Soapbox: You there! Are you tired of getting sand kicked in your face? I ask you: why does the US have public debt without public equity?

Public funding, subsidy, stimulus, and infrastructural spending should purchase public equity that can only be bought back from the public via surplus taxes. We don’t have to call it socialism. It can be capitalism proper. But it’s the people’s capital and labor being lent, interest-free. They should expect a return. Fair is fair.

It’s simpler and stronger than labor unions. There’s no collective bargaining for temporary compensation, no dues, no pickets, no fuss. The pension is paid from the start by public endowment as a matter of course, eliminating the underlying financial insecurity employers exploit. The free market is more free when poverty can’t dictate your fee.

And besides securing the future for so many people, it would change the way citizens see themselves and the world around them, the stake they have in their governance and economy, and would certainly reframe public discourse.

1. National healthcare is clearly overdue vertical integration that would curtail inefficiencies and improve outcomes.
2. Entitlements like UBI could then be ordinary financial vehicles, annuities of the ever-expanding public trust.
3. National debt would become leverage for a better future rather than a burdensome inheritance.
4. Conservative rhetoric would sound hopelessly plebeian against an owner-proletariat. Whining about unfair government handouts has no place where everyone is granted the same share of public dividends.
5. Many large private interests that have historically gobbled up public funds would quickly see the public become majority shareholders, effectively nationalizing many industries that should have been long ago. In particular, many nonprofits would coalesce into the bonafide public works they should have been all along.
6. It even allows the good intent of inheritance without compounding generational inequality, and your safety net is not contingent upon means testing or number of years working. Were you just born? Welcome. You’re covered.

Public equity unlocks the logical, humane, and sustainable version of capitalism in which every worker is vested and shares both the means of production and the value they produce.