Alaska's Universal Basic Income, Supported By Liberals and Conservatives Under Attack

[anonymoose]

Hello Kacper,



The UBI does work. Alaska has shown that because it has not destroyed the Alaskan economy. All the fears and worries about such a concept causing people to die from laziness have been proven moot. It doesn't matter what the source is. In this case, the source has been from taxing oil extraction. It could be from taxing a different kind of wealth, and be just as effective.

The Permanent Fund dividend was a bad idea. Enshrining it in the Alaska Constitution would be harebrained.
If you can say anything for certain about many lawmakers, it is this: They never, ever give up pushing their ideas — no matter how lousy those ideas might be.

Take, for instance, the notion of enshrining the Permanent Fund dividend — itself a particularly harebrained public policy decision dating back to 1980 — in the Alaska Constitution, thereby compounding the Legislature’s 39-year-old error.

Lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats alike, I’m sorry to say — have embarrassed themselves over the past few years with repeated attempts to constitutionally ensure the Permanent Fund dividend is paid, no matter what.

This time around, Democratic Sen. Bill Wielechowski, as he did in 2016, has offered Senate Joint Resolution 1. In the House, Democratic Rep. Chris Tuck has offered mirror legislation in House Joint Resolution 3. If approved by two-thirds of the Legislature and voters, the amendment would enshrine the dividends and a formula to calculate them.

The impetus for all this appears to be former Gov. Bill Walker’s overriding the statute-based formula in 2016 and vetoing $696 million of the $1.4 billion appropriated by the Legislature for dividends as the state faced massive budget deficits.

Wielechowski sued, challenging the governor’s veto authority. The Alaska Supreme Court sided with Walker. The Legislature, not to be outdone, overrode the formula in the following two years. The money remains stashed in the fund’s $16.6 billion earnings reserve account.

A lingering question unanswered by the save-the-dividend-at-all-costs crowd is this: If oil prices crash, as they did in the 1980s and again a few years ago — and prices were to remain low — what then? Dividends are nice, but Alaska has other constitutional obligations, funding retirees and education among them. Would an enshrined dividend, complete with its own formula, elevate the annual payout above retirement pay or funding education, which have no constitutionally mandated spending formula, when push comes to shove? That seems almost unthinkable.

In a state with a long, sad history of boom-and-bust cycles and only one resource to pay the bills, how can anybody begin to guarantee — constitutionally guarantee, no less — an annual dividend, when nobody even knows for sure how much money the state will have next Thursday? What happens when there is not even enough money to pay the required dividends? What if there is not enough money for dividends and government services, even truncated government services? What goes away to pay dividends? Public safety? Health? Courts? Medicaid?

Count me among the grievously conflicted, those who like the dividend, but know it is wrong, wrong, wrong. OK, count me among the grievously conflicted, those who love the dividend, but know it is wrong, wrong, wrong. It is free dough, a sinfully guilty pleasure akin to ignoring your doctor and eating a pile of Chicago hot dogs, pizza and chocolate cake — and washing it all down with $200-a-shot hooch. And the idea of reimbursing the dividends shorted over the past few years? That is more than appealing — despite real questions about where the dough would come from.

That the dividend, as hatched, was a bad idea is undebatable. It has pushed and tugged at Alaska’s fiscal policy for decades and now is the tail wagging the dog. Ostensibly created as a buffer to protect the state’s oil wealth savings account from greedy lawmakers, it has morphed into a vast entitlement program. Over the years, as Alaskans grew more attached to their slice of Alaska’s oil wealth, the now-$61 billion saving and investment account’s raison d’être evolved — from being the Alaska Permanent Fund to the Alaska Permanent Dividend Fund.

When it comes to the dividends, it would be nice to stuff the genie back in the bottle, rethink the entire idea and find a better way to keep government honest, but we are all grown-ups here. The dividend is going nowhere; that train left years ago. It now is an integral part of the Alaska economy, a financial cornerstone for many Alaskans and economic manna from heaven. Doing away with it could be calamitous on many levels.

While there are many Weilechowskis and Tucks among us who sincerely believe enshrining the dividend is a good idea, they are wrong. At some point, a constitutionally protected dividend would inflict real fiscal damage. The answer is not in making the dividends unassailable, it is in changing the statute to provide an affordable dividend and electing lawmakers and a governor who will follow established law — and punishing them at the ballot box when they do not. The dividend program, you will remember, chugged along just fine without constitutional protection from 1980 until Walker’s veto.

Adopting a new, untenable and burdensome constitutional amendment with the potential for catastrophic consequences is not just an idea.

