Proposal explorer
drafted under the Commonwealth Corporation Act
“Ownership rights belong to those who give.” the fourth contributist principle
The undersigned organize the following enterprise as a Commonwealth Corporation:
All ownership — voting power and rights to profit alike — is divided among three classes. No class may hold less than twenty percent (20%) nor more than forty percent (40%), and the three shall always total one hundred percent (100%).
Tradeable shares — the capital investors
Community is the remainder; it never leaves the 20–40% band
Share of profit distributed each year — dividends and buybacks alike
Price ÷ earnings, for the community stake's fair value — worker shares price separately, at 8×
Market rate on the workers' bought-in slice
Share of the worker dividend servicing the loan in year one — it falls as shares release
Real annual growth of distributed profit
the public’s cut stops being a tax and becomes ownership — and the slice above 20% is bought at fair value, not taken · recomputes with your charter
per full-time worker · the loan is serviced first, then the full dividend flows · dashed rule marks payoff
None of this depends on how many companies convert. The public is ahead from the first year at every level of adoption — its outlay buys a permanent asset, and a stake worth about five years of profit is set against about a fifth of a year’s tax annually. Adoption only sets the size of the result, so it is not forecast here: you choose it, and the numbers follow.
By profit, at maturity — you choose, the numbers follow
cumulative · community shares at market value plus dividends received, against Treasury outlay plus forgone tax · today's dollars
Method. The certificates are arithmetic, not forecasts: every figure is a direct consequence of the charter you set. You choose the split (each class 20–40%, summing to 100), the company, the payout ratio, the valuation multiple, and the loan terms; everything else is derived. The investor raise factor prices the community shares above the base 20% at fair value, matched by the Treasury round for round. Two multiples, because there are two instruments. Investor shares and the Treasury’s community purchase are priced at the company’s market multiple. Worker shares are not: a worker share may never be sold — it attaches to the job, is granted on hours and tenure, and rebalances to the remaining workers when its holder leaves — so it is worth the dividends it pays and nothing more. Capitalising that stream (80% of earnings, growing 3%, discounted at 13%) prices the worker class at 8× distributable earnings, capped at the company’s own multiple where that is lower, since losing the right to sell can only make a share worth less. This is an ordinary marketability discount, not a subsidy — and it is what makes the buy-in serviceable: priced at a growth company’s 25–30×, the dividend would never cover the interest and the loan would compound forever. At 8× it clears in 23 years, inside the 10–25 the Q&A promises; below the cap it clears sooner. The worker slice is a leveraged ESOP: shares are released to workers as the loan is paid down, and the release runs ahead of the principal, so the dividend climbs every year instead of arriving in a lump the year the loan clears. Year one is unchanged — workers keep whatever the loan-service dial leaves them — but the earlier money is bought with a longer term and more total interest, landing the payoff roughly five years later than a flat service share would. Tax figures are federal only — state corporate taxes are omitted, as is the uncapped QSBS-style exemption. The payout ratio is a real dial: earnings a company retains pay the public nothing that year (the dial lives in Schedule A, on The Charter tab). It is set at 80%, which counts dividends and buybacks — the Act makes buybacks pay out pro-rata to all three classes, so the G-Corp equivalent of a shareholder return is the combined figure, and large-cap America distributes 80–90% of earnings on that measure. Across America, adoption is never forecast — you set the share of US corporate profit that goes G-Corp, and it follows a fixed S-curve toward that ceiling; it does not respond to the tax toggle. Under a restored 35% rate you also choose how it arrives: phased in at 0.5 pt/yr, which takes until 2057 to land, or all at once as a stress test. Corporate tax is charged at the statutory 21% throughout, which is what the Act actually forgives; effective federal rates run nearer 15–17% after deductions and credits, so the forgone-tax figures here are, if anything, generous to the objection. Baselines mirror the Fund’s own: US corporate profit ≈ $3.5T today growing 2%/yr real, all figures in today’s dollars.
