Saturday, December 26, 2015

The Party is Over for the Ice Arabs

The government was always spending big, it was just hidden because of high tax revenues from oil.

In truth, Sarah Palin, as governor, was as conservative as a Kardashian in a selfie.

NYT explains:
Oil money no longer pays the bills here.

The governor, facing a profound fiscal crisis, has proposed the imposition of a personal income tax for the first time in 35 years. State lawmakers, who recently moved into a palatial new office building here [Anchorage], where they work when not toiling in the far-off Capitol in Juneau, are now seeking less costly digs.

And a state budget that was a point of Alaskan pride — and envy from around the nation — lies in tatters as revenue that flowed from selling crude oil from Prudhoe Bay over the past four decades has been swept away.

With oil prices down along with oil production, the state is facing an Alaska-size shortfall: Two-thirds of the revenue needed to cover this year’s $5.2 billion state budget cannot be collected.

Many Alaskans are not old enough to recall times this bad. This is the nation’s least-taxed state, where oil royalties and energy taxes once paid for 90 percent of state functions. Oil money was so plentiful that residents received annual dividend checks from a state savings fund that could total more than $8,000 for a family of four — arriving each autumn, as predictable as the first snowfall.

  -RW 

1 comment:

  1. I have met and know several of the Alaskan legislators, they are seriously some of the most stupid people I have met. None of them could run a coffee stand and yet they think they can understand and run the Alaska economy. I've listened to them get asked pretty good questions on local talk shows, usually softball ones at that, and they just duh duh uh their way through their answers. These fools have blown more stolen loot on nothing than any fools I have heard of. The budget now is somewhere over $5 billion? Well the last couple years it's been over $8 billion. For a State with 700,000 people. The State, particularly agencies like the DOT, wastes so much money is laughable. Of course now they say "there is no way we can just cut our way out of this". Really? Don't spend any money and you will still be broke? This governor just hired 3 of his old buddies for over $100,000 a month each, but they can't cut their way out of this. This governor is a moron. Palin was a moron. Parnell was a moron. And every stinking legislator in Alaska is a moron. Someone should write a book on how a State can have a $42 billion dollar surplus fund and be broke in a couple years. I don't mind them being broke, in fact I think it's great. Except now of course they want to milk us cows dry. One good thing that could happen is a mass migration of folks out of Alaska. I can only hope.

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