With Liberty and Dividends for All by Peter Barnes

Author:Peter Barnes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2014-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

As TO THE TOTAL QUANTITY OF ASSETS to put into the co-owned wealth fund, my suggestion is: keep adding until society decides the pot is full. Like social insurance, co-owned wealth dividends will grow by laying pipes first and then filling them with water. The long-term goal is to pay dividends that modestly supplement labor income for everyone. When that goal is reached is for the people, through politics, to decide.

Still, it’s worth estimating the quantity of money that could flow through shared wealth dividends if the will were there. For the next several decades, a sizable chunk could come from selling a declining number of carbon pollution permits. In addition, revenue could flow from our monetary infrastructure and other shared resources. Figure 7.1 lists five potential sources, along with estimates of their possible yields. It shows that a mature system could generate close to $5,000 per person per year, or $20,000 a year for a family of four. The numbers are explained in the appendix.

Consider what $5,000 per person per year would mean. If a child’s dividends were saved and invested starting from birth, they’d yield enough to pay for a debt-free college education at a public university. In midlife, $5,000 per person would add 25 percent to the income of a family of four earning $80,000 a year. In late life, it would boost the average retiree’s Social Security benefit by about 30 percent.

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