On Thursday, the Alaska Permanent Fund, which is Alaska’s investment account and source of Permanent Fund dividends, topped $75 billion.
It had just hit $70 billion in December, 2020. A year ago in March, it was at about $60 billion.
The fund fluctuates, as all investments do, but at least for a moment last week stood at $75,073,000,000.
The Permanent Fund was a constitutionally established fund approved by voters in 1976. Since Alaska’s Constitution doesn’t allow for dedicated funds, an amendment was put to a vote of the people on the General Election ballot of that year, and passed 75,588 to 38,518. The proceeds from the fund are reinvested but also are skimmed off via a formula known as Percent of Market Value to pay for state government, and dividends are paid from the fund to qualifying residents.
Need to get your facts straight Suzanne. POMV was Cathy Giessel’s failed attempt to abscond with the Permanent Fund. The dividend and the State operating funds come from the earnings of the Permanent Fund according to statutory formula, not the market value. The practice of the last few years of the State stealing the PFD is illegal. The excuse given by the court that the PFD is a State expenditure and therefore must be budgeted by congress is a travesty of justice and plainly a misinterpretation of law. The answer to this mess created by the Alaska Supreme Court is a Constitutional Amendment enshrining the statutory formula.
Yessir Rich it’s only you that has a handle on how to interpret a law. Heheh! Your law degree is from?
Bill, your comments here are invariably both pathetically shallow and unthinkingly conformist, toeing the pro-Oligarchic Establishment line in every detail. How boring and how useless.
You do know that you can skip my posts, Jefferson. Perhaps you can give us your cred on how Rich interprets the law as I’m sure your opinion would be “deep” Heheh! Maybe even give us your take on Trump’s election landslide? Tough noogies to you.
Hear, hear!
Well said. The Governor has a plan to both enshrine the PFD and pay out the money Giessel and her ilk stole from every Alaskan over the last few years. Love him or hate him, those two measures are sorely needed.
The only constitutional amendment necessary is to eliminate your hard-earned dividend. UBI by any other name is still UBI.
Especially like that “hard-earned” bit about PFD. As someone who had slaved for umpteen hours every year for every PFD since it’s beginning, I can testify to how “hard-earned” it is. Heheh!
When it comes to slavery, Bill, nobody knows about it, and fights FOR it, better than you (and your other radical leftist bedfellows). Your entire political agenda consists of subservience and obedience to Big Government and Big Tech.
Boy Jefferson where do you get slavery from any of these comments? You just make stuff up as you write but it’s a good idea to have your brain in gear first IMO. Anyway, slaved over filling out PFD applications is hardly a pimple on slavery’s you know what. But I’m sure that Erak appreciates your answering for him/her. You are some tool. Heheh! Are you about 8 years old?
Bill, your every post is supportive of slavery — slavery to the oligarchy who rule over us, under the guise of politicians, corporate heads, billionaires and their other globalist bedfellows. Yours is an anti-human, anti-life agenda of total subservience and total control. You and your radical leftist authoritarian agenda are, not to put too fine a point on it, simply evil incarnate.
Thanks for that gibberish Jefferson!
I’m sorry, Billy Boy, that a clear and concise comment comes across as “gibberish” to you. It’s too bad that your mother chose to smoke and drink so much while she was pregnant with you.
It’s gibberish because hard work is one thing but slavery is another and there is just no way to speak of them in the same sentence. Nobody was talking about slavery but you needed to bring it up-why? Then you need to go on about how I was raised by my mother-you do know you are all nine kinds of jerk and Geldhof had you pegged correctly.
So, plenty of money to pay us our statutory rate. And some of what’s owed from years past.
Be interesting to see the rationale they use to get out of it.
This isn’t Alaska’s fund…it is the Wall street bankers “Alaskan Oil Royalties Re-investment Fund…
If this was the people’s fund, we would have indoor swimming pools in every community and no one would be without a secure job in AK.
As it stands, we cannot even get the elected gov representatives to give us our fair PFD’s.
P.S. There are dozens of Chinese co’s that this fund is heavily invested in…WTF?
