[RANT ON]
As a 14 year resident of Los Anchorage, I can't begin to speak for those in Alaska who live off the road system.
But as an American taxpayer, I firmly believe that remote Alaska is the most heavily subsidized population segment in the US. A couple of data points:
Former Senator Ted (Uncle Ted) established the Denali Commission in 1998 as a means of routing Federal dollars to remote Alaska via a state/federal partnership. The average budget for this entity averages ~$80,000,000. Over the ten years of its' existence, that's $800,000,000 (
http://www.denali.gov).
Established in the mid 1980's, the state provides Power Cost Equalization funding to remote Alaska to bring the cost of their electricity in line with that of Los Anchorage. This has cost the state on average $20,000,000 per year. In round numbers, this represents about $200,000,000 over the previous 10 years (
http://www.state.ak.us)
The EAS system costs the US taxpayers $212,000,000 for the upcoming year alone. Over the past 10 years, $2,000,000,000. Alaska probably gets a good portion of that. Let's guess about 50%.
In my little mind, the issue is not whether the residents of remote Alaska "deserve" this money by virtue of where they live - they don't - any more than the residents of New Leipzig, North Dakota or Podunk, Idaho . . . that is a place, isn't t?
The larger issue is that we can't continue to spend that kind of money to help a very small portion of the state's population maintain the subsistence lifestyle they continue to spout is the real reason to continue the expenditure. The fact of the matter is that the villages of Alaska are economically non-viable units - there is not sufficient population to maintain a cash economy - without continued government subsidies. Via the Denali Commission, we build washeterias, health clinics, schools, power plants, bulk fuel storage facilities, etc. without a thought as to who is going to pay for the Operations & Maintenance (O&M). Oh, I forgot, we're going to pay for that too.
Did I mention that remote Alaska has about 10% of the total state population? Using the 2010 census numbers for AK (710,231), this would mean that remote Alaska means about 71,000 people. For numbers sake, let's round up to 75,000 (that added 15 villages! the average village size is about 211). If we use just the numbers quoted above, that totals out to $2 BILLION dollars for 75,000 people, or $26,666 per man woman and child, and that's not taking into account any other subsidy program, such as Denali Kid Care, the state Heating Assistance Program, Food Stamps, Medicare, etc.
If we used the same formula for the lower 48, and arbitrarily spent the same amount of money for whatever purpose (go ahead, make one up - our politicians do!) this would represent $8.3 TRILLION dollars. A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking real money (with apologies to the former Senator Everitt Dirksen) . . . Simply put, we can't afford it. [RANT OFF]
