From: floyd@hayes.ims.alaska.edu (Floyd Davidson)
Newsgroups: alt.culture.alaska
Subject: Re: Healthy Winter
Date: 27 Dec 92 04:03:42 GMT
Organization: University of Alaska Computer Network

In article <1992Dec27.021416.8710@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> les@cs.stanford.edu writes:
>Michael Adams writes:

>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.
Newsgroups: alt.culture.alaska