What does Spreading the Wealth look like?
It's a geography and economics quiz. In other words, a high number of US citizens are guaranteed to get it wrong.Click the image for larger/more legible. [Update: forgot the link to data collected by the Tax Foundation.]
Note the state called Alaska. Not only does this state come in #2 by getting $1.87 in federal spending for every dollar in taxes paid, they have this thing called the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend. True to actual Socialist doctrine, they send AK citizens a check derived from pooled taxes levied on the private fossil fuel industry. If you've managed to avoid a felony conviction and lived a year or more in Alaska (yes, even kids) then you get a gift from the state every year thereafter. 2008's number? $3,269.00
Oddly enough, no Alaska governor has suggested that their system of "spreading the wealth" or sponging off that of the lower 48 states is anything less than a Really American idea.
posted by fouro @ 10:48 PM
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The permanent fund is actually the result of interest paid on an account set up many years ago by the state government. The original sum was the result of fossil fuel contracts and sales. The permanent fund is a permanent way to give the money back to the citizens of Alaska in relation to that sale.
Sorry, but no, it's not a fixed-principal endowment.
Here's the AK Constitutional Amendment language: “At least 25 percent of all mineral lease rentals, royalties, royalty sales proceeds, federal mineral revenue-sharing payments and bonuses received by the state be placed in a permanent fund, the principal of which may only be used for income-producing investments."
Interest is a factor, but the individual payout fluctuates yearly based largely on sales volume and commodity prices, old and new lease revenues, etc. It is a system set up in 1976 when the pipeline was so obviously a symbol of shipping Alaska's common resource wealth to points elsewhere.
The irony is this private harvesting of public 'wealth' happens in the lower 48 too,, but Alaska is the only state to Socialize commercial activity this way in any meaningful form. And good for them.
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