Rethinking how progress is shared.
Common Wealth Canada is a non-profit advocating for land tax shift to improve the housing market and address the urgent productivity and affordability crisis; and sovereign wealth funds that invest natural & public wealth to pay dividends.
Why? Shifting taxes from income and productive investments to land fixes the incentives that have made housing too expensive, while increasing returns to workers and businesses. Together with dividends from common investment funds, they give everyone a stake in a growing and automating economy.
The goal of this project is to expand our common wealth so that our shared resources and economic progress benefit all current and future generations of Canadians.
Rethinking how Canada’s progress benefits all Canadians.
We’re a think tank and advocacy organization focused on practical solutions to Canada’s economic, housing, and productivity challenges.
We focus on 2 key areas:
Capturing land value — to build a healthier housing market, replace harmful taxes on work and productivity, and fund public needs.
Public wealth funds & dividends — investing natural and public wealth to give all Canadians a direct stake in a growing and automating economy.
We’re a national think tank focused on practical solutions to Canada’s economic, housing, and productivity challenges.
B.C. Land Value Tax Putting our greatest asset to work
By shifting taxes to land, B.C. could lower prices, replace anti-productive taxes, and restore housing accessibility — while putting more money in the hands of families.
Land value tax can make homes cheaper and let people keep more of their incomes.
So long as land—what drives home values—is an investment, cost of living will be high. A land value tax would reduce incentives to speculate on land, encourage supply, and bring down the #1 cost of living for Canadians: rent and mortgages. This could make homes 40% cheaper and eliminate income tax for over 90% of Canadians.
A citizen’s wealth fund that pays you dividends.
The world is changing fast. Work can no longer compete with owning assets or speculating on homes, as technology continues to melt wages while cost of living rises.
A citizen’s wealth fund, owned by and run in the interest of all Canadians, gives everyone an equity share in our nation’s growing productivity, creating prosperity and opportunity for all.
Upcoming Common Wealth Call
with Guest Speaker William Newell, AKA LandTaxerMemes and director of Common Ground USA
Thurs May DAY, 2023, 2 PM Eastern
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LandTaxerMemes
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Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/NxDVxe86rM
Upcoming Common Wealth Call
with Guest Speaker William Newell, AKA LandTaxerMemes and director of Common Ground USA
Thurs May DAY, 2023, 2 PM Eastern
Upcoming Common Wealth Call
with Guest Speaker Peter Barnes, pioneer of “cap and dividend” and author of Ours: The Case for Universal Property
Thurs MONTH DAY, 2023, 2 PM Eastern
We think our wealth today comes from productive corporations and workers, but they merely add icing to a cake baked long ago. Peter Barnes argues that most of today's wealth is co-inherited from nature and past human efforts, not individually earned. If some of that co-inherited wealth were placed in trust for each of us, living and yet-to-be born – creating what Barnes calls “universal property” – capitalism would be fundamentally transformed.
As Barnes notes, capitalism as we know it has two tragic flaws: it relentlessly widens inequality and destroys nature. Both flaws are a result of one-sided property rights that favor capital over everything else. Adding universal property to the current property mix would create a market economy in which businesses prosper, nature’s limits are respected, and a large middle class thrives.
“All persons have a right to income from wealth we inherit or create together. That right derives from our equality of birth... It consists of assets created not by individuals or corporations but by nature or society as a whole… our atmosphere and ecosystems, our sciences and technologies, our legal and financial systems, and the value that arises from our economic system itself... paying dividends from wealth we own together is a practical, market-based way to assure the survival of a large middle class.”
Up to $16,000/year in dividends per adult and lower income taxes, paid from Canada’s common wealth.
Read full report and highlights at commonwealth.ca/report
Common wealth for the common good.
Leading supporters of building common wealth
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Peter Barnes, entrepreneur, author and originator of "Cap-and-dividend"
“All persons have a right to income from wealth we inherit or create together. That right derives from our equality of birth... It consists of assets created not by individuals or corporations but by nature or society as a whole... paying dividends from wealth we own together is a practical, market-based way to assure the survival of a large middle class.”
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Carys Roberts, Executive Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)
“Everyone should collectively own a portion of [a country's] wealth. This would be held in one big fund so we can invest it sensibly so that everyone benefits fairly from the returns… By owning wealth in common, the fund would act as a force for economic equality by distributing returns to capital more widely.”
