u/Neo_Solon

Changing the money system is not the radical act it gets treated as, and the reason is already written into a document almost everyone accepts.

>We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
>
> -Declaration of Independence, 1776

The founders asserted a general right: the people may alter any form of government that stops serving their safety and happiness. Nothing in that principle exempts the machinery of money. And a monetary system is a governing power. Its design determines who receives newly created purchasing power first, whose holdings hold their value and whose erode as prices move, and what share of future output is pre-committed to debt service before that output exists. A power of that size is legitimate, by the founders' own logic, only so far as it serves the governed.

And it is a form of government in the fullest sense. It was created by government, legislatures chartered the central banks, authorized the borrowing, wrote the statutes. And it is run as government: the Fed's governors are presidential appointees, confirmed by the Senate, exercising delegated state power over the nation's money. That it was established lawfully is not a defense against changing it. It is exactly what places it under the principle the founders named. The principle itself is not in doubt: when a form of government stops serving the safety and happiness of the governed, the people keep the right to alter or abolish it, and to institute in its place one that does.

None of it is inevitable. The erosion of savings, the concentration of new money, and the servicing burden carried forward are outputs of a design, not facts of nature, and a design can be examined and altered.

This is not one people separating from another. It is the same people reclaiming a power they delegated and stopped watching, the authority to create money.

>What follows is that architecture: https://neo-solon.github.io/Citizens-Standard/Citizens\_Standard\_Engine.html

There are two things working against you that no amount of frugality touches, because they are not about your habits. They are about the money itself.

1. The money you save is quietly losing value.

You already feel this. A dollar saved a few years ago buys noticeably less now. The part most people miss is that the lost value did not vanish. When new money enters the economy, it reaches asset owners first, stocks and housing, and pushes those up before regular prices catch up. So the saver holding cash is on the paying side of that transfer. You did the responsible thing and funded someone else's gain. That is not a problem you can budget your way out of. It is built into how the money works.

2. Almost all of the money is debt.

When a bank makes a loan, it creates new money, and that money has to be paid back with interest. Most of the money supply exists exactly this way, as debt with interest attached. You can be personally debt free and still live inside an economy where the money itself carries one enormous interest charge, and that interest flows to whoever already holds the assets. No budget fixes this one either.

So the deeper issue is not only that saving is hard. It is that the money is built to leak value upward and to carry interest baked into the whole system. You are trying to save inside a thing that is designed to lose.

There is a framework called the Citizens Standard that goes after the money itself, on both counts.

- Money would be issued publicly rather than created as interest bearing bank debt, so money creation stops being a private interest bill on everyone.

- And the gain from creating money, which today quietly flows to whoever gets it first, would come back to citizens instead. Either as money that actually holds its value, or as a dividend, with that choice made by vote rather than left on a default nobody picked.

It is not a magic investment that beats the market. Any equity piece still rides the market like everything else does, timing and all. The point is not a better return. The point is sounder money. Money that is not bleeding value to asset holders by design, and not structured as one giant interest payment. It is about saving the money, not just saving in it.

The reasoning in plain language, if you want it:

https://neo-solon.github.io/Citizens-Standard/front\_door.html

TLDR: Frugality saves your money. But the money itself is set up to lose value over time and to exist mostly as interest bearing debt, and no budget fixes either one. The Citizens Standard is an attempt to save the money at that level, so that saving in it actually holds.

When the money supply grows, the new money does not arrive evenly. It reaches people who already hold assets first, because that is where credit and markets push it, and they book the gain before it ever shows up in wages and prices. The bottom half of the country owns about 2 to 3 percent of all stock, so this whole channel routes around them. It is upward redistribution that happens every year, invisibly. Inflation can also be called the "hidden tax".

So I asked one question. What if a share of that money-creation gain went into an account every citizen owns instead? A floor that compounds for each citizen.

