A nation should fund a citizens' dividend from AI windfall profits

The fruits of the AI infrastructure era are not the outcome of individual companies alone, but are built on the industrial foundation that the entire nation has accumulated over the past half-century. [...] Part of those fruits should be structurally returned to all citizens. Tha…

Meanwhile, AI companies are training their models on the knowledge of billions of human beings. [...] To turn this concept into policy, policymakers could classify human knowledge itself as the capital AI utilizes and require AI companies to pay royalties into a trust that issues…

At its core, the AI Dividend is simple: if AI dramatically increases productivity and concentrates wealth, the American people have a stake in those gains. [...] It's a way to ensure that if AI transforms the economy, it strengthens the country, not just the balance sheets of a f…

Public Wealth Fund. Create a Public Wealth Fund that provides every citizen—including those not invested in financial markets—with a stake in AI-driven economic growth. While tax reforms help ensure governments can continue to fund essential programs, a Public Wealth Fund is desi…

This is modest by design… to provide a tangible signal that every Singaporean has ownership in our shared future.

At its core, the AI Dividend is simple: if AI dramatically increases productivity and concentrates wealth, the American people have a stake in those gains. [...] You don't take out fire insurance because you expect your house to burn down — you have insurance in case something go…

The American Dividend Plan makes sure the gains from automation and AI are shared with the workers who make our economy run. Today, investors and large companies capture the benefits of rising productivity while many workers face stagnant wages and job disruption. This plan resto…

It is not a punishment for innovation — it is an insurance policy.

To start, the billions, if not trillions, of dollars generated by this fund would provide direct payments to the American people. [...] As the fund generates more and more wealth, the proceeds would be used to ensure that every man, woman and child in our country has a decent and…

Universal basic income could be financed through taxes on relevant companies.

[...] and that is why, just last week, I introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. This legislation would give the public a direct ownership stake in the largest AI companies in America. It would allow the American people, through their government, to own 50 percent o…

I propose Citizens' Equity, a simple mechanism wherein corporations contribute fractions of their capital liabilities to a sovereign fund issuing one share to each citizen.

As AI shifts income from labor to capital, we need to rethink taxation and redistribution. A levy on large firms, paid in their own non-voting shares to a public benefit trust and enforced through market access, sidesteps the failures of past wealth taxes. The proceeds could be u…

Meanwhile, AI companies are training their models on the knowledge of billions of human beings. [...] To turn this concept into policy, policymakers could classify human knowledge itself as the capital AI utilizes and require AI companies to pay royalties into a trust that issues…

Public Wealth Fund. Create a Public Wealth Fund that provides every citizen—including those not invested in financial markets—with a stake in AI-driven economic growth. While tax reforms help ensure governments can continue to fund essential programs, a Public Wealth Fund is desi…

Universal basic income wouldn't be an antidote to AI-driven job loss.

One-time cash payment is no solution to widening inequality.

The approach here resists utopian assumptions of unlimited resources or models like Universal Basic Income (UBI), Universal Basic Capital (UBC), and mechanisms based on the Alaska Permanent Fund that would seek to exhaust any revenue raised from AI productivity gains through equa…

It took a lot of effort to achieve some basic rights, and now neoliberalism is destroying everything: the education system, health care... By giving money to each citizen you are transferring responsibility from the State to the people, so that they can manage as best they can. I…

UBI does not alleviate poverty and turns social necessities into products for profit. To truly address inequality we need adequate social provisioning. If we want to reduce means testing and dependency on capitalist employment, we can do so with capacity planning. Our political d…

To replace a social security system primarily financed by contributions and based on wage solidarity with a rent paid by the Government and financed by tax income seems a war machine against the welfare state. In addition, an income provided unconditionally to anybody can only be…

[The national dividend proposal is] an anti-market idea that goes against market principles and is no different from socialist-style distribution.

The fruits of the AI industry are not the government's "free safe." This is an anti-market idea that goes against market principles and is no different from socialist-style distribution.

[The proposal to pay all citizens a dividend from AI and semiconductor windfall profits] is a populist idea driven by an obsession with immediate votes and an act that shakes the foundation of the free market economy.

The federal government is really the only entity powerful enough to be a real check on these companies. If they become joined at the hip, that check goes away. It can easily become a form of regulatory capture.

Still, it’s difficult to imagine a future in which our dysfunctional Congress passes a law to take a stake in AI companies, and then the government seamlessly redistributes the earnings to the rest of us. And regardless, such arrangements are unlikely to save a flailing labor mar…

[On proposals to redistribute AI/semiconductor windfall profits to citizens through a national dividend:] AI is a very young technology. We don't know exactly which way it's going to go. We don't know how well the semiconductor producers are going to fare in the future.

Artificial intelligence has become the latest excuse for reviving one of the oldest bad ideas in economic policy: a universal basic income. [...] AI will change work. It will not repeal economics. The best response is not fear-driven universal dependency.

Basic Income attempts to pay people under what should probably be called the l’Oréal Principle (“because you’re worth it”). They want to be paid first and then perhaps do something later if they feel like it. That is a complete reversal of the principle of contribution. Everywher…

Would the payment of a basic income to the whole population foster the same macroeconomic mechanism (i.e. a demand-led stimulation)? Yes if such payments anticipate additional production. But, by definition, the unconditional basic income is isolated from any anticipation and the…

Profit sharing can be one tool among many, and the sooner we treat it that way, the sooner we get to the harder work that actually matters.

Companies like Samsung Electronics that outperform profit targets should consider sharing excess gains with suppliers, subcontractors and their workers, after deducting taxes, given their contributions to corporate growth.

In the “unprecedented” scenario, the company wrote that more permanent support will be necessary, and it listed several ways to generate and share revenue broadly, including basic income, sovereign wealth models and equity-sharing mechanisms.

Rather than doing something immediately, it would be better first to have academic research and examination, and then apply the scholarly findings to reality. It is an issue that, in the later legislative process, must win public consensus and fully reflect diverse opinions.