r/geography • u/illHaveTwoNumbers9s • Nov 01 '24
How would Alaska benefit if it was connected to the mainland? Discussion
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u/renegadecoaster Nov 01 '24 edited Nov 01 '24
Its population would about quintuple, so it would have that going for it
Fun fact I just found out: Vancouver Island by itself (which doesn't include the city of Vancouver) has a larger population than Alaska.
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u/RzaAndGza Nov 01 '24
Would probably add a bunch of democrats to the house of representatives
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u/renegadecoaster Nov 01 '24
I feel like taking pretty much any place in Canada outside of the prairie provinces would add a bunch of democrats lol
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u/BobBelcher2021 Nov 01 '24
BC’s interior and rural Ontario are also quite conservative.
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u/Barnard_Gumble Nov 01 '24
American conservatives and Canadian conservatives are… not the same
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u/Toggel06 Nov 01 '24
Rural Alberta would like a word with you. People constantly fly Maga and Trump flags.
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u/ungovernable Nov 01 '24
When Texas elects a governor as left-wing as Rachel Notley, we can talk. I’ve seen Trump flags flying in rural Vermont…
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u/Toggel06 Nov 01 '24
Notley was about as centrist as you get and was purely elected by the two major population centers because the conservatives split their votes to two parties. Otherwise every elected majority has been a rightwing party.
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u/doktorapplejuice Nov 02 '24
Centrist? She started her career before politics working with labour unions. Her premiership involved increasing minimum wage by 50%, investing in infrastructure in first Nations communities, banning conversation therapy, increasing AISH benefits, increasing funding for healthcare, welfare, and education, introducing a carbon tax, hiking corporate taxes, rehabilitating orphaned wells, shutting down six of the province's coal power plants in favour of cleaner energy sources, setting up provincial parks, providing coverage for HIV medication, expanding daycare centers, freezing post secondary tuition fees, and implementing school lunch programs.
Damn, dude. Trudeau must seem like the Alt-Right if Notley is a centrist to you.
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u/SilverConversation19 Nov 01 '24
Clearly you didn’t grow up in Vermont if you think this is weird.
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u/son-of-hasdrubal Nov 01 '24
Rural Alberta is not some racist hell hole that you'd like to make it out to be. I've lived there, the people are great. Ya there's a racist asshole here and there but those people are everywhere
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u/amadmongoose Nov 01 '24
My friend is from Alberta and an extremely right wing Canadian that will always vote Conservative. My dad is a moderately right wing Canadian that almost always votes Conservative. Both would vote Democrat straight down the ticket because they think Trump and MAGA are crazy. Canadian conservatives are not the same as MAGA.
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u/DumbgeonsandDragones Nov 01 '24 edited Nov 01 '24
That is not true for a lot of Cons out here atm. We have a lot of conservatives that are completely sold on Trump and American politics.
To add, it is anecdotal I work with predominantly 35+ men in blue collar work. I am inundated with political talk, specifically about Con/Republicans no matter what... and that our Canadian system, specifically in Alberta would he better served by separating from the country and taking on more of an American model.
We are playing the same politics here, just watered down. The united conservative party takes its ques from the Republicans.
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u/Shimakaze81 Nov 01 '24
We have a population similar to Connecticut about 3,5 million, and they have 5 seats. 2,5-3 million of that lives in Greater Vancouver and Vancouver Island. We would definitely have a D Governor, 2 D Senators, and likely 4 D Congressmen, the Interior would likely only get one seat but still wouldn’t be surprised to see that go D as well.
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u/anonsharksfan Nov 01 '24
Even Alberta would probably vote Democrat
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u/DumbgeonsandDragones Nov 01 '24
The cities Edmonton and Calgary would, the rural vote which is half the population would go Republican.
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u/Healthy-Drink421 Nov 01 '24
yup. The OP asks how would Alaska benefit? Well now its a blue state. lololol
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u/PerpetuallyLurking Nov 01 '24
Definitely, because enough of the non-die-hard conservative voters (small c) will absolutely vote Democrat if they’re American now. They’ll miss their healthcare real quick! Among other social services, like parental leaves.
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u/PerpetuallyLurking Nov 01 '24
Please don’t take practically a third of our population. We like that third. We need that third more than you do! And it’s our warmest place to visit in winter without a passport. And you can’t even build a highway anyway.