I modeled it on real US data from 1960 to 2025:

Every citizen reaches retirement with a locked floor of roughly 210k to 245k, plus a cash dividend that brings it to about 237k to 278k. That is roughly what the median household holds today, at about 0.4 times the average. Read that twice, because it is the point. It does not mint millionaires. It universalizes the middle. For the bottom half, who own close to nothing now, going from nothing to the median is the whole fight.

I stress tested it. I resampled the ugliest stretches of US history, the Depression and the Great Inflation, ten thousand times. The floor still holds. In the worst draws it lands around the median, not above it. The point was never a lottery ticket. It is a floor nobody falls through.

Quick note on Gini, since it gets thrown around a lot. It is a single inequality score from 0 to 1, where 0 means everyone is equal and 1 means one person owns everything. US wealth sits near 0.83. In the microsim, this mechanism pulls it to 0.743. That is a real move for one lever.

Now the comment I know is coming: just tax the rich. I am not against it. But a tax is a fight you have to win again every year, against the people with the most money to fight back, and they have won it for forty years running. This changes who the new money goes to in the first place, so there is nothing to claw back later.

It is not magic and I am not selling anything. It is a rule about where the gains from money creation land. It is part of a framework I have been building called the Citizens Standard. The plain-language walkthrough, with the diagnosis and an interactive version of the fix, is here: https://neo-solon.github.io/Citizens-Standard/front\_door.html

The model, the code, and the data are all open source. Feel free to ask me anything.

This is the plain-language front door to a monetary framework I've been developing. It starts from the exact gap this sub tracks: the aggregate can look healthy while access to housing, savings, and a stake in anything keeps thinning.

The plutonomy angle, concretely: a dollar saved in 2000 holds about 54 cents of purchasing power now. Nobody stole it. The monetary system is built so that stored value erodes by default. The people who own appreciating assets stay ahead of that erosion. The people holding cash, and living on wages that at best keep pace with it, fall behind the asset owners. That asymmetry, assets compounding while savings melt, is a quiet engine of the stratification you're describing.

The framework's answer is structural rather than redistributive after the fact: give every person a locked, compounding wealth floor plus a recurring dividend, funded by growth-tied money issuance, so the people at the bottom hold an appreciating stake, not just melting cash.

It's all free to read, and I'm posting it for critique rather than promotion. The question I most want pressure on: does a universal wealth floor actually bite on the asset-versus-cash divide, or does the premium economy just reprice around it?

Front door (the pathway): Citizens Standard Pathway

Empirical counterfactual paper (cohort wealth outcomes, 1960-2055): https://ssrn.com/abstract=6735078

The median American household reaches retirement with approximately $260,000 in actual wealth, including pension value. A 95-year counterfactual simulation of the Citizens Standard framework, run against actual US economic data from 1960 to 2025, produces a Stable Floor at retirement of $1.32 million in 2025 real dollars for the earliest cohort. That’s 5× the median American’s actual retirement outcome.

The mechanism is straightforward. Every citizen receives two deposits:

- K1 at birth: 2.5% of GDP per capita

- K2 annually: calibrated to real economic growth

Both route into a locked, total-market equity index account — the Stable Floor — that compounds until age 65. It cannot be withdrawn early, charged excessive fees, or panic-sold during downturns. Long-horizon equity compounding, structurally enforced.

95% of the terminal value comes from compound equity returns. Only 5% is the deposited principal

This is the exact asset class wealthy families have always used to build generational wealth: early equity positions, long time horizons, no withdrawal pressure. The reason ordinary citizens don’t have it isn’t that it’s impossible. It’s that newly created money currently flows to financial institutions and bond holders first, not citizens. The Citizens Standard is a proposal to change that allocation rule constitutionally, not through discretionary policy.

The simulation covers four cohorts born 1960–1990, stress-tested against Depression-era and stagflation-era equity sequences, with full Monte Carlo analysis. The median advantage ranges from 4.02× to 5.81× across all cohorts under central return assumptions and holds under bootstrap resampling of historical data.

The median gets 5× more. The mechanism is equity from birth. The question is why this doesn’t exist yet.

