Standard Mischief

tgirsch, of the blog Lean Left, sometimes posts over at pro-RKBA blog Say Uncle. He sometimes post what has been dubbed “a flaming bag of poo”, meaning a deliberately inflammatory post dumped on everyone on Friday like a paper bag of crap, lit and left on your doorstep.

It’s a cute name, but not very fair because he doesn’t just ring the doorbell and run, he sticks around and defend his points in comments. I really appreciate the different perspective, and it’s not like I’ve got to go out and find a left leaning blog that allows something other that Reasoned Discourse^TM [1] to get a well-rounded insight on the issues of the day.

In his latest effort, I think I might have caused him a last minute cognitive shutdown to avoid a warp core breach.

I’ll rephrase the question here, because hey, it’s my blog:

Given that you have a government that is “of, by, and for the people”, and given that this government’s revenues from royalties of publicly held mineral rights exceed the government’s expenses, what do you do with the extra cash that is as far as possible from socialism?

It’s not a hypothetical question, shocking as it seems from living in the greatest country on the planet which happens to have had a crushing deficit and multiple future unfunded obligations arguably for my entire life. The real life democratically elected republic is called the state of Alaska. Their answer to what to do with excess revenue is called the Alaska Permanent Fund.

tgirsch seemed to have a tough time wrapping his head around the concept, at one point asking me where his check was from the royalties on minerals extracted from United States property. Did I really have to point him back to those multiple future unfunded obligations like Social Security and Medicaid and our deficit?

So my question to you is this, what else would you do with the excess funds? Please try to keep your suggestions as far away as possible from unevenly spreading the wealth around, pretending that such a lopsided approach would be good for everyone.

Ideas considered and rejected so far:

• Used the extra cash to line the pockets of the politicians.

This seems to be permissible in the various dictatorships dressed in democracy clothing that we’ve supported around the world in the past (because they were not communism), but this is hardly suitable here at home.

• Cut the taxes on the corporations extracting the minerals to reduce revenue.

A little Corporate Welfare, eh? No, the tax rates ought to be set to return the largest amount of revenue possible while balancing the need for a responsible, effective and clean use of the people’s resources. Factors in the world oil market may need to be weighed in, and the fees may need to be adjusted from time to time. The oil does not belong to Exxon, and they ought not get their hands on it for free.

[note: I may add a few more examples below this line, but let me publish this now.]

Oh, and apologies to Say Uncle for the “probing” I did with his comment moderation thingy the other day.

[1] Reasoned Discourse^TM