Alaskans Are About to Suffer the Lean Years

This article was published at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, December 11, 2015:  

Matthew Henry commented on Joseph’s interpretation of the Pharoah’s dreams:

Pharoah had dreamed that he stood upon the bank of the river Nile, and saw the kine, both the fat ones, and the lean ones, come out of the river….

We cannot be sure that tomorrow shall be as this day, or next year as this.

We must learn how to want, as well as how to abound.

Mark the goodness of God in sending the seven years of plenty before those of famine, that provision might be made.

For the past generation Alaskans have enjoyed the fat years. An estimated 90 percent of the government’s budget came from oil and gas revenues. Its massive Prudhoe Bay field is the largest in the world, and its natural gas reserves are equally substantial.

In 1980 the Alaskan legislature, seeing how the government was spending every dime that came in after the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was built, decided to exercise at least a measure of prudence, and created the state’s Permanent Fund, putting excess revenues into it, and drawing out just five percent each year to pay a dividend to Alaska’s permanent residents. Last year 645,000 of them got a check for $2,072. In June that fund was worth $53 billion.

It won’t be enough.

Keep Reading: Alaskans Are About to Suffer the Lean Years