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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 $1,884 to 640,000 citizens, despite a decline in oil revenues that year.
And Alaska living isn't easy or cheap.
so get a paper divorce and get more?
also add medicare / medicaid (joined in to one) for all.
They are royalties for resources held in the ground which are government property, not free money. Who else has a better claim to it, than the owners of the land, i.e., the people.
We paid for it when purchased under President Johnson, at the behest of Seward.
No, that's just welfare.
With communism there is no money at all...in theory of course. Basically you have to force people to work for free, and eventually people get pissed off because some people feel that they do more work than other people, and aren't justly rewarded, and so they leave. Then your GDP goes to shit and you turn to socialism just to try to maintain the status quo of your local political leadership, which is where everybody works for the government as the government owns the means of production for every single industry, and indeed there is a return to currency, and you pretend to work while the government pretends to pay you.
At least, this is what has happened to every single commune to ever exist anyways. The only ones to have emerged from that rut eventually just returned to full blown capitalism.
It's a genius idea and a perfect way to seriously gut the federal, state, and local governments of useless bureaucrats. Welfare programs are horribly sexists and promote single motherhood something that is neither good nor should be celebrated. Institute a living wage, gut the governments of their useless bureaucratic leeches, eliminate the minimum wage, and end pensions. I'd be thrilled to see something like that instituted. Being a bureaucrat shouldn't be encouraged as a career choice. You'll see hyperinflation before such a program comes about
And also, you'd have to pay me a lot more than 1,800$ to want to live in Alaska. Something northwards of $150k and then maybe i'd consider it for 3-5 years. Otherwise, pass on the great cold north.
Damn, that's sounds a lot like the perfect recipe to create third world conditions right here at home. Do you like the idea of stepping over dying old people while kids beg from you in the street? Is that really your idea of paradise?
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?
In communism you have money, but nothing to buy with it on the shelves. In capitalism the shelves are always choke full but you don't have money.
I know you're joking, but...
The first sentence in your statement defines socialism, not communism, and pretty well at that (often times people may have money but nothing worth buying.) It's understandable because most people confuse the two, but in communism there indeed is no money. The USSR identified themselves as communist, but they in fact fit the economic definition of socialism.
As far as the second sentence in your statement, capitalism tends to be very well self correcting in that regard. Namely, if you don't have money, then nobody would have any reason to put anything on the shelves. Though usually what ends up happening is somebody figures out a way to capitalize on a given market, even the super low price ones. Take for example the recent slashdot article talking about how a lot of manufacturers were selling Android smartphones in the US for under $50.
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...
Don't forget Wall St. We have been artificially holding interest rates at 0 for 7 years now just to give an enormous boost to the financial industries. That far exceeds the dividend to Alaskans. Nobody is making any noise about that.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
An unmarried couple still is a couple. Welfare systems may look at the household and not care if the people there are married or not.
Where the hell do you live that welfare/disability pays enough to buy endless beer and meth? I know a couple of people on disability and they have a fuck of a time just eating satisfactorily, little well being able to buy more then a 6 pack of beer once a month.
There's also one fuck of a lot of homeless people around and they sure don't look like they're having a great life, especially when the weather turns to shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
This is exactly why I believe universal income is a good thing. No fear to lose welfare, or just uncertainty from changing lifestyle and go to a working place where everyone is frowning, tired and living in submission and/or fear and "competing" with colleagues for crumbs or a permanent position. If you can even get hired in the first place.
Instead, the bums could go to work for a 20 hours a week unskilled job smiling, and the oppressed workers have a range of options from quitting the job, working a bit less, studying or considering a better job, having a better bargaining position etc.
"The State" doesn't have any goddamn valuable resources. The people who live in the state have those resources. It's called "the commons".
Who owns the air over your head? Who owns the motherfucking light on a sunny day? If the state you live in has oil, on public lands then it belongs to the citizens of that state.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Socialism means that the factories (means of production) belong to the state. This is not the case in Denmark, so your use of the word socialism is ignorant and incorrect.
Socialism means that the factories (means of production) belong to the state. This is not the case in Denmark, so your use of the word socialism is ignorant and incorrect.
I'm an American, and I find that the Trotskyites here call anything they don't like - "socialism". It's...... complex, some how.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Alberta just put the royalties into general revenue and spent it. Now that the price of oil has collapsed they are facing a huge budget deficit and have nothing to show for it. (Well, some infrastructure may have been built that wouldn't have.)
Norway placed high royalties on their oil and invested it. I think their fund is the largest sovereign fund in the world. There is a budgetary rule that only 4% of the value of the fund could be taken out in a year to be used in their budget. So far the fund has always grown by more than 4% each year so it looks good for them.
