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Comment by iscrewyou | Hacker News Reader

Nobody needs a “deeper and penetrating insight into the finances of state of Alaska” to see the problem here.

Cutting a stem program should not be on the top of any budget cut proposal. That’s the problem.

I'd love to see a comparison of the sizes of cuts across the UA system - if STEM is being cut disproportionately that's really messed up. But as far as I can tell, it's the UA administration choosing what to cut, and I wouldn't put it past people choosing the worst places to cut in order to score political points.

Dunleavy released a 15 page budget proposal which notes that UAF's spending is the sum of the problem: UAA and the community campuses are fine, UAF is way out there. This is actually true; the UAF campus has over 2x the spending per student of the rest of the system.

Unfortunately, his staff doesn't seem to have been educated enough to realize that that spending is on graduate & research programs. Since that's where the money you can effectively cut is, that's what will get cut.

A big chunk of this problem can be solved by eliminating the oil dividend given to all residents.

Many people would probably leave Alaska altogether if that was the case, which would be much worse for the tax base. The subsidy is crucial to keeping Alaska populated at all. They still collect various other taxes despite the subsidy.

They'd leave over the removal of a $1-2k subsidy?

Imagine the benefits if they'd done that from the beginning.

(We don't even have to imagine. There's an existing example: Norway's socked away $200k per citizen for a rainy day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...)

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