“Back in 1976, a year before the spigot opened on the 800-mile pipeline, Alaska created a fund to forever share the impending oil bonanza with all state residents,” Michael Winter reports for USA Today. “Today, that fund reported it had hit a record $40.1 billion.”
“Come Oct. 6, Alaskans can expect to share about $800 million in the annual dividend paid out by the Alaska Permanent Fund,” Winter reports. “The payout last year was $1,281 per person.”
Winter reports, “But despite profiting mightily from the messy old-economy product of pipeline majority owner ExxonMobil, the fund’s biggest boost in the just-ended fiscal year came from the clean tech of Silicon Valley — Apple Inc., which tops the investment fund’s stock holdings. Stocks comprise about 50% of the fund’s total value.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “ChiMac” for the heads up.]
Wish I’d been smart enough to do that instead of buying houses.
There’s something deliciously ironic about one of the most conservative states in the country operating the most socialistic slush fund in the country. Isn’t this the sort of thing that Sarah Palin and the Tea Party should be objecting to?
Let me get this straight: Every citizen of Alaska, even if they don’t own property, shares equally in a windfall profits tax on the private operations of oil companies. But the rest of the country can’t close the most outrageous tax loopholes written for the oil industry, lest the fear the Tea Party wrath.
Something doesn’t make sense.
Somebody, please enlighten me.
Can you tell me what those “tax loopholes” are? I keep hearing about them but can’t seem to find any evidence of them.
They are distributing the money from smart investments.. not forcing the working class to distribute their hard-earned money to people who don’t want to work.
Does that make sense?
It’s actually a great example of government being smart with money… Too bad Social Security isn’t based on this model.
Methinks you need to learn the definition of socialism. It’s not what you seem to think it is.
In socialism government owns the means of production. The means of production in alaska are not owned by the government, not even the pipeline, which is all owned by private interests who are leasing the rights to put it on government land. Sure, government owning the land is socialist… but in the range of socialist things in the USA this is one of the less offensive ones.
Thank you. So you agree then that Obamacare is not a “socialist takeover” seeing how the government does not provide/sell the insurance or own/pay hospitals or doctors.
BUT IT FORCES US TO BUY IT AND ADDS MORE IRS AGENTS TO ENFORCE IT. UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!!!!!!!!!!! SCUM BAGS!!!!!!!!
Correct, Obamacare, like the auto industry actions, is Fascist, rather than purely socialist. Fascism is a form of socialism where the economy remains in the hands of government connected private interest, but they have to operate according to the dictates of the government, though they get to keep the profits. (in a pure socialist situation the government would keep the profits.)
Obamacare is impeachable.
We need to put you next to the “keep your government hands off my Medicare” sign guy.
Your inability to make an argument, an instead making an insult shows your lack of intelligence and understanding.
Simply,
1. Oil co asks for government help in producing oil.
2. Oil co get tax loophole.
3. Oil co produces oil.
4. Oil co makes profit.
5. Oil co pays less tax due to loophole.
6. Oil co pays percent of profit to Alaska oil fund.
7. Oil co pays dividends to stock owners.
8. Oil co contributes to political campaigns.
simple enough?
So, indirectly all tax payers in America are funding some of the Alaska oil fund.
Just because the government might– and you haven’t provided evidence that this is happening– tax one organization less than it taxes another, doesn’t mean that there is a “subsidy”.
Less theft is not subsidy, it is less theft.
You seem to think that everyone else is your slave and they exist to work for your profit.
I have an answer to that: Fuck you. I don’t work for your benefit, and you have no right to my profits.
Wanting to take them shows you to be a worthless individual lacking in basic decency.
If you consider taxes to be theft, then you are the one who is in error. Taxes are a necessity to cover the expenses of executing governmental functions. Personally, I consider taxes to be a patriotic contribution to the welfare of this country.
Spending and revenue need to be balanced. I believe that spending needs to be cut substantially. Unlike others, however, I am not opposed to well-reasoned changes to tax codes that may result in modest revenue increases in order to maintain adequate spending on critical activities. In the end, we need to pay as we go.
The US government operated for more than its first 100 years without a federal income tax, so obviously it is not “necessary”.
Further, I think it is necessary for you to come work for me. I won’t pay you anything, but according to you, this isn’t theft, because your labor is necessary to improve my welfare.
The thing is, you scumbags have decided that you can steal from others to pay for “necessary” things, and no matter how blatant the handouts to special interests, you act as if its “unreasonable” to point it out.
This makes you scum, fankly. This is not an “error” it is the nature of what you are.
Engineer? Seriously. You’re saying that because the US didn’t need an income tax for the first half of its existence, it shouldn’t need it now? You’re a moron.
And BTW, kingmel ain’t a liberal. Perhaps you confused his reasonable/realistic stance for one of a lefty.
