Previously, we had imagined the United States Federal government would issue sufficient payments for completion of civic duties such being a juror, voting, and other “nice things.” (Kind of like the direct payment of $ for social credit that Andrew Yang campaigned about). In that case, we should actually call the program Universal Basic Jobs (UBJ), construing the civic duties as jobs the government gives to it’s citizens. Today, we envision a new form of distributive allocation of excess societal wealth: It is an UBI with a different ‘I’–namely Universal Basic Investment. In some instantiations, it may even be properly referred to as Universal Basic Investiture.

Typical corporate stock related actions are available to a person: He can split it, reverse split it, make up some new shares, sell some or buy some back, and pay dividends. Derivatives may be issued for his stock. The person may gift some shares, for example, at a baby’s birth, parents may gift shares of their own stock to the baby.

Suppose we issue stocks that represents a person’s worth, with official recording, monitoring and oversight. When a baby is born, it has 1 share and is worth $0. Of course, the parents may choose to gift the child with monetary gifts (that can be taxed), and his money worth at birth can be substantially higher than $0. But for most people, the money value of the person (and therefore his stock price) would be just what’s in the bank account. If the money invested, then a rational investor would value that person’s monetary worth at the value of the portfolio. Now this is considered a public entity encumbered with to-be-established normal reporting and transparency requirements. However, the person is the chief executive of his publicly incorporated entity, able to direct its funds and operations.

For brevity sake, instead of referring to the federal government, let’s assume the Social Security Administration (SSA) or a later instance of that same body of the federal government is responsible for UBI.

In one embodiment, the SSA may make periodic (or continuous) purchase of each person’s stocks at a fixed rate. For example $2000 each month. For babies, the SSA’s shares dilute very quickly as it has to split or create new shares in order to get these monies from the SSA. Notice that by issuing the UBI as equity purchase, we have given the person asset without increasing his liabilities in the accounting formula Assets=Liabilities+Equity. We can also calculate the worth of each new baby assuming guaranteed UBI share purchases by the SSA. Supposing a discount rate of 1%, the NPV of all future proceeds of stock sale is only $200,000. If everyone is to be born Millionaire in a low inflation period having discount of 10‱, the SSA only need to purchase $1000/person/month. For a country of 0.3 Billion people, that comes to 3.6 Trillion dollars each year(That is approximately same as the total 2020 IRS collection.) As SSA gradually invests in each person, it may wish to cap the ownership of each person’s public property to a legislated maximum. As each individuals’ wealth increase, the SSA may end up rebalancing it’s portfolio selling some of their shares instead of buying it from him. Equivalently, this means investing more to the poorer individuals and capitalizing on those that earn or own more. The SSA may also wish to cap the periodic investment for practical purposes.

In another embodiment, the parents may own all or some significant share of a baby’s stocks. In this case, the parents sell the stocks to the SSA for money to raise the child. Later, they may wish to buy some shares back (into their own ownership, or to reduce the amount of outstanding shares) if they realize their child has money-worthy talents. The management of personal stock shares switches ownership to the children at their 18th birthday. In fact, this loss to the parents should be a tax deductible event, their wealth have materially been impacted due to the maturing of their child. The opposite is of course concerning: the birth of a child is a taxable event due to its increase of parents’ assets, although this increase is valued at $0.

In another embodiment the SSA is a market maker for this and will trade in and out of peoples’ stocks so there is some apparent liquidity. It treats everyone equally and must spend same amount for purchase from each person. In order to encourage participation in this market, the SSA is required to make these purchases periodically. If it cannot find any sellers, it will raise purchase price until it spends enough.

It is not permitted to contract a debt convenant over the person’s operation of his stocks.

There could be ETF’s that aggregate peoples’ personal worth.

Much like a company, while the shareholders may retain the ownership of future earnings of an individual, they do not control that individual. In particular, these personal stocks are like the non-voting shares that some silicone valley companies have been issuing. The shares only grant right to the assets of the company but does not control the operations of the company. Therefore, each person is able to go to Vegas and lose it all in one hand of poker. But more likely scenario is that they may spend the money to engage in non-productive(and non-reproductive) activities.

Another interesting aspect of this system is that a person may have rational reasons to refuse the UBI. If the person has sufficient cash(flow), it makes no sense to sell shares to the SSA. SSA should offer to purchase equally, but the seller may refuse to sell. In the case of high cash-inflow but temporary cash shortage, the individual may choose to borrow debt instead of selling his stocks. Of course, there are many financial varietals such as warrants, convertible debts, etc., that combines debt with their stock. This choice for self determination is a fundamental difference between Universal Basic Investment and any other system that permits the government to forcibly own individuals’ future productions and current assets. If the individual choose not to sell out his shares, he can freely do so and no one else can own that individual.

Upon death, the person’s assets are distributed to share holders in dollars. If a children holds shares of parents’ stocks, then they receive the money similar to inheritance.

What’s cool about this is that parents can actually trade in and out of their own kids (and the kids’ friends). And I do declare that I’m not inspired by my kids or other peoples’ kids in any specific way. I have never wanted to short my kids and long their friends in their whole life and never plan to. But with UBI on top of the Stock Market, we actually can!

The advantage of these new formulations is that we forgo the unnecessary but traditional political debates of socialism (or even communism) versus capitalism. This implementation is all capitalism! It is completely based on modern tried and true mechanisms of capitalism: capital based alloctaion, investment for the future, ownership and control, free market, competition as well as principals of democracy: equal empowerment of all citizens. Leveraging present day technologies, it doesn’t get better than this, if I do say so myself.