In response to Greg Carr’s letter praising Alyse Galvin for a state tax. Does it really make sense to pay a tax and get the Permanent Fund dividend? We pay the federal government taxes on the PFD; all those taxes would stay in the state and help fund our needs. Cut the PFD to balance the budget and fund the PFD with what’s left. The PFD was never meant to be an entitlement, it was meant as a way to pay for government. Gov. Jay Hammond only felt that if the people got some of the oil money, it would guard against the Legislature from spending all the money.
Can you imagine if we had been able to put all the money into our Permanent Fund, where we would be today? All of the government would forever have been paid for by the fund, and all generations of Alaska would benefit equally, not just those of us here during oil extraction.
— Greg Svendsen
Anchorage
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