you missed the higher cost of living remark. Cost of living there is only ever beaten out by hawaii, california, and new york. if your completely at 0 and on the streets then its going to make a big difference but if that person with the shitty truck and barely adequate house could pay less for most everything and might actually do better in alabama. Now granted without it the high cost of living would not be appreciably lower so its effect is massive just maybe not massive enough to make up for the cost of living there.

I see so much argument around UBI with the assumption it has to be enough to live off or it's worthless. But Alaska's system makes a real difference to reducing the number of people living below poverty level, even being just a small fraction of what is required to live there for a year. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pop4.398

Although not designed as a social program to redistribute income, the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) has been reducing poverty by providing equal annual payments to nearly all state residents for over 40 years. ...the PFD reduced the number of Alaskans with incomes below the US poverty threshold by 20%–40%... The effect of the PFD has been even larger for vulnerable populations. The PFD has reduced poverty rates of rural Indigenous Alaskans from 28% to less than 22%, and has played an important role in alleviating poverty among seniors and children... up to 50% more Alaska children—15% instead of 10%—would be living in poor families without PFD income. The poverty-ameliorating effects of the PFD have lessened somewhat since 2000, as dividend amounts adjusted for inflation have been declining.

If we stop exporting our own oil and stop buying from the Saudis, I'll fuckin take it at this point.