Proposal № 001 of 250 · Released July 4, 2026
The American Dividend
Establish the American Permanent Fund — a citizens' endowment that pays every American an equal dividend, forever.
The problem
Americans collectively own an extraordinary portfolio: the broadcast spectrum, the minerals under federal land, the oil off federal shores, the fruits of publicly funded research, and the legal infrastructure that makes every fortune possible. The public's assets are monetized constantly — spectrum auctions alone have raised more than $200 billion since 1994 — and the proceeds vanish into general revenue, invisible to the people who own them.
The result is a country of owners who have never seen an owner's statement. Wealth from shared assets compounds privately; the public's share compounds nowhere. And a citizenry that never receives anything as citizens slowly stops thinking like shareholders of the republic and starts thinking like tenants of it.
The proposal
Congress should charter the American Permanent Fund: an irrevocable national endowment, owned equally by the citizens of the United States, one non-transferable share per citizen from birth.
The Fund pays no dividend for its first twenty years. It only accumulates. After the quiet period, it distributes up to 4 percent of a five-year rolling average of its value each year — divided equally among all shares and deposited directly on Dividend Day, a new civic date on the first Monday of October.
How it would work
The Fund is seeded by redirecting flows the government already collects, plus new ones designed for it:
- A fixed 20 percent carve-out of all federal asset monetizations: spectrum auctions, mineral and timber royalties, offshore lease revenue, and asset sales.
- Equity remedies: when federal antitrust or fraud settlements are paid in stock, the shares go to the Fund rather than being liquidated at the courthouse door.
- Voluntary founders' pledges of startup equity, made tax-rational by Proposal № 002.
- The sojourner levy created by Proposal № 003, so that every guest worker in America literally pays a dividend to every citizen.
Governance follows the Norwegian model, which is boring on purpose: an independent board, published holdings, ethics screens, a bar on directed investment in domestic politics, and a payout rule written into the charter rather than the annual mood of Congress.
The numbers
This is not a utopian machine. It is a machine that already exists in four places and works in all of them:
| Fund | Founded | Size | What it pays for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Permanent Fund | 1976 | ~$80 billion | Annual dividend to every Alaskan since 1982, roughly $1,000–$3,300 in recent years |
| Texas Permanent School Fund | 1854 | ~$56 billion | Public schools; the oldest fund of its kind in America |
| New Mexico Land Grant Fund | 1912 | >$50 billion | Schools, hospitals, universities |
| Norway Government Pension Fund | 1996 | ~$2 trillion | Over $300,000 of national savings per Norwegian |
Norway's fund received its first deposit in 1996. In thirty years it became the largest sovereign fund on earth. America's economy is more than ten times Norway's. The constraint has never been arithmetic. It has been patience.
The honest objections
"The dividend would be trivially small for decades." True — and disqualifying only if you think in election cycles. The Texas fund has compounded through 170 years, a civil war, and two world wars. A fund seeded today at even $40 billion a year, earning historical market returns, crosses $2 trillion in real terms within a generation. The first Alaska dividend was $1,000; the point was never the first one.
"Why not just cut taxes or pay down debt?" Because those are invisible and reversible, and ownership is neither. A tax cut is repealed in one Congress. An endowment with 340 million shareholders watching its balance is the closest thing fiscal policy has to a ratchet.
"Congress will raid it." The genuine risk. The answer is constitutional-grade design: principal legally untouchable, payout formula in the charter, trustees with staggered terms, and — the real protection — a dividend check that arrives in every mailbox in every district. Programs with universal, visible benefits do not get raided; they get defended. Ask Social Security.
"Won't people stop working?" The best evidence says no. The leading study of Alaska's dividend (Jones and Marinescu, American Economic Journal, 2022) found no negative effect on overall employment. A dividend is a floor, not a hammock — and under Proposal № 005, service raises it.
Sources
- Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (apfc.org)
- Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)
- Texas Permanent School Fund; New Mexico State Investment Council
- Jones & Marinescu, "The Labor Market Impacts of Universal and Permanent Cash Transfers," AEJ: Economic Policy (2022)
- FCC auction proceeds data (fcc.gov)