Past Common Wealth Speakers
Dr. Guy Standing is a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University of London and a founding member and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), a non-governmental organisation that promotes a basic income for all. Standing has written widely in the areas of labour economics, labour market policy, unemployment, labour market flexibility, structural adjustment policies and social protection. He used the term precariat to describe an emerging mass class characterised by insecurity and lack of any occupational identity. Since the 2011 publication of his book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, his work has focused on the precariat, unconditional basic income, deliberative democracy, and the commons.
Standing has authored numerous publications on these topics to critical acclaim, including The Politics of Time: Gaining Control in the Age of Uncertainty (2023), The Blue Commons: Rescuing the Economy of the Sea (2022), Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income Now (2020), Plunder of the Commons: A Manifesto for Sharing Public Wealth (2019), The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay (2016), and Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen (2017).
Undermining Canada's Future Generations
Will Canada's future generations forgive us for squandering our shared mineral inheritance?
Rahul Basu, Research Director of the Goa Foundation
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“Minerals are a shared inheritance… We, as custodians, must ensure future generations inherit at least as much as we did, either the minerals or their value. The key objective then is protection of inherited wealth for future generations.“ - Rahul Basu
Rahul Basu is Research Director of the Goa Foundation, an environmental non-profit which advocates that minerals and natural resources be accounted for as a shared inheritance, and a member of The Future We Need, a global movement to make intergenerational equity foundational for civilization. In his article, Stem the loss: how Canadians’ futures are being impoverished Rahul showed from StatCan data that Canada is on track to lose 77% of its mineral wealth to private extraction, equivalent to nearly $1 trillion or $24,000 per Canadian that could be invested in a Future Generations Fund that pays citizen’s dividends.
With a background in the world of finance, Rahul has spearheaded the campaign to modify the treatment of mining in the IMF’s Government Finance Statistics Manual and the UN’s System of National Accounts. In practice, it seeks to treat the sale of minerals by governments as an exchange of assets, usually at a loss, which results in a reduction in net worth of the government and the value of the commons.
Daryl Fairweather is the chief economist of Redfin. She is an outspoken advocate for land value tax as a way to improve housing affordability, as featured on Bloomberg, CBS News and Forbes. Her insights on the housing crisis have also been featured on 60 Minutes, the New York Times and Washington Post. Prior to joining Redfin she was a senior economist at Amazon working on problems related to employee engagement and managing a team of analysts. During the housing crisis, Daryl worked as a researcher at the Boston Fed studying why homeowners entered foreclosure. Daryl received her Bachelor's of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received her Ph.D. and Master's degrees in economics at the University of Chicago where she specialized in behavioral economics.
How Canada got its first Common Wealth Levy: the Carbon Rebate
Brendan Frank, Director of Policy & Strategy at Clean Prosperity
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Brendan leads Clean Prosperity’s policy development and analysis. Prior to joining Clean Prosperity, he worked for several organizations that specialize in energy transition policy, including Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, the University of Ottawa’s Positive Energy program, and Innovative Research Group. His experience spans the private and public sectors, academia, and civil society.
With roots in Alberta and Ontario, Brendan strongly believes that addressing environmental challenges can be a unifying issue across regional and political lines.
Time for a Tax Shift – Taxing Housing Wealth More, Taxing Incomes Less
Dr. Paul Kershaw, Founder of Generation Squeeze and Professor at UBC
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Dr. Paul Kershaw is an award-winning tenured professor at the University of BC, public speaker, regular media contributor and Founder of Generation Squeeze – a "Think and Change Tank" that promotes wellbeing for all generations by turning evidence into action and rejuvenating democracy to protect what is sacred for younger and future generations: a healthy childhood, home and planet.
Paul’s work has contributed directly to historic investments in BC child care, the first ever tax on empty homes in North America, a shift in BC to reduce income taxes by taxing unhealthy home prices more, and successfully led the Intergenerational Climate Coalition to defend the constitutionality of carbon pricing, in SK, ON, and at the Supreme Court. In this talk, Paul explores how putting a modest price on housing inequity could slow down price growth, restore affordability, and build a fairer world for the next generation.
Universal Property and Dividends
Peter Barnes, entrepreneur, author and pioneer of cap-and-dividend
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Peter Barnes is an entrepreneur and writer who has co-founded and led several successful businesses and written numerous articles and books about capitalism, the commons and other topics. His latest book, Ours introduces the concept of universal property, a synonym for common wealth. He is an advocate for universal dividends from shared wealth as a practical, market-based way to reduce inequality, save the middle class, and promote environmental conservation.
An Ecological Perspective on Economic Rents
Stefan Horn, PhD Candidate at University College London, Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
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Stefan Horn is a PhD candidate in Innovation and Public Policy at the University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Stefan’s research centres on the fundamental idea that unconditional private ownership of co-created and natural resources encourages unsustainable demand for them. In his thesis he investigates the role of economic rents in sustainable cities with a particular focus on a the dwelling sector. The built environment plays a critical part in both the climate crisis and value extraction through economic rents. The goals are to provide a conceptual foundation for understanding the role of economic rent in sustainable cities and to substantiate the role of economic rent for sustainability in the broader economy.
Stefan’s wider research interests include the circular economy, citizen’s dividends, and architectural and economic history. Stefan’s PhD is funded by the Bittner PhD Sustainability Scholarship.
Common Wealth Dividends: Fairly Sharing the Wealth that Belongs to Everyone
Brent Ranalli, author of Common Wealth Dividends: History & Theory
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There are certain kinds of wealth--for example, wealth derived from the value of land and natural resources--that properly belong to everyone. Thomas Paine, Henry George, and others have developed mechanisms that can share that wealth fairly. The Alaska Permanent Fund is a famous working example today. In this talk, based on his book Common Wealth Dividends: History and Theory (Palgrave Macmillan 2021), Brent Ranalli will provide an introduction to common wealth dividends and an overview of how they could be used to "share the wealth" more fairly in the twenty-first century.
Conflict / Hope — A Tale of Two Desires
Martin Adams, author of Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
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“All of nature is community wealth, including—and especially—land.”
What if we lived in a world where everyone had enough? A world where everyone mattered and where people lived in harmony with nature? What if the solution to our economic, social, and ecological problems was right underneath our feet? Land has been sought after throughout human history. Even today, people struggle to get onto the property ladder and view real estate as an important way to build wealth. Yet, the act of owning land—and our urge to profit from it—causes economic booms and busts, social and cultural decline, and environmental devastation.
In his book Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World, Martin Adams introduces a radically new economic model that ensures a more fair and abundant reality for everyone. It is a book for those who dream of a better world, for themselves and future generations.
Martin Adams is an entrepreneur and author based in BC. His book Land can be read for free online or in print. Follow Martin on X.
Common wealth for the common good.
Common Wealth is a project that promotes policies rooted in the idea that value arising from what nature or society creates, rather than individual effort, should be collected to benefit all citizens directly — through dividends and lower taxes.
Doing so would fix the incentives driving our housing and cost of living crises, while stewarding our resources for the benefit of future generations. The goal of this project is to expand our common wealth in order to create a society where progress benefits everyone.