Alberta just put the royalties into general revenue and spent it. Now that the price of oil has collapsed they are facing a huge budget deficit and have nothing to show for it. (Well, some infrastructure may have been built that wouldn't have.)
I think the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund has managed to do a bit of good. But it doesn't look like it has been as effective as Norway or Alaska's systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I reject that definition.
You can reject it all you'd like. You can reject that the color of the night sky is black and argue that it is white too, but the fact remains otherwise. What the USSR had was socialism; the government owned all of the factories and other means of production, and everybody in the country worked for the government.
Capitalism means a free market economy, and a free market simply means that prices are determined by the forces of supply and demand.
If you choose to make Fruit Cocktail, and are required to make it to a specific formula,
No, there is no such requirement in the US. Though typically it's beneficial to your product if its name at least somewhat describes what it is. You might get sued by your customers if you call it chicken soup and they don't find any chicken in it however. There are also certain guidelines for what levels of foreign material may be found in food products you sell (for example, the FDA has certain guidelines for the limit for the number of insect eggs and body parts that may be found in different types of vegetables) but that's a safety guideline and not an economic one.
So again, your understanding of socialism is incorrect.
If you can choose to make anything you want, however you want (including stealing competitors formulas and logos), then you are pure capitalist.
You're confusing capitalism with anarchy. Again, capitalism just means free markets, and a free market is one where prices are determined by supply and demand. Anarchy means there are no rules and you just do whatever the hell you want.
All systems in existence today are hybrid.
No, they're not. Most European countries do have some markets that are socialist, namely they run a health care system where the means of production (the medical staff) is owned and run by the government. THAT is socialism, but everything else in those countries is capitalist. When they take from the rich and give to the poor however, that is not socialism, that's welfare.
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.
If you actually look at what they said, you would see they considered themselves in a transitional state to communism.........fully aware they hadn't arrived yet.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm an American, and I find that the Trotskyites here call anything they don't like - "socialism". It's...... complex, some how.
When Americans say socialism, they usually mean taxes. Typically they disregard how society indirectly provides benefits like a skilled labor pool, infrastructure and other foundations for modern civilization that enabled their company to make millions in profit. They only narrowly look at the government services they've directly consumed and want their tax bill to match. In fact they might actually argue their tax rate should be lower because a millionaire is still just one man and doesn't consume services in proportion to his income, so they'd rather have a small government and pay themselves. "Socialists" are everybody who want more taxes, progressive taxes, inheritance tax, wealth tax, taxes for welfare, taxes for universal services, taxes for public services or really any form of tax that would redistribute wealth from the rich for the common good. Basically any accumulation of wealth is their own and society has no right to any of it, though those who say that typically want protection of private property and contracts, police, courts and all the other bits that happen to be necessary to keep a large personal fortune. I'm sure it's a coincidence.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
Most European countries do have some markets that are socialist, namely they run a health care system where the means of production (the medical staff) is owned and run by the government. THAT is socialism,
This single sentence demonstrates perfectly that you dont understand the meaning of "socialism" nor universal health care systems.
A lot (meaning most) universal health care systems, even single payer systems allow a lot of private entities to operate within them. From consulting doctors to entire private hospitals, what universal health care does ensure is that private entities cannot overcharge or profiteer and that a patient gets the care they need regardless of their financial status (I.E. you cant be too poor to get treatment).
In some universal health care systems, a public and private system sit side by side. Public provides a minimum standard of care (which is still pretty damn good) and the private system must provide better.
Also, almost all government these days run mixed economies, so they are hybridised as the GP said. Attempts to run pure capitalist or socialist governments have been abject failures although it should be noted that unlike pure socialist governments, pure capitalist governments completely failed to get off the ground.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I'm an American, and I find that the Trotskyites here call anything they don't like - "socialism". It's...... complex, some how.
When Americans say socialism, they usually mean taxes. Typically they disregard how society indirectly provides benefits like a skilled labor pool, infrastructure and other foundations for modern civilization that enabled their company to make millions in profit. .
And yet - at least for my my most vociferous peeps who call anything they disagree with, "socialism" they completely ignore the fact that the soocial security they are collecting is an actual socialist program.
Indeed, the most "conservative guy I know, collects social security, has not paid a medical bill in his adult life, went to college fully paid, and worked for the government his entire life. The way I figure, the evil government he so despises, has shelled out many millions for the guy. The only money he hasn't extracted directly from the guvmint is the interest from the banks where he put their money.
Which is why the "Keep your Government hands off my Medicare crowd: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.... is not conservative at all. They are Trotskyites. They will rail on about being conservative, but nothing is further than the truth.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.