How the public’s position is scored. Comparing one year’s community dividends against that year’s forgone tax — the “net cash” column — the public is ahead on cash at the proposed charter: the community collects payout × its share (80% × 30% = 24% of profit) against a 21% corporate rate. That margin is thin and it is real, and it reverses under the restored-35% toggle, where 24% is set against 35% — the honest reading of that scenario, since the exemption is worth more precisely when the rate it forgives is higher. Either way the cash column understates the case, because the Treasury’s outlay buys a permanent asset. So the tiles and the chart above report the balance sheet: what the public holds (its shares at market value, plus every dividend received) against everything it gave up to hold them (Treasury outlay plus forgone tax). The public is ahead from the first year, which is not a surprise but an accounting fact — the base 20% is granted in exchange for the exemption, and a stake worth ~6.6 years of profit is set against ~0.2 years of tax annually. The stake is marked at the same market multiple as the rest of the page; it is an illiquid holding the Fund may not sell (Charter Article I.3), not a war chest. The per-worker dividend is an average, and a generous one: profit grows 2%/yr real here while employment is held flat, so it embeds 25 years of rising profit per worker (≈$10,300/yr by 2054 in today’s terms). Sector medians run lower still — around $6,960, from ≈$1,200 in food service to ≈$60,000 in software.
When the public owns a slice of a company, who decides how it votes? Not politicians — a charter. Pick the rules below, then watch the Fund vote on six real situations. The Fund never initiates; it can accomplish nothing alone.
of the Giving America Fund and participating State Funds, governing all Community Shares held in Commonwealth Corporations (G-Corps)
We hold that ownership rights belong to those who give. The people of the United States, through their sovereign funds, are owners of every Commonwealth Corporation — not by taking, but by giving: their capital, paid in full and at fair value; their labor, their custom, and their communities, in which every corporation lives. This Charter binds the Fund to steward that ownership so that every company it owns may profit, endure, and widen its people’s capacity to contribute — and to restructure what is extractive into mutual giving.
any executive compensation exceeding twenty times (20×) the pay of the company’s median worker.
any proposal to disclose product safety, environmental impact, or workforce conditions.
the annual publication of the company’s charter compliance report.
Where a vote raises a question no standing rule decides, the Fund abstains, and refers the question to its staff, who consult these principles and publish the answer in the Fund’s public guidebook — which thereafter governs all like questions.
All dividends received upon Community Shares are distributed to the social programs of the Giving America roadmap, and to no other purpose. The Fund keeps nothing for itself beyond its published costs of administration.
This Charter may be amended only slowly, and only by the people it serves. For a State Fund: by ballot measure of the people of the state. For the Giving America Fund: by double enactment — passage of identical text by two successive Congresses, with a federal election between them. No officer, board, or single administration may amend it.
Adopted under the Commonwealth Corporation Act. This Charter is a public document. Every vote cast under it is a public record.
Set the standing rules, then watch them govern. The three principles below are the fallback where no rule answers — not a control.
The Fund votes against CEO pay above this multiple of the median worker.
How votes are counted. An ordinary measure carries when more shares vote for it than against — shares that abstain count for neither side. A fundamental question — a charter amendment, sale, merger, relocation, dissolution, or de-conversion — needs a two-thirds supermajority; because the Fund’s community shares stand “no” by default, that supermajority must come from the worker and investor classes themselves.
Workers at a Big M Markets distribution center are uneasy about what the refrigeration fleet vents into the air. They put an emissions-disclosure bylaw to a vote. The investor class sees cost and liability and votes against it. On their own, the workers are outnumbered 30 to 40.
The Fund is a standing coalition partner for insiders' conscience — the amplifier, never the initiator. It turns a worker minority into a majority, but only once the workers move first.
The board of Big M Markets brings a routine vote: a pay package for the incoming CEO worth 34 times what the company's median worker earns. It sits within market norms, and the investor class is ready to wave it through.
Mechanical rules, zero discretion. The Fund exercises no judgment — it reads the pay ratio against the cap you set and votes accordingly.
Investors at Big M Markets propose a “streamlined testing” program to get products to market faster. No standing rule speaks to it, and the workers are wary of what “streamlined” might mean for safety. The question is genuinely new.
