The Weekly Top 3 (1.13.2025)

Should the #akleg fund AGDC's "Hail Mary," where working age outmigration is occurring by income bracket & why "royalty relief" is an unnecessary statewide subsidy of Southcentral consumers

Welcome to The Weekly Top 3 — our look at the top 3 things on our mind here at Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets — for the week of January 13, 2025.

The Weekly Top 3 is a regular weekly segment on The Michael Dukes Show. The Show broadcasts on Facebook and YouTubeLive as well as via streaming audio from the Show’s website weekdays from 6–8am. I join Michael weekly in the first hour of Tuesday’s show, from 6:10–7am, for a discussion between the two of us about our three issues.

This week, our top 3 issues are these: 1) we discuss whether the legislature should fund the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation’s “Hail Mary” to keep the #AKLNG project alive for yet another year (2:20), 2) to complement the Department of Labor’s recent analysis of Alaska’s population, we look at IRS data to examine where the drain in Alaska’s working age population is by income bracket (18:54), and 3) we explain why the energy “royalty relief” touted by some as a solution to the Cook Inlet gas situation is, in fact, an unnecessary subsidy being taken out of the pockets of middle & lower-income Alaska families statewide (37:52).

The segment is at the YouTube clip above. For those who prefer the audio version, it is available on our Spotify and Soundcloud pages. And for those interested, a rough draft of the transcript of each show from July 23, 2024 forward is available through our Buzzsprout page.

Go to the Show’s Soundcloud page here for this and other complete podcasts of The Michael Dukes Show.