From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Mon Feb 25 2002 - 17:33:01 MST
John Grigg wrote:
>
> James Rogers wrote:
> While I see it said many times that Alaska is a libertarian State, I have my
> doubts. In my experience, Alaska is a fairly socialist State (in the same
> way New Mexico is), but is in a unique position where the citizens of the
> State are not really paying the costs of socialism.
> (end)
>
> I tend to agree. For one thing, Alaska has one of the largest state governments per capita in the nation.
>
> While Alaskans like to see themselves as rugged individuals on the edge of the frontier doing their own thing, I would say not Libertarianism, but instead "conservative" Republicanism is the dominant political force here. And to think Republicans are s
upposed to be against big government bureaucracies! ; )
Alaska is a good example of parasitizing government on the exploitation
of resources. Most all of the state budget comes from oil revinues,
which obviously, since the consumers are not state residents, gives the
government a rather free hand in providing any services it's citizens
want, since they don't actually pay for it themselves. Its a
prescription for bloat. The fact that every resident is on welfare as
well (each state resident receives about $2000 annually from oil
royalties) doesn't help things.
Now, Alaska does have the largest percent of land owned by the state and
federal governments of all states in the union, so that requires a
rather significant bureaucracy to manage all that land, while, because
of the degree to which things are spread out, the costs of roads and
services are similarly much higher. If there were more people in Alaska,
with less land in government hands, the size of government would be much
smaller.
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