What is The Share?
This is about Freedom and Prosperity and Fairness
You’ve probably heard of Universal Basic Income. If there is one thing that might make the pain and horror of Trumpet 2.0 worth it, it will be if our remake in his aftermath delivers a UBI for America.
The proposal at www.FairAndShare.info is completed legislation waiting for elected officials and candidates to champion it.
And it’s about so much more than Income.
It’s about a new social contract that can bind our society together into a system of mutual growth and support that gives everyone a real opportunity to Prosper.
Why call this The Share?
Because every adult citizen receives a fixed percentage of All Income. It is literally a share of the whole—similar to a share of stock.
This is different from other UBI plans is its funding mechanism. The Share is paid for by a single, fair, equal tax on all income, replacing the current maze of loopholes and special treatment which result in rich and wealthy paying a lower rate in taxes than work-a-day people.
What are the details?
The Share Amount starts at $20,000 a year and goes out in twice-monthly checks to every adult US Citizen.
The Equal Tax rate starts at 29%.
Both adjust annually.
The Share rises with national income:
The Tax Rate rises or falls to hold the national debt at 100% of GDP.
(But that variance is less than a single percentage.)
People usually respond with strong approval; occasionally with skepticism.
The same questions often come up:
Will this cause inflation?
No. There is no borrowing, so there is no overstimulation. A Roosevelt Institute analysis of twelve UBIs shows this model yielding about 2.65% extra GDP growth with roughly 0.5% inflation.
Won’t this make people Lazy?
Humans have always built, created, invented, and contributed.
We live in a world shaped entirely by human effort.
A baseline income doesn’t erase ambition; it frees it.
Consider for yourself, what will you do with extra money? (Which, by the way, you have earned, see the moral reasoning later.)
There may be a lurking ‘otherism’ or even racism in thinking ‘others’ won’t use this money wisely.
Here too, research shows us that this is not the case.
Is this socialism?
There is no government ownership here. Nothing about The Share is socialist. It simply uses public policy to improve society.
While that’s something Social Democrats want, we’re not switching out of basic capitalism here.
We’re making capitalism better with a cleaner tax-and-share structure. We’re also fixing a fundamental flaw in Capitalism (more on that later).
If the Share needs a label, call it Fairism: everyone receives an equal share of the economic activity we all make possible.
And we do make it possible. This is why in a larger sense this is a moral and rightful share which is earned by We the People.
When we participate in our civil society we make economic stability which enables the engines of capitalism to function. We do our part to make civil society work every day all the time: when we wait at a red light, or queue at a store, or help a neighbor.
But this larger civil society which which makes this strong economic foundation is being exploited by a tiny few for disproportionate profit.
Who wins?
Eighty percent of Americans come out ahead: they receive more in Share benefits than they pay in additional taxes.
The top 20% pay more. The number starts at 20% because current law exempts income above $179,100 from Social Security and Medicare taxes.
Even then, most pay only a few thousand dollars more, and in exchange, they gain a stable, healthier society
The wealthy still profit; they simply pay the same rate everyone else pays. Today they enjoy preferential treatment—capital gains taxed far below wage income.
The Share ends that distortion.
Won’t labor costs rise too high?
Too high for what?
The Share solves capitalism’s most distorted market: labor.
A market requires the option to walk away. Workers don’t have that option today; they are coerced by the threat of poverty.
That is not a free market—it is an oligopsony (a market in which there are only a few buyers).
The Share creates the first genuinely free labor market in industrial history.
Workers can refuse unfair pay.
Capitalism becomes sustainable.
It is what Capitalists should want. Those who don’t are seeking personal advantage, not the moral high-ground of any kind of ‘economic system of freedom.’
What’s the risk of changing the status quo?
Few people today want to defend our status quo.
It’s too broken.
For centuries, concentrated wealth has forced most people to rent their lives from a tiny minority who inherited land, resources, and legacy privileges.
This was tolerable only when most people could still accumulate modest security through a lifetime of work.
That era is over.
Oligarchic consolidation is ending the old bargain. Without reform, we face a future where housing, water, food, medicine, and labor itself become price-fixed by monopoly.
This is not defensible, not moral, and not stable.
The most rational repair is to ensure everyone holds a stake in the economy.
Trickle-down has failed for forty years. The data are clear.
The moral imperative is equally clear.
Humanity is entering a steady-state era because our population is leveling off. Add to that sunlight, wind, and geothermal energy and we are ready for a century of abundance and shared prosperity.
We must turn away from the perils of dominion and wealth gaps that are gulfs larger than the oceans.
If we intend to live morally on this earth, then we must bind our fates together.
No one should have too little.
All of us should contribute equally.
In the Lord’s Prayer, only two unconditional requests are allowed: deliver us from temptation, and give us our daily bread. And we are commanded to act “on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
Should we not do our part to bring a piece of that Heaven to Earth?
We can do this by giving us all together “The Share.”
It is a simple as daily bread.
In solidarity, and with eyes on a better future.
Amen America.
Link to the finished legislation, economic analysis, and more moral discussion: www.FairAndShare.info.