Implementing Universal Capital Accounts in the U.S.: Fixing Our Broken Income Distribution System (Working Paper #2) - CLEO Skip to main content

Summary

The concentration of ownership by the very wealthy is supported by a financial system that enables them to acquire income-producing capital basically on credit whereas no such financing strategy is available to the mass of the population. A solution lies in creating a system whereby every individual has the right and opportunity to acquire income-producing capital on a basis where the income produced is used to pay for the cost of capital acquisition, and thereafter the capital provides its owner with income indefinitely. In this proposed system, everyone with an active Social Security number would have an account in a nationwide fund that would make investments for all participants. The program puts in place incentives for publicly-traded corporations that would increase the amount of equity financing, as opposed to debt-financing and retained earnings, thereby enabling the mass of the population to participate in a meaningful way in the trillions of dollars of new capital created annually. This paper is a more detailed discussion of how the implementation and operation should be accomplished to create a Universal Capital Trust Fund.

This paper is part of the Working Paper Series of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations.