One of the most glaring examples of ‘socialism’ in the United States is the Alaska Permanent Fund and, in particular, the Permanent Fund Dividend. I won’t go into all the particulars (if you are interested, follow the links) but the bottom line is that there is an amendment in the Alaska Constitution which dictates that 25% of Big Oil’s sales and royalties be set aside in a fund that is managed by a semi-independent corporation. As part of that, each Alaskan enjoys an annual dividend check. The amount of the check varies. In 1984 it was $331 and this year it was $3,269. One of the reasons that this year’s check was so large is that Sarah Palin included a one-time bonus (Alaska Resource Rebate) of $1,200. If you want to know why some polls give her an 80% approval rating, look no further than the fact that she paid every Alaskan a $1,200 bonus this year.
Some countries have nationalized oil sectors. Other countries have some kind of hybrid situation. The United States (with the exception of Alaska) allows all minerals (national resources, really) to be utilized by corporations. The people of Texas, for example, do not get a check in the mail from Exxon/Mobil. What goes on in Alaska is the exact kind of thing that so upsets Oil Men when it happens in Venezuela or Iran, that they start talking about coups, invasions, and the menace of international communism terrorism.
Now, I don’t have a problem in any general sense with the way Alaska orders its business, but I do wonder why Alaskan citizens are so lucky and the rest of us see no benefit from the wealth created by tapping our national resources. In addition to getting a nice, fat check every year, Alaskans have other advantages:
Alaska is the only state that does not collect state sales tax or levy an individual income tax on any type of personal income, either earned or unearned. To finance state operations, Alaska depends primarily on petroleum revenues. Some of its cities and other local jurisdictions, however, do collect sales tax revenue.
Mayor Palin, for example, raised the local sales tax to help pay for an athletic arena in Wasilla. In any case, Alaska is different from the other 49 states in that it is a quasi-socialist state. And that is highly unusual in a country that is almost pathologically opposed to the idea of any kind of state-owned, state-run anything. We can’t even get people to take the idea of a single-payer health care system seriously, let alone let the people share in the profits from mineral and timber extraction.
In fact, it’s this culture of the sanctity of private enterprise and privitization that has a lot of liberals gloating at the prospect of the U.S. government owning 80% of the world’s largest insurer, AIG. The level of hypocrisy inherent in the Bush administration’s decision to take over AIG is staggering. But, Sarah Palin, at least, shouldn’t be too unsettled. No word yet if a McCain/Palin administration will cut us all annual dividend checks out of AIG’s sales and royalties.
I called the Fed and the Treasury about whether “annual dividend checks out of AIG’s sales and royalties”. Interestingly, the woman at the treasury told me she wasn’t sure it was a done deal, until i read her the front page of the new York Times, and pointed out that everything was written in the past tense, suggesting the deed had been accomplished. Then she told me she didn’t know anyone who could answer my question.
the Fed was similarly useless, but i did leave a message for someone, who no doubt won’t call me back.
There’s much to dislike about Alaska — not least Palin — but its socialist revenue sharing should be a model for every civilized country. I suppose it’s the closet socialism that revs up so many Alaskan Oil Welfare Queens to scream so loud about how much they hate big, intrusive government and what rugged libertarian individualists they are.
Anyway, guess I’ll work on getting folks here in Illinois and a few other states plus Canada to start selling Great Lakes water to the rest of you and divvying up the profits to Us. If it’s good enough for Sarah it’s good enough for Me.
Corporations are more important than people and therefore the people’s government. Ride the government into the ground taking all that can be taken from the people to line the pockets of the top one percent with $$$ and bail out the corporations that apparently took the “greed is good” concept just a bit too far. Then when the government collapses because the cupboard is bare, hey what do “they” care? “They” are all multi-billionaires!
I think you hit upon a very important principle here, Boo. Because Alaska is a socialist state, the majority of its citizens can afford to be Republicans. This is pretty much true of the Republican western states of the lower 48 as well. Although they don’t get a dividend, they benefit from a huge degree of federal support in the form of water and power projects without which people couldn’t even live in those places. There are other kinds of subsidies from oil: in Texas, for example,”the Permanent University Fund, which receives all revenue from oil, gas, sulfur and water royalties; increases in investments; rent payments on mineral leases; and sales of university lands, is one of the largest university endowments in the world. The mineral income on University Lands from 1923 through fiscal 1998 has been $3.146 billion. Investment return in the same period has been $8.163 billion”
http://www.texasalmanac.com/history/highlights/oil/
Socialism? We don’t need no stinkin’ socialism. We already got it!