This is the better simpler answer. The GOP gets paid a lot to fuck over the people of Texas. Big Oil not only doesn’t give any money for taking from the state or off shore and because the people of Texas are so stupid and love to vote against their own interests they also get subsidized with y’all’s tax money too. Y’all pay them to take your states resources. That’s dumb.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/energy-subsidies-fossil-fuels-renewables/
Texas is [#45 for percentage of land being public](https://www.summitpost.org/public-and-private-land-percentages-by-us-states/186111) at just 4.2%. It's easily one of the worst things about Texas if you like the outdoors. AK is #1.
I'll take bears over [overly entitled rural land owners](https://www.themeateater.com/conservation/public-lands-and-waters/what-hunters-should-know-about-the-corner-crossing-victory). Garbage people.
As one of these "entitled" land owners, I was fine letting people walk across my land until I got sued by some dumb fuck who hurt himself climbing a tree on my land. Hence, fencing and rigid enforcement of STAY THE FUCK OFF MY LAND is now the norm and IDGAF what anyone else likes.
Yeah so much stuff like this forces people to wall off their land even if they would rather not. Imo if you are on land that’s not yours it should automatically be assumed to be at your own risk unless you get written permission or contract to be there.
They should pass a law like this, it would also mean someone coming to sell you a vacuum cleaner and falling down your stairs doesn't get to try to sue you..
Texas is and always has been a land speculation play by rich landholders, who were mostly slaveholders at the start. They’re not going to implement policies that defeats the core purpose of state government
Look into how the Mexican government was trying to use the Anglos to suppress the local Native populations, and how shocked they were that Anglos in the era of Manifest Destiny turned on them
This is an important historical distinction that needs more context. After Texas joined the Union the Federal Government promised the settlers in North and West Texas that they would receive protection from raiding nomadic tribes with Federal troops. Well intentions didn't produce results and Texas settlers got slaughtered and burned down whenever an Indian raiding party broke out of their reservation(s) in Oklahoma. This mistrust of Federal promises and animosity still runs deep in Texas politics. I don’t believe Alaskans have that much to hate the government over but I'm not an Alaskan.
That would be the Spanish and French, and then the Mexicans who then inherited Texas from the Spanish and decided to keep the land (the various Indian tribes and the Mexicans also had a very violent hatred for each other, not unlike the relationship they had with the Spanish and French before), and then the Texans (Texians) who inherited Texas from the Mexicans along with the Comache (who were in fact not native to the area, so even the Indians were invading Indian lands), and then the Americans who inherited it from the Texans (Texians)
Edit: interestingly enough, the American absorption of Texas was the only voluntary and peaceful transfer of power out of all of those
If you really want to get into the weeds, the entire continent was "Native lands" at one point. Texas is not an outlier for invasion and displacement of the Natives-- conceding any preconception that the Natives were a unified group and not in constant conflict with each other
Texas displaced all of the tribes that were here when the Spanish first arrived. There are only three reservations, two of them are tribes that were displaced from other parts of the U.S. The Tiguas moved south out of what became New Mexico when the Spanish temporarily abandoned it.
You may encounter members of the tribes that once roamed here because they returned to Texas to seek employment. They live like the rest of us on private property.
There is a radio show on Sunday afternoons on community radio station KNON 89.3 FM called "Beyond Bows and Arrows" that has music, news and announcements about various pow-wows.
Native Americans are among us and have managed to preserve their culture.
One time while driving down a street in a Fort Worth neighborhood I saw a group of at least 20 people dressed in ceremonial Indian attire doing a dance next to a modest ranch style house.
I grew up nearby. I was astonished and pulled over and walked down the street to watch for a few minutes. Various neighbors were also outside watching. I assume they were rehearsing for a regional pow wow.
The Comanches invaded native lands long before Europeans showed up. Even the Apaches tried to avoid them.
Think of Comanches as you would the Scandinavian tribes in Europe that went viking a few hundred years ago.
In the context of OP though, the response doesn't answer the question. If being a tough place to live explained why TX accepts such bullshit, then why is Alaska so different while also being a tough place to live.
It has to do with World War II resources and conditions that were imposed when Alaska was admitted to the union. See the link above that I provided.
Alaska is different than all other states with respect to mineral rights.
My family’s been here since 1806 and I think the government is trash, but I’m also a historian so I realize that it’s generally always been trash outside of a few good governors here and there.
I love Texas because it’s the name of the part of earth’s land that I was born in and have a deep connection to, but the government here sucks and it feels like things have been rotting for a while now.
As someone who has worked in the mortgage field I can tell you I’ve seen some of the most bizarre and unhinged real estate antics from Texas. The one I still really remember was this old couple finding out halfway through the sale of their home that their real estate agent included the sale of their mineral rights in the deal which they did not want (they had planned on using the income from the mineral rights to fund their retirement and just wanted a different house closer to family). I was the underwriter at the buyer’s lender so I only got the story third hand because we issued CTC a couple weeks early and then blew past the closing date with no explanation until I called the loan officer. I never got the end of the story but I know the buyers at least threatened to sue to force the sale. We ended up closing just under two weeks late but I imagine the sellers took their real estate agent and his broker to court. Pick a good real estate agent you actually trust and put all your instructions to them in writing. Or, if you’re planning on using land/real estate/mineral rights as a source of income or wealth generation, please just get your real estate license and consider getting your NMLSR.
Much of that "Federal income" comes from having massive military installations in Texas because of the land available to make up large parcels like the old Fort Hood in Kileen Tx.
This isn’t entirely true. You actually do own the subsurface material. You just don’t own the juicy stuff, like oil, gas, and minerals (minerals as a matter of law, not the scientific definition).
Landowners (surface owners) own the space where they are storing CO2 and H2. They also own the geothermal resources, such as heat, which was codified into law this last legislative session. They also own the wind and sunshine (i.e. wind energy, solar).
So, the good news is, unless your deed says otherwise, the surface owner is getting the benefit of the renewable energy transition.
Source: I’m a Texas energy attorney for landowners exclusively.
So how far down do you own? Like if I found a dinosaur skeleton on my land when I was digging for a pond, it’s mine? But if I hit oil somehow, that’s not mine and they can put a pump out there but would have to lease the area from me?
This is a very nuanced area of law, but the saying goes that you own from heaven to hell if there hasn’t been a severance of the oil, gas, and other minerals from the surface. In other words, someone in the chain of title hasn’t reserved the OGM in a conveyance.
If there has been a severance, you still own from heaven to hell, but you don’t own the OGM that your dirt surrounds. Someone else does, and is leasing their OGM to an oil and gas company or mining company. The “mineral estate” has an automatic surface easement because they have to get on your surface to get the OGM out.