Architecture: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6702518
Empirical: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6735078
Transition: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6810741
Follow the work: r/CitizenStandard

Democratic constitutions address foundational entitlement questions: who owns what, what claims citizens hold against the state. These are treated as too important to leave to ongoing institutional discretion. They require deliberation to acquire legitimacy

There is one entitlement question of comparable scale that no democracy appears to have ever deliberately answered: when a monetary system creates new money, who holds the prior claim on its value?

This is not a question about how much money to create or at what rate. It is a prior question about whose the value is at the moment of creation. In practice every monetary system answers it through architecture rather than deliberation. The distributional structure is built in, not chosen. Existing arrangements produce defaults in which the gains from money creation accrue disproportionately to those nearest issuance. These defaults were not ratified but were inherited.

The Rawlsian framing makes the problem precise. Behind a veil of ignorance — not knowing whether you will be a wage earner, saver, borrower, capital holder — what distributional rule for newly created money would you accept as legitimate? The rule "gains accrue to whoever institutional proximity delivers them to" seems clearly rejectable from that position. An equal per-citizen rule seems at minimum more defensible as a default, because no party ignorant of their position has rational grounds to refuse it.

The most likely objection is that democratic governance of central bank mandates including inflation targets and employment objectives, already constitutes a democratic answer. But controlling the objective of a monetary institution is different from deciding the entitlement question. Who holds the prior claim on what issuance produces is constitutional in character; what the institution should target is a policy question.

Has political philosophy actually engaged this distinction, or has it simply been assumed away?

Built a historical counterfactual asking what US retirement outcomes would look like if monetary seigniorage had been routed into locked per-citizen equity accounts rather than through bank lending channels. Dataset spans 1960–2025 using publicly available data sources.

Central finding: across four cohorts born 1960–1990, the counterfactual produces retirement outcomes 2.21x to 3.21x above median actual US retirement wealth. The decomposition is the most interesting methodological result: 95% of the advantage comes from structural participation effects (universal enrollment, automatic deposits, locking, fee minimization) and only 5% from the monetary issuance mechanism itself.

Monte Carlo resampling runs 10,000 bootstrap paths on the historical joint distribution of equity returns, inflation, and real GDP growth. Full replication code in Python is public on GitHub.

Useful for anyone studying monetary economics, retirement finance, or counterfactual methodology.

Paper: ssrn.com/abstract=6735078
Code: github.com/Neo-Solon/Citizens-Standard

Georgism's core insight is that land value, which is created by the community, not by the landowner, should belong equally to all citizens rather than being captured privately. The land value tax is the mechanism for returning that commons value to its rightful owners.

That same logic applies directly to monetary issuance, and almost nobody is talking about it.

When new money is created, whether through bank lending or central bank operations, it enters the economy with purchasing power derived from the productive activity of the entire citizenry. The economy's output is what gives new money its value. That's a commons. Yet that value currently flows to banks and financial institutions first, before prices adjust, enriching whoever receives new money earliest at the expense of everyone else. That's the Cantillon Effect, the monetary equivalent of land rent capture.

The Georgist remedy for land is the land value tax returning commons value to citizens. The monetary equivalent is routing new money creation equally to citizens at the moment of issuance rather than through financial institutions first.

Historical data from 1960-2025 suggests this produces retirement outcomes roughly 2x to 3x above median actual US retirement wealth; not through taxation, not through redistribution, but by returning commons value to its rightful owners at the moment of creation.

The framework supplements rather than replaces existing programs, requires no new taxes, and distributes equally per citizen regardless of income or employment.

Is the Georgist logic extensible to monetary commons? And if so, what would a citizen monetary dividend look like compared to a land value tax citizen dividend?

Full research with replication code if anyone wants to stress test the methodology:

Paper 1 (Architecture): ssrn.com/abstract=6702518
Paper 2 (Empirical): ssrn.com/abstract=6735078
Paper 3 (Transition): ssrn.com/abstract=6810741
Replication code: github.com/Neo-Solon/Citizens-Standard
Reddit: r/CitizenStandard
Discord: https://discord.gg/hFyzcXV54

The following poem is Solon of Athens, 594 BC, as preserved by Aristotle in the Constitution of Athens. Prose lines in italics are Aristotle's commentary.