There’s a difference between a tax on private profits, and a lease.
The oil is on state land, so there’s no private entity that owns it.
This is the kind of arrangement you’d see when oil is found on private property– the producers pay the property owners for the right to exploit the resource, and the owners benefit.
Only difference is the “state” is the owner… and Alaska is uncommonly decent in its management of these resources (most states use this kind of money for corrupt purposes.)
There’s a huge amount of oil in the USA, in Texas and California, on state land, and in those and other states, the residents never see a dime of it… though they may have lower taxes as a result.
There aren’t outrageous tax loopholes written for the oil industry. That’s the kind of bullshit that leftists who want to tax people even more say.
It is a good thing the TEA party came about, and has managed to get some people elected who will act responsibly in the face of those who can’t be bothered to respect that they are spending other people’s money.
What’s the difference between a slave who works all the time for his owners benefit and a taxpayer who works %50 of the time for the profit of politicians? Can we call them half-slaves?
You’re so focused on raising taxes because you want to steal from those who are productive, imagining that your lazy ass will profit from it.
Even a Republican commissioned study showed that the most efficacious policy was a 3:1 balance of cutting spending with raising taxes. Of course, they buried the report.
Even the Economist, a quite pro-business, conservative magazine, labels the Tea Party and their pet representatives correctly as naive, obstructionist ideologues willing to bury the country for the sake of their ideology.
If you hate paying taxes so much, then quit driving on the roads, living under police and fire protection, using power from public utilities, etc. And you’ll need to drop all your insurance policies as those are ‘shared risk’ where “your lazy ass will profit from it”.
I know you find ideology to be easier than thinking, but it really isn’t very impressive. If you were right, you wouldn’t have to lie, you know.
Can you enlighten me and tell me what TEA stands for? I never realized it was an acronym.
News flash moron…just because someone is ok w/reasonable and representative taxation, doesn’t mean they’re a lazy lowlife. The original Tea Party patriots weren’t against taxes–they were against taxes w/no representation.
That’s one slick operation.
Some people in use use the word “socialist” so easily
“doing things for the people” don’t make you a socialist
Why not? That’s what socialism is……..sharing with the society. If this ain’t it then nothing is.
I don’t think socialism is what you think it is.
No Paul, I don’t think you know what socialism is.
Socialism is a economic and political philosophy, I wouldn’t call it complex (nor logical), but it’s more than just ‘sharing’ with society. Clearly you have a K-8 grasp of this and have equated the two. I’m guessing you’ve bought more Ché shirts than books about socialism by socialists.
Go learn the difference, and educate yourself about what socialism is. You should also look up the words ‘seizure’ and ‘allocation’.
Socialism is not communism, Mr Heathen. Please educate yourself. Many democracies have social policies…GB, Canada….and yes even the US. Please don’t report me to Mcarthy at the HAUC. And by the way, the Alaska thing,…..yes, it is socialist.
Even you yourself are more social than you might think. I’ll leave you to ponder on that. Why? Oh, I just like forcing people who don’t normally think to…..think.
Charity is when people voluntarily help society by donating time or money. In capitalism, people also benefit society by providing increased value for the same or lower cost.
Socialism is when government steals from society with the claim that it is going to redistribute the wealth. Communism is a totalitarian form of socialism, but there are also milder forms like the USA and britian. In britian the government owns (or used to own) some major industries, in the USA the government didn’t traditionally own any industries but with the recent takeovers of the insurance industry and auto industry, we’re heading towards a fascist form of socialism.
In fascism the government has absolute dictatorial power over industry without actually owning it, and the industry remains ostensibly capitalistic, with the profits going to the (often government installed and connected) owners, but the major decisions are dictated by the government.
Fascism, “socialism” and communism are all different forms of socialism under different arrangements.
If you’d like to start thinking, please educate yourself, paul. http://mises.org
You show an even greater level of ignorance by putting communism and fascism on the same sentence. They are pretty much opposites and fascism is far, FAR away from socialism.
Lukeskymac–
I love it when people call me “ignorant” for pointing out the actual definitions of the words, because these definitions disagree with the fantasies they’ve constructed for themselves.
But, hey, that’s the definitions of the words. Communism is socialism combined with a totalitarian government. Fascism is socialism that pretends to be capitalism.
There’s a reason “Nazi” is short for “nationalist socialist”.
But since you cannot actually make an argument, and instead you call me ignorant and then assert a position contrary to mine– without any explanation or justificaiton– you show yourself to be the kind of unthinking idiot that I so completely enjoy exposing.
You’ve replaced ideology for thinking, otherwise you’d be able to come up with something more than calling me ignorant for citing definitions!
I can’t decide if you’re a miserably stupid turd, a miserably dishonest turd, or both.
