Commons organizing principles are scalable; the same
rules that work locally and regionally can also be
applied nationally. Generally, it’s best to
organize commons at the lowest level possible; that
increases community involvement and transparency.
Sometimes, though, the scale of the underlying commons is
so large that the management structure must be national
or international. Here are examples of possible national
institutions.
AN AMERICAN PERMANENT
FUND
An American Permanent Fund would be the centerpiece of
the new commons sector proposed in this volume.
It’s a way to fix, or at least ameliorate,
capitalism’s flaw of concentrating private property
among the top 5 percent of the population. It would do
this, like the Alaska Permanent Fund, by distributing
income from common property to every citizen equally.
This would add a third set of “pipes” through
which income would flow to Americans, the first two being
wages and private property income.
As discussed in chapter 7, the American Permanent
Fund’s income would come in part from the sale of
pollution permits — mostly for carbon dioxide
— and in part from the commons’ share of
corporate profits. The first revenue source would be
directly correlated to our efforts to curb global
warming. If we decided to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions, say, by 3 percent per year for the next three
decades, as scientists say we must, this would generate a
substantial flow of income into the American Permanent
Fund. Some of that might be invested or spent on public
goods, and some would be used for per capita dividends.
The faster we reduced emissions, the higher these
dividends would be. In effect, the dividends and public
goods would be a bonus to Americans for doing the right
ecological thing. Eventually, when a post-carbon
infrastructure is built, carbon emissions would stabilize
at a low level, and so would this revenue source for the
American Permanent Fund. By this time, the second revenue
source — dividends from holding a portion of
publicly traded corporate shares — would kick in.
This revenue source would give every citizen a stake in
increasing corporate profits, just as the first source
gives them a stake in decreasing pollution. Who could
object to that combination?
Getting the Permanent Fund up and running, even if it
starts small, would be a crucial precedent and signal.
Like the Social Security Trust Fund, it would be a
pipeline through which more money would flow over time.
It would establish a fundamental principle for the
commons sector — one person, one share. And it
would change the way Americans think about our economic
relationship with nature: every penny not paid by a
polluter would be a penny out of everyone’s pocket.
It wouldn’t be just future generations, then, who
experience a loss when nature is degraded; the bank
accounts of living Americans would suffer as well.
Irresponsibility toward the future would carry an
immediate and widely felt price.
THE CHILDREN’S
OPPORTUNITY TRUST
The Children’s Opportunity Trust is the second
big piece of national commons infrastructure. It’s
a way to fix capitalism’s other bad habit of
perpetuating class privileges from one generation to the
next. Unlike feudalism, which was based on hereditary
aristocracy, capitalism is, in theory, a meritocracy, or
at least a “luckocracy.” Players are supposed
to have a fair, if not equal, chance to succeed. Winners
are supposed to be determined by hard work, talent, and
luck, rather than by accident of birth. Yet, as
we’ve seen, Capitalism 2.0 falls far short of this
ideal.
The Children’s Opportunity Trust would give
every child, as a birthright, an infusion of start-up
capital — a kind of Social Security for the front
end of life. The trust’s revenue would come from
end-of-life repayments, as explained in chapter 7. This
funding mechanism, I believe, is better than taking money
from the general treasury. It directly links start-up
help from society with an end-of-life obligation to
repay, creating a kind of temporal commons that connects
arriving and departing generations.
A SPECTRUM
TRUST
A spectrum or airwaves trust would have a distinct
mission: to reduce the influence of corporations on our
democracy. Its economic and ecological impacts could be
significant (reducing corporate political influence will
improve many policies), but they’re secondary to
the political objective.
According to a study by the New America Foundation,
the market value of the airwave licenses we’ve
given free to corporate broadcasters is roughly $500
billion. It’s possible this value will decline as
unlicensed wi-fi spreads, but meanwhile broadcasters sell
our airwaves to advertisers and reap billions that
belong, at least in part, to all of us.
Part of that money comes from political candidates who
must purchase TV and radio ads to get elected. The
problem isn’t so much the unearned windfall
broadcasters collect; rather, it’s the fact that
candidates are compelled to pay it to them. That makes
politicians kowtow to corporate donors in order to pay
broadcasters. Other democracies give free airtime to
political candidates, but we protect the
broadcasters’ lock on our airwaves. By privatizing
our airwaves, in other words, we’ve effectively
privatized our democracy. The job of a spectrum trust
would be to take back our democracy by taking back our
airwaves.
This could be done in a couple of ways. One
wouldn’t require an actual trust: Congress could
simply say that, in exchange for free spectrum licenses,
broadcasters must give a certain amount of free airtime
to political candidates. Alternatively, broadcasters
could pay for their licenses, with revenue going to a
nonpartisan trust. That trust would allocate funds to
candidates for the purchase of TV and radio ads; the
allocation formula would take account of cost differences
between media markets and other relevant variables.
Neither of these approaches would prevent corporations
from lobbying or contributing to candidates’ other
expenses, but they would level the political playing
field by greatly reducing the sums candidates have to
raise to get elected.
COMMONS TAX
CREDITS
Some commons trusts will generate income from the sale of
usage permits. Many others will need income to acquire
property rights, restore degraded habitat, or give
children start-up capital. It’s therefore essential
to encourage a multiplicity of revenue sources. The best
way to do this is through a federal commons tax
credit.
When I was in the solar energy business during the
1970s, our customers benefited from a combination of
federal and state solar tax credits. As I frequently
explained then, a tax credit isn’t the same as a
tax deduction — it’s bigger. A deduction is
subtracted from the amount of income subject to tax; if
your marginal tax rate is 30 percent, a tax deduction
saves you thirty cents on the dollar. By contrast, a tax
credit is subtracted from the amount of taxes you pay,
regardless of your tax bracket. If you owe taxes, it
always saves you one hundred cents on the dollar.
The premise behind a commons tax credit is that
wealthy Americans owe more to the commons than they
currently pay to the government in taxes. That being so,
a commons tax credit would work like this. The federal
government would raise the uppermost tax bracket by a few
percentage points. At the same time, it would give
affected taxpayers a choice: pay the extra money to the
government, or contribute it to one or more qualified
commons trusts. If people do the latter, they get a 100
percent tax credit, thereby avoiding additional taxes.
The message to the wealthy thus is: You have to give back
more. Whether you give it to the IRS or directly to the
commons is up to you. If you want to eliminate the
government middleman, that’s fine.
What qualifies as a commons trust? It’s a trust
that either benefits all citizens more or less equally or
collects money to restore an endangered commons. Social
Security, the American Permanent Fund, the
Children’s Opportunity Trust, and most land and
watershed trusts, would qualify. By contrast, a normal
charity would not.
Contributions to normal charities would remain
deductible from taxable income, but not from taxes owed.
...
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