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Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and former President of Y Combinator
“The value of land appreciates because of the work society does around it: the network effects of the companies operating around a piece of land, the public transportation that makes it accessible, and the nearby restaurants, coffeeshops, and access to nature that makes it desirable… it’s fair for that value to be shared with the larger society”
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Andrew Yang, entrepreneur, former US Presidential Candidate and founder of the Forward Party
“Here is something you never hear when a company pays a dividend: 'What are the shareholders going to do with the money?' We are the owners and shareholders of this society… We need to take the bounty of the 21st century economy and return it to the people.”
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Professor Mariana Mazucato, economist and Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
“A citizen’s dividend allows the proceeds of co-created wealth to be shared with the larger community—whether that wealth comes from natural resources that are part of the common good or from a process, such as public investments in medicines or digital technologies, that has involved a collective effort.”
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Professor Guy Standing, economist and Co-founder of Basic Income Earth Network
"Throughout history the commons have been a vital part of social income, providing a ‘right to subsistence’… We need to take back the commons, revive their principles of sharing, solidarity and universality, and ensure that commoners – ‘we, the people’ – are properly compensated for any loss.”
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Jens Stoltenberg, Former Prime Minister of Norway and NATO Secretary General
“The natural resources in the ground, that’s something we own in common… we believe in the market, we believe in competition, we believe in open economy. But we believe that the extra rent connected to natural resources shall be something which is in the common ownership of the people”
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Frank de Jong, environmentalist, author and first leader of the Green Party of Ontario
“Funding government programs by capturing the community-generated, unearned income that accrues to desirable finite assets increases economic efficiency, eliminates poverty and unemployment, halts sprawl, conserves resources and reduces pollution.”
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Brent Ranalli, Research Scholar at Ronin Institute and author of "Common Wealth Dividends: History and Theory"
“There are some things in this world, like land and natural resources, that ought to be considered our common heritage, and that those who own or control these common-heritage resources owe some compensation to the rest of us who are excluded from their use.”
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Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics and former Chief Economist of the World Bank
“Most of the increase in the value of wealth is an increase in the value of land… A tax on the return to land, and even more so, on the capital gains from land, would reduce inequality and, by encouraging more investment into real capital, actually enhance growth.”
Explore the Common Wealth Blog
A new vision for a sustainable economy.
What we’re for
We believe that the value arising from what nature or society creates, rather than individual effort, should be collected to benefit all citizens directly. By creating new ways to capture this common wealth, we could increase the wealth and well-being of all Canadians, and steward these resources for the benefit of future generations.
Why we aren’t there
Allowing some to own the value of our natural and co-created wealth is driving up the cost of living for Canadians, while keeping billions of dollars out of the productive economy.
How we get there
Common Wealth advocates for collecting value arising from our shared, natural and co-created wealth, and returning that value back to Canadians through dividends and lower taxes.
There’s over $400B of rent owed to you from Canada’s common wealth.
We could use this to eliminate all taxes on income, or pay everyone $16,000/year in common wealth dividends, or do a bit of both. Collecting this rent can help make homes affordable, protect our planet, and share earth’s resources more fairly.
Our Common Wealth Plan
By collecting rent on Canada’s land and natural resources (estimated at $420B/year), we can lower income taxes and pay common wealth dividends to every adult.
Option 1
No income tax reduction
$16,000/year
Dividend
Option 2
No tax under $111K of income
$8,000/year Dividend
Option 3
$5,000/year
Dividend
No tax on all income
Funded by collecting over $420B/year of rent on Canada’s land and natural resources.
Housing
Paying rent for land can make housing affordable again — while lowering taxes and paying you dividends.
A system where we pay rent for land could bring down the cost of living, eliminate all taxes under $72,000 of income, and pay everyone $7,000/year in land rebates. We could go even further by collecting rent on all of Canada’s natural resources, eliminating all taxes under $111,000 of income and paying $8,000/year in common wealth dividends.
Our Land Rent & Rebate Plan for Canadians
Option 1: Land dividend without tax reduction
$13,600 / year
per person
no changes to income tax
Option 2: Land rebate with
tax reduction
$6,800 / year
per person
no tax on first $111K of income
Option 3: Land rebate with all income tax eliminated
$2,800 / year
per person
and no more tax on all income
Funded by collecting $362B/year of rent from Canada’s land. We could go even further by collecting up to $420B/year in rent from all of our natural commons and rebating that back to Canadians through $8,000/year in dividends and eliminating all tax on the first $111K of income.
Let’s tax land,
not your income.
A land value tax would curb runaway speculation, encourage housing supply, and make life affordable again for millions. And it could eliminate all taxes income and property taxes, while paying us monthly dividends.