[goodnesswins]

What I don't understand is....well, actually I do....every Alaskan gets an "oil rebate"......THAT'S where the MONEY should come from!

[RedBloodedAmerican]

It's not thatmuch. But I think the money should come from taxes on oil companies up there, IMO.

[hattend]

What I don't understand is....well, actually I do....every Alaskan gets an "oil rebate"......THAT'S where the MONEY should come from!

Don't you wish that your state government was forward thinking and set up an account where the people who live there would benefit from the export sale of your state's natural resource?

To change how the "oil money" is spent would take a change in the Alaska State Constitution.

[RightWhale]

That is incorrect. The PFD is available, but not all take it.

[Brad C.]

My guess is that you don't know a whole lot about how the PFD program was set up, how the distributions get made, and what happens to the other moneys collected by the State of Alaska.

After living in Alaska for 30 years, I get really bothered by people saying that it "free" money, or that it should be spent in such a such manner. While the program is in no way perfect, and the local government takes advantage of every possible means to spend every dollar it can; there is no state in the union that has a better method of redistributing the wealth generated by the resources of the state back to its residents which by law are the owners of those resources.

Picture if you will a similar setup in Iraq today. A percentage of the money from the sale of oil gets deposited into an investment account. As the investment appreciates, a percentage of that revenue is then paid out to every citizen (man, woman and child) in the country. Using figures from Alaska, lets say that would be around $1,000 US each and every year. For most of the people/families in Iraq, this would be a dramatic raise in annual income and become a major source of disposal income to them.

The reason I mention this is that with a direct interest in the revenue, the people have a much higher interest in protecting what is theirs. The pipelines didn't matter before because Saddam got all the money, but if it meant 6-10 thousand dollars a year to each family there might be a little less terrorism in country.

I have no idea what state you live in, but just imagine the benefit you would be receiving if your government had set up a similar program for the sale of state owned resources and invested the money for your benefit.