Common Wealth Dividends: History and Theory (Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee)

✍ Scribed by Brent Ranalli

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 186
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Common wealth dividends are universal cash payments funded by fees on the private use of common resources like land, minerals, and the atmosphere as a carbon sink. Thomas Paine’s 1797 pamphlet Agrarian Justice and Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend are staples in the literature on Basic Income, but there is much more to common wealth dividends beyond these highlights, and common wealth dividends have a distinctive ethical justification and distinctive policy implications that merit discussion. This monograph, the most comprehensive study of common wealth dividends to date, will be of interest to students, teachers, and advocates of Basic Income and those in the field of environmental studies, including sustainable development, natural resource management, and climate policy.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Praise for Common Wealth Dividends
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
2 Thomas Paine Solves the Perennial Problem of Land Reform
Natural Law and Property: A Question of Justice
Additional Considerations: Humanity and Sustainability
Paine’s Backstory
The Reception of Agrarian Justice
After Paine
References
3 Natural Resources and the Alaska Model
Origins of the Alaska Permanent Fund and the Permanent Fund Dividend
Interpretations of the APF and the PFD
Beyond Alaska
References
4 Ecosystem Services and Carbon Dividends
Peter Barnes’s “Sky Trust”
James Hansen’s “Fee-and-Dividend”
Carbon Dividends Advocacy in the U.S.
Carbon Dividends in Action
Policy Design for Carbon Pricing and Dividends
Why Price Carbon at All?
How to Price Carbon (Carbon Tax Versus Cap-and-Permit)
Designing a Carbon Tax
Designing a Carbon Cap-And-Permit System
Benchmarking
How to Use the Revenue
The Future of Carbon Dividends
References
5 Common Wealth Dividends, Generalized
Natural Wealth and the Demands of Sustainability
General Theories and Principles
Political Theory: Public Trust Doctrine
Property Theory: The Labor Theory of Property
Microeconomics: Economic Rent
Man-Made Sources of Common Wealth
The Contribution of Social Context to Land Values
Cultural Inheritance
Social, Political, and Economic Institutions
Broadcast Spectrum
Web Domain Names
Money Creation
Practicalities
The Innocent Buyer Problem
To Issue Dividends or not?
Who Will Issue Dividends?
Who Will Receive Dividends?
Conclusion
References
Index