I gave to the mass of the people such rank as befitted their need,

I took not away their honour, and I granted naught to their greed;

While those who were rich in power, who in wealth were glorious and great,

I bethought me that naught should befall them unworthy their splendour and state;

So I stood with my shield outstretched, and both were safe in its sight,

And I would not that either should triumph, when the triumph was not with right.

Again he declares how the mass of the people ought to be treated:

But thus will the people best the voice of their leaders obey,

When neither too slack is the rein, nor violence holdeth the sway;

For indulgence breedeth a child, the presumption that spurns control,

When riches too great are poured upon men of unbalanced soul.

And again elsewhere he speaks about the persons who wished to redistribute the land:

So they came in search of plunder, and their cravings knew no bound,

Every one among them deeming endless wealth would here be found,

And that I with glozing smoothness hid a cruel mind within.

Fondly then and vainly dreamt they; now they raise an angry din,

And they glare askance in anger, and the light within their eyes

Burns with hostile flames upon me. Yet therein no justice lies.

All I promised, fully wrought I with the gods at hand to cheer,

Naught beyond in folly ventured. Never to my soul was dear

With a tyrant’s force to govern, nor to see the good and base

Side by side in equal portion share the rich home of our race.

Once more he speaks of the abolition of debts and of those who before were in servitude, but were released owing to the Seisachtheia:

Of all the aims for which I summoned forth

The people, was there one I compassed not?

Thou, when slow time brings justice in its train,

O mighty mother of the Olympian gods,

Dark Earth, thou best canst witness, from whose breast

I swept the pillars26 broadcast planted there,

And made thee free, who hadst been slave of yore.

And many a man whom fraud or law had sold

Far from his god-built land, an outcast slave,

I brought again to Athens; yea, and some,

Exiles from home through debt’s oppressive load,

Speaking no more the dear Athenian tongue,

But wandering far and wide, I brought again;

And those that here in vilest slavery

Crouched ‘neath a master’s frown, I set them free.

Thus might and right were yoked in harmony,

Since by the force of law I won my ends

And kept my promise. Equal laws I gave

To evil and to good, with even hand

Drawing straight justice for the lot of each.

But had another held the goad as I,

One in whose heart was guile and greediness,

He had not kept the people back from strife.

For had I granted, now what pleased the one,

Then what their foes devised in counterpoise,

Of many a man this state had been bereft.

Therefore I showed my might on every side,

Turning at bay like wolf among the hounds.

And again he reviles both parties for their grumblings in the times that followed:

Nay, if one must lay blame where blame is due,

Wer’t not for me, the people ne’er had set

Their eyes upon these blessings e’en in dreams:-

While greater men, the men of wealthier life,

Should praise me and should court me as their friend.

For had any other man, he says, received this exalted post,

He had not kept the people back, nor ceased

Till he had robbed the richness of the milk.

But I stood forth a landmark in the midst,

And barred the foes from battle.

What Solon is describing:

In 594 BC Athens was approaching civil war. The poor were debt-enslaved, their land marked by horoi; physical pillars recording debt bondage visible to the entire community. The wealthy controlled the monetary and legal system entirely. Both sides wanted Solon to solve it their way.

The poor wanted redistribution; equal division of land and cancellation of all obligations. The wealthy wanted their position protected permanently. Solon refused both.

His solution was constitutional architecture. Not redistribution. Not extraction. Equal law applied to all regardless of position, with neither side able to capture the system entirely.

Both sides were furious. He considered that the validation of his approach.

The three positions:

The capitalist reading: Solon protected property rights and refused to redistribute wealth. "Nor to see the good and base side by side in equal portion share the rich home of our race." He explicitly rejected forced equality of outcome.

The socialist reading: Solon cancelled debt bondage, freed enslaved citizens, and removed the mechanism by which the wealthy extracted value from the poor through the monetary and legal system. "I swept the pillars broadcast planted there, and made thee free, who hadst been slave of yore."

