It is a challenge. But also keep in mind that alaska has a sparse population and any money spent on infrastructure wouldn't go very far.
Yes there is the alaskan oil fields and companies. But those oil companies also drill all over the country not just in alaska. Alaska could stop paying its residence $1500 for living in the state and put that money to public works aswell.
I am not defending republicans only pointing out the uniqueness of the situation.
first off the divident is not always $1500, in fact the last one was $850, and the one im getting here in next month will be $1106. it goes up and down with how much the oil companies are getting out of the ground. they were having some problems with the smaller pipelines that lead to the mane pipeline from the drill sites, whih was reducing throughput to cause a big drop in profits. theese problems seem to have been resolved for now, and they may once again move up to the $1500 mark.
that said alaska is a very expensive place to live. its got some ****ing expensive real-estate, considering the amount of land we have. and yes its true, blowing that money on infrastructure wouldnt do it a bit of good. the number of poor people in alaska is so great that every time the vote comes to end or reduce the dividend it fails miserably.
Also if you constantly elect officials who do not wish the improve the infrastructure, then it will not improve.
Alaska has had the oil industry for several decades now, and those are some of the richest companies around.....
thats a trickey subject. governement in alaska is highly decentralized. alaska's constitution give more power to the individual communities. for example every town has its own sales tax, last i checked anchorage had none, uneau currently has a 5% sales tax. some towns and viliges have their own local prohibitions. they tried one in barrow for a couple years awhile back and it failed miserably. anyway the point is the way alaska is set up takes away power from the state level. so the hands of state offitials are tied when it comes to
of issues.
if you compair us to scandinavvia youl find a pretty much equivalent climate and natural resources, however they have a much richer way of life and their towns dont look like total slums. and theyre not full of hippies and hard core conservatives, noone in the middle and all consume about the same amount of weed. and we dont even have a decent metal band. god damn this place sucks. ****im moving to norway 
You've clearly never been to Norway, or Denmark...
id like to just for the metal scene. but from all the documentries ive seen and from oogle earth, it looks fairly nice,
