For those of you who are economically illiterate, the oil companies lease their lands. Essentially, they buy the resource, or rather, the option to extract the resource. Many lands go unexploited because the yield does not justify the costs. Sometimes, it’s because they are just sitting on the oil, as they were in places in AK.
The point is, they buy the resource. It does not belong to them. The price they pay for it is determined by negotiation with the owning government. Palin simply demanded a higher price… and they paid up. Some of the excess money goes back to the people of AK each year. The rest funds the government, or is invested and/or held against future need.
It is not Marxism. It is capitalism. The federal government keeps all the money they get. AK treats it as owned by the people, because the people are the government. As in “We the People”. You got a problem with that?