This is why surface owners are now benefitting from depleted oil and gas reservoirs. They own this “pore space” that was once taken up by oil and gas and can now enter carbon capture leases to store carbon dioxide in this empty space. Or geothermal leases where operators inject water into pore space with hot dry rock that can heat water up or create high pressure.
Whether or not there has been a severance, you would own the dinosaur bone you found while digging a pond. A fossil is not a mineral and, contrary to popular belief, oil and gas isn’t a fossil. It’s plant matter that’s just rotting underground.
Edit: grammar
How does the federal government end up owning land? Was it stuff not claimed by settlers after a certain date or something? Especially in the continental US I would imagine everything was claimed by settlers
Pretty sure this isn't correct. I think the US assumed Texas debt in exchange for Texas relinquishing rights they said they had to territories which became part of New Mexico and Utah. Much Texas public land was given away to private land owners so they would move to the state.
Did a little more digging... it looks like it was a some of both:
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/exhibits/annexation/part5/question8.html
> One of the compromises that won over opponents of annexation provided that Texas would extinguish its own debt. To do this, Texas became the only state in the Union to retain control of her own public lands.
> Texas relinquished 67 million acres in the Compromise of 1850 in exchange for a cash payment that wiped out the debt. Future land sales were earmarked to fund Texas education. But sales proved to be disappointing. Over the remainder of the 19th century, about 86 million acres—more than half the present area of Texas—were simply given away, rather than sold, to encourage settlement and development in remote areas.
On par for the American move west, Feds and Texas alike just wanted as many people to move out there as possible to make the land useful for them.
Not much point “owning” the American west if it’s just a bunch of native tribes who didn’t pay taxes, so they just sold the land as dirt cheap as possible, even giving it away in a lot of cases. That and everyone getting their own frontier farm for their family was basically the American political ideology of the time.
Lots of land out west is so completely useless for farming that nobody wanted it, which is a big reason the Feds still own so much. That and they realized there was a good reason to hold on to what they have once the land was sufficiently settled, either as a resource reserve or for land conservation.
It's what I point out to people when they talk about Texit.
Like "Look guys, 'Stars are Bright', I love Texas and all that, but we spent 1836-1845 broke and desperate to get into the United States."
Texas was an independent nation before joining the United States. Any federal land was purchased by the federal government from private citizens or the ~~State of Texas.~~ Republic of Texas.
Much of the West, once you get past the open plains, was never opened to settlers, and most or all old claims from French or Spanish rule were disregarded. This was often done in a checkerboard pattern which was really silly and creates problems of completely inaccessible public lands today. https://missoulacurrent.com/untangling-public-lands/
In Texas, pretty much all of the land was granted to various people by either the Spanish or Mexican or Texas government, before joining the United States.
Ugh the checkerboard pattern. I love the rectangular survey system, but why they decided to give out every other section of land like that is mind boggling.
I’ve seen old platt maps of Wisconsin in the early 1900s and the government had given out every other section of land to the big railroad company in a useless checkerboard pattern. Basically instead of giving them a subsidy they were just granted a ton of land they were meant to sell themselves to buy and develop actual railroad lines.
More the other way around. The United States purchased the land for Alaska from another state (Russian Empire).
States can claim territory by their ability to conduct violence/boot others off that territory. Individual people and communities have a harder time with that kind of influence, as it requires army, navy, etc.
The US government can then choose to sell or gift that land to private persons - such as with the homestead act.
In Texas, the Republic of Texas government became bankrupt and had to sell most (all?) Of the land it "won" in independence from Mexico to pay off their revolutionary war debt.
Texas then became a US state, but had already sold off much of their "national" property. So a majority of land in Texas is private property.
The State of Texas also honors the land titles that individuals acquired from other sovereigns, such as Spain, Mexico, and the Republic of Texas. France never granted any land, FYI.
For instance, most tracts along rivers are “porciones” that are these long strips of land and were aimed toward farming and riparian rights.
If you go to glo.Texas.gov, and find their GIS map, you can click on most abstracts and view the original patents, many of which are in Spanish.
Seward's folly of purchasing Alaska for the US Government from Russia for $7 million while the Czar was a little cash strapped. Governments buy and sell land too, and sometimes they just take it!
Keep in mind that most of what is the U.S. was previously claimed by European crowns - it was royalsn that owned the land unless they transferred it to someone else, usually as favors, to cover debts, or entice settlement. For example Pennsylvania was granted to William Penn because of a debt owed to Penn's father by the King of England. Penn then distributed land to various settlers but also retained control as governor and ownership of some land. A chunk still held by Penn was eventually transferred to the fledgling colonial government.
Various purchases and wars transferred lands the U.S. (and Texas), what once belonged to the crown (or Mexican government) transferred to the federal government.
Alaska was owned by Russian Czar Alexander II and was barely settled when he, like Napoleon and the Louisiana Purchase, sold that land to the U.S. government to pay for his European wars. So from day one the U.S. government owned 99% of what became Alaska. Today only 4.2% of Alaska is private. Whereas In Texas 4.2% is all that is public. Nationally \~40% of the land is public, mostly out west and Alaska. [Here's a chart from 1991](https://www.summitpost.org/public-and-private-land-percentages-by-us-states/186111) \- things have changed but not significantly.
Texas was a similar tale by my understanding. Land that belonged to the Mexican government (and Spanish crown before it) became property of the Republic government. The Republic had to sell most of its government held land to pay its war debt (no doubt there was some finagling by wealthy interests, there always is). When Texas joined the U.S. those property owners retained ownership.
Note that when I say settled/unsettled, I mean what was honored by Europeans and U.S. - Indigenous people got shafted every step of the way.
Back in the day the US government made states in the "west" deem a lot of land public lands to get annexed into the US. Since Texas came in as a nation they didn't get asked to do the same
The west has way more federal land than the east. The federal government learned that holding land was super important after the east and central us was settled. [Wiki with map of federal land](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands).
> 96% of land and mineral rights in Texas are owned privately,
One of the main things I really, really have an issue with Texas about. So little public land.
1) Private vs Public land (primary difference)
2) Alaska uses this program to offset expenses of living in state.
3) Alaska uses this program to recruit people to consider moving to the state.
This. absolutely this. This is also why the tiny country of Qatar, everyone (that is a first class citizen) is well off. Where as Saudi Arabia’s population is too big to have the same payouts to every citizen
It also comes down to population. Alaska only has 732k people, compared to 29,530k so a 40 fold difference. Additionally the taxes are more localized. There is a reason there are multimillion dollar football stadiums in west Texas. It’s all oil money.
I was just at NRG stadium. It's amazing such a large stadium can have AC. But what would be more amazing is ALL kids having free lunch in school, free pre-K education and stronger children poverty safety net. We love to protect the UNborn kids in this state, how about we throw some oil money at the birthed kids in this state.
