There’s lots of unpacking still to be done

A newcomer’s introduction to Alaska starts with unpacking everything you thought you knew about the way the world works. Assimilation in Alaska begins with repacking the new information into a brand new suitcase.

The in-between process is not unlike the learning experience of a wide-eyed toddler, absorbing whole new pieces of information every day.

On Wednesday, the weekly Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce Luncheon at the The Grill at the Grand View Inn & Suites was the site of one such unpacking for me. There, Angela Rodell, CEO of the Alaska Permanent Fund, spoke to a dining hall full of business-minded folk.

Though the content of her presentation surely wasn’t news to most Alaskans, Rodell took us on a breakneck tour of the history and the future of the fund. She started with its origin in 1969 and the ratification of Article IX, Section 15, in 1976, which established the set-aside fund known as the Alaska Permanent Fund.

“What word is not there?” Rodell asked, turning to the screen and back again. “Dividend.”

The word ‘dividend,’ Rodell explained, doesn’t show up until 1980 and SB122 with the rise of the Permanent Fund Division that created the annual payout. To a newcomer, this was news.

Rodell went on to detail the particulars of the fund’s investments. Leaning heavily on real estate — mostly overseas — the people’s fund piles up to more than $58 billion.

Meanwhile in Juneau, state officials were burning the midnight oil, trying their darndest to wriggle us free from a $4 billion budget deficit that’s blamed mostly on declines in oil tax revenues. Alas, as of Friday afternoon, the statesmanlike efforts of our leaders proved to have been in vain, and among the governor’s veto items that will stand is a 50 percent slash in the PFD, effective immediately.

Obviously, nobody wants their payout cut from $2,000 to $1,000. I know I wouldn’t like it. But the most strident and the most selfless voices against cutting the dividend cry out that it disproportionately hurts the poor.

I know as an outsider — still a good two years from getting my first Christmas in October check — I should probably keep my mouth shut and my eye on the unpacking. But the wisdom of the proverb, “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life,” suggests that if you really want to help the disadvantaged, the last thing you want to do is hand them cash.

Why not instead use it to provide better schools, better access to health care, establish food security, economic development and infrastructure?

If you really want to inject it into the economy, you could subsidize a statewide raise in the minimum wage and thereby trickle it into circulation. After all, the poor spend, and spend locally, while the rich save and spend elsewhere.

At this point, I’m probably sounding a lot like much-maligned Gov. Walker, who, whatever you think of his solutions, is at least putting forth solutions.

The same can’t be said of the legislature, which seems incapable of disappointing anybody, and would rather kick the can back to the boroughs, who have no choice but to raise property taxes and cut services to make up the difference.

No borough is facing tougher decisions than the Mat-Su, and on Friday it was announced that Walker will be present for Tuesday night’s critical meeting in Palmer. Let’s hope he lends some counsel to a room where you have to imagine he’ll be most unpopular.

I can’t wait to shake the hand of a man with that kind of nerve.