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u/Avery_Thorn Nov 01 '24
As soon as I saw this map, I was all like “this wouldn’t change the US much, but it would SUCK for Canada, this would be really bad.” So yes, please know that there are Americans who completely agree with you. :-)
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u/DeathByOrgasm Nov 01 '24
This would absolutely suck for Canada, but would absolutely have a huge impact on politics for the US.
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u/PerpetuallyLurking Nov 01 '24
It would have a huge impact on Alaskan politics, but I don’t know that there’s enough people to completely alter the entire country’s politics. It would certainly make Alaska a somewhat comfortably Democrat state, but would that be enough to counteract the entire rest of the US? It might be final push for Dems getting y’all some socialized healthcare, maybe, but even that seems like a stretch.
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u/aaronite Nov 01 '24
It would add a decent amount of house seats and raise the electoral college votes. There's almost 4 million extra people on Vancouver and Metro Vancouver. That quadruples Alaska's population. The two biggest cities in the state would be both former Canadian cities and 100% Democrat voters. It would be around the same population as Oregon.
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u/CommitteeofMountains Nov 01 '24
Also, your access to the Pacific. The largest benefit for Alaska by far would be various tolls and the next largest would be US military spending to protect that income.
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u/jesusshooter Nov 01 '24
if it’s still not able to connect by road directly to the main peninsula then i don’t think it changes much but maybe cheaper imports
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u/spizzle_ Nov 01 '24 edited Nov 01 '24
It would massively expand Americas exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and would completely cut off Canadas access to any fishing, oil and gas, timber harvest in the pacific. It would be a many billions of dollars profit and maybe nearing trillions according to my quick basic search.
It would be massively impactful.
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u/Snaggel Nov 01 '24
Probably not much of a difference for Alaska as the added land area is highly mountainous, unpopulated and cold meaning you can't really build an economically viable highway through it. Naval and Air travel would still remain predominant way to reach Alaska or if a highway was used, it would curve into Alaska through flatter Canadian lands, but even then, carving a highway through Alaska would also prove very problematic for the same reasons as to why making a highway from Washington to Alaska would be a bad idea: Mountains.
The good thing you would get are some sparsely populated fjord archipelagos that could be used for (eco)tourism and wind power, but Alaska itself already offers enough of that in its coastline alone, majority of which are underutilized as they are. But even then, it would be very expensive to build anything in there and the distances to US mainland where people and energy needs are would still be very problematic.
The loss of Vancouver port city would be absolutely disastrous for Canada however.
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u/canuck1701 Nov 01 '24
Probably not much of a difference for Alaska as the added land area is highly mountainous, unpopulated
Alaska would be politically dominated by the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island.
It's no longer "Alaska". It's now "Northern Vancouver".
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u/renegadecoaster Nov 01 '24
Yep...the area that's currently Alaska would make up 20% of the population of this new state
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u/EpicCyclops Nov 01 '24
There is a highway from Washington to Alaska through Canada already. You're right that it doesn't cut through the mountainous coast and curves in through interior BC and the Yukon, but you can drive from Seattle to Anchorage or Fairbanks if you want.
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u/Turbulent-Bet-7133 Nov 01 '24
What if the feds gave a blank check to build an interstate system though?
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u/fubes2000 Nov 01 '24
There's no building a road across that stretch, you'd be paying utterly hilarious amounts of money to bridge hundreds of valleys and cut through hundreds of mountains.
There's also nothing there but a few barely populated villages along the coast and on the islands that are only accessible by boat and seaplane.
There's also already a road that goes through the interior of BC to Alaska.
The only reason to build a road along this theoretical coast would be out of massive amounts of spite because this theoretical Canada theoretically doesn't let you cross their borders.
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u/SpiderMurphy Nov 01 '24
Then you would have another shithead conservative billionaire-backed president elected four years later, cutting back on food stamps for children because the federal government spent too much money.
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u/AskVarious4787 Nov 01 '24
Or, how would Alaska benefit if it was part of Canada?
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u/monkiepox Nov 01 '24
Ya, or at least give us the panhandle back!
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u/DoctorWernstrom Nov 01 '24
It was never yours. We bought it from the Russians several months before Canada became a unified Dominion.
