A new online tool is shedding light on a subject that has long fueled political tension in Alaska: the reduction of the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD). The website, PFD Doomsday Clock, allows Alaskans to quickly calculate how much money they and their families have lost since the state government stopped paying out full statutory dividends in 2016.
Developed by concerned Alaskan Phil Izon, the tool uses publicly available data to estimate the gap between what residents would have received under the traditional PFD formula and what they actually received each year. Users simply input the number of eligible family members, and the site instantly displays a cumulative total of lost income.
For a family of four, the losses since 2016 can amount to more than $20,000, money that, under the original formula, would have been distributed directly from the earnings of the Alaska Permanent Fund. Instead, The Bill Walker Administration and legislatures have capped or restructured the payments, using portions of the fund’s earnings to cover perceived state budget shortfalls.
The site presents the information starkly, with a running counter and breakdowns by year. It’s a powerful visual reminder of how deeply the dividend issue cuts across Alaska’s political and economic landscape.
Since Gov. Walker’s Administration first reduced the PFD payout by half in 2016, critics have argued that the state has violated the intent and statute that governs the dividend program, which was created to ensure that all Alaskans benefit from the state’s resource wealth. Proponents of the reduced dividend argue it’s a necessary measure to maintain essential services amid fiscal challenges.
The release of the calculator arrives at a time when the current Legislature has reduced the dividend to just $1,000 in 2025. public pressure is once again mounting for lawmakers to return to the statutory formula. As debates continue.
With elections approaching in 2026 and budget debates ongoing, the PFD remains a potent symbol of what Alaska once was, and what it has become. Alaskans have a clear window into just how much it has cost them and their children.
It’s not over yet. It never will be until the legislature has it all, corpus included.
After that comes a state income tax followed by a state sales tax.
Republicans have always stood for personal responsibility, and that includes paying your own way. But lately you all have a”nothing for anyone else DOGE attitude”, while at the same time wanting someone else to pay the cost for your government.
Republicans also stand for the rule of law.
The Permanent Fund was created by law, and the Dividend payments to the residents of Alaska are to be calculated using the formula in the statute.
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Which the legislature has not been doing.
Huh?
It is consistent to insist that all pay their own way and tax dollars not be spent on people, who cheat, defraud or abuse the system. So what is your point?
There are delineated functions of government (national defense, infrastructure, law enforcement, regulating interstate commerce, education here in AK). You make it sound as if Alaskans have a totally free ride, which is incorrect. While we do not pay any personal state income tax(yet everyone does pay federal income tax), there are gas taxes, property taxes, payroll tax, vehicle registration fees, tire disposal fees, corporate income tax, fees for fishing/hunting licenses, taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, sales taxes in several jurisdictions…….
Should the state and local governments not live within their means, instead of appropriating funds that are rightfully each Alaskans, especially considering that they are already entitled to half of those funds?
If you want to give your dividend back to the state treasury nobody is stopping you.
Some people always scream that it is “our oil”, but apparently the dividend from that oil isn’t ours but the legislature’s alone….go figure.
Republicans have always stood for personal responsibility, and that includes paying your own way. But lately you all have a”nothing for anyone else DOGE attitude”, while at the same time expecting someone else to pay the cost for your government.
You’re delusional again have you contracted rabies? the point of DOGE was to stop paying for stupid crap that served only to to redirect taxmoney into thewallets of Democrat cronies since when was public money supposed to be fed into leftists’pet projects and personal acvounts??? As opposed to paying for public good
Maybe the solution is to dissolve the PF, paying it out in equal shares along with returning subsurface mineral rights to all Alaskans similarly in equal shares. Cheers –
I supported this plan for a long time. Take the corpus, split it in half, with one half to the state and the other to be equally distributed to each Alaskan. Return mineral rights to the individual property owner. Part of this agreement needs to include a caveat that no personal income tax can be established and all future royalties and taxes will go to the state for the purpose of running government. Then the sole owner of the PFD will be there state and all this bellyaching and time wasting every session will end.
Fair enough, but only if counterbalanced by the Rapture Report of how much we’ve kept in our possession by not paying state taxes.
