it's 27 million inhabitants.
I think that you're forgetting that Texas produces about 8x as much crude as Alaska. If they had setup a similar fund we would be talking about at least $400 per year. Not too shabby.
Now, if either state had followed Norway's lead and kept most of the oil profits for themselves, we would be talking about substantially larger amounts of dividends or savings. Norway's fund is now approaching a trillion dollars in value -- for a country with a population one fifth that of Texas's, and approximately the same level of crude production.
Hey mate, spare a sig?
Quick calculation seems that the fund is worth about $70k per head (pop 740k). Not shabby.
Norway (pop ~5M) has the largest fund in the world, also from oil revenues, which owns an estimated 1% of world equities. That fund value is about $170k per head. It doesn't pay dividends to citizens, rather using the money to pay government pensions (thus saving gov revenue).
I can't find (from perfunctory searching) historic figures of value (thus growth) for both that I can compare, but it would be interesting to compare the investment return of both, and the management fees.
A complete irrelevant metric. The percentage is high only because home prices are low in Texas. Instead, a much more relevant metric would be to take a typical home (1500 sq ft?) and calculate the average property tax in dollars for that house and then compare that dollar value across states.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
In the economic realm, justice is "get what you pay for, and pay for what you get."
Your scheme is deeply unjust. Fully implementing it would destroy civilization faster than global nuclear war.
As far as you personally are concerned, Anonymous Coward, you want to live without deserving to live. I wish you the fate you deserve.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
...who are trying to destroy the petro economy, that will then go away.
Congrats.
-Styopa
The federal government bought and paid for Alaska, why should the people who live there be the only ones to benefit from the exploitation of its natural resources?
I used to live In California. I now live in Texas. I pay about the same in property tax and no longer pay state income tax.
You're right.
Free money is for bankers, employers in non-union workplaces, and lobbiests.
I think that you're forgetting that Texas produces about 8x as much crude as Alaska. If they had setup a similar fund we would be talking about at least $400 per year. Not too shabby.
Sorry, but you are being fuzzy with the math. According to that page, the total for the semester was 635,251 for Texas and 89,695 for Alaska, so the factor is 7.08. So the amount each Texan would receive would be just over $316. That is not only 21% less than your estimate, but also 1/6 (more precisely 16.8%) of what the Alaskan's received.
And if you look at the year in question (2014), the numbers become 1,157,262 for Texas and 181,425 for Alaska, the factor becomes 6.38 and the amount received under $285 or just 15.2% of what Alaskans received. The point is that the numbers become far less impressive when you look at a normal state that isn't severely underpopulated as Alaska.
About the Norway thing... yeah, I agree with you. In fact we should do a lot of things like Norway, although lots of people would kick and scream if we did.
The woman who said that doesn't live in Alaska. She's probably never been to Alaska.
I remember that. From this vantage it's hard to remember there were a bunch of really stupid people in 2008 who actually believed a line from a comedian was actually said by the politician she was lampooning. What makes it ironic is they did this because they thought it made them more intelligent.
You just can't make this stuff up.
http://www.governing.com/gov-d...
don't forget the October sales that spring up - I remember two years ago - the pfd was low (like 724 or something) - and some Tactical Shop had a deal where you could buy any gun of combo of guns up to $750 for $724 :)
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
I will get the PFD this year - I've been here since April of 2013 but was only eligible after my full year of residency in 2014 - and there's a lot of conditions (like shipping your passport in) - so don't expect to park a tent behind Carrs/Safeway and get it down the line
This is a kickback from our natural resources - it's also cyclical based on I think a 5 year average of the price of oil - that means it's going to start going down next year as gas starts to plummet
We do have issues with finance in the state - no state income tax is fine but everything is about 15% more expensive (more so on Kodiak or in the Bush) - so it def. balances out - the PFD makes it a little easier for lower income workers to make it up here where the cost of living is higher. A recent poll suggested residents would rather start paying a state tax than tap the PFD for infrastructure - so we'll see how much longer we go without a sales or state income tax - (and some of the more touristy spots DO have a sales tax)
As it turns out my wife got a job up here and my boss lets me Telecommute in my job as a Network Engineer - the GCI fiber just went in so I get 100mb download and 5mb upload but a 300gb cap - however I have a verizon hotspot the company got me for emergencies. I can get 100ms response to Minneapolis - so it's pretty well connected at least in the big cities along the underwater fiber. Out in Nome and most of the bush, they're running Microwave/Fiber to get them some better response but wouldn't be good for low latency/high bandwidth stuff
RB
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
So, I enjoyed my dividend check while I maintained residency. However, that money was offset by my 6$/gallon milk and other ridiculous expenses. The nearest McDonalds, wal-mart, or movie theatre were a hundred miles away, although you could get free weed at school all day long.. hell i didn't know people paid for weed until i moved to the lower 48!