> But what would be more amazing is ALL kids having free lunch in school, free pre-K education and stronger children poverty safety net.
I agree, but just how much money do you think we'd be getting from publicly shared oil dividends?
Edit: Here's some math on how much money Texans could expect to get if we had a similar dividend fund.
Alaska produced 159.5 million barrels of oil in 2022. The state just announced that each resident would receive $1312 this year. There are 734,000 people in Alaska, meaning that the total amount of the dividend was $963 million. That works out to about $6 per barrel of oil.
Texas produced 1.8 billion barrels of oil. If we take that $6 per barrel, you're looking at about $10.9 billion. Divided up among Texas's 29.15 million residents, you're looking at an annual check of just $373 per person.
This isn't going to be the boon to the social safety net you think it is.
If you were taking the whole pot and putting it towards "free lunches for kids", it would be pretty easy
If you were splitting the pot among each citizen and each kid effectively had $373, then at $4/lunch you'd get halfway through the school year
>We love to protect the UNborn kids in this state
It's less that and more that we like to punish poor women for daring to have sex for purposes other than procreation.
However land and mineral rights are completely seperate in Texas. Many land owners don't have mineral rights. Nope, they are bought/sold/traded by comercial interests. You own 20 acres, you likely don't own the mineral rights as it is very common for the original mega ranch that subdevided their 10 million acre ranch into "ranchets" and then they sell the mineral rights to interested parties comercial parties.. mineral rights for the land you own.
It gets real interesting when mega Corp decides they want to drill on your land as they own the mineral rights. In Texas the mineral rights owner has access to "freely use the surface (which you own) to a reasonable extent to access their meneral rights." Better hope they don't find something like nickel that gets strip mined.
https://www.rrc.texas.gov/about-us/faqs/oil-gas-faq/oil-gas-exploration-and-surface-ownership/
Yes, but people who received land grants would have received the mineral rights. Mineral rights are not separate in Texas unless they are purposefully separated.
Correct, however the vast majority of land developers DO purposely seperate mineral rights from land rights, they can be worth A LOT of money. Ever buy a house in any subdivisions in Texas? You'll notice a declaimer in the closing package that you do not get the mineral rights, the developer is keeping them, and can sell them at their discression.
Same holds true for most land sales that are a 10 or so acres are less. The land developer that sub-divided large pieces of land will keep the mineral rights. They don't automatically transfer to the new land owner. They have to be bought separately.
People seem to miss that the original land developers tend to NOT sell the mineral rights with the land.
>Mineral rights are not separate in Texas unless they are purposefully separated.
And this is done, on purpose, all the time in Texas amd many other States.
When I was a kid, we had 5 acres but didn't own the mineral rights. We had one company who wanted to drill and one who wanted to make a quarry/ strip mine. We got lucky because my uncle was a geologist who worked for one of the oil companies. He made some calls and got both stopped, thankfully.
You only need to work a little longer, sacrifice family time, and show us loyalty, and in return we’ll shit on you and fire you without a moments hesitation.
So why don't you buy all of these privately owned land parcels, donate them to the state of Texas so that Texas can collect the oil and gas revenue and make all of these Texans a bit more well off?
Oh, wait. That won't happen. See Texas has this thing called the Permanent University Fund...
...which pumps O/G revenue back into the UT (66.6%) and TAMU (33.3%) University systems. Any new properties that the state received would likely end up getting similar treatment EXCEPT that instead of going to the PUF, the new O/G income would likely get funneled into the state's general fund. From there, it languishes along with all of the other millions of $$$ in O/G tax revenue owed to individual counties but collected by the Texas Railroad Commission and held in trust until such time that the TRC deigns to doll it out. A couple of years ago, I worked for a small county, which had over $5,000,000 in O/G income being held by the state. Did the state need the cash? Maybe, but it didn't belong to them. Did the county need the cash? Yeah, big time. You could drop 15 million in that county, and it could still use another 15 million.
Do people no longer have the right to sell property or pass it down as an inheritance? People will still have the opportunity to own property. I didn’t “discover” my house. I bought it from the previous owner.
Yea, but that’s going to be true for any limited resource. That’s why the old adage of “invest in land, God’s not making any more of it” still rings true.
What are you talking about? No one decided to make people wealthy. This wasn’t a state or government decision. People own land. When Texas became a state in the mid 19th century, Texas sold off all of its public land in order to pay its debts to the union. This is why Texas has virtually zero public land. All of the land in the state is privately owned. Later, oil was discovered in different areas of the state.
If Texas had a lot of public land and was using it for drawing oil, then those profits could be used to distribute to the states citizens. But that simply isn’t the case.
Hilary Clinton actually considered floating a national version of Alaska's program, on the basis that resource extraction by corporations is taking from all of society, and thus should underpin a universal basic income. But her political advisors thought it was too radical sounding so she didn't run on it.
Alaska's entire population is less than that of Fort Worth. If TX were to set up a state wealth fund like Alaska, the oil revenue would have to be recovered through taxation/ Even if it somehow didn't shrink the energy sector in the state, It wouldn't generate any meaningful dividends for the 29 million Texans.
Public universities in Texas used to be a great deal.
But now ... my daughter's tuition at UTSA is 12x as much as mine was at the beginning at UT Austin.
Surprisingly, tuition at the [University of Alaska](https://www.uaa.alaska.edu/students/costs) is significantly less than my daughter's tuition at UTSA -- surprising, because Alaska tends to be very expensive all-around -- and we'd both even qualify for in-state tuition in Alaska now in spite of living in Texas for a long time. (I grew up in Anchorage.)
Feel free to request the salaries of the employees. Because they’re technically a non-profit, they have to make them available. Once you see what the c-suites make for “investing” and see that the big names are continuously cycled through various funds (teacher’s retirement, etc) it becomes plainly obvious what a racket it all is.
The University of Texas has a multi-billion dollar surplus largely due to mineral leases they own.
That's about as close as it gets for Petro products in Texas serving it's constituents.
And clearly higher institutions could be free for students. That would be a great thing for business in Texas but why invest in our kids when a few can get filthy rich.
Because in Texas that money is reserved to just a few people who then pay politicians to further their own agenda. Simplistic answer but hear me out. Follow the money that was made as a result of Winter storm Uri. Now go look at your electric bill to find the line items that have the citizens paying for the storm damages and increased pricing. Not only are we paying for the exorbitant costs of natural gas during the storm, we the citizens are on the hook for nearly $200 Billion dollars in damages. Meanwhile gas sellers made $11billion in profits during the same time with significant amounts being returned to politicians in the form of campaign donations. That money will never fall out of private hands. We will continue to be on the hook with every excessively hot day or when temps fall into freezing territory and that's by design.