The 3rd reading: Solon's actual position was neither. The shield outstretched between both sides isn't charity or protection of privilege. It's constitutional constraint. A rule that applies equally regardless of who you are, that prevents either side from using the system as a weapon against the other.

The question:

Solon refused the tyranny both sides offered him and called that refusal his greatest achievement.

Is that kind of constitutional middle path still possible? Or have we decided that every economic settlement must be a victory for one side over the other?

The following poem is Solon of Athens, 594 BC, as preserved by Aristotle in the Constitution of Athens. Prose lines in italics are Aristotle's commentary.

I gave to the mass of the people such rank as befitted their need,

I took not away their honour, and I granted naught to their greed;

While those who were rich in power, who in wealth were glorious and great,

I bethought me that naught should befall them unworthy their splendour and state;

So I stood with my shield outstretched, and both were safe in its sight,

And I would not that either should triumph, when the triumph was not with right.

Again he declares how the mass of the people ought to be treated:

But thus will the people best the voice of their leaders obey,

When neither too slack is the rein, nor violence holdeth the sway;

For indulgence breedeth a child, the presumption that spurns control,

When riches too great are poured upon men of unbalanced soul.

And again elsewhere he speaks about the persons who wished to redistribute the land:

So they came in search of plunder, and their cravings knew no bound,

Every one among them deeming endless wealth would here be found,

And that I with glozing smoothness hid a cruel mind within.

Fondly then and vainly dreamt they; now they raise an angry din,

And they glare askance in anger, and the light within their eyes

Burns with hostile flames upon me. Yet therein no justice lies.

All I promised, fully wrought I with the gods at hand to cheer,

Naught beyond in folly ventured. Never to my soul was dear

With a tyrant’s force to govern, nor to see the good and base

Side by side in equal portion share the rich home of our race.

Once more he speaks of the abolition of debts and of those who before were in servitude, but were released owing to the Seisachtheia:

Of all the aims for which I summoned forth

The people, was there one I compassed not?

Thou, when slow time brings justice in its train,

O mighty mother of the Olympian gods,

Dark Earth, thou best canst witness, from whose breast

I swept the pillars26 broadcast planted there,

And made thee free, who hadst been slave of yore.

And many a man whom fraud or law had sold

Far from his god-built land, an outcast slave,

I brought again to Athens; yea, and some,

Exiles from home through debt’s oppressive load,

Speaking no more the dear Athenian tongue,

But wandering far and wide, I brought again;

And those that here in vilest slavery

Crouched ‘neath a master’s frown, I set them free.

Thus might and right were yoked in harmony,

Since by the force of law I won my ends

And kept my promise. Equal laws I gave

To evil and to good, with even hand

Drawing straight justice for the lot of each.

But had another held the goad as I,

One in whose heart was guile and greediness,

He had not kept the people back from strife.

For had I granted, now what pleased the one,

Then what their foes devised in counterpoise,

Of many a man this state had been bereft.

Therefore I showed my might on every side,

Turning at bay like wolf among the hounds.

And again he reviles both parties for their grumblings in the times that followed:

Nay, if one must lay blame where blame is due,

Wer’t not for me, the people ne’er had set

Their eyes upon these blessings e’en in dreams:-

While greater men, the men of wealthier life,

Should praise me and should court me as their friend.

For had any other man, he says, received this exalted post,

He had not kept the people back, nor ceased

Till he had robbed the richness of the milk.

But I stood forth a landmark in the midst,

And barred the foes from battle.

What Solon is describing:

The shield outstretched between rich and poor isn't charity or redistribution. It's constitutional architecture: A rule that applies equally regardless of who you are. Neither side triumphs when the triumph is not with right.

The debt pillars: physical horoi markers of debt bondage planted in Athenian soil are swept away not through revolution or confiscation but through constitutional law. The Seisachtheia is structural reform, not seizure.

"Thus might and right were yoked in harmony, since by the force of law I won my ends"
Not powerful actors making discretionary decisions, but law that runs automatically and applies equally to all.

