market socialism: alaska's most coveted export?

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/market-socialism-alaska-s-most-coveted-export-1328893034

Less than six months be­fore his as­sas­si­na­tion on April 4, 1968 Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. first en­dorsed the idea of “the guar­an­teed in­come” in his col­lec­tion of es­says en­ti­tled Where Do we Go From Here, Chaos or Com­mu­nity? King writes, hith­erto now “we have pro­ceeded from a premise that poverty is a con­se­quence of mul­ti­ple evils: lack of ed­u­ca­tion re­strict­ing job op­por­tu­ni­ties; poor hous­ing which stul­ti­fied home life and sup­pressed ini­tia­tive; frag­ile fam­ily re­la­tion­ships which dis­torted per­son­al­ity de­vel­op­ment. The logic of this ap­proach sug­gested that each of these causes be at­tacked one by one…Each seeks to solve poverty by first solv­ing some­thing else. I am now con­vinced that the sim­plest ap­proach will prove to be the most ef­fec­tive -- the so­lu­tion to poverty is to abol­ish it di­rectly by a now widely dis­cussed mea­sure: the guar­an­teed in­come.”

Al­though pro­pos­als like King’s are often met with cyn­i­cism or chas­tise­ment, the truth is that at least one state in the Union has man­aged to es­tab­lish a par­tial guar­an­teed in­come plan lauded by those with seem­ingly di­ver­gent— or so we’re told—po­lit­i­cal in­cli­na­tions.

Have you ever won­dered how Alaska has man­aged to boast yearly bud­getary sur­pluses amidst eco­nomic crises while main­tain­ing the third low­est poverty rate in the coun­try (be­hind New Hamp­shire and Mary­land) with­out col­lect­ing a sin­gle cent in in­di­vid­ual state in­come taxes? The Alaska Per­ma­nent Fund, in part, pro­vides one such ex­pla­na­tion and might, in fact, rep­re­sent the best of both so­cial­ist and lib­er­tar­ian tra­di­tions.

[canoeist52]

1. Worthy Idea for all states with natural resources.

"Far from conceived as “handouts,” dividends represent the idea that Alaskans own their resources collectively and should therefore benefit from the 10% annualized rate of return on their investment. Further, in the form of an “unconditional cash payment,” the dividend respects the freedom and autonomy of each person to use it as s/he sees fit. And finally, because nearly everyone has a stake in the dividend, Alaskans have tended to invest prudently in lower risk asset classes that maximize the public good like government bonds and infrastructure."