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u/qgmonkey Nov 01 '24
How about USA cedes Alaska to Canada if Mexico cedes Baja to USA. Then each country would look cleaner on a map
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u/buckyhermit Nov 01 '24
The Alaska cruise ship industry would be in trouble due to the Jones Act, since there is no Canadian port to touch or launch from.
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u/a_filing_cabinet Nov 01 '24
If it's connected like that, absolutely nothing. The southern part of Alaska is already completely disconnected from the rest, there are too many mountains and fjords. This affects Canada much more, as they lose their third largest city and their ports in the west. The prairie gets even more isolated, trade becomes much more complicated and even more dependent on the US. Most of B.C's population would now be in the US, which is almost an eighth of the country.
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u/scheifferdoo Nov 01 '24
they would get the salt spring island farmers market and thats a pretty big pickup
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u/monkiepox Nov 01 '24
Not very much. There is no way you could make a road through most of this.
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u/Upbeat_Effective_342 Nov 01 '24
Not sure why they'd want to steal from Canada seeing as they already get along so well anyway. And I think a lot of people would be upset that people from Vancouver will have to start voting in Alaska's elections.
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u/Present_Student4891 Nov 01 '24
Panhandle is mostly mountains. The Alcan highway already works well. No need for an alternative thru mountains to places where there r more bears than people. Not economically feasible.
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u/cobruhclutch Nov 01 '24
Another Vancouver. Fack!
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u/Snazzy21 Nov 01 '24
But it'd be the good Vancouver, not the shitty Washington knockoff
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u/Choskasoft Nov 01 '24
Adding Vancouver and Victoria would turn Alaska into a blue state. So there’s that.
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u/erodari Nov 01 '24
This would never work. Better to go the other way. Connect with the Canadian arctic shore, Hudson Bay, Labrador, and link with the Lower 48 at Maine.
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u/No_Cat_No_Cradle Nov 01 '24
It would suddenly become a radical left leaning urban state with a small disgruntled and ignored rural population
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u/JoelOttoKickedItIn Nov 01 '24
Would you consider an eternal bloody guerrilla war to reclaim the Canadian coastal homeland a benefit? Or nah?
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u/rover_G Nov 01 '24
Those kids in Point Roberts wouldn't have to cross the border to get to school.
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u/Miles_1828 Nov 01 '24
It wouldn't. Most of that connection is impassable wilderness. You would still have to drive through Canada to get goods from the lower 48 to interior Alaska.
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u/atlasisgold Nov 01 '24
all the Alaskans with DUIs and guns in their car could drive on the most expensive highway never built
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u/alexcascadia Nov 01 '24
The only way I'd think a road connection could be built, is if they consulted the Norwegians on how to overcome fjords.
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u/Sensitive_Remove1112 Nov 01 '24
There would be a beautiful highway
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u/sortaseabeethrowaway Nov 01 '24
There would be a beautiful highway
There would be a highway through a beautiful area
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Nov 01 '24
no there would not be
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u/Slight_Outside5684 Nov 01 '24
I’m with you. That’s some of the most rugged unforgiving terrain in North America. Not to mention all of the rivers and fjords that dissect the coast.
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u/RoyalExamination9410 Nov 01 '24
There is no coastal highway. The Sunshine Coast, despite being located on the mainland only 60 km from Vancouver, is only accessible by ferry as there are no bridges over Howe Sound. Driving to Powell River, further up the coast but also physically on the mainland, requires a second ferry.
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u/Norwester77 Nov 01 '24
It would have to be a bit more broadly connected to actually have a road link.
Something like this.
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u/GingerScourge Nov 01 '24 edited Nov 01 '24
As someone who has lived on that panhandle in the past, it would do nothing. That terrain is extremely mountainous, so there won’t be a road. The only difference is maybe the Alaska Marine Highway adds stops on the formerly Canadian areas instead of only stopping in Prince Rupert? Which wouldn’t really affect Alaska in any real way.
Thinking about it though, in the past there were some weird issues regarding fishing rights and things like that. It might help with this since now the entire coast is part of the US. But again, that’s a pretty small difference that likely wouldn’t change very much.
Edit: I did think of something else that actually would really affect Alaska. Vancouver and Prince Edward islands, together have, by themselves, about twice the population of Alaska. This would dramatically change the political landscape of the entire state. Instead of most of Alaska’s politics being centered in the Mat-su valley, it’d be centered in what we call Southeast Alaska. I am aware that the capital of Alaska is in SE, but currently central Alaska is where political power is concentrated.
