The Fund’s value is now more than $50 billion. The state is only allowed to spend the earnings from the fund, which is invested in various stocks, bonds, and real estate. Those earnings usually amount to about $2 to 3 billion a year, a figure that is expected to increase (The state also has a separate Constitutional Budget Reserve, worth about $10 billion now, that was funded by the state surpluses in the boom years of the mid-2000s).

Permanent Fund Balance, by Year, in Millions

Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation

But just because the state can spend that Permanent Fund earnings doesn’t mean it has done so. The legislature puts a chunk of it back into a fund called the Earnings Reserve Fund, which is now worth about $7 billion. It has also, since 1982, sent part of those earnings to every man, woman, and child in Alaska. Between 1982 and 2010, the amount of that check — called the Permanent Fund Dividend—averaged about $1,100 a year.

Every fall, when the Dividend checks come out, Alaska’s stores experience an economic boom akin to the one the rest of the country sees around tax-refund season. Alaskans wait to buy washing machines and refrigerators and snow machines, and businesses respond by offering special Permanent Fund Dividend sales and promotions.

To an outside observer, it might be obvious that a state that doesn’t ask its residents to pay any taxes and is now experiencing a giant budget deficit should just stop writing residents checks, or at least use some of the earnings from its $50 billion in the bank to pay its bills. Since the Permanent Fund is projected to continue to make more and more money from its earnings, the state could still spend a portion of earnings and keep the reserve fund well-endowed. Or the state could put a cap on the yearly amount of Permanent Fund dividends (the amount of the dividend is currently calculated by a formula based on the average of the Fund’s income over five years).

But Alaskans are fiercely protective of their checks, and of their state’s savings. This might be the most tight-fisted state in the union.

“The only thing that could make you less popular than raising taxes is stealing the dividend checks,” Knapp told me.

I hung out in a supermarket parking lot in Wasilla, famously known as the one-time home of Sarah Palin, and asked residents how they thought the state’s fiscal problems should be solved. None of them wanted to see their Dividend check go away.

“Leave the permanent fund alone—once they get their mitts on it, they’ll spend it all,” one Wasilla resident, Suzie Swanner, told me.

But others in the state are worried about what further budget cuts could mean. They include Lisa Sauder, the executive director of Beans Café, a day shelter for homeless people in Anchorage. This summer has seen a spike in homeless deaths in Anchorage—half a dozen deaths in two weeks—which police say is linked to the use of the synthetic drug Spice. Spending on homelessness-prevention programs was cut in an initial version of this year’s budget and then later restored, but Sauder worries that any cuts to the state budget will have a big impact on the state’s poor. Already, people flock to Anchorage from Alaska’s small towns when the economy slows down and find themselves out in the street because of the high cost of housing, she told me.