By MICHAEL TAVOLIERO
Over the past decade, Alaska has become a sobering case study in the systematic digression from freedom to entitlement, where government agencies, originally built to serve and protect, have transformed into sprawling bureaucracies of dependency, eroding both the independence and health of its people.
In a bitter irony, the very programs created with the intention of improving lives, Medicaid expansion, SNAP, subsidized housing, behavioral health grants, have instead produced managed decline, where poverty is institutionalized and personal agency is replaced by procedural compliance.
The irony lies not just in the results, but in the intentions. These programs were meant to expand access, reduce suffering, and create equity. Instead, they’ve created chronic dependency, where people are sustained in poor health rather than healed, where public nutrition programs coexist with soaring obesity and diabetes, and where addiction services multiply even as communities fall deeper into despair.
Alaska’s Medicaid program, expanded in 2015 with promises of increased care, now consumes billions while delivering long wait times, limited provider access, and little measurable improvement in public health.
Wellness is no longer the goal. Maintenance within a broken system is!
This decay has not been limited to health. SNAP benefits and housing subsidies, instead of providing stability, have fueled multi-generational reliance on the state, displacing family responsibility and weakening community resilience. In this environment, hope is rationed, and initiative is penalized. The government has become not a partner in progress, but the central authority managing a web of entitlements. This web quietly discourages self-reliance.
Meanwhile, to fund this expansive machinery, Alaska’s government has increasingly diverted money from the Permanent Fund dividend (PFD). Once a symbol of shared wealth and economic independence, the PFD is about to become a memory. In doing so, the state strips individuals of direct control over their portion of Alaska’s resource wealth and instead reallocates it through opaque bureaucratic pipelines, where the individual is always a passive recipient, never an empowered actor.
The cruelest irony of all is this: in attempting to protect the vulnerable, we have made more people vulnerable. In trying to reduce inequality, we have deepened the divide between state-managed existence and authentic opportunity. And in promising compassion, we have delivered control.
In this same vein, Alaska has witnessed the quiet emergence of a new class divide, not between rich and poor in the traditional sense, but between those who work for the government and those who live off it. This is the unintended but entirely predictable result of a system where government spending, not production, innovation, or private enterprise, has become the dominant economic engine in much of the state.
Classic Marxism.
On one side are the bureaucratic beneficiaries: agency employees, administrators, program managers, and consultants whose salaries, pensions, and job security are shielded from market forces and funded by taxes, royalties, and increasingly, by diverted Permanent Fund revenues. These individuals operate in a parallel economy where performance is often decoupled from results, and institutional growth, not public service, is rewarded. Their livelihoods depend on maintaining the size and scope of government itself.
On the other side are the dependent class: not by nature, but by circumstance, trapped in webs of Medicaid, SNAP, housing subsidies, and a host of welfare systems that offer temporary relief but long-term stagnation. These Alaskans are not empowered to build, compete, or rise; they are managed, surveyed, and processed. Any attempt to break free from these programs is met with bureaucratic resistance, benefit cliffs, or administrative delays that punish ambition and reward compliance.
Caught between these two classes is the shrinking private sector, where entrepreneurs, tradesmen, small business owners, and working families shoulder the costs of both systems while receiving few of the privileges. They do not draw checks from the state, nor are they supported by it, but they are constantly told they must pay more for the sake of “adequacy” and “equity” in a structure that seems neither adequate nor equitable.
This is not a healthy society. It is a soft caste system built not on merit, but on proximity to government power. It is a reversal of Alaska’s founding values, where rugged self-reliance and equal footing under the law were once the norm. And it is unsustainable.
Our state motto has become “North to entitlement.”
To restore balance, Alaska must rebuild a culture of earned independence, where dignity comes from contribution, not entitlement; where public servants serve rather than rule; and where assistance is a stepping stone, not a way of life. The state’s future depends not just on reducing bureaucracy, but on reviving the principle that government exists to enable freedom, not divide citizens into the managed and the privileged.
Change begins with awareness of the system’s drift, consciousness of its consequences, and conscience to act against it. We must awaken to how far we’ve strayed from Alaska’s original intent, freedom, opportunity, and accountability, and recognize that no policy, no program, and no bureaucracy can replace the responsibility and dignity of a free people. Only when citizens reclaim their role, not as passive recipients, but as active stewards, can we restore a system rooted in liberty, local control, and self-determination.