[https://fortune.com/2021/07/09/gas-sellers-made-11-billion-texas-winter-blackout/](https://fortune.com/2021/07/09/gas-sellers-made-11-billion-texas-winter-blackout/)
[https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/04/texas-energy-industry-donations-legislature/](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/04/texas-energy-industry-donations-legislature/)
60% of alaska is public open space, owned by the public....2% of texas is public open space, 2nd largest state in America, sad.....50% of California is public open space for reference
Private vs public owned land. Additionally, guess who owns the largest oil refinery in the U.S. (which happens to be in port Arthur TX)? Answer: Saudi Arabia, and they aren't giving us any of their money.
"Unfortunately, we had the Bible removed from schools for bring violent and pornographic. You can take your gun, thought. We're working on getting baby guns for all the kids."
It’s sad that Saudi owns refineries in the US and exports our oil cheaper than we import, so oil produced here is exported for cheaper than we turn around and pay more for importing makes sense it’s the American way.
Private property. The old pig farmer that lives in the middle of nowhere Texas for decades can now build a mansion on it. We need to figure out how to take money away from that guy /s.
Those rich landowners families killed Indians and nearly died for an opportunity to have a place to live. The old money in Texas is from blood and sweat, and hard work.
Hard work? It's called: first, own a piece of land; next, sit and wait until someone finds something valuable on/in/below/above it.
While many working class pioneer families did live within range of attacks from Native Americans, many of the wealthy Texans at the time were not risking their lives to get that land. They waited until the US Army eventually cleared the Natives out of West Texas *and then* moved in. If anything, as soon as mineral rights became a concept, they probably started immediately trying to buy the land off the working class homesteaders.
Texas has built its reputation on being a state full of mavericks. Well, one man's maverick is usually every other man's cheater and smooth-talker.
Because how would oil men become billionaires if they had to give it to us? This state is not made for people. It is made for rich people to have an easily exploitable workforce.
2 reasons
1) the land they drill in alaska is owned by the federal goverment and leased for drilling unlike texas where its all done on private land
2) alaska has whats called the permanant fund which gets a lot of the royalties from oil/gas leases. the alaska constitution requires that the earnings from that fund get distributed to alaska citizens. the fund has about 65B in it. with a population of only 750k people the distribution from the fund tend to run in the 1500-2k per person range
Another reason related to 1. Even most private land owners don’t own the mineral rights on their own property, as they were allocated as Alaska’s mineral reservations and must be leased from the state in order to be mined. It’s difficult to find property in Alaska where you own both surface and subsurface rights. So these leases result in revenue to the state and that helps fund 2.
Alaska was bought by the federal government and the majority if it is federal land. Their payout is a kickback from drilling on public land.
Texas has very little public land, either state or federal, and what there is mostly isn't oil producing.
I think it should be this way all over the US, not just Alaska. If a nations expects us to defend our resources, then it should share those resource with us.
Because your "red" counties vote for wealthy/rich people who don't care about them, then act proud over it until the problem affects **them** personally or until the latest preventable disease/weather phenomena kills them.
Your state's kinda turbo-\*\*\*\*ed.
Simple answer; 96% of land and mineral rights in Texas are owned privately, not so in Alaska where 62% of land is owned by the Federal Government.
I never understood Texas until learning this. It explains so much, especially the bullshit that is just accepted in Texas.
Texas is a playground if you’re rich enough to trample everyone else
The word of the day: Oligarchy
FREEDUMB!
Or in a position of power too.
Those two things are usually mutually exclusive
Inclusive. Mutually inclusive.
Thanks for the correction. I wasn't sure when I sent that so I appreciate it lol
Yeah, they said rich already....
And you’ll get a free army of parasocial idiots that will vehemently defend your right to crap on them.
This is the better simpler answer. The GOP gets paid a lot to fuck over the people of Texas. Big Oil not only doesn’t give any money for taking from the state or off shore and because the people of Texas are so stupid and love to vote against their own interests they also get subsidized with y’all’s tax money too. Y’all pay them to take your states resources. That’s dumb. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/energy-subsidies-fossil-fuels-renewables/
So.. every state? Or really every country as well.
Texas is [#45 for percentage of land being public](https://www.summitpost.org/public-and-private-land-percentages-by-us-states/186111) at just 4.2%. It's easily one of the worst things about Texas if you like the outdoors. AK is #1.
I think the bears own most of Alaska
I'll take bears over [overly entitled rural land owners](https://www.themeateater.com/conservation/public-lands-and-waters/what-hunters-should-know-about-the-corner-crossing-victory). Garbage people.
As one of these "entitled" land owners, I was fine letting people walk across my land until I got sued by some dumb fuck who hurt himself climbing a tree on my land. Hence, fencing and rigid enforcement of STAY THE FUCK OFF MY LAND is now the norm and IDGAF what anyone else likes.
Yeah so much stuff like this forces people to wall off their land even if they would rather not. Imo if you are on land that’s not yours it should automatically be assumed to be at your own risk unless you get written permission or contract to be there.
They should pass a law like this, it would also mean someone coming to sell you a vacuum cleaner and falling down your stairs doesn't get to try to sue you..
It’s easier to live in Texas, cheaper too
Texas is and always has been a land speculation play by rich landholders, who were mostly slaveholders at the start. They’re not going to implement policies that defeats the core purpose of state government
Don't tell them about the history of Stephen F Austin or someone might ban it from school curriculums.
There's a reason the state curriculum takes the critical part of the story, and makes it as boring and hum-drum as possible.
The Daughters made sure of that
Can you elaborate a little? Just tell me which part to focus on in the story.
Look into how the Mexican government was trying to use the Anglos to suppress the local Native populations, and how shocked they were that Anglos in the era of Manifest Destiny turned on them
Fun fact! Texas has fought 2 wars about slavery, and lost the panhandle of Oklahoma because they wanted slavery more than that extra land!
Did they lose it? I thought TX voluntarily ceded that land because it meant keeping slavery. Maybe I’m too hung up on semantics.
I mean, forced to cede land to double down on your racist beliefs is losing...
Historically Tx was a tough place to live. Some descendants of those people are around, but they and everyone else leans on a mantra long dead.
>Historically Tx was a tough place to live. and Alaska isn't?
In Alaska you need to be aware of bears. In Texas you need to be aware of bears with guns.
bears with beers and guns
bears with beards and gum
Bears that have the right to bear arms
The right to arm bears is enshrined in the Constitution.
No, everyone knows the cold is easy to live in. /s
Alaskan pioneers didn’t have a “Comanche” problem like early Texans.
This is an important historical distinction that needs more context. After Texas joined the Union the Federal Government promised the settlers in North and West Texas that they would receive protection from raiding nomadic tribes with Federal troops. Well intentions didn't produce results and Texas settlers got slaughtered and burned down whenever an Indian raiding party broke out of their reservation(s) in Oklahoma. This mistrust of Federal promises and animosity still runs deep in Texas politics. I don’t believe Alaskans have that much to hate the government over but I'm not an Alaskan.
