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.
