Alaska is Unique When it Comes to Oil Ownership and Taxes

Around the globe, there are two basic systems governing the ownership of oil. In the first, resources are owned and controlled by the government. In the second, personal property rights extend all the way down to the core. The difference between the treatment of subsurface mineral ownership has far reaching implications. And, Alaska finds itself[…]

Fixing Alaska’s Investment Earnings Paradox

I wrote a piece a few weeks back about how Alaska’s current investment earnings laws don’t work together. They create a paradox in which the budget deficit gets smaller if investment earnings get worse. In the extreme, we could balance the budget by losing $7 billion in the stock market. Because that makes absolutely no[…]

Inflation Proofing the Permanent Fund

There was a little bit of a sparring match during the PFD working group meeting last week. Senators Hughes and Stedman seemed to have different impressions about the Percent of Market Value (POMV) approach to managing the Permanent Fund. But, the fireworks came in the form of a misunderstanding about how inflation proofing works. Let’s[…]

Why is Alaska’s Population Declining?

The Department of Labor published Alaska’s annual population numbers in January. It shows a reduction of 3,048 people in FY19. That is the third annual loss in population in a row.    On a quarterly basis, the available U.S. Census data suggests we’ve been losing population for 12 consecutive quarters (beginning in October 2016). And[…]