——– Dictionary ——–
socialism |ˈsō sh əˌlizəm|
noun
a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
• policy or practice based on this theory.
• (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.
Man, you are so ignorant I don’t know that you CAN be educated.
Start here; Socialism != communism or Fascism.
Most Americans equate these three and even use then interchangeably as if they were synonyms. Usually they get very uppity and start espousing all kinds of long texts about how knowledgeable they are and how unknowledgeable everyone else is. They don’t even realize how fascist their own government is. Just look at the Bush Jr. years. People forget that in those years if you were not for the government you were deemed unpatriotic. They didn’t even realize that those who spoke againt the policies of Bush were in fact more patriotic…for they bore the slings and arrows of their fascism. You could not wear certain clothes with certain messages, a blatant violation of freedom of speech. Yet they portray themselves as flag bearers for such principles. This is a country that today issues assassination orders against their own citizens as well as other countries leaders. They imprison anyone that disagrees with them or justly outs them as a warmongering killing machine without morale……as we are finding out with incarceration of Bradly Manning and those pictures of Apache helicopters mowing down journalists and children. I could write stacks more on torture and kidnapping and murder and all the things that don’t add up with the 911 disaster. But maybe another time.
HA HA! Attention idiots: You can lie and lie and give me any kind of half assed ignorant assertions you want, but they just show how dishonest you are.
And what is the motivation for your dishonest? Your own greed.
You want to steal from others because you’re not a productive member of society….
The sad thing, of course, is your abject failure has reduced the well being of the poorest among us dramatically.
And has brought the globe to the brink of collapse… when it happens– as you work mightily to push us over the brink– you will get what you deserve.
Me, having understood both economics and morality, am rich enough and have seen this coming long enough to have prepared.
Did you see that video where Ron Paul predicted the housing crisis in 2001?
You idiot’s can’t predict next week! Because your “economics” is ideology… and you’ve replaced thinking with ideology.
I too am sick and tired of the anti-socialist rants that seem to be common place in the US. I studied for 4 years in the US towards a degree. Before that, I was a pretty rightist, conservative guy, notwithstanding having been exposed to the late sixties in Europe. Yes, living on a US campus actually made me more leftist, adopting many “socialist” principles, because most of those principles seemed more justified and correct. But, by God, in the US, even if you were thinking in a more socialist way than the average European, NEVER call yourself a “socialist”. The term has evolved to be a covert euphemism for “communist”, surviving the McCarthy era, with an even worse connotation.
A different issue, which may offer an explanation for the current decline of socialism in Europe seems to be that, more recently, it has become more difficult to support socialist oriented parties, because they seem to concentrate on petty issues. E.g., by making complicated rules that increase the cost of living, except for the really low incomes (even to the point of having a cumulative effect making them actually earn more than the middle class who is taxed more heavily through various social correction mechanisms). They pretend to defend the working class, but the people who are actually working, now form the middle class. The social correction mechanisms often are not well-thought out by subsidising the wrong people or offering loopholes for inappropriate exploitation.
European socialist parties, who have previously owed their success and backing from the middle class, are attacking the savings of that same class, almost trying to make them feel guilty of having actually worked for these savings.
They are also only slowly freeing themselves of supporting corrupt structures.
My point being, that socialist thinking is not to be blamed, but the actual incarnation of these thoughts in socialist parties is.
Good to know that US campuses are still the socialist brainwashing centers that the rightists think they are.
Read Atlas Shrugged, and understand why I’m not your slave, and never will be… and thus why none of these grand socialist experiments have ever worked out.
And if you refuse, then I demand you explain to me how the murder of 200 million people by socialist governments over the past century is “helping” them.
Why don’t you residents of the former Eastern Bloc countries. They referred to their communist systems as “cradle to grave prisons.”. As a results they are now the most free market oriented economies in the world. There is a huge disconnect between good intentions and depotism are replete through out history. Hitler (a National Socialist) came to power to protect the little guy – as did Lenin, Trotsky, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussien (bathist = national socialist – check your history. Jefferson said it best – government can either give you security or freedom, but not both. I’ll choose a government which provides me liberty.
SHUT THE FUCK UP. HITLER WAS NOT A SOCIALIST. Is your educational system THAT bad? There’s no such thing as a “national socialist”, both Hussein and Hitler were F-A-S-C-I-S-T-S, which is a extreme right-wing ideology. Both were conservatives to the core. Hitler for example was a religious fanatic.
The free market as the right knows it is a LIE. It is not truly free as corporations quickly grow to powerful and eventually make use of dangerous moves to expand that wealth and power. Not only that makes the costumers of the “free market” only “free” to submit themselves to the will of big corporations, the almost-ilegal and mostly dumb shady moves from the big corporations cause economic crisis such as the 1929 crisis (caused by overproduction and economic stagnation) and the 2007-2008 crisis, sparkled by the sudden “loss” of tons of money from the scandal, which triggered reactions to the fragility of the market at that moment, in turn caused by big corporations making dumb decisions and the government not INTERFERING the way they should, not to mention the piles of debt caused by Bush’s tax cuts to the rich, which also created an unbalanced amount of consumption/growth and contributed to the fragility of the economy itself.