It is a lousy idea.

So now I've provided two opinion pieces from local op-ed writers.

The dividend seems to be all many Alaskans care about now. Politics reflects that.
https://www.adn.com/opinions/2019/01...c-fb9fce026ebb

One very liberal, the other very conservative.
Both opinions are very very negative about the PFD . Not only is it dysfunctional but downright bad for the state.

[PoliTalker]

So now I've provided two opinion pieces from local op-ed writers.

One very liberal, the other very conservative.
Both opinions are very very negative about the PFD . Not only is it dysfunctional but downright bad for the state.

That serves your beliefs quite well, if that's what you wanted.

I bet two opinions could be found, one from a conservative and the other from a liberal, both in support of the PFD.

[anonymoose]

That serves your beliefs quite well, if that's what you wanted.

I bet two opinions could be found, one from a conservative and the other from a liberal, both in support of the PFD.

OK, find them.
BTW, both of the opinion pieces came from the Anchorage Daily News. Locally in other words. Let's see what you come up with.

[PoliTalker]

OK, find them.
BTW, both of the opinion pieces came from the Anchorage Daily News. Locally in other words. Let's see what you come up with.

And how do we know if the ADN is slanted or not? If the ADN is taking a position on the PFD, it appears they ARE slanted.

It has already been done and complied into an article of investigative journalism.

It's in the OP link from Mother Jones.

"After visiting the state in July 2017, Mark Zuckerberg, a vocal basic-income booster, wrote in a Facebook post that the dividend provides “good lessons for the rest of our country.” "

Zuckerberg has never declared whether he leans conservative or liberal, and has displayed elements of both. So there you have both sides in one view.

It's not like liberals took over the State and forced this thing on conservatives:

"The dividend’s origins are rooted less in ideal*ism than in greed. In 1968, nearly a decade after Alaska joined the Union, the largest oil field in North America was discovered on its northern coast at Prudhoe Bay. Lease sales filled the young state’s coffers with $900 million, more than five times its annual budget. Within five years, the entire windfall was gone. Much of it paid for education and transportation projects, but some politicians and members of the public felt that spending had overinflated the bureaucracy. Jay Hammond, a trapper and fisherman elected governor in 1974, declared that the “nest egg” had been “scrambled.” He and other leaders decided the state ought to safeguard some oil revenue for future generations. In 1976, voters approved a constitutional amendment creating the Permanent Fund, a savings account that would be managed by a semi-independent, state-owned corporation and would take in at least a quarter of oil royalties and related income and invest it.

The fund’s principal could never be touched, barring a constitutional amendment, but Hammond strongly believed the earnings should go directly to residents. The self-styled “bush rat governor” had no interest in charity or wealth redistribution. Rather, influenced by consultants like Milton Friedman who advocated a federal basic income, he viewed recipients as shareholders that should benefit equally from ownership in “Alaska, Inc.” and could spend money more efficiently than the government. Hammond reasoned individual distributions would give the public a personal stake in keeping the fund safe—were politicians to fritter away or mismanage the savings, it would hit every resident right in the pocketbook. If oil was, in the words of OPEC’s founder, “the devil’s excrement,” breeding waste and corruption, Hammond argued a dividend would “at least halfway pin a “diaper'” on it.

As the young fund slowly built up principal, lawmakers debated how to spend the earnings. Most of them strongly opposed dividends, preferring to fund infrastructure or loans to small businesses. Many feared handouts would attract “freeloaders” to the state, or that people would stop working or waste money on frills and vices. But when oil prices soared after the Iranian revolution, there seemed to be enough revenue to go around. In 1980, legislators repealed individual income taxes and put the fund to use, enacting a dividend that would give every adult Alaskan $50 for each year they’d been a resident since statehood. The US Supreme Court ruled the seniority provision unconstitutional, so legislators replaced it with flat annual payouts, extending them to children and adding provisions that prevented recipients from losing federal public assistance because of any windfall. In 1982, Alaskans received their first checks of $1,000. It was the first time in contemporary history that a government had sent money to people just for living in its jurisdiction.

...

Public support for a dividend was tepid before its launch, but it soon became the state’s most popular policy, with backing across party lines. Officials have regularly tried to cut payouts, particularly in lean years, but just as Hammond intended, those attempts have historically spelled political suicide. After oil prices cratered in the late ’90s, an advisory ballot question polled voters on whether a portion of the fund’s earnings should go toward closing the state’s general budget deficit; 83 percent said no. If anything, support for dividends has intensified over time. The Economic Security Project survey found that 58 percent of respondents would rather pay new taxes than give up a portion of their dividend. The anti-tax Alaska State Chamber of Commerce’s own 2018 survey found that 35 percent of Alaskans were open to new taxes to balance the state’s budget; only 9 percent were open to using fund earnings."

