Citizen's Dividend
The distribution of collected land and resource rent equally to all citizens as a cash dividend — proposed by Henry George and exemplified by the Alaska Permanent Fund.
Definition
A citizen's dividend is the equal distribution to all residents of the public revenue collected from land and natural-resource rent. If land belongs in common, the argument runs, then the rent it generates is shared property — and returning it as a per-capita dividend is the natural way to distribute it.
Georgist Origins
Henry George anticipated the idea: once land rent funds the legitimate functions of government, any surplus could be distributed to citizens directly. The citizen's dividend is the bridge between Georgism and the modern universal basic income debate — a UBI funded not from taxes on labour but from the common rent of land and resources.
Real-World Example
The Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend is the closest large-scale implementation: since 1982, Alaska has distributed an annual cash dividend to every resident, funded by the state's oil-resource rents. It demonstrates that a resource-rent dividend is administratively workable and politically durable.
See Also
Sources
- Henry George (1879), Progress and Poverty — wiki summary
- Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend — the standing resource-rent dividend program.