Common wealth dividends

Peter Barnes explains how protecting the environment and sharing the fruits of our economy more broadly can – and should – go hand-in-hand:

The failure to charge for common wealth — for example, letting polluters dump freely into our atmosphere — leads to what economists call “nega­tive externalities.”  The costs of pollution aren’t paid by polluters; they are shifted to pollutees, nature and future generations.  And this mar­ket failure persists because no living individuals or companies would finan­cially bene­fit from fixing it.

But imagine a system in which everyone benefits from fixing this tragic flaw.  In this system, polluters would pay and all living citizens, as joint benefi­ci­aries and trus­tees of nature’s gifts, would get dividends.  The higher the price for using the commons, the larger the dividends and the lower the externalities.  The health of nature’s gifts would be directly linked to greater income for everyone.

Read more here.