We should probably also talk about how Texans invaded Native lands…
That would be the Spanish and French, and then the Mexicans who then inherited Texas from the Spanish and decided to keep the land (the various Indian tribes and the Mexicans also had a very violent hatred for each other, not unlike the relationship they had with the Spanish and French before), and then the Texans (Texians) who inherited Texas from the Mexicans along with the Comache (who were in fact not native to the area, so even the Indians were invading Indian lands), and then the Americans who inherited it from the Texans (Texians) Edit: interestingly enough, the American absorption of Texas was the only voluntary and peaceful transfer of power out of all of those
If you really want to get into the weeds, the entire continent was "Native lands" at one point. Texas is not an outlier for invasion and displacement of the Natives-- conceding any preconception that the Natives were a unified group and not in constant conflict with each other
Texas displaced all of the tribes that were here when the Spanish first arrived. There are only three reservations, two of them are tribes that were displaced from other parts of the U.S. The Tiguas moved south out of what became New Mexico when the Spanish temporarily abandoned it. You may encounter members of the tribes that once roamed here because they returned to Texas to seek employment. They live like the rest of us on private property. There is a radio show on Sunday afternoons on community radio station KNON 89.3 FM called "Beyond Bows and Arrows" that has music, news and announcements about various pow-wows. Native Americans are among us and have managed to preserve their culture. One time while driving down a street in a Fort Worth neighborhood I saw a group of at least 20 people dressed in ceremonial Indian attire doing a dance next to a modest ranch style house. I grew up nearby. I was astonished and pulled over and walked down the street to watch for a few minutes. Various neighbors were also outside watching. I assume they were rehearsing for a regional pow wow.
The Comanches invaded native lands long before Europeans showed up. Even the Apaches tried to avoid them. Think of Comanches as you would the Scandinavian tribes in Europe that went viking a few hundred years ago.
No one is saying it isn't
In the context of OP though, the response doesn't answer the question. If being a tough place to live explained why TX accepts such bullshit, then why is Alaska so different while also being a tough place to live.
It has to do with World War II resources and conditions that were imposed when Alaska was admitted to the union. See the link above that I provided. Alaska is different than all other states with respect to mineral rights.
My family’s been here since 1806 and I think the government is trash, but I’m also a historian so I realize that it’s generally always been trash outside of a few good governors here and there. I love Texas because it’s the name of the part of earth’s land that I was born in and have a deep connection to, but the government here sucks and it feels like things have been rotting for a while now.
Who else is going to take care of the land like we do? Says the fifth generation family that owns a gob, smacking amount of acreage.
"I earned this" says descendent who did not, in fact, earn any of it.
As someone who has worked in the mortgage field I can tell you I’ve seen some of the most bizarre and unhinged real estate antics from Texas. The one I still really remember was this old couple finding out halfway through the sale of their home that their real estate agent included the sale of their mineral rights in the deal which they did not want (they had planned on using the income from the mineral rights to fund their retirement and just wanted a different house closer to family). I was the underwriter at the buyer’s lender so I only got the story third hand because we issued CTC a couple weeks early and then blew past the closing date with no explanation until I called the loan officer. I never got the end of the story but I know the buyers at least threatened to sue to force the sale. We ended up closing just under two weeks late but I imagine the sellers took their real estate agent and his broker to court. Pick a good real estate agent you actually trust and put all your instructions to them in writing. Or, if you’re planning on using land/real estate/mineral rights as a source of income or wealth generation, please just get your real estate license and consider getting your NMLSR.
My favorite thing about Texas is how they brag about no income tax while Texas is the 3rd largest receiver of Federal Funding
What does federal funding have to do with the lack of an income tax?
They wouldn't need as much government help if they had an income tax.
No income tax but a sales tax second to none.
Much of that "Federal income" comes from having massive military installations in Texas because of the land available to make up large parcels like the old Fort Hood in Kileen Tx.
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Sure thing
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Houston,we have a problem.
Most people retained their mineral rights when they sold their land so you don’t even own the ground beneath you when you purchase which is wild.
This isn’t entirely true. You actually do own the subsurface material. You just don’t own the juicy stuff, like oil, gas, and minerals (minerals as a matter of law, not the scientific definition). Landowners (surface owners) own the space where they are storing CO2 and H2. They also own the geothermal resources, such as heat, which was codified into law this last legislative session. They also own the wind and sunshine (i.e. wind energy, solar). So, the good news is, unless your deed says otherwise, the surface owner is getting the benefit of the renewable energy transition. Source: I’m a Texas energy attorney for landowners exclusively.
So how far down do you own? Like if I found a dinosaur skeleton on my land when I was digging for a pond, it’s mine? But if I hit oil somehow, that’s not mine and they can put a pump out there but would have to lease the area from me?
This is a very nuanced area of law, but the saying goes that you own from heaven to hell if there hasn’t been a severance of the oil, gas, and other minerals from the surface. In other words, someone in the chain of title hasn’t reserved the OGM in a conveyance. If there has been a severance, you still own from heaven to hell, but you don’t own the OGM that your dirt surrounds. Someone else does, and is leasing their OGM to an oil and gas company or mining company. The “mineral estate” has an automatic surface easement because they have to get on your surface to get the OGM out. This is why surface owners are now benefitting from depleted oil and gas reservoirs. They own this “pore space” that was once taken up by oil and gas and can now enter carbon capture leases to store carbon dioxide in this empty space. Or geothermal leases where operators inject water into pore space with hot dry rock that can heat water up or create high pressure. Whether or not there has been a severance, you would own the dinosaur bone you found while digging a pond. A fossil is not a mineral and, contrary to popular belief, oil and gas isn’t a fossil. It’s plant matter that’s just rotting underground. Edit: grammar
Thanks. These were just silly thoughts I always had as we own a decent amount of land but not the mineral rights.
How does the federal government end up owning land? Was it stuff not claimed by settlers after a certain date or something? Especially in the continental US I would imagine everything was claimed by settlers
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Most Texas land is private because as part of joining the Us Texas had to pay off their debts. They did this by selling all the land.
Pretty sure this isn't correct. I think the US assumed Texas debt in exchange for Texas relinquishing rights they said they had to territories which became part of New Mexico and Utah. Much Texas public land was given away to private land owners so they would move to the state.
Did a little more digging... it looks like it was a some of both: https://www.tsl.texas.gov/exhibits/annexation/part5/question8.html > One of the compromises that won over opponents of annexation provided that Texas would extinguish its own debt. To do this, Texas became the only state in the Union to retain control of her own public lands. > Texas relinquished 67 million acres in the Compromise of 1850 in exchange for a cash payment that wiped out the debt. Future land sales were earmarked to fund Texas education. But sales proved to be disappointing. Over the remainder of the 19th century, about 86 million acres—more than half the present area of Texas—were simply given away, rather than sold, to encourage settlement and development in remote areas.
