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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (48276)	7/9/2013 7:20:55 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 85487

What plan private plan would have helped the poor and distraught during the great depression? The private sector doesn't need some overall plan to help. It would have done more to help without a lot of the actions of government (such as destroying food when people where hungry, trying to force up wages, when companies where laying people off and/or failing, trying to send people to jail for offering discounts when people where poor and needed them, etc.) Other states don't have a permanent fund because , why? Such a fund can make sense when there is a huge source of wealth, compared to the size of the population, that will gradually run low, and/or is subject to major swings in prices. Alaska's population is low, it has tons of natural resources esp. oil. The price of oil is volatile. And presumably Alaskan oil will eventually run low. So its good to have a fund to buffer the swings, and deal with the eventual reduction of production of the states main commodity. States with larger populations, and more diverse economies and tax bases have less need for such a fund, and less ability to generate one large enough to be meaningful for their population. They might have smaller funds built for use during the swings of the economic cycle, but usually politicians can't keep their hands off of those. When things are good the funds fill up, and politicians want to grab the money.