The jerks in New York and elsewhere that “manage” this wealth benefit from it to a much greater degree than Alaskans. The money has been saved for effectively no purpose. A small dividend will be paid out but most of the earnings will be used by bureaucracy to benefit bureaucracy.
$5K dividend to every qualified Alaskan THIS year!
Like blood in the water, the feast begins. That sweet sweet smell of money. all that wealth has blinded the Alaska legislators. All those dollars have caused them to lose their sense.
Suspend the dividend. Reinvest the earnings for a few years. Get us to 100 Billion and we will never require a state tax, sales, income, or otherwise. We could also do away with almost all licensing fees completely. A little sacrifice now and we are financially free forever later. This is the conservative approach.
Although I agree with you in part, your “screen name” is so similar to mine, I will not post under OLD ALASKAN from this point forward. Respectfully.
I’ll work on a fix for that issue. – sd
I have said the same thing . If they steal the PFD, then we should not have any state fees placed upon its citizens ever.
What’s the argument with paying out the dividend now? $10,000 each for Alaskan citizens?
This amount could be misunderstood by some readers. It includes not only the corpus but the earnings reserve. Because the Alaska Legislature has now gone for an extended period of time without putting any of the earnings reserve into the corpus, the corpus as of 12/31/20 was only $57.8 billion. So an unusually large amount is available for spending (appropriation by the legislature) on the state budget and for PFDs, which is dangerous. At least historically when a disproportionate amount of the total Permanent Fund balance, $75 billion according to this story, is available for appropriation the Governor at the time and the Legislature have placed some of the excess into the corpus where it can earn income without being spent (absent a vote of the people). It looks to me like the next huge injection of federal money (borrowed by the federal government of course) and the need to finally reduce the operating budget going forward should allow about $10 billion of that $75 billion be put into the corpus for protection and increased long-term earnings. That will still allow the larger 2022 PFD, and it will allow the corpus to recover from the pandemic losses.
Only in Alaska – Universal Basic Income is the most important thing to Republicans.
You have no subsurface mineral rights. In other states, you do. The state had a formula to pay its citizens, a very small percentage of the revenue off the investments in the fund. The politicians decided they wanted to change it, so they would have more to pay special interests. The citizens, feel like the formula should be maintained. Part of the PFDs creation, according to those who implemented it, had to do with keeping the people involved in state spending, such that, a raid on the PFD (like we had) would be a bellwether of a state government that was spending more than it could afford.
Are you arguing that landowners should get their subsurface mineral rights, or just that this money should go to politicians and special interests and not to the citizens? If you think that it should be spend on social welfare, are you arguing that washing this money through government is a more efficient way to spend it, as opposed to giving it directly to the people?
My position on this is one of pragmatism. There was a formula. It was neglected and altered- without a vote of the people, and when they did get a chance to speak they primaried the people that did it. If it’s welfare, it’s more efficient to give those funds directly to the people, than to wash it through a bureaucracy. If it’s profit sharing off of land the people are forbidden from developing themselves, then remove those restrictions and you can make a better case for getting rid of the PFD…But if your position is just that, government should get this money because government knows better than its people how to spend it?
I think you’re nuts.
Right on the fund belongs to the people not the greedy politicians and their friends.
Don’t Look Know but the price of Oil is up to 57 dollars a barrel. Don’t let the Legislature get away with stealing the peoples earnings and we must build toward the future by investing a portion of the earnings in future resources. Full Dividends full investments and full resource development to provide for a maximum benefit for the people of All Alaska.
Alaska Constitution Article IX, Section 15
Section 15. Alaska Permanent Fund.
At least twenty-five percent of all mineral lease rentals, royalties, royalty sale proceeds, federal mineral revenue sharing payments and bonuses received by the State shall be placed in a permanent fund, the principal of which shall be used only for those income-producing investments specifically designated by law as eligible for permanent fund investments. All income from the permanent fund shall be deposited in the general fund unless otherwise provided by law.