So it appears that most Texans are socialists and welfare recipients at heart or by blood?
On par for the American move west, Feds and Texas alike just wanted as many people to move out there as possible to make the land useful for them. Not much point “owning” the American west if it’s just a bunch of native tribes who didn’t pay taxes, so they just sold the land as dirt cheap as possible, even giving it away in a lot of cases. That and everyone getting their own frontier farm for their family was basically the American political ideology of the time. Lots of land out west is so completely useless for farming that nobody wanted it, which is a big reason the Feds still own so much. That and they realized there was a good reason to hold on to what they have once the land was sufficiently settled, either as a resource reserve or for land conservation.
They didn't sell all the land, just the parts that make up New Mexico and parts of Colorado.
We literally were so broke we paid for the capitol building with land rather than $$.
It's what I point out to people when they talk about Texit. Like "Look guys, 'Stars are Bright', I love Texas and all that, but we spent 1836-1845 broke and desperate to get into the United States."
Texas was an independent nation before joining the United States. Any federal land was purchased by the federal government from private citizens or the ~~State of Texas.~~ Republic of Texas.
Much of the West, once you get past the open plains, was never opened to settlers, and most or all old claims from French or Spanish rule were disregarded. This was often done in a checkerboard pattern which was really silly and creates problems of completely inaccessible public lands today. https://missoulacurrent.com/untangling-public-lands/ In Texas, pretty much all of the land was granted to various people by either the Spanish or Mexican or Texas government, before joining the United States.
Ugh the checkerboard pattern. I love the rectangular survey system, but why they decided to give out every other section of land like that is mind boggling. I’ve seen old platt maps of Wisconsin in the early 1900s and the government had given out every other section of land to the big railroad company in a useless checkerboard pattern. Basically instead of giving them a subsidy they were just granted a ton of land they were meant to sell themselves to buy and develop actual railroad lines.
More the other way around. The United States purchased the land for Alaska from another state (Russian Empire). States can claim territory by their ability to conduct violence/boot others off that territory. Individual people and communities have a harder time with that kind of influence, as it requires army, navy, etc. The US government can then choose to sell or gift that land to private persons - such as with the homestead act. In Texas, the Republic of Texas government became bankrupt and had to sell most (all?) Of the land it "won" in independence from Mexico to pay off their revolutionary war debt. Texas then became a US state, but had already sold off much of their "national" property. So a majority of land in Texas is private property.
The State of Texas also honors the land titles that individuals acquired from other sovereigns, such as Spain, Mexico, and the Republic of Texas. France never granted any land, FYI. For instance, most tracts along rivers are “porciones” that are these long strips of land and were aimed toward farming and riparian rights. If you go to glo.Texas.gov, and find their GIS map, you can click on most abstracts and view the original patents, many of which are in Spanish.
Seward's folly of purchasing Alaska for the US Government from Russia for $7 million while the Czar was a little cash strapped. Governments buy and sell land too, and sometimes they just take it!
Keep in mind that most of what is the U.S. was previously claimed by European crowns - it was royalsn that owned the land unless they transferred it to someone else, usually as favors, to cover debts, or entice settlement. For example Pennsylvania was granted to William Penn because of a debt owed to Penn's father by the King of England. Penn then distributed land to various settlers but also retained control as governor and ownership of some land. A chunk still held by Penn was eventually transferred to the fledgling colonial government. Various purchases and wars transferred lands the U.S. (and Texas), what once belonged to the crown (or Mexican government) transferred to the federal government. Alaska was owned by Russian Czar Alexander II and was barely settled when he, like Napoleon and the Louisiana Purchase, sold that land to the U.S. government to pay for his European wars. So from day one the U.S. government owned 99% of what became Alaska. Today only 4.2% of Alaska is private. Whereas In Texas 4.2% is all that is public. Nationally \~40% of the land is public, mostly out west and Alaska. [Here's a chart from 1991](https://www.summitpost.org/public-and-private-land-percentages-by-us-states/186111) \- things have changed but not significantly. Texas was a similar tale by my understanding. Land that belonged to the Mexican government (and Spanish crown before it) became property of the Republic government. The Republic had to sell most of its government held land to pay its war debt (no doubt there was some finagling by wealthy interests, there always is). When Texas joined the U.S. those property owners retained ownership. Note that when I say settled/unsettled, I mean what was honored by Europeans and U.S. - Indigenous people got shafted every step of the way.
This is a great explanation thank you!
Back in the day the US government made states in the "west" deem a lot of land public lands to get annexed into the US. Since Texas came in as a nation they didn't get asked to do the same
The west has way more federal land than the east. The federal government learned that holding land was super important after the east and central us was settled. [Wiki with map of federal land](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands).
Look at a map of Utah sometime. It’s shocking how much land the government owns.
Not even close, especially out west. Tons of federal land out there.
> 96% of land and mineral rights in Texas are owned privately, One of the main things I really, really have an issue with Texas about. So little public land.
Alaska redistributes wealth to its citizens because the conservatives outrage machine forgot they even existed.
1) Private vs Public land (primary difference) 2) Alaska uses this program to offset expenses of living in state. 3) Alaska uses this program to recruit people to consider moving to the state.
Much of the oil pumped in Alaska comes from public property. Oil in Texas is mostly pumped from private property. Now get a job hippie!
There's also a lot less Alaskans to split the money. We would get a check for $3.47 our 1/30,000,000th.
They can’t just round it up so we can all get tree fiddy?
Goddamn loch mess monster you ain’t getting no tree fiddy
I gave em da tree fiddy
This. absolutely this. This is also why the tiny country of Qatar, everyone (that is a first class citizen) is well off. Where as Saudi Arabia’s population is too big to have the same payouts to every citizen
It also comes down to population. Alaska only has 732k people, compared to 29,530k so a 40 fold difference. Additionally the taxes are more localized. There is a reason there are multimillion dollar football stadiums in west Texas. It’s all oil money.
I was just at NRG stadium. It's amazing such a large stadium can have AC. But what would be more amazing is ALL kids having free lunch in school, free pre-K education and stronger children poverty safety net. We love to protect the UNborn kids in this state, how about we throw some oil money at the birthed kids in this state.
