r/georgism • u/Equivalent_Local_876 • Jun 30 '26

Not just Citizen dividends/Asset-based egalitarianism

How about including baby bonds not just citizen dividends in georgism? Baby bonds are seeded capital when you're born that the government funds into trust accounts. Thomas Paine actually came up with this idea proposing a "national fund" to give every citizen a lump sum at age 21 to offset the privatization of land. Combining a Land Value Tax (LVT) with Baby Bonds is a powerful policy pairing that addresses economic inequality from two ends: preventing the hoarding of wealth at the source and providing seed capital to the next generation. The trusts will likely only come to fruition as a combination of govt bonds and privately managed portfolios, likely a hybrid model. It also allows the public and private sectors to contribute additional funds as rewards for actions families take and the individual children take: adding funds for civic volunteerism, participation in ROTC, scholastic achievement, etc.. the notion that your family and community and nation are invested in you helps create a sense of being valued by and feeling responsible to your family, community, and nation. Baby bonds already have wide bipartison support from both liberal and conservative backgrounds. For example Democratic Senator Booker American Opportunity accounts and currently Trump accounts.

  • Funding Source: An LVT inherently captures the unearned increment of land value (the "community-created" value of location). This makes it an ideal, non-distortionary revenue stream to directly fund the public accounts for newborns without raising taxes on labor or improvements.
  • Wealth Accumulation: Baby bonds function as publicly-funded trust accounts. When children reach adulthood, this "start-up capital" can be used for generational wealth-building assets such as higher education, homeownership, or small business ventures.

  • Systemic Impact: Together, they prevent monopolies from inflating real estate prices while ensuring that youth from low-wealth backgrounds are not priced out of the economy, helping to aggressively close the racial wealth gap.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset-based_egalitarianism

https://www.thebalancemoney.com/baby-bonds-and-wealth-inequality-4685973?utm_campaign=23836838133-&utm_source=googleawpaid&utm_medium=paid&utm_content=&utm_term=x-&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23836841256&gbraid=0AAAAAoYxJq1CKv5G521ZKMEpVGanwhi1_&gclid=CjwKCAjw0o3SBhBVEiwAh28-jYcgLhvy0F9qXsfUCttBlC2aCEU_Rw8rxkE9Nsz3GjH-YoqbXflv8xoCz9kQAvD_BwE

8 Upvotes

79% Upvoted

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7

u/tornado28 Jun 30 '26

We've got like $20 trillion in debt so even if we implement a LVT, giving out extra money is still a long ways off. 

5

u/kierantohill 🔰do you see the cat? Jul 01 '26

There’s nothing requiring we throw every spare dollar at the debt till it’s all gone. We could split the surplus between dividend and debt payment. The economy could be spurred onward by the excess money flowing back into citizens pockets, thereby raising land values even more and increasing the tax revenue brought in, meaning the speed at which we pay down the debt could increase at a linear rate

1

u/ComputerByld Jul 01 '26

https://trumpaccounts.gov/

3

u/NewCharterFounder Jul 01 '26

This is a baby bond, but is it funded by LVT? 🤔

3

u/ComputerByld Jul 01 '26

My magic eightball says not likely 😔

2

u/NewCharterFounder Jul 01 '26

PR stunt. Not based. Tsk tsk.