From: nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu
Subject: Re: Healthy Winter
Organization: University of Alaska Fairbanks
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1992 03:38:47 GMT

In article <1992Dec27.040342.11690@raven.alaska.edu>, floyd@hayes.ims.alaska.edu (Floyd Davidson) writes:
> In article <1992Dec27.021416.8710@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> les@cs.stanford.edu writes:
>>Michael Adams writes: (No I did not say the following.. Someone else was
replying to something I said..
> 
>>The primary source of state income is, of course, North Slope oil.
>>The annual dividend has been paid to residents even in years when the
>>price of oil fell to the point where expenses substantially exceeded
>>income, but the state legislature treats the dividend as politically
>>untouchable.
> 
> The size of the dividend is determined by how much money the permanent
> fund made, not the price of oil or the state budget as you seem to
> imply.  You might argue that it should be, but you didn't...
> 
> I think it is set up rather nicely the way it is, especially the 
> politically untouchable part!
> 
>>This problem is compunded by the fact that every gallon of petroleum
>>products sent to native villages is subsidized by the state so as to
>>encourage the use of heating oil, power boats, and snow machines
>>in place of older resources.  The state has also put in satellite
>>television with cable distribution in most villages so that the people
>>can watch TV instead of telling each other those silly old myths that
>>they used to pass long winter nights before the '80s.
> 
> Are you seriously suggesting that the above is even a significant 
> factor in the current state budget, the economy, or for that matter
> much of anything else?  The amount of petroleum products used in
> all of bush Alaska is a drop in the bucket compared to what Anchorage
> uses.  The subsidy hardly compares to the money spend to subsidize
> the lifestyle of Anchorage.  Think about road maintenance for a
> couple seconds as a matter of comparison.
> 
> Also you are not correct about "cable distribution", as RATNET in
> villages is not on cable.  There are little 50 watt TV
> transmitters in each village.  I don't recall one cable system
> that the state has any connection with, particularly in the Nome
> area...
> 
>>What the state has not done is to create industries that will permit
>>the native people to support themselves in their new lifestyle when the
>>oil money runs out in a decade or two.  I fully expect the Alaska
>>legislature to run straight into that brick wall without blinking,
>>then request subsidies from the Federal government to deal with their
>>"unfortunate and unforeseen" poverty.
> 
> I don't understand why you are refering again to the Native people
> being in some way the problem here.  The state has spent less money
> on them than it has on non-Natives, and certainly the state hasn't
> done any better at creating industry or any type of sustainable
> yeld future for anyone else either.
> 
> It could also be argued well that the one area of the state where
> an infrastructure with an eye to the future has been built was done
> so by the Native people of the North Slope Borough.  Not that it has
> been the smoothest transition anyone ever heard of, but considering
> where they started and where the have gone too, they make the rest
> of the state look anemic.
> 
> Floyd
> -- 
> floyd@ims.alaska.edu        A guest on the Institute of Marine Science computer
> Salcha, Alaska              system at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

What it was said that I said is not what I said at all.. 

Newsgroups: alt.culture.alaska