It’s astounding how ignorant you are. “Nazi” is short for the german term “nationalist socialist” which is what they were.
They had big rallies where Hitler courted the unions and hitler got into power on a platform of “Defending the workers” and a lot of other typical socialist positions.
Fascism is a form of socialism, by the way.
You think you know economics but what you’re giving is political nonsense long refuted by real economists.
Economics is a science. I knew the housing crisis was going to happen in 2001… because of economics. When did you figure it out?
Guys, Engineer is full of crap….we all know that. Just leave him to froth at the mouth like a rabid tea party nutjob that he is.
Doing things for other people makes you a philanthropist. Looting your neighbors on the pretext of doing things for other people makes you a socialist.
-jcr
Well, I guess the good news is that at least some Americans are getting something from the oil being extracted from our soil and sold to the highest bidder overseas.
I advised my father to invest in Apple in December of 2003 when the stock was about $18 because he came into a bit of money. He didn’t. Now 2 stock splits and at $388 a share, he’s kicking himself.
@kaplanmike Democrats are referring to many tax deductions, such as section 199 of the IRS tax code, that allow many different companies, in a range of fields, to deduct qualified business expenses. The term loophole is subjective. Rather than describing it as closing loopholes, it would be more fair to say you want to limit what qualifies as a qualified business expense. Currently, oil companies can deduct things such as intangible drilling costs and tertiary injectants. While this may not seem like a prudent use of government money, it is being used for what the law was designed for. It is often described as a loophole because when you specifically include things such as intangible drilling costs and tertiary injectants, it becomes pretty clear that it was written with a certain industry in mind.
@Jesus How the fund is grown through investments is irrelevant to the fact that the principle which was invested in the first place came from oil company royalties. Oil companies in Alaska pay royalties equal to 1/8 of the oil produced. This is the same as taxing them an amount equal to the income they would have received on that 1/8 of production. 50% of this must be put in the Alaska Permanent Fund. This is where the money for those investments comes from in the first place. You cannot create value in a fund out of thin air. There must be a principle amount to invest in the investments in the fund. The unemployment rate in Alaska in June was 7.5%. Some of those people as you say must just not want to work. And every citizen of Alaska gets a dividend from the Alaska Permanent Fund. Therefore your argument is false because there must be some people in Alaska, who choose not to work, who receive money that was a percentage of revenue of oil companies that the state took.
Money taken from industry (not taxed population), invested with earnings, and redistributed.
Not the same as social welfare…which is what I was loosely comparing it too. You can’t compare the intitled poor living in Chicago ghettos to the unemployed in Alaska.
Not only is the scale different, the source of revenue is different (all of Illinois paying taxes…that gain no profit because the money is not invested…to support a failing social welfare system).
The source here is seed money from industry, and invested at a decent profit.
Money gained…not money lost…redistributed…and then lost again.
It seems typical of democrats to claim that only paying taxes on your profits, rather than your total revenue, is a “loophole”.
Shame on them.
Speaking as a former resident of Alaska who received a Permanent Fund Dividend check, I would emphasize the view of the creators of the PFD. It was realized, as should be obvious, that the state of Alaska contains untold natural resources. The state, or the people collectively through their government institutions, own those resources. They do not belong to any private company. If private companies wish to profit from them, they must pay for the privilege. It isn’t exactly a hardship on the richest companies in the world. Remember, Exxon still has more money than Apple. They didn’t get that money by being bad at math.
Well, the next time we have an Indian Summer down here, I’ll be out on my boat thinking about you all in cold dark Alaska wondering how much a flight to a survivable environment costs 😉
I, too, lived in Alaska, at the time when the Alaska dividends were first distributed. I was only 12 or so years old at the time, and I got this fat check for $1,000 from the state, as did each person in my family. (The amount was reduced in later years, to only a few hundred dollars, and then gradually built up again.) In our eyes it was compensation for the high cost of living in Alaska: the high utility bills (long winters), the high food prices (everything shipped in), etc. Alaska had a very small population, and still does; and the dividend was a small incentive to keep people living there, which obviously has a direct benefit to the state and all local industries. Although the dividend is nice, still it is obviously not extravagant enough to create a rush of people moving to the northlands.
Meanwhile, the rest of America is sitting on a vast array of natural resources that we’re afraid to touch. We’d rather empower our enemies by sending all of our money and jobs overseas.
The same goes for our food supply and the joke that is Ethanol, which in turn drives up food prices.
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