In principle I am against this approach.
It is a bottomless slippery slope. If it is OK to tax (confiscate) one sector and simply hand the money over to another, where does it stop? Why don’t the recipients simply vote to raise the tax level and award themselves even more money?
Is this really any different than the liberal “tax the evil rich and give to the virtuous poor”?
Can people envision the near limitless ways this could be applied? Like all government giveaways, it’s great if you are the recipient, bad if you are the involuntary donor.
This could be applied to any industry that could be painted as doing nothing for its profits. Which is pretty much everything as far as libs/socialists are concerned.
It’s pure socialist redistribution at its finest.
"ACES represented a major philosophical shift in the role of government. As resource owners, Alaskans literally had a "working interest" in energy exploration and development. Traditionally, the sovereign's role is to passively collect resource royalties, but under this value structure, we would shift towards an active role in incentivizing resource development. Our state and nation needed it. Ours ACES proposal would provide more value to Alaskans when the price of oil was high but would provide substantial relief to the oil companies when prices fell.In the special legislative session held in October and November 2007, legislators on both sides of the aisle agreed with our approach. The measure passed with overwhelming public support. Of course, I took political hits as the oil companies launched a smear campaign that we were raising taxes on the industry. But we persevered, and I'm glad we did. A year later, vindication came when industry officials admitted that the legislation was working and had even significantly increased their profits while spurring them to invest more in exploration and new development in Alaska. We had struck that sweet spot where industry and the public interest were mutually served."
GR pg.164
Your understanding of the payments to Alaskans is flawed. The people own the land NOT the oil companies. The oil companies are paying a usage fee to the citizens not a tax. If you owned a 100 acre farm and another farmer used 50 acres of it, you would expect a portion of his profit. Same concept.
If your family owned a piece of land and someone found gold on that land. You then gave that person the right to dig for gold because they had the expertise and equipment. Would you and your family just give that gold to that person or would you, because you owned the land and the gold under it, expect part of the profits from that gold? Would you consider it socialism if each of the family partners who were co owners of that land received a portion of those profits?
What part of taxes isnt? By your standards, the whole world for all history is socialist! I really do not understand when people get a direct tax cut based on surplus income to the government people freak out. You are fine with it if the people dont get a percentage of the windfall from mineral wealth, you only get freaked out when the people do?
Trust me, there are plenty of government bean counters that would love to do away with that check. Why then we in alaska could count tree toed frogs, if we could find thawed ones that is.
>> “It’s pure socialist redistribution at its finest.” <<
.
How can it be when it goes to everyone, not just to the “poor.”
Go troll somewhere else.