In addition, this would completely fuck with the cruise ship industry. Due to the Jones Act, cruise ships have to stop at a foreign port unless they’re of US registry. While I doubt this would completely kill off cruising in Alaska, it would likely shrink considerably and be much more expensive for passengers. Many small towns/villages live and die off of tourism, and this could effectively kill those towns off.
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u/HurlingFruit Nov 01 '24
Not at all. I suspect that most Alaskans wish that we were even farther away.
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u/anon122768 Nov 01 '24
US gains Vancouver and Victoria but that’s about it. You’re not making a road through there
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u/Deaddoghank Nov 01 '24
Well I don't think much will change. Here is why.
There is a reason there is only 3 highways running east west to the coast of BC and none going north south. There is a buttload of mountains.
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u/Aromatic-Deer3886 Nov 01 '24
Over our dead bodies! Fuck you America you give us Alaska
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u/flowerpanes Nov 01 '24
Here’s a hint-most of that BC coastline is only boat or float-plane friendly. So YEAH, no road directly connecting Alaska to the rest of the USA without going through Canada anyhow.
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u/wikimandia Nov 01 '24
Ummm... its population would basically triple. The population of Alaska is like 700k whereas the Vancouver areas has a couple million. So now it has all those people and tourists generating income and a huge area of coastline it has to take care of, not to mention that all those people getting free healthcare won't accept it being taken away, so it would add state income tax for sure. The Vancouver film industry would become part of the Alaska film industry, which would expand to more shoots in Alaska, and more jobs, and promoting more tourism. Alaska would get an NHL team.
It wouldn't make sense to keep the capital so far away from the majority of the population so they might make another capital down south, or it would be more like California with very diverse economies and a capital in the middle of nowhere.
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u/i3dMEP Nov 01 '24
Lots of revenue from fish. That area there is fucking amazing. Might be the closest place to heaven on Earth I have ever visited.
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u/PLPolandPL15719 Nov 01 '24
alaska would barely benefit, but canada would hugely lose as it loses an important city
transport from alaska to the continental us is largely done by plane, and this wouldn't change
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u/MercuryPlayz Nov 01 '24
why would this even be necessary?
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u/CanadianRedKing Nov 01 '24
The only necessity I could see here would be to cut BC off from Port access to the Pacific. The land highlighted is way too mountainous and Rocky on the Panhandle to build a Highway anyways, and it also coincidentally claims the entirety of Vancouver Island and the lower Mainland; the two major population centers of BC, taking out like nearly 70% of BC's population. Besides, I'm pretty sure there's already a highway to Alaska built in the '40s inland, as well as that Marine highway of ferries that I think starts in Prince Rupert.
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u/RunAgreeable7905 Nov 01 '24
Well the drive/railway/whatever would probably be very scenic. Maybe good for tourism.
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u/Responsible_Yoda Nov 01 '24
The same question was also asked by Putin in Ukraine: what if we connect Russia with Crimea?
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u/asardes Nov 01 '24
The US could come with an excuse, ex. Canada is run by Nazis, or people who speak 'murican are being oppressed by the French-Canadians, then set up a special military operation to solve those "issues" :D
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u/Anything-Complex Nov 01 '24
Alaska is connected to the mainland. There are highways in Canada connecting AK to the lower 48.
Extending Alaskas border to the rest of the U.S. wouldnt really change a thing. The coast is too rugged for a continuous connecting road to be feasible and there is already an extensive ferry network in place.
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u/Eubank31 Nov 01 '24
Other than the big increase in population, it wouldn't help all that much. Only a handful of panhandle towns have road connection and the others wouldn't be able to get one even if this happened. Sitka, Juneau, Ketchikan, etc would still be isolated from the road system because the panhandle is very full of mountains and glaciers which are hard to build roads on
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u/multificionado Nov 01 '24
A highway along that border would benefit, but at the same time, a highway along there would be a doozy, considering the mountains there are.
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u/NotTheCraftyVeteran Nov 01 '24
Way more impacted by the socio-political ramifications of absorbing Vancouver than anything else I’d imagine.
Huge population boost, which would mean more Representatives in the House, more electoral votes in presidential races, etc. Given how major cities tend to vote, probably looking at a big shift towards Democrats for statewide races and for the new House districts created.
A huge surge in state tax revenue can’t hurt either.