On February 28, 1977, the Permanent Fund received its first deposit of dedicated oil revenues totaling $734,000. Investments were comprised almost entirely of bonds, while the Legislature had a four-year public discussion regarding whether the Permanent Fund should be managed as an investment fund or as an economic development bank. Governor Jay Hammond signed a bill in 1980 creating the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APFC) for the purpose of managing investments. That year Legislature also approved the first Permanent Fund Dividend program, and the first dividend check of $1,000 was distributed two years later.
“You have come a long way baby”
When the globalists reset hits it will be gone anyways,, pay it out to the people so they can at least buy some food or something for their families.
An FRN is worth about as much as a pinch of crap to a tree,,,, so what if you have 75 billion of em.
Right on!
Just watch … when the next market meltdown happens, more sooner than later, our Permanent Fund will lose several times more than what a 5k PFD would have cost.
Is it time? $50,000 per resident and the rest, $40 billion or so, stays in the fund and a 5% annual draw for government, or about $2 billion per year. No dividend going forward. Add in a true state spending cap, maximize oil production during rising prices, and we should be good.
And after the inevitable and imminent stock market crash, not to mention the crash in value of the US dollar, what will the (Not-So) Permanent Fund be worth then, in today’s dollars? $50 Million? $25 Million? Less than that? Remember folks, market evaluations are NOT wealth, only figments of wealth.
Careful of those assumptions Jefferson, they might come back to haunt you. But while we are at this, what is your cred in timing the market? Heheh!
First intelligent comment I recall you ever making!
You do much better giving your slant on affairs than wasting electrons with your extremely prejudiced and contemptible criticisms on the motives of others who post on this site.
You evidently have some cred at timing the market too Billy. You think a crash is imminent like Jefferson? Perhaps you can define a “crash” so we have some common ground-Jefferson doesn’t have a clue about anything so no point in getting him involved. Your turn Billy!
A troll says “what?”
Did you forget to list your credentials on market timing? Take your time as you might get some business if you can BS your way through this. Heheh!
Universal Life Income? Another more accurate name for pfd
Potential market crash:
The dollar is sustained by public confidence.
Public (and foreign) confidence is waning because of extremely high US deficit.
The recent stock market rise is due primarily to businesses/banks sitting on their funds, including much of government covid funds. Those funds are invested in the stock market in lieu of other suitable options (potential business options).
The overall trend of the US is higher levels of public funding required, and fewer percentage of workers paying taxes. The work ethics eroding. Public expectation is growing that the government should take care of them (especially those transplants from California – I speak from experience). The govt is investing most of its resources in social programs and military vs. public works and infrastructure.
History of crashes, with conditions similar to now, provides at least some experience of what may occur.
The unknowns: Will foreign governments migrate to some other monetary system?
Any other nation have enough gold to provide a currency basis. Is it worth is giving up US dollars accrued in trade for a stable currency?
Will everyone simply accept that the US stock market, in lieu of anything better, become the new basis for determining value, in which case the market could climb into infinity and the govt will simply run the printing press, forever, each generation passing a larger burden to the next.
When will the next economically destructive covid-type event occur, or “some damn thing in the Balkans” occur to set off another regional war with profound global effects. Probably not long.
Wild bunch of plain assumptions there Billy, but I specifically asked for any cred you have for wanting to time markets. You toot your own horn about having experience but that’s hardly any credential IMO.
Again, do you have any cred for such pie-in-the-sky garbage? Heheh!
I don’t really care what you specifically asked for! I gave you a thumbnail synopsis, not a “tooting my own horn” perspective.
Pay attention!
Heheh!
No, you did give what I asked for Billy-that you have no cred at all on market timing. A synopsis without anything to back it up is worthless but you evidently think a thumbnail synopsis from you is not “tooting your own horn?” Heheh!
Toot away, but it appears you pulled this synopsis out of thin air. Your turn.
I don’t really care what you specifically asked for! I gave you a thumbnail synopsis, not a “tooting my own horn” about having extraordinary experience.
Pay attention, and engage constructively or continue languishing in the backwaters of redneck country. Your choice.
Heheh!
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