[anonymoose]

And how do we know if the ADN is slanted or not?

The opinions are from the left and right. How the heck can that be considered slanted?

If the ADN is taking a position on the PFD, it appears they ARE slanted.

You're slanted.

[anonymoose]

It's in the OP link from Mother Jones.

"After visiting the state in July 2017, Mark Zuckerberg, a vocal basic-income booster, wrote in a Facebook post that the dividend provides “good lessons for the rest of our country.”

I'm glad Mother Jones knows more about what's going on in Alaska than the Aanchorage Daily News and good to know Zuck knows what's better for AK than the people living there do.

Zuckerberg has never declared whether he leans conservative or liberal, and has displayed elements of both. So there you have both sides in one view.

Am I supposed care about Zuckerberg's opinion on anything? Let me know.

It's not like liberals took over the State and forced this thing on conservatives:

"The dividend’s origins are rooted less in ideal*ism than in greed. In 1968, nearly a decade after Alaska joined the Union, the largest oil field in North America was discovered on its northern coast at Prudhoe Bay. Lease sales filled the young state’s coffers with $900 million, more than five times its annual budget. Within five years, the entire windfall was gone. Much of it paid for education and transportation projects, but some politicians and members of the public felt that spending had overinflated the bureaucracy. Jay Hammond, a trapper and fisherman elected governor in 1974, declared that the “nest egg” had been “scrambled.” He and other leaders decided the state ought to safeguard some oil revenue for future generations. In 1976, voters approved a constitutional amendment creating the Permanent Fund, a savings account that would be managed by a semi-independent, state-owned corporation and would take in at least a quarter of oil royalties and related income and invest it.

The fund’s principal could never be touched, barring a constitutional amendment, but Hammond strongly believed the earnings should go directly to residents. The self-styled “bush rat governor” had no interest in charity or wealth redistribution. Rather, influenced by consultants like Milton Friedman who advocated a federal basic income, he viewed recipients as shareholders that should benefit equally from ownership in “Alaska, Inc.” and could spend money more efficiently than the government. Hammond reasoned individual distributions would give the public a personal stake in keeping the fund safe—were politicians to fritter away or mismanage the savings, it would hit every resident right in the pocketbook. If oil was, in the words of OPEC’s founder, “the devil’s excrement,” breeding waste and corruption, Hammond argued a dividend would “at least halfway pin a “diaper'” on it.

As the young fund slowly built up principal, lawmakers debated how to spend the earnings. Most of them strongly opposed dividends, preferring to fund infrastructure or loans to small businesses. Many feared handouts would attract “freeloaders” to the state, or that people would stop working or waste money on frills and vices. But when oil prices soared after the Iranian revolution, there seemed to be enough revenue to go around. In 1980, legislators repealed individual income taxes and put the fund to use, enacting a dividend that would give every adult Alaskan $50 for each year they’d been a resident since statehood. The US Supreme Court ruled the seniority provision unconstitutional, so legislators replaced it with flat annual payouts, extending them to children and adding provisions that prevented recipients from losing federal public assistance because of any windfall. In 1982, Alaskans received their first checks of $1,000. It was the first time in contemporary history that a government had sent money to people just for living in its jurisdiction.

...

Public support for a dividend was tepid before its launch, but it soon became the state’s most popular policy, with backing across party lines. Officials have regularly tried to cut payouts, particularly in lean years, but just as Hammond intended, those attempts have historically spelled political suicide. After oil prices cratered in the late ’90s, an advisory ballot question polled voters on whether a portion of the fund’s earnings should go toward closing the state’s general budget deficit; 83 percent said no. If anything, support for dividends has intensified over time. The Economic Security Project survey found that 58 percent of respondents would rather pay new taxes than give up a portion of their dividend. The anti-tax Alaska State Chamber of Commerce’s own 2018 survey found that 35 percent of Alaskans were open to new taxes to balance the state’s budget; only 9 percent were open to using fund earnings."

What you don't understand is that we all like our dividend. It's like crack. It makes us feel good temporarily every Oct.
The reality is that we're making huge cuts in infrastructure spending to save the PFD.
I like my dividend, we all do. But if you had bothered to read the articles I posted and had an ounce of cognitive reasoning you'd understand the point of the articles. We're basically addicted to something that is bad for the state and ultimately for the people living there.