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u/Ad_Captandum_Vulgus Nov 01 '24
This would be an absolutely seismic shift. Not because of any road or infrastructure connecting the lower 48 to Alaska -- that's basically irrelevant. But giving Vancouver and Victoria and their metro areas to Alaska would be absolutely enormous. What would happen overnight is that Vanlaska's population would increase by a factor of 8; it would have what has immediately become the 17th largest metropolitan area in America, the size of Denver or Baltimore; a 250 billion dollar economy; and an added area the size of many of the eastern seaboard states.
But the real kicker is that this new state, the largest in the United States by an even more significant margin, would be extremely liberal. Vanlaska would go from the 49th most populous state to the 25th, with the balance between liberals and conservatives more heavily blue (in the US sense) than any other state in the Union; this would mean that, not only would Vanlaska's two senators be Democrats, they would also send a signficantly increased House delegation of Democrats to Congress. On top of all of this, the new Governor of Vanlaska, almost certainly a Democrat, would be in charge of the US's richest state in terms of natural resources.
So this joke change, probably based on the idea of giving Alaska a road down to the lower 48 (which it already has!), would actually probably result in a major shift of the US political and economic landscape.
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u/chevylover91 Nov 01 '24
Well lets see. Youre taking Vancouver, vancouver island incl Victoria our capital city, cypress, grouse, whistler, all our port towns, all our tourism, ferry systems, all our protected fresh water and estuaries would be now unprotected.. looks like Terrace and Kitimat, BC would go too. Itd sure change a lot!
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u/EveryFinn Nov 01 '24
Americans really think they can just take the entire west coast from the Canadians like that lol
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u/Deathbyhours Nov 01 '24
Okay, I’m going to be That Guy. Alaska does, in fact, connect to the mainland. See that vertical line between Alaska and Canada? That line is imaginary, and that’s where the connection is, AND there is a road through it.
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u/dlobnieRnaD Nov 01 '24
This would be devastating for Canada and has the potential to be mildly convenient for the United States
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Nov 01 '24
I don’t think it helps Alaska much because there are no roads along that stretch and building one would be astronomically expensive.
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u/Soup3rTROOP3R Nov 01 '24
That land is extremely difficult to traverse outside of floatplane or ferry. Little to nothing would change.
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u/Atari774 Nov 01 '24
Literally nothing would change. That land has extremely rough terrain, and is very difficult to reach in the first place. So we wouldn’t really build a road there to connect Alaska to Washington state. It would be far easier to just keep using the Canadian highways to get there by land, or just going by sea. The only somewhat significant change would be that Vancouver would now be a US city, and that Canada would have very little trade with China. But otherwise, very little change.
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u/BloodyRightToe Nov 01 '24
It could make transporting cargo to Alaska cheaper. A long time ago they passed a law called the Jones Act. It means any ship that takes cargo between US cities must be built and operated by a US company. This was an idea to 'protect' our ship building industry. The problem is that it wasn't enough yet the law stays on the books. Which means the "Jones Fleet" is mostly just river barges that aren't difficult to build nor see any real rough seas, mostly drift up and down the Mississippi. What it means is that places like Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Alaska that need to use ships to get goods often by from foreign countries more than other use territory there is no real way to get US goods to those places. It is also why we have large truck highways up and down the coasts of the US as that is where most people live yet cant use ships to move goods up and down the coasts. Connecting Alaska to the lower 48 by roads would mean fewer tariffs and other issues moving goods from the united states to Alaska. Now going through Canada by truck isn't that bad but still it is more hassle than just crossing a state line which has no boarder to speak of (in most states, looking at you California).
TL;DR the Jones act makes moving goods between US territories by ship impossible. Which means we use far more trucks than we should. We should repeal the Jones act as it has already failed at its goal and we are now just suffering under it.
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u/Electrical_Angle_701 Nov 02 '24
Alaska IS connected to the mainland, just not the US part of the mainland.
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u/funhawg Nov 02 '24
Yeah, I don't think Canada is going to eliminate their primary west coast seaport that exports grain to Asia.
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u/TellLoud1894 Nov 02 '24
Cheaper food prices. Most food has to be shipped up which adds to the price
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u/LivingOof Nov 01 '24
Well I guess it has Vancouver now, but other than that nothing. If you're doing this to get a road connection built, its not happening through that panhandle