<
https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/how-to-pay-for-ubi-stock-dilution-tax>
"Corporations issue new stock all the time — to raise cash, to pay executives,
to swallow up other companies. So here’s a question: what if they had to issue
a little new stock to the rest of us, too? I call it a stock dilution tax, and
I think it’s the cleanest way to pay for a universal basic income (UBI) with a
wealth tax. Make every large corporation mint 1.5% in fresh shares each year,
sell them off slowly, and hand the proceeds to every American — roughly $365 a
month, with no new bureaucracy and nowhere for the wealthy to hide from it.
I’m not the only one thinking about this approach. This week, Senator Bernie
Sanders announced the
American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would hit
the biggest AI companies with a one-time 50% tax to be paid in stock and to
drop those shares into a fund that pays dividends to all of us. Last year,
Trump signed an executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund, and his
administration has been grabbing equity along the way — a roughly 10% stake in
Intel, a chunk of the rare-earth company MP Materials, a “golden share” in U.S.
Steel. And as I write this, senior officials are reportedly in early talks with
the big AI companies about having them voluntarily hand the government shares,
with a dividend paid to American households floated as one thing to do with the
proceeds. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla floated taking 10% of every public
company and pooling it for the people. And back in 2021, Sam Altman proposed
almost exactly this in his essay “Moore’s Law for Everything” where he
suggested an American Equity Fund capitalized by taxing big companies 2.5% of
their market value every year, payable in shares.
So the question is no longer
whether the public should own a stake in the
wealth we all help create. Experts regardless of party affiliation have
basically conceded that point. The question now is
how. And on the
how, I
think everyone is making the same mistake.
They all want to build a giant pile of wealth.
I don’t. I want to build a faucet."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
