Permanent Fund Hits New High and its Dividend Hits New Low

The Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) has reached an all-time in a year in which Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) will probably reach its lowest level since 1987. The PDF is Alaska’s small, variable, yearly basic income. It’s financed by the returns of the APF. You’d think, then, that the fund and the dividend financed by it would move up and down together. And they do—on average, over the long-run, with a time-lag. But they don’t necessarily move together in any particular year, and this year the difference is extreme.

OPINION: Six Lesson from the Alaska Model

Basic income is a regular unconditional cash grant paid to all citizens without any means test or work requirement. It’s often dismissed as a utopian idea. However, a basic income, or something very close to it, exists today in Alaska. It’s called the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) or sometimes “the Alaska Dividend.” The PFD has been paying annual dividends to Alaskans since 1982 with no conditions except citizenship, residency, and the willingness to fill out a form. After following the Alaska Dividend since 1999, and I want to share six lessons that supporters of progressive economic policy should learn from what I call “the Alaska model,” but first some basic background.

OPINION: Big changes come

While voters of the United States were loudly debating gun control, the deficit, the debt, taxes, immigrant rights, the filibuster law, health care, and a host of other issues, the Obama administration quietly did something that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. It ordered the military to allow women to serve routinely in combat units. Other changes that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago also seem to be underway.