Sure, but money “kept in our possession” cannot include that spent on cheap Chinese junk or winter vacations to Maui or Disneyland.
our legislative body is all about them and their pet projects to get reelected. they have no regard for the statute or the people. Vote ALL of them out and let’s start over.
The majority of the members of the legislature need to be prosecuted and punished for grand theft. And while you’re at it, throw in Governor Walker and the State Supreme Court. I’m sick of these people.
Clearly, the PFD has been sacrificed for more government in Alaska. That’s what are leaders have supported, starting with the disgraced Bill Walker. Now, more than half of the legislators believe in socialism. They don’t want the people to have their own power of the pocketbook. The only way we can defeat this kind of radical socialism, and the people in office who support it, is to vote their *sses out. Period.
Thieves. Giessel, Stedman, & company are in felony territory.
That’s right MRAK – feed the rage. Right on brand. Never mind the inconvenient little fact that the money went to support your government, whose services you and all other Alaskans so richly enjoy.
Alaska would have been far better off to follow the Norwegian GPFG model, where the accumulated oil revenue was used to pay old-age pensions instead. At least that would have eliminated the incessant b*tching about not getting a bigger annual check. Geez.
What a bunch of spoiled, entitled whiners.
i do not want more government. If you actually read anything I wrote here on MRAK, that would be obvious. The less money the State legislature gets from me, the better off I am.
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There has never been a politician, on either side of the political aisle that did not insist on spending other people’s money on luxury items that make them more electable. And, that crap needs to stop.
“…….Alaska would have been far better off to follow the Norwegian GPFG model……”
Hear! Hear!
Dog comments here at MRAK on a continual basis, but never contributed a dime. He would prefer that someone else pay the bill. Typical free-loading socialist POS. Yeah…..YOU, Dog.
The democrats of Alaska have found a way to STEAL FROM THE PEOPLE.
After that, then the taxes
Every Alaska Politician is a liar and a thief, Why do we have a Governor if these people can over ride a veto and steal the PFD with no Consequences?
Vote all of them out.
The Permanent Fund corpus is currently valued at @ $83 billion.
Since 1980, the Permanent Fund Dividend program has distributed over $21 billion. That money is gone. It bought no infrastructure or anything else that represents investment. It represents a quarter of the current corpus, not including the returns it could have been accruing over the years like the Norway Oil Fund has been doing, making the nation of Norway the richest on Earth.
Our current budget just passed through much legislative strife (including a $1000 PFD, which will total $740 million, or 3/4 of a billion) totals $14.2 billion. Just $2.9 billion of that is the capital portion.
The PFD program has been a 45 year party of retail and winter vacation waste. Any further growth In the Permanent Fund corpus will be a miraculous accident. The race is on to determine who will suck the rest of it dry like a leach; government (who provides “programs” for residents) or residents (who provide money for retail or entertainment business entities).
Reggie, you bemoan that Alaskans spent their checks on stuff and vacations (not that that is any of your business) keeping businesses in operation and providing jobs for fellow Alaskans. More likely the funds went to car repairs, school supplies and fuel oil for the winter.
Yet you seem to give our government a total pass here. What did they do with THEIR share of the dividend? Did the build new roads where they had not been any? Did they build new bridges or create first rate educational opportunities for our children?
No they did not. They wasted money on growing government, boondoggles and pet projects, while continuously undermining the industrial base providing the funds for their largess.
So frankly, I am tired of this centralized politburo absconding with every penny they can to pay themselves bigger pensions and hire more people (to pay more union dues) and create more roadblocks for the ones footing the bill.
“……..More likely the funds went to car repairs, school supplies and fuel oil for the winter………” You write as if I haven’t been here since well before the first PFD payout and haven’t actually witnessed what it has been spent on. When the first PFD payout occurred, I had a tenant who didn’t have a job and who took his entire family’s collective PFDs and bought a pound of weed to sell “and get rich”. Yeah, in addition to the cheap Chinese junk and Maui vacations, a lot of it has been spent on dope. You aren’t replying to a resident of Delaware here, Dude………
“…….Yet you seem to give our government a total pass here. What did they do with THEIR share of the dividend? Did the build new roads where they had not been any?………”
Obviously, you either never drove the Glenn Hwy out to the Valley pre-oil, did you? Don’t remember Mayor Tony Knowles “Accelerated Road Project” out to the metropolis of Eklutna………and Valley residents continuing on single lanes back and forth for another 20 years? Or the Glenn “Highway” out to Glennallen? Or how about the Parks Highway, completed in 1971 (before oil flowed, but after discovery and part of the preparation)?
