If you can't make it in Alaska, you have to leave. Those cold winters don't forgive failures or runner ups.

Hence if you do make it there, your salary is likely to be high. Once you get the job, your competition has to leave the state.

It would seem that Alaska rewards individual initative, as per conservative ideology. But note that it's a fairy land. That's because the money for the high salaries comes from elsewhere. Without the lower 48 and its insatiable demand for oil and maybe salmon, Alaskans wouldn't make a nickel.

Notice that the lower 48 is the economic powerhouse, not Alaska. We could live without Alaska, we would just buy oil from elsewhere. But Alaska would be nothing without us.

The real America, the real powerhouse, isn't the lucky low tax high wage dog eat dog world of Alaska, it's the crowded industrialized unionized world of high taxes and welfare and immigrants. Somehow we're the ones who make all the money, while the Alaskans are the ones who like to dispense all the advice. Yet they're dependent on us for everything they have.

'But note that it's a fairy land. That's because the money for the high salaries comes from elsewhere. Without the lower 48 and its insatiable demand for oil and maybe salmon, Alaskans wouldn't make a nickel.'

the are bribing you stupid fucks with your own money. there has been a recent spike in demand for lesbian government social working grief counselors from massachusetts in alaska.

Nerdham wrote

"If you can't make it in Alaska, you have to leave. Those cold winters don't forgive failures or runner ups".

I am about to start my forty second winter here. It gets colder in Minnesota and Maine. There are a lot of failures here - sourdoughs, one might say - Sour on Alaska, but no dough to get out. Add to that a lot of oilfield trash left over from the pipeline.

Hence if you do make it there, your salary is likely to be high.

Used to be, but not any longer.

"Once you get the job, your competition has to leave the state."

Huh? I don't suppose nerdham would care to expand on that.

After that nerdham does have it right, pretty much. Alaska is resource extraction and tourism. What is Nevada, other than the same thing? Arizona doesn't produce much except sunshine for retirees and agricultural produce subsidized by the federal government's water projects.

California is, of course, Arizona writ large, but with a scenic Victorian/Edwardian gay mecca and a handful of coders. Florida is Cali East. New York produces Broadway shows and pleas for $700 billion bailouts. New Jersey's only significant export is its obnoxious citizenry, who love to tell you how they did it in Jersey, but the fact that none of them live there anymore should tell you something.

Texas may be the last productive state in the Union.

I don't suppose nerdham would care to expand on that.

It's nerdnam, not nerdham. Alaska is a low population state. The reason is that its cold and there aren't that many jobs and the high paying jobs involve work on some of the coldest parts, such as the pipeline. If you can't get one of those jobs, then you generally can't live in Alaska. Hence Alaska remains a low population state. Is that clear enough to you?

Now, down here in the lower 48, we can't just expect people to go away when they can't find jobs. And people come here all the time.

Hence we don't have a fairy land of high wages, such as Todd Palin enjoys, wages which allow him to play at being fisherman for a few months out of the year, or to run in 500 mile sled races with a broken arm.

We don't live by resource extraction. And we have all these people who don't go away and that we have to take care of, one way or another. And yet we make the money. It's our dime that pays Todd Palin's salary. Doesn't that tell you something?

It tells me that conservative ideology is shit. Money doesn't come from millionaries, or from oil, it comes from people and from their desires. No people, no money. If we take care of people, if they have jobs and money and health care, then we can generate wealth. If however we try to be Alaska and attempt to throw people away, as conservative ideology does, then in the end we will make nothing.

Alaska is a low population state because it is a low population state. It isn't near another population center (like Rhode Island or New Jersey are to New York) so we don't receive overflow residents. We don't have a manufacturing base, because we are so far away from transportation hubs, and we just entered the union in 1959, so we are a very new entrant into the residency stakes. I will grant you that Hawaii's climate is inducive to population inflow, while Alaska's may not be, but to blame it all on the climate?

Also, I would like to point out that Texas is an oil-producing state, most coastal states have fisheries, and while the lower-48 collectively may be an economic powerhouse, the reality is we could do without most other individual states as well. AND Alaska sells most of our resources out of the country, like fish and timber to Japan. Even if we drilled ANWR tomorrow, we wouldn't put a plug in the current demand for oil based energy, so we don't need to drill ANWR, we need to develop alternative energy.

If you don't like Palin, join the club. But don't Alaska-bash. Palin bash.

As long as Alaskans like Palin come down here and tell us to be more like them, and denigrate our way of life, I will continue to 'bash' Alaska.

The high wages that Todd Palin enjoys from working on the pipelines are an accident of climate and location, not a result of his superior initiative or of any harder work on the part of Todd Palin. The low taxes and oil company payments that Alaskans enjoy is a result of the money that we and other countries like Japan pay for their resources.

Without other people to buy their resources, Alaskans would have next to nothing. Alaska does not generate wealth. Saudia Arabia does not generate wealth. The Southern slave states did not generate wealth. Countries where workers are exploited do not generate wealth. All such countries only live off countries that do generate wealth, and ALL of those countries that generate wealth happen to have high taxes, social safety nets such as welfare, and many, many rules and regulations, all of which conservatives like to tell us we should do without.

The fact is that places where 'government gets out the way,' as Sarah Palin advises, simply don't generate wealth. They only live off the wealth that other people generate. So I believe my contention is correct; Alaska is a conservative fairy land, a place where conservative ideology appears to work. But in fact it would never work without the economic powerhouses of liberal ideology.

'But in fact it would never work without the economic powerhouses of liberal ideology.'

so how much is califonia going want to get bailed out? that's your liberal ideology right there.

'As long as Alaskans like Palin come down here and tell us to be more like them, and denigrate our way of life, I will continue to 'bash' Alaska.'

i'm a conservative and think you liberal know-it-alls should have every right to sodomize each other, suck the brains out of your babies, all go one public assistance, whine and complain your entire lives, and get all your info from songs, flicks and TV.

just please shit the door, keep your mouths shut and do it on your own dime. is that too much to ask?