Let me know where you live and I'll tell you what's best for your politics. Deal?

[Part Multi 313]

"How to Hand Out Free Money
When the robots take our jobs, we’ll need another form of income. Alaska can show us the way."

Mother Jones

"For nearly four decades, the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) program, designed to share revenue from the state’s oil wealth, has made flat annual payouts to anyone who has lived there for at least one calendar year, barring those with certain criminal convictions. While the program’s architects didn’t use the term, it’s the closest thing today to a universal basic income program that has durably existed anywhere in the world.

The concept of universal basic income—in which governments pay residents a set sum regularly, no strings attached—has gained momentum in recent years. A growing chorus of Silicon Valley executives has called the policy inevitable, as automation threatens to displace one-third of American workers by 2030, raising the specter of unemployed masses rioting in the streets. Others have revived the idea as an efficient solution to poverty and inequality. Y Combin*ator, the tech startup accelerator, will soon test basic income with 3,000 people in two states, following a smaller study in Oakland, California. The city of Stockton, California, will launch a guaranteed income pilot in 2019, and lawmakers in Hawaii and Chicago are considering following suit. Trials have also launched in Barcelona, Canada, Finland, Kenya, Uganda, and Switzerland. In the United States, the concept is inching its way into the mainstream; Hillary Clinton’s campaign memoir disclosed she seriously considered floating a universal basic income program called “Alaska for America” during her 2016 run."

PoliTalker anti-troll thread thief disclaimer: If this thread is stolen, plagiarized, will the thief have the nerve to use the entire OP, word for word? Including this disclaimer? If you want my take on it, you'll have to post to this original PoliTalker thread. I refuse to be an enabler for online bullies, so I won't post to a stolen thread. I won't even read it. If you don't see me, PoliTalker, posting in this thread check the author. This might be a hijacked thread, not the original.

Eventually, most jobs as we know them will be performed by robots. Artificial Intelligence is changing the way we work. This level of automation will dwarf anything seen in the past. And it will not generate more jobs than it eliminates. We are on the precipice of having a society where there are far more willing workers than jobs.

As if we don't have that already. We can fool ourselves by claiming jobs are abundant and unemployment is low, but it is rarely wise to fool ourselves. Yes, jobs are abundant and unemployment is low, technically, but the unemployment figures count anybody working one hour per week as not unemployed. Nobody can live on one hour's pay unless they are CEO of a major corporation, so for millions of Americans, work and paychecks are not enough to live on. There is not enough work for everybody, and much of the work that is there doesn't pay enough to live on.

And the situation is poised to become far worse.

The need for government assistance is about to be amplified.

Should we continue to pay lots of government workers to be part of a huge bureaucracy to decide who gets benefits and who doesn't?

What if there was another way? That's a lot of money to run government agencies and pay people to enforce elaborate rules to decide who is needy and who isn't. It's a lot of overhead. It costs the taxpayers a lot of money just to try to figure out who gets what.

What if we simply handed out the money instead?

If we had a UBI, much of the government safety net could be dismantled.

Who is going to pay for it all?

The ultra rich. That's who.

The ultra rich are far richer than most. Most people don't even have any idea how rich the super-rich are. But let me tell you. They are rich. Rich enough to cover this.

And they are about to get a lot richer. Extreme wealth inequality is not going to stop. AI is going to launch it into the stratosphere. The only people who will be able to afford the fancy AI machines that will, not only do most jobs but also service and repair the new AI machines as well as design and build improves AI machines, will be the super-wealthy. Workers will not be able to own their own 'worker machine' that goes and does their job for them. No. It will not work that way. The super-wealthy will own those machines and they won't need workers any more. The 'job creator' nonsense will be blown out of the water. The AI race will be a race to eliminate jobs.

Your job could be going away.

And you might not be able to get another one.

The very need for whatever you are trained for will be going away.

And so will your paychecks.

And revenue.

We are going to have to raise taxes on the super-wealthy, and we are going to have to tax them enough to pay for the UBI.

There's no other way to do it.

Unless you have a better idea.

Theres a lot of reasons that make this free Alaskan money thing work to our benefit. Alaska is a dangerous place, nobody wants to live there. People move to Alaska simply for that basic income and start on life, much like people join the military for an easier start. Then theres people who try to get everything free in life, those types would gravitate to Alaska like moths to a lamp post light. Far out of the way. Because the climate is so harsh certain measures must be set in place to insure that a bottom line is above poverty levels.

