What’s Happening with BIG around the World?

Abstract

Perhaps the most important outcome of the guaranteed income movement of the 1960s and 1970s happened not at the federal level but in the state of Alaska.

Not conceived as a handout, the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend embodies the idea that all Alaskans own their resources in common and every person should benefit from these resources. In the form of an unconditional payment, the dividend respects the freedom of each person to use it as he or she sees fit. Because everyone has a stake in the dividend, Alaskans are vigilant and hold the fund’s management accountable.

—Michael Howard, professor of philosophy at the University of Maine and coeditor with Karl Widerquist of Exploring the Alaska Model: How the Permanent Fund Dividend Can Be Adapted as a Reform Model for the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)