Universal Beneficial Income

Motivation

The framework claims that better incentives produce system-wide prosperity. It has not stated what an individual citizen receives when that claim holds. Without an answer, "shared prosperity" remains rhetorical.

Existing transfer programmes also carry a structural defect this framework should not reproduce: means-tested benefits phase out as income rises, so earning more can leave a recipient worse off. That benefit cliff punishes exactly the behaviour the framework wants to reward.

Specification

Adopt the prosperity dividend, essential-life guarantee, Citizen Prosperity Account, funding constraint, distribution formulas ($DP_t$, $D_t$, $PSR$), payment priority order, prohibited conditions, and governance separation described at /spec/economics/universal-beneficial-income.

Key requirements:

1. Distribution is funded only by audited productive revenue — never confiscation or citizen debt.
2. Essential benefits and reserves are funded before any cash distribution.
3. The dividend is individual, automatic, unconditional, and never reduced by earned income.
4. Distribution reduces or suspends automatically when the reserve ratio falls below published bands.
5. No organization controls more than one of distribution, auditing, and appeals.

Rationale

Making the dividend unconditional is what removes the cliff: if the payment never phases out, additional earnings never cost a citizen their support. Making it profit-gated is what keeps it honest: the system distributes what it earned, and publishes the arithmetic.

Backwards compatibility

Additive. No existing chapter is invalidated. Book VII rights govern this chapter where they conflict with any measured outcome.

Open questions

Revenue scale; regional cost-of-living variation; housing supply constraints; inflation pass-through in essential markets; eligibility verification without surveillance; the procedure for setting $\alpha$; and treatment of minors.

ISILP. IIP-0009: Universal Beneficial Income. Intelligentism Improvement Proposals, version 0.1.0-alpha (revised 2026-08-01). https://intelligentism.isilp.org/proposals/iip-0009