That being said, the real benefit to living in Alaska isn't the dividend fund, it's the top-rate education system. I moved from Alaska to Kentucky my Junior year of HS and went from being a solid c student to straight A. The junior/senior classes in HS covered topics from JR High in Alaska. The state dumps tons of money into education.
The basic sense of the article is that Alaska's system of taking money from various natural resource exploitation activities and saving/redistributing it is a model for the rest of the country/world as the beginnings of a minimum income for all system? Sorry to burst their bubble but its not going to last, oil is no doubt the primary driver of the fund and it will become ever more difficult to sustain its income levels. Its also not really viable for most other areas as Alaska has significantly more natural resources per capita than pretty much anywhere else by a wide margin. Saving a sizable chunk of change and investing it might keep it going for considerably longer but even that has significant risks (I wonder how the fund has weathered some of the crashes since the 80s) and governments invariably raid such money pots for some idiotic pork projects (Alaska is the home to the "Bridge/Highway to nowhere"). Even putting limitations on the funds being extracted may not help. A while back they found oil under a city near me, the city council at that time was rather forward thinking as well and created a fund where a majority of the money was placed and they put a stipulation on the account that only a small percentage (5% I think) could be extracted per year. The very next administration attempted to raid the fund, the bank which held the money and was forbade by contract from giving more than 5% of the funds per year protested, a short court battle ensued but quickly the 5% requirement was voided by the court and the money began to flow. Don't get me wrong, its nice that they're trying to distribute the funds a little more fairly instead of funneling them directly into foolish endeavors/politically connected pockets (though I'm also sure some funds are being skimmed) but its simply not a sustainable system.
While Alaska does have a great many natural resources, they are insignificant compared to oil. Oil revenues comprise over 90% of the state's revenue. Tourism consumes a large part of the remainder. Mining and timber are an almost insignificant part of the whole.
We tried to do this with the mining tax in Australia a little while back but unfortunately the idiots in opposition (now the idiots in government) blocked it because their mate's Gina et al weren't happy.
To me it just makes sense: stuff that hasn't yet been dug up belongs to either the person who owns the land or, if no-one owns said land, to the country as a whole. If you want it you need to buy it off us first - just like you would need to buy any other asset that I/we might own.
I'm not saying that the price of purchase should be so high that mining iron ore for example is no longer profitable* - that would be counter-productive. But you should not be able to just walk in, dig stuff up and pretend that it belonged to you all along.
(Actually in Australia it's even worse than that for farmers. If oil/gas/coal/iron ore etc are found on your farm the miners can quite literally get a mining permit and kick you out without even needing to ask your permission first let alone negotiate a price for access or purchase).
*Actually I would like to make mining for coal prohibitively expensive, but unfortunately for everyone that's unlikely to happen in my lifetime.
The reality of modern societies is that in the last 100 years, we have gone from predominantly manual human labour to machine labour.
A huge percentage of the population are mainly suited to manual labour, and there will never be jobs for them, and they do drugs etc to briefly escape from their lack of any sense of achievement in any other area. The argument that they don't want to work is stupid, and we are not going back to hand digging trenches etc, so what is the answer, if not some form of income support?
It's always amusing watching Americans go on about socialism, (particularly ironic for a country which has only two right wing parties, one of which is the extreme loopy Republicans and no socialist party at all) however it boils down to one unassailable fact, you let people see their kids and themselves go hungry, or not be able to get medical care they are going to commit crimes.
The first place I ever saw beggars on the street was in the US, I was shocked, having visited many other western countries before and never seen people in such a pitiful state. It's why many consider the US to be the first empire to rise and fall without an intervening period of civilisation.
Social welfare systems. PREVENT crimes of desperation.
When huge amounts of money are in the hands of a few, mainly through family inheritance than their own efforts, inequality and injustice are rife.
yeah but Texas has a Permanent Fund too -it fund colleges formoil and gas rev from state owned land in west texas mainly - we also would never have refunded money to citizens as Texas decided early in it US statehood to invest in an extensive Farm to Market road system which has ongoing maintenance costs
Well, to be fair, what she actually said is "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."
Which is true, in the most technical sense; from Little Diomede island, you can see Big Diomede.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Right. What she actually said was both true and perfectly reasonable. What the comedian said was a perfectly serviceable bit of lampooning. What's ridiculous is the number of people who confused the two.
Indian regime owes reparations to 300 million Untouchable for 2000 years of Caste system; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Casteism
As it pertains to this story... some of the largest oil companies in the world happen to be nationalized, in that they are wholly owned or the largest shareholder is a nation... I was thinking Denmark, but it might be Norway... as is China. I know this because I questioned the great idea to sell Canadian tarsands land to oil companies that for all intents and purposes represent another country, which amounts to literally selling your natural resources directly to another nation...