Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining Its Suitability as a Model

by Karl Widerquist (Editor), M. Howard (Editor)

Discussing the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) and Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) as a model both for resource policy and for social policy, contributors explore whether other states, nations, or regions would benefit from an Alaskan-style dividend. Many other jurisdictions could create similar funds and dividends, but most of them under-tax resources, giving resources away to corporations who sell them back to the people. Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend looks back at the success of the APF and PFD, and it looks forward (using theory and empirical investigation) to see how the Alaska model can be of use in other places and how the model might be altered and improved.

Genres: Economics

284 pages, Hardcover

First published February 15, 2012

About the author

Karl Widerquist is a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar. He specializes in distributive justice: the ethics of who has what. He is an interdisciplinary scholar who holds two doctorates, one in Normative Political Theory (Oxford University 2006) and one in Economics (the City University of New York 1996). His writing and research cross the disciplines of philosophy, politics, economics, anthropology, and the philosophy of social science. He has published dozens of scholarly articles and eleven books including Universal Basic Income: Essential Knowledge, the Problem of Property, the Prehistory of Private Property, A Critical Analysis of Basic Income Experiments; Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy; and Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No. Much of his writing is about Universal Basic Income. He was a founding editor of the journal Basic Income Studies, cofounder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, and cochair of the Basic Income Earth Network. The Atlantic Monthly called him “a leader of the worldwide Basic Income movement.”
Website: www.widerquist.com
Twitter: @KarlWiderquist
Email: Karl@widerquist.com