Many people have heard once or twice that you get paid to live in Alaska. To others the fact that it is true is surprising. Alaska adopted the Permanent Fund decades ago as an incentive for people to live in the state and thus contribute to its culture and economy. At the time, many of the people who were vital to Alaska’s unique place in the global marketplace were seasonal workers. Fisherman, miners, loggers, all wholly subject to the whims of nature in such an extreme place. Many of them lived in Canada, or the northwestern United States, and many still do.

If a person lives in Alaska for one full calendar year, they receive a yearly dividend check based on oil profits. For each year thereafter that a person resides in the state, they receive the check. Some hardy homesteaders, though fewer and fewer, live with only this income, subsisting by trade and with what can be gleaned from the land.

This is, in essence, a Universal Basic Income. It is a concept which has been receiving a lot of attention, primarily from the far left, since the contentious 2016 election. Today the news has been reporting a story that Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and others are promoting a corporate funded UBI to offset the loss of jobs represented by technology. Elon Musk says “It's going to be necessary.” There are many other opinions, but the talk of inevitability is growing ever louder .





The Alaska Permanent Fund has been touted by all proponents on the many sides as a successful example, and in the case of Alaska it has been. There is one thing that many fail to mention. The average payout is far less than even normal poverty level income. It varies based upon the oil markets but in 2015 it totaled 2,072 dollars per resident. The economics of scale are also important to remember, and even without charts and graphs, the numbers don’t add up.





Alaska has one of the smallest populations in the country as the first map above shows. It also has one of the highest median household incomes. A disproportionate amount of industrial and commercial activity relative to its population makes it more unique. It is prosperous equally due to its resource-richness and its remoteness. Things must be gotten from it and thus other things must be brought to it, all of which is expensive. Comparing a social program which is successful in one of the richest states with one of the lowest populations is like comparing the United States to Monaco. While UBI is an important discussion, the Permanent Fund has no place in it.

Many seem to feel that UBI is inevitable. If that is the case then privatizing public infrastructure is clearly a more sensible answer. If tech corporations want to offset the effect of job killing innovation then they should innovate differently. If they want to give money away, found free colleges to teach new, sought after skills. STEM specific colleges with no tuition but which take a small share of yearly earnings for an agreed upon amount of time in lieu of student loan payments. Or perhaps upon graduation they owe the supporting corporation a certain amount of work. Loan the education, not the money to buy it.

Infrastructure is government’s role and province. Most liberals and conservatives agree that highways must be maintained. Anyone who has driven on the East or West coast, or in other areas where toll roads and bridges are common and compared them the the vast middle, where pointless construction is a permanent fixture, know that private industry can and does do better, sometimes. Anyone who sat in traffic in Boston for 30 years while the dig got bigger knows about the danger of private contractors trying to do government work. It is a dicey area to be sure with no easy answers.









The fact is that most public benefit and entitlement programs are used due to a lack of basic income and their use is growing all the time, outpaced only by the expense of administering them. It should be made clear that the health care issue is separate, in this author’s opinion. The programs discussed here are social security, welfare programs, EBT/SNAP, WIC, and unemployment benefits as well as federal and state highway maintenance and construction.

Those programs and their liabilities have swelled so disproportionately and failed so comprehensively that when the math is done and the amount of money spent per person receiving benefits is tabulated, the most conservative option might be mopping it all up, finding a better way to fix or mitigate many wasteful and useless failures of government and in doing so discover a cheaper way to deal with the potentially inevitable. A single public benefit program with set ratios and numbers funded by an industry based upon a resource necessary and important to all seems far more conservative than a dozen agencies vying for tax dollars, wasting or just misplacing trillions of them, all on the way to failing miserably. The way forward for conservatives may be accepting that government is already where it doesn’t belong and will likely stay there, but what that government looks like and how well it performs is still the province of the people.









For a sobering example, latest estimates have the federal reserve missing 9 trillion dollars. Simply missing. While not suggesting that the federal reserve should pay the UBI, it is worth noting that amount represents nearly 28,000 dollars for every man, woman, and child in the United States based upon latest population estimates of 325 million. HHS Statistics for 2017 put the poverty level for a household of 3 at just under 26,000 dollars. While not in any way a technical solution it is a startling example of government ineptitude and its implications for citizens. It is difficult for any conservative to even consider public handouts of money, but what is it when an agency is handed trillions and misplaces it? For many, it is probably time to admit defeat on all fronts and find a different way.













Matthew Ely is a freelance author, journalist, and analyst from Cincinnati, Ohio