2,600 years later, is the problem Solon solved actually solved? Or just better hidden?

The current system creates money through bank lending. Banks get it before prices adjust, this is what's called the Cantillion Effect.

What if new money went to citizens first instead?

65 years of US historical data. Four birth cohorts 1960-1990. Results were 2.21x to 3.21x above median actual retirement wealth. 95% of the advantage came from compounding not the deposits themselves.

The current system already produced what this sub warns about. $970B annual interest with no ceiling. 40% M2 expansion in 2 years. 9.1% inflation. The transition paper acknowledges constitutional reform happens during crises not stability.

Three papers, full replication code, open to conversations.

Paper 1 (Architecture): https://ssrn.com/abstract=6702518

Paper 2 (Empirical): https://ssrn.com/abstract=6735078

Paper 3 (Transition): https://ssrn.com/abstract=6810741

GitHub replication code: https://github.com/Neo-Solon/Citizens-Standard

Reddit: r/CitizenStandard

Running a constitutional monetary framework against 65 years of actual US data (1960–2025). The Stable Floor mechanism: universal locked equity accounts funded by citizen seigniorage rather than bank credit creation, produces retirement outcomes 2.21x–3.21x above median actual US retirement wealth across four cohorts. 95% of the advantage comes from compound equity returns, 5% from the monetary deposits themselves.

Three papers, full replication code: ssrn.com/abstract=6702518

Happy to discuss methodology, Austrian critiques, MMT critiques, or anything else.

I’ve been working on a research project that looks at monetary issuance through a constitutional and statutory lens rather than an economic or political one. The focus is on how different institutional architectures allocate legal authority, constrain discretion, and interact with existing U.S. constitutional structures.

The core questions are legal:

• How should issuance authority be classified within the constitutional framework: legislative, executive, or sui generis?
• What statutory mechanisms are required to bind issuance to rule‑based criteria?
• How does separating issuance from fiscal authority affect the distribution of legal power?
• What constitutional constraints (non‑delegation, separation of powers, judicial review) would apply to a rule‑bound issuance system?
• How would Congress structure oversight and accountability without reintroducing discretionary control?

The goal isn’t to argue for a political outcome, but to analyze the legal and constitutional implications of placing monetary issuance under a rule‑bound statutory architecture. I’m interested in perspectives from people familiar with constitutional law, administrative law, or the legal structure of monetary institutions.

This paper examines monetary issuance as a constitutional design problem rather than a policy debate. It analyzes how different governance structures—fiscal, monetary, and statutory—shape institutional incentives, legitimacy, and long‑term stability. The focus is on the separation of powers, rule‑bound authority, and the political‑science implications of removing discretionary issuance from fiscal politics.

The paper does propose a specific institutional architecture (the Citizens Standard), but the argument is made in constitutional and political‑science terms rather than as a policy campaign. The focus is on how different governance structures allocate authority, constrain discretion, and shape the incentives of political actors over time.

I’m posting it here because the core questions: institutional design, separation of powers, rule‑bound authority, and constitutional structure, are directly within the scope of political science.

Would be interested in feedback from people who study political institutions, constitutional design, or the political economy of central banking.

Architecture: The Citizens Standard: A Constitutional Monetary Architecture with Mode-Selectable Inflation Regimes

I’ve been working on a large‑scale macro simulation engine that models how different monetary rule sets behave over long horizons. It’s built around a dual‑circuit architecture with three issuance channels (K1/K2/K3), selectable inflation regimes, and a locked equity account that compounds over a citizen’s lifetime.

The modelling work includes:

Historical reconstruction (US data 1960–2055)
Chain‑weighted GDP, CPI‑U, Damodaran equity returns, Census demographics, and multiple cohort paths.

Scenario engine
Adjust K1/K2/K3 magnitudes, inflation targets, real‑growth assumptions, or Mode configurations and see how the system behaves.

Stress‑tests
Low‑growth decades, high‑volatility periods, recessions, and counterfactual launch years (e.g., 1929, 1973, 2008).