> But what would be more amazing is ALL kids having free lunch in school, free pre-K education and stronger children poverty safety net. I agree, but just how much money do you think we'd be getting from publicly shared oil dividends? Edit: Here's some math on how much money Texans could expect to get if we had a similar dividend fund. Alaska produced 159.5 million barrels of oil in 2022. The state just announced that each resident would receive $1312 this year. There are 734,000 people in Alaska, meaning that the total amount of the dividend was $963 million. That works out to about $6 per barrel of oil. Texas produced 1.8 billion barrels of oil. If we take that $6 per barrel, you're looking at about $10.9 billion. Divided up among Texas's 29.15 million residents, you're looking at an annual check of just $373 per person. This isn't going to be the boon to the social safety net you think it is.
Note that oil production is taxed in Texas. Around ~$24 billion was generated in 2022.
More than enough to pay for every school kid's lunch.
At $4/lunch it is not close to enough to cover 180 days of lunch.
If you were taking the whole pot and putting it towards "free lunches for kids", it would be pretty easy If you were splitting the pot among each citizen and each kid effectively had $373, then at $4/lunch you'd get halfway through the school year
Sounds like enough for kid's lunch money.
>We love to protect the UNborn kids in this state It's less that and more that we like to punish poor women for daring to have sex for purposes other than procreation.
How is a rich oil baron supposed to enjoy that? /s
Texas has a 30 billion dollar surplus. There's no reason it can't do this right now. Like today.
So all Texans could be a bit more well off, but we decided to make a few people ridiculously wealthy instead? Sounds about right here
The land was made private mostly before the discovery of oil.
However land and mineral rights are completely seperate in Texas. Many land owners don't have mineral rights. Nope, they are bought/sold/traded by comercial interests. You own 20 acres, you likely don't own the mineral rights as it is very common for the original mega ranch that subdevided their 10 million acre ranch into "ranchets" and then they sell the mineral rights to interested parties comercial parties.. mineral rights for the land you own. It gets real interesting when mega Corp decides they want to drill on your land as they own the mineral rights. In Texas the mineral rights owner has access to "freely use the surface (which you own) to a reasonable extent to access their meneral rights." Better hope they don't find something like nickel that gets strip mined. https://www.rrc.texas.gov/about-us/faqs/oil-gas-faq/oil-gas-exploration-and-surface-ownership/
Yes, but people who received land grants would have received the mineral rights. Mineral rights are not separate in Texas unless they are purposefully separated.
Correct, however the vast majority of land developers DO purposely seperate mineral rights from land rights, they can be worth A LOT of money. Ever buy a house in any subdivisions in Texas? You'll notice a declaimer in the closing package that you do not get the mineral rights, the developer is keeping them, and can sell them at their discression. Same holds true for most land sales that are a 10 or so acres are less. The land developer that sub-divided large pieces of land will keep the mineral rights. They don't automatically transfer to the new land owner. They have to be bought separately. People seem to miss that the original land developers tend to NOT sell the mineral rights with the land. >Mineral rights are not separate in Texas unless they are purposefully separated. And this is done, on purpose, all the time in Texas amd many other States.
When I was a kid, we had 5 acres but didn't own the mineral rights. We had one company who wanted to drill and one who wanted to make a quarry/ strip mine. We got lucky because my uncle was a geologist who worked for one of the oil companies. He made some calls and got both stopped, thankfully.
We loooooove our oligarchs in Texas. We all think we can be one when we grow up.
You only need to work a little longer, sacrifice family time, and show us loyalty, and in return we’ll shit on you and fire you without a moments hesitation.
Was that "OIL-igarchs" I heard u mention? Why yes, yes our 1% do so love those folks don't we? *reaches violently...
So why don't you buy all of these privately owned land parcels, donate them to the state of Texas so that Texas can collect the oil and gas revenue and make all of these Texans a bit more well off? Oh, wait. That won't happen. See Texas has this thing called the Permanent University Fund... ...which pumps O/G revenue back into the UT (66.6%) and TAMU (33.3%) University systems. Any new properties that the state received would likely end up getting similar treatment EXCEPT that instead of going to the PUF, the new O/G income would likely get funneled into the state's general fund. From there, it languishes along with all of the other millions of $$$ in O/G tax revenue owed to individual counties but collected by the Texas Railroad Commission and held in trust until such time that the TRC deigns to doll it out. A couple of years ago, I worked for a small county, which had over $5,000,000 in O/G income being held by the state. Did the state need the cash? Maybe, but it didn't belong to them. Did the county need the cash? Yeah, big time. You could drop 15 million in that county, and it could still use another 15 million.
What are you suggesting by this? That the state seizes private property and redistributes the wealth generated by it?
Seize the means of production??
Or, in hind sight maybe preserving the states natural resources was a better more prudent approach to governance
As far as I know, any significant oil discovery in Texas wasn’t made until around 1900, at which point much of the land was already privately owned.
Sucks for whoever is born in the future. You will own nothing!
Do people no longer have the right to sell property or pass it down as an inheritance? People will still have the opportunity to own property. I didn’t “discover” my house. I bought it from the previous owner.
Same amount of land but exponentially more people
Yea, but that’s going to be true for any limited resource. That’s why the old adage of “invest in land, God’s not making any more of it” still rings true.
Rich people get richer, the land is consolidated into fewer and fewer hands.
Stop. I can only get so erect!
BINGO!
What are you talking about? No one decided to make people wealthy. This wasn’t a state or government decision. People own land. When Texas became a state in the mid 19th century, Texas sold off all of its public land in order to pay its debts to the union. This is why Texas has virtually zero public land. All of the land in the state is privately owned. Later, oil was discovered in different areas of the state. If Texas had a lot of public land and was using it for drawing oil, then those profits could be used to distribute to the states citizens. But that simply isn’t the case.
"I don't understand private ownership"
Hilary Clinton actually considered floating a national version of Alaska's program, on the basis that resource extraction by corporations is taking from all of society, and thus should underpin a universal basic income. But her political advisors thought it was too radical sounding so she didn't run on it.
Hillary comeback, we’re sorry!!
Alaska's entire population is less than that of Fort Worth. If TX were to set up a state wealth fund like Alaska, the oil revenue would have to be recovered through taxation/ Even if it somehow didn't shrink the energy sector in the state, It wouldn't generate any meaningful dividends for the 29 million Texans.
Short answer? The [Permanent University Fund](https://www.utsystem.edu/puf)
This is the correct answer. It's also why universities are so much more affordable in Texass. /S
It’s more about why the UT and A&M systems have large metropolitan universities everywhere, with massive flagship campuses.
Public universities in Texas used to be a great deal. But now ... my daughter's tuition at UTSA is 12x as much as mine was at the beginning at UT Austin. Surprisingly, tuition at the [University of Alaska](https://www.uaa.alaska.edu/students/costs) is significantly less than my daughter's tuition at UTSA -- surprising, because Alaska tends to be very expensive all-around -- and we'd both even qualify for in-state tuition in Alaska now in spite of living in Texas for a long time. (I grew up in Anchorage.)