The solution is not to withdraw compassion, but to reclaim freedom. That begins by dismantling this entitlement apparatus, restoring local control, re-empowering families, and returning public resources to the people.
Alaska cannot recover its promise by continuing down a path paved with good intentions and buried under bureaucratic outcomes. It must rediscover the original values that built it: responsibility, liberty, and trust in the individual, not the institution.
The problem with freedom is personal accountability and responsibility. It is better to force your neighbors to pay for the poor choices you make.
Spot on!
I agree wholeheartedly, but what can I do? I have voted in Alaska for 50 years, never missed an election, and I tried to be as informed as possible, but Alaska has gotten progressively worse. 2 of my kids, born and raised here, 3rd generation have relocated to the lower 48 and are thriving. I foresee a grim future for the private sector, as government consumes resources at an alarming rate and all we get is more control from a government that demands more and more. I miss the Alaska that I fell in love with in 1975 and for the first time questioning my ability to remain here as a retiree.
And you can thank Tony Knowles for leading this explosion by asking for “pilot programs’, at which the end of the year a campaign would be organized within gubbermint agencies(I witnessed first hand) to call and send frantic letters to legislators to keep the programs and it just grew.
So Tony Knowles is just another Marxist? And, he wasted millions on the “fast-ferries” boondoggle to prove his lack of wisdom. In a recent interview, current gubernatorial candidate Adam Crum was asked, “who do you view as our best prior governors?” His number one answer: “Tony Knowles.” Our drift to Marxism is driven by who we vote for. Marxism is what we are asking for vis-a-vis our votes for candidates who promise more and more free stuff from government. Terms such as “liberty, self-determination, etc do not get us where we need to go; homeless people have that. No where in the above essay does Tavoliero use the words “hard work, diligence, self-sacrifice, tenacity, etc.” Like the Alaska carpenter said, “there ain’t nothing for free; if you ain’t payin for it, someone else is.”
Michael,
Outside of Jeanette, you, and myself, who will react to:
“Change begins with awareness of the system’s drift, consciousness of its consequences, and conscience to act against it.”???
Alaska is too far down the slippery slope. You are correct in one facet, the PFD is history with next session of fiscal discussion. (It no longer can be called “Debate”, as the conclusion is forgone.)
Cheers,
Al-Ketchikan
Al,
Many of us are aware and reacting. When we have time while making a living and making payroll for our employees. But too many are like the frog in the kettle of water. When they realize there’s a problem it’s too late. They’re cooked. Batten down the hatches. It will get worse before it gets better..
Well stated, Michael. I am afraid the addiction is real. And the motivation to break free has been crushed. Then again, maybe that was the long game all along – a dependent people are the easiest to control.
I agree. Been working on this rant awhile? Your language gives it away. 🙂
Nothing will change until we take control of education from the communists.
“Poorly” managed dependency.
Change begins with awareness of the system’s GRIFT, consciousness of its consequences, and conscience to act against it
Michael, in one paragraph above describes the problem in its entirety. Alaska has become a State wholly dependent upon Government $pending alone, and not upon production derived from its resources.
With the advent of Oil in the 1970’s, Alaska had its opportunity to further develop its resources which would require building infrastructure with which to ease that development. Alaska failed to do so. To my knowledge, the last road corridor constructed by the State was the road from Skagway to Carcross, in 1976. Planning and engineering for that project begin in 1972. Prior to that the State built the Dalton Highway, (1974) and the Parks Highway, (1967).
Alaska is suited to provide the world with minerals. From Greens Creek to Red Dog, mining provides good, high paying employment to Alaskans. If one wants to turn this dependent economy away from dependence based upon the whims of political parasites to one of production and real wealth… well, let’s just say the path is pretty obvious. Stop electing Commies!
My question is when the PFD goes away, we will no longer have a need for the PFD department. What will they turn it into? Will it just get renamed? Maybe the department of government gluttony?
Michael decries Marxism while lamenting smaller dividends. Oh, the irony.
The statutory dividend this year would have had an almost $4 billion dollar price tag. Where would that money come from, Michael? The money tree?
The biggest recipients of welfare are the large corporations, through per barrel welfare credits, and through credits obtained through a net profits system where the state pays billions, but gets ZERO equity interest for its money. Couple this with the fact Alaska gets less for its oil than any other jurisdiction in the world, and voila, we have lost most of our dividends.
In a recent year $17,000.00 worth of oil, per Alaskan, (per capita) was taken. Yet Alaskans, the owners, get a tiny share.