Replication package
Full code + data sources for anyone who wants to audit or extend the model.

The full research trilogy is on SSRN:

Empirical Analysis
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6735078

Replication Package (code + data)
https://github.com/Neo-Solon/Citizens-Standard/tree/main/Citizens-Standard-replication

Interactive Engine
https://neo-solon.github.io/Citizens-Standard/Citizens_Standard_Engine.html

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

The median American retires with about $95,000 in retirement accounts (Vanguard, How America Saves 2025). I’ve been working on a research project asking a simple question: what if a small portion of new money creation — which currently flows to banks first — had instead been routed into a locked per‑citizen equity account from birth?

Using actual U.S. data from 1960–2025 (FRED M2, BEA GDP, BLS CPI‑U, Damodaran S&P 500 returns), the counterfactual produces about $685,000 in today’s dollars for someone born in 1960. For a baby born today, the forward projection under the same parameters is about $1.64 million in today’s purchasing power — roughly $66,000/year at a 4% withdrawal rate, on top of Social Security.

The mechanism is simple: $2,250 at birth plus roughly $576/year tied to economic growth, locked in a total‑market index until age 65. About 95% of the final balance comes from compounding, not the deposits themselves.

The practical version anyone can do today: open a custodial account for a child, put in ~$2,500 to start, add $100/month into VTI or FSKAX, and don’t touch it.

Full paper with replication code:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=6735078

We constructed an annual dataset from 1960–2025 (FRED M2, BEA GDP, BLS CPI-U, Damodaran S&P 500 total returns) and applied a simple formula: what if new money creation was routed into locked per-citizen equity accounts instead of into bank balance sheets?

The deposits come from seigniorage; the value created when new money enters the economy, currently captured by banks through fractional reserve lending. Under the framework that value routes instead into locked per-citizen equity accounts. At 2025 parameters: $2,250 at birth (K1) plus roughly $576 per citizen per year at launch tied to real GDP growth (K2), scaling upward annually as the economy grows. Combined that's approximately 0.89% of M2 annually, no taxation and no new government spending line.

Edit
The central finding: across four cohorts born 1960–1990, the counterfactual Stable Floor at retirement exceeds the median American's actual retirement account balance of approximately $95,000 by roughly 7x in today's dollars or 2.21x to 3.21x when compared against the broader benchmark including DB pension wealth.

Monte Carlo resampling of the historical joint distribution (10,000 paths per cohort) shows the P50 advantage holds across all configurations. The honest finding: roughly 5.7-28.4% of simulated histories produce outcomes below the median actual benchmark depending on cohort, it's not a guaranteed outcome.

The practical takeaway for individual investors: the framework isn't law, but the mechanic is replicable today. Open a custodial account for a child, deposit $2,500, add $100/month into VTI or FSKAX, and don't touch it for 65 years. The structural advantage isn't the monetary theory; it's universal participation, locking, and zero behavioral leakage. That's something any investor can build manually right now.

Full paper with replication code: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6735078

Happy to answer questions on methodology.

Modern central banks operate under mandates set by legislation, but the deeper question of who has legitimate authority to determine the monetary regime itself. Whether an economy should target inflation, deflation, or price stability, and by what mechanism new money enters circulation, seems largely unaddressed in political philosophy.

This is distinct from the question of how to manage a given regime. It's a prior question about legitimacy: by what philosophical justification does an appointed technocratic body hold discretionary authority over something as foundational as the money supply, without constitutional anchoring or direct democratic ratification?

A few specific questions I'm interested in:

Under legitimacy theory in the tradition of Raz or Waldron, does discretionary monetary authority require democratic justification in the same way other exercises of public power do or is there a credible service conception argument that technocratic insulation is itself legitimacy-conferring?

From a republican freedom perspective following Pettit, does unanchored discretionary monetary issuance constitute domination even when exercised benevolently; and would a constitutionally formula-bound system escape that critique?

Is there philosophical literature that addresses monetary regime choice specifically as a question of constitutional legitimacy rather than economic efficiency?