In short: the public charges for using what belongs to everyone, for rents, and for costs pushed onto others. It never charges for holding what you use, or for success. Taxes on earned income fund government; structure, not tax rates, keeps wealth from concentrating.
The principle
The public charges for three things:
- Using what belongs to everyone. The grid, spectrum, public data, public research, public land, natural resources drawn down, and the right to sell in a market.
- Rents. Returns that come from position rather than contribution, above all the returns from automation that once would have been paid as wages.
- Costs pushed onto others. Pollution, depletion, and any choice that exports its cost to people who did not make it (burden attribution).
It does not charge for two things:
- Holding what you use. A home you live in, a workshop you work in, a field you farm.
- Success. A builder who wins customers pays what everyone pays for the public inputs it uses, and nothing extra for winning.
That one line reconciles rules that look like they collide. No levy makes ownership depend on what others want, because nothing is charged for holding. Automation rents are charged, because they are not holding; they are the income that machines now earn in place of people.
What is charged in the full state
| Charge | What it falls on | What it pays for |
|---|---|---|
| The public share | equity stakes in automated production and levies on automation rents, taken as the price of public inputs | the floor first, then the commission funds |
| Natural resources | water, minerals, and soil drawn down | the floor |
| The right to sell | a share from firms selling into a market, wherever they book their profits (the global loop) | the floor |
| Charges on exported costs | activities that push costs onto others | repairing the harm, and the floor |
| Holding charges | scarce goods kept out of use, holdings large enough to close a field, inheritance above the lifetime allowance | the floor |
| Income tax | contribution income above the floor, at low rates | general government: courts, roads, offices, defense |
| Corporate tax | converted into the public share as the share is built, so nothing is charged twice | — |
| Sales tax | none on floor goods; a sales tax on food or rent only raises the floor’s price and is paid back through the credit | — |
How the full floor is paid for
The full floor costs about a quarter of what an economy produces today. It will cost less in practice. The floor is priced in real goods, automation lowers the cost of food, building, and transport, and a public builder borrowing at public rates builds floor homes below market rent.
That sounds impossible only if the floor is imagined as a cost added on top of the economy. It is not. It is how output is shared once wages no longer share it. Today most of what an economy produces reaches people as pay. When machines do most of the work, most income flows instead to whoever owns the machines, the models, and the data. The floor makes the public a part-owner of that production, so part of the income that used to be wages returns to everyone as credits.
| Source | Share of the floor’s cost |
|---|---|
| The public share of automated production: about an eighth of the claim on automated income | about two-thirds |
| Natural resources and the right to sell | about a tenth |
| New money issued by rule as sustainable output grows, capped at around 1% of output a year (who creates money) | about a twelfth |
| Holding charges | about a twentieth |
| Lower real costs from floor homes built by the public builder | the rest |
Income tax is not on the list. Contribution is not taxed to pay the floor.
An eighth of automated income is large but not exotic. Public funds that own large shares of resource wealth already exist, and so do dividends paid to every resident from them. The share is not seized. It is built: every permit, grid connection, spectrum lease, and data license carries a small share as its price, and over decades, as firms keep needing public inputs and keep selling in public markets, the stakes add up.
It is a loop, not a drain. Floor credits are spent on food, homes, and getting around. That spending is revenue for the same automated firms, which pay part of it back as the public share.
It does not drive up prices, for four reasons. Credits buy a standard of real goods the economy can produce. The housing part rises only as fast as floor homes are built. Credit for buying existing scarce goods is limited, so neither credits nor new money can be leveraged into bidding up land. And new money is capped by real growth and steered to keep the floor’s price stable.
If automation turns out smaller, funding and need move together. A smaller automation return means a smaller public share, but also fewer people displaced and wages still carrying more of the load. The credit is tied to the share and rises with it. The real danger is the opposite case: large automation and a small public share, output soaring while the public holds no claim on it. That is the closed loop, and the transition exists to prevent it.