[PoliTalker]

Hello Part Multi 313,

Theres a lot of reasons that make this free Alaskan money thing work to our benefit. Alaska is a dangerous place, nobody wants to live there. People move to Alaska simply for that basic income and start on life, much like people join the military for an easier start. Then theres people who try to get everything free in life, those types would gravitate to Alaska like moths to a lamp post light. Far out of the way. Because the climate is so harsh certain measures must be set in place to insure that a bottom line is above poverty levels.

Sounds like a perfect example of how socialism and capitalism can work hand in hand to produce a vibrant economy.

[anonymoose]

Hello Kacper,,



Well, some actually live on it, but it takes more grit than money to live where they do. It isn't enough for most to live on, but it is a regular payment from the State to everybody for doing nothing, and the money comes from taxing the wealthy. The basics of my argument are all there. You're simply debating proportions.



I explained that in the OP.

"Who is going to pay for it all?

The ultra rich. That's who.

...

We are going to have to raise taxes on the super-wealthy, and we are going to have to tax them enough to pay for the UBI."

We don't have enough super-wealthy to pay a dividend.
Here's a link to the list of massive cuts that had to be made to preserve the PFD. Think it's worth it?
https://www.adn.com/politics/2019/06...e-item-vetoes/

And these cuts only make a dent in the budget shortfall.

[PoliTalker]

Hello anonymoose,

We don't have enough super-wealthy to pay a dividend.

We most certainly do.

Here's a link to the list of massive cuts that had to be made to preserve the PFD. Think it's worth it?
https://www.adn.com/politics/2019/06...e-item-vetoes/

And these cuts only make a dent in the budget shortfall.

"The governor vetoed $5.4 billion of a $9.4 billion transfer from the Permanent Fund’s earnings reserve to the corpus of the fund. The transfer was intended to prevent the Legislature or the governor from easily spending that money. The veto leaves the money in the Permanent Fund’s earnings reserve, where it can be spent."

An interesting accounting. All kinds of education and social services were cut, but no taxes were raised for the rich or for big corporations.

Lemme take a wild guess. This governor is a Republican, right?

I also noticed no mention was made of the fact that the legislature has previously raided the fund.

[anonymoose]

Hello anonymoose,



We most certainly do.

I didn't know you live in Alaska. Besides why do you post a vid about the rest of America? We're talking about our state, Alaska. No, there's not enough super wealthy living in AK who can give up most of their income to redistribute to the rest of the population. But if you lived here you'd know that.

"The governor vetoed $5.4 billion of a $9.4 billion transfer from the Permanent Fund’s earnings reserve to the corpus of the fund. The transfer was intended to prevent the Legislature or the governor from easily spending that money. The veto leaves the money in the Permanent Fund’s earnings reserve, where it can be spent."

You should be happy about that. It preserves the PFD.

An interesting accounting. All kinds of education and social services were cut, but no taxes were raised for the rich or for big corporations.

Can't raise what isn't there to begin with. We have no state income tax.

Lemme take a wild guess. This governor is a Republican, right?

Right . He won in a landslide. He campaigned on exactly what he's doing. Like I said the only way to preserve the PFD was to make drastic cuts.

I also noticed no mention was made of the fact that the legislature has previously raided the fund.

Uh, yeah. So what's your point?
If you live in Alaska why don't you understand better what the limitations are? You seem amazingly uniformed for someone from here. This has been big news for yrs. now. Either preserve the PFD and make drastic cuts or raid the PFD and don't make cuts. The last governor and legislature raided the PFD. He didn't even bother running again he was so unpopular.
We've been spoiled for a long time. No taxes, and a PFD. Something had to give. The voters want their PFD, damn all else. Not good.

[Celticguy]

The PFD is $1600 a year at this time.
While that's a nice little bonus for Alaskans its really no more and isnt going to change anyon's need to work.

[PoliTalker]

Hello Celticguy,

The PFD is $1600 a year at this time.
While that's a nice little bonus for Alaskans its really no more and isnt going to change anyon's need to work.

Some people live off it entirely. For most, it augments their income and contributes to the Alaskan economy.

[Celticguy]

Hello Celticguy,



Some people live off it entirely. For most, it augments their income and contributes to the Alaskan economy.

Live off it ? Not for long.

[anonymoose]

Hello Celticguy,



Some people live off it entirely.

Really? That's $133.33/ mo. to live in a place that has the sixth highest cost of living index in the country. I personally don't see how anyone can live off that entirely.

For most, it augments their income and contributes to the Alaskan economy.

That is true. What do you think $444,000,000 in cuts will do to the Alaskan economy?