Or how about the hundreds and hundreds of airports (to every village out there)?
Yeah, it’s all there. Not like the cheap Chinese junk now filling our landfills (more infrastructure), if people even bother to throw their junk away rather than simply letting it pile up around their hovels.
Oh, BTW Mr. Taxpayer, unless you’re paying a professional tax, the only taxes you’re paying to the Great State of Alaska is a gasoline tax at the pump, which is the lowest state gasoline tax in the nation. The state is actually paying YOU a negative tax to be here, and some of us want a tax break on that one.
Sadly another example of lack of understanding what a “DIVIDEND” is!
Cutting the PFD in half or more is a TAX on my income from the oil I communally own with my fellow Alaskans. I know it’s hard to get the concept, but try to keep up.
BTW there are a myriad of fees and property taxes paid to the state or local governments, so your claim does not really hold water.
“…….Cutting the PFD in half or more is a TAX………”
Correct; it’s less of a NEGATIVE TAX. Econ 101, Dude: ‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax#Further_reading
In this case, it isn’t a negative INCOME tax. It’s pure socialism; common ownership of public resources, right out of The Communist Manifesto. It has most recently been called Universal Basic Income by 2024 Democrat POTUS candidate Andrew Yang who wants to use it as the basis of the New Welfare System, just as many here in Alaska try to use the PFD as a lame argument of it being some sort of welfare necessity because they “pay bills” with it.
No, you aren’t paying property taxes to the state. You (and I) are paying them to local government. The only state tax you pay is a gasoline tax at the pump, and Alaska’s gasoline tax is the smallest of all 50 states at 8.95 cents per gallon. Even if you’re an employer, most payroll taxes are actually insurance premiums (unemployment, accident, and medical) and are paid on the behalf of your employees, not everybody else. So if you want to whine about your local taxes, try not to insert it into your demands for huge state NEGATIVE taxes.
15,112$ per man woman and child. Taxation of children? They want the whole enchilada, let’s put it to a vote of the people. It won’t pass a 75/25 split they want.
Phil, Thanks for keeping track of the numbers as a reminder for concerned residents.
Hopefully there will be another site or similar accounting of how those dollars were spent and what the results of those funds spent. Such as funding public education institutions that are not competent enough to send graduates out into the workforce with the skills required to learn a trade where simple math and reading comprehension is required.
Another accounting of who voted for what in the legislator during election season would be helpful info as well.
Senator Dunleavy – who as a majority member of finance, wrote the state budgets as we churned through 16 billion in savings/failed to replace revenue when the bottom fell out of our oil income in the early-mid 2010s; ran for Governor on the promise that only the Governor could restore full PFDs.
How’s that going, Governor?
The fact that people are willing to allow this criminal theft to go on is a testament to the fact the judiciary are in on the theft of YOUR rights. Our “government” has been corrupted and taken over by the bureaucracy and we will never get it back, short of civil war. The bureaucratic tyranny running our government, from local to federal, will never willingly give it up.
You are correct.
The oath taken by elected leaders to uphold and follow the laws are being so blatantly ignored.
As the present PFD diminishes, the legislature should enact a 2ndary back-up PFD program called the “Hammond Bond”. It would be far cheaper than the present PFD program (at least to begin with). The proposed “Hammond Bond” is a mirror image of Governor Jay Hammond’s original 1980 PFD program that he signed into law on April 15, 1980. The 1980 PFD law favored long-term Alaska residents. The longer their residency, the bigger the check. Unfortunately, it was challenged in the U.S Supreme Court, and was replaced in 1982, by the current PFD statute. The “Hammond Bond” fixes those legal issues, but still ultimately favors long-term Alaska residents.
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Google “Hammond Bond 1980 PFD” for a picture of the bond certificate, and explanation.