The transition
The transition has a hard problem at its center. Income and payroll tax revenue falls as automation spreads, exactly when the need for support rises, and the regions losing payroll lose their tax base first. The floor has to start before displacement peaks, long before the public share is large.
So the floor arrives in stages. Each stage is universal within its scope and never tested against earnings:
| Stage | What starts | Why in this order |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Continuity: no support lost when a person earns, a guaranteed legal address and identity, healthcare that survives the loss of a job; and the public builder with the override of rules that block building | cheap and urgent; housing takes years to build, so supply starts first |
| 1 | The full child floor, for every child, paid to whoever raises them | universal, unconditional, protects the next generation, and low in cost per person |
| 2 | The elder floor, by topping up existing pensions to the floor | most of the money already flows; this fills the gap |
| 3 | The adult food and mobility parts, for every adult | they reach everyone, including the underemployed, without pushing up rents |
| 4 | The adult housing part, region by region, rising only as fast as floor homes are built | housing money paid before the homes exist only raises rents (a payment is not a floor) |
Signs of displacement can bring a stage forward in a region: falling entry-level hiring, waves of buyouts, payroll leaving. Once a stage is reached, it never goes back.
Who pays in the early years:
- Today’s benefits fold into the credit, so no one receives less than now.
- The public share from the first permits and grid connections.
- Ending tax breaks that mostly reward holding existing assets.
- In a crisis, emergency money paid directly to people.
- Income tax at today’s levels, rising modestly in the brackets well above the floor during stages 3 and 4.
- Borrowing against the public share, capped as a share of what has actually been contracted: leases signed and stakes held, never shares hoped for.
Every source and its size is published each year beside the floor measure. The early years cost real money, and the framework says so: taxes may have to rise before they fall. The borrowing cap also makes the leverage deadline the floor’s own deadline. The more of the public share is secured now, the faster the floor can rise.
Income tax
Income tax survives, as a funding tool for government, under four rules:
- The floor is never income. Floor credits are never taxed, counted, or used to raise anyone’s rate.
- Earning always pays. The combined rate on the first earnings above the floor is capped low, so taking on work always leaves a person clearly better off.
- Simple bands. A few mildly progressive bands and few deductions. The top rate stays moderate, because wealth is limited by structure: essential-layer duties, credit limits, the lifetime allowance, and jurisdiction that wealth cannot buy.
- A ratchet down. As the public share takes over the floor and the commission funds, rates fall on a published schedule toward a low level. They never reach zero, so government never depends on a single source.
Land
The classic tool for scarce land is a tax on its value. The framework does not use one, because of a retired couple in a house that has become valuable. Their bill would rise with what strangers bid for neighboring houses, on an income that has not risen, until they had to sell. A framework built on no one being forced out of their place cannot send that bill.
Instead, credit for buying existing scarce goods is limited, so prices follow earned money rather than lending. That leaves one gap: buyers who pay cash. Two narrow charges close it:
- A vacancy charge. A scarce good kept out of use in a high-demand place, such as a home held empty or a site left idle, pays an annual charge. Keeping a scarce good from use closes it to others.
- A large-holding charge. When a holder’s share of a scarce good crosses the threshold where the field is closing, the rising obligations include an annual charge.
Neither is ever paid by someone who lives there from their current income. A resident can defer either until sale or estate, without interest, and neither is ever taken from the floor. No one is taxed for owning what they use.
Who sets the rates
An independent fiscal body proposes the size of the public share and the income tax schedule on a long cycle, within limits set at the constitutional level. Funding for the floor is protected: cutting it counts as weakening a guarantee, so it is hard by design. Lesser changes to rates are ordinary rules. The figures the rates depend on, such as the floor measure and sustainable output, come from the estimator pool, never from one official number.
What stays open
- The size of the public share in each place, and how fast it is built.
- The income tax bands, and the cap on the rate for the first earnings above the floor.
- The thresholds for the vacancy and large-holding charges.
- The borrowing cap during the transition.