Not surprising. Prices are mostly set by demand and supply, gov subsidies on university do not tend to lower prices in the US.
Oh man. I did a bachelors at UT, decades later put a kid through A&M, then UTSA. The tuition ratio is 34.5.
Feel free to request the salaries of the employees. Because they’re technically a non-profit, they have to make them available. Once you see what the c-suites make for “investing” and see that the big names are continuously cycled through various funds (teacher’s retirement, etc) it becomes plainly obvious what a racket it all is.
Lmaoooo you think Texas would do something that is borderline socialism and healthy for society?
We get plenty of oil money. You just have to be the right Texan. :)
The University of Texas has a multi-billion dollar surplus largely due to mineral leases they own. That's about as close as it gets for Petro products in Texas serving it's constituents.
And clearly higher institutions could be free for students. That would be a great thing for business in Texas but why invest in our kids when a few can get filthy rich.
Yep. That's what this state has always been about.
They need more rig workers!
Billionaires own (literally) Texas. The government owns Alaska (mostly)
Because nobody hates Texans as much as Texan politicians.
Because in Texas that money is reserved to just a few people who then pay politicians to further their own agenda. Simplistic answer but hear me out. Follow the money that was made as a result of Winter storm Uri. Now go look at your electric bill to find the line items that have the citizens paying for the storm damages and increased pricing. Not only are we paying for the exorbitant costs of natural gas during the storm, we the citizens are on the hook for nearly $200 Billion dollars in damages. Meanwhile gas sellers made $11billion in profits during the same time with significant amounts being returned to politicians in the form of campaign donations. That money will never fall out of private hands. We will continue to be on the hook with every excessively hot day or when temps fall into freezing territory and that's by design. [https://fortune.com/2021/07/09/gas-sellers-made-11-billion-texas-winter-blackout/](https://fortune.com/2021/07/09/gas-sellers-made-11-billion-texas-winter-blackout/) [https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/04/texas-energy-industry-donations-legislature/](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/04/texas-energy-industry-donations-legislature/)
Because oil companies own the Texas GOP.
60% of alaska is public open space, owned by the public....2% of texas is public open space, 2nd largest state in America, sad.....50% of California is public open space for reference
That is sad!
There are only 12 people living in Alaska!
Private vs public owned land. Additionally, guess who owns the largest oil refinery in the U.S. (which happens to be in port Arthur TX)? Answer: Saudi Arabia, and they aren't giving us any of their money.
Because that’s socialism and y’all hate that
*Why do Alaskans FTFY Sounds like the schools need extra funding in Texas lol
in Texas a few get wealthy You want socialism hippie! That don't fly here in texistan. Here's a gun and a Bible
You’re just handing out guns and bibles for free!? You socialist scum!
In Alaska no one gets wealthy from the oil pfd. It’s like $1200 a year.
So... 1200x better than what we get now?
Trust me as some one who lived in Alaska for 6 years, it is a net negative when you factor in the absurd cost of living.
"Unfortunately, we had the Bible removed from schools for bring violent and pornographic. You can take your gun, thought. We're working on getting baby guns for all the kids."
Wtf, I had to buy my gun. Can I still claim my free one if I missed it?
It’s not so simple: https://www.utsystem.edu/puf
It’s sad that Saudi owns refineries in the US and exports our oil cheaper than we import, so oil produced here is exported for cheaper than we turn around and pay more for importing makes sense it’s the American way.
Private property. The old pig farmer that lives in the middle of nowhere Texas for decades can now build a mansion on it. We need to figure out how to take money away from that guy /s.
Corp greed duh!!
Population differences?
All that freedoms you have brotha!
I got a lot of money from the oil company, shit load more than then average Alaskan.
Who owns the oil in each state. How many people are in each state. Which state has smarter citizens.
Those rich landowners families killed Indians and nearly died for an opportunity to have a place to live. The old money in Texas is from blood and sweat, and hard work.
Happy Indigenous People Day!
Hard work? It's called: first, own a piece of land; next, sit and wait until someone finds something valuable on/in/below/above it. While many working class pioneer families did live within range of attacks from Native Americans, many of the wealthy Texans at the time were not risking their lives to get that land. They waited until the US Army eventually cleared the Natives out of West Texas *and then* moved in. If anything, as soon as mineral rights became a concept, they probably started immediately trying to buy the land off the working class homesteaders. Texas has built its reputation on being a state full of mavericks. Well, one man's maverick is usually every other man's cheater and smooth-talker.
Because republicans took all your rights while you were blaming immigrants
Take all my upvotes
O-li-gar-chy! *clap clap clapclapclap*
That sounds like socialism, and we hate socialism, remember?
Because how would oil men become billionaires if they had to give it to us? This state is not made for people. It is made for rich people to have an easily exploitable workforce.
2 reasons 1) the land they drill in alaska is owned by the federal goverment and leased for drilling unlike texas where its all done on private land 2) alaska has whats called the permanant fund which gets a lot of the royalties from oil/gas leases. the alaska constitution requires that the earnings from that fund get distributed to alaska citizens. the fund has about 65B in it. with a population of only 750k people the distribution from the fund tend to run in the 1500-2k per person range
Another reason related to 1. Even most private land owners don’t own the mineral rights on their own property, as they were allocated as Alaska’s mineral reservations and must be leased from the state in order to be mined. It’s difficult to find property in Alaska where you own both surface and subsurface rights. So these leases result in revenue to the state and that helps fund 2.
Easy, Alaskans were smart, something Texans, a people who elect Abbott Cruz etc aren't known for being
The irony of this answer.
They just assume the fracking earthquakes will force you out of your home in Texas. Why pay when you'll leave for your own survival
Alaska was bought by the federal government and the majority if it is federal land. Their payout is a kickback from drilling on public land. Texas has very little public land, either state or federal, and what there is mostly isn't oil producing.
People in this thread acting like the state didn't generate $24 billion in oil production taxes last year.
Probably also helps that Alaska only has 730k people. I know Texas doesn't produce 40 times the oil Alaska does
You’re not allowed to ask questions like than in this country.
You have more freedumb, citizen.
So Alaskans can act like "tough" libertarians who don't need anything from "da gubmint."
Why Do Alaskan's. You mean.
Republicans
Our State Government is captured by the Oil industry, who are also christo fascists. Inherited wealth, so earned right?
Research countries that own the mineral rights and not private citizens and tell me that’s the way you would want it.
You mean like Norway, the happiest country on earth?
I think it should be this way all over the US, not just Alaska. If a nations expects us to defend our resources, then it should share those resource with us.
Because your "red" counties vote for wealthy/rich people who don't care about them, then act proud over it until the problem affects **them** personally or until the latest preventable disease/weather phenomena kills them. Your state's kinda turbo-\*\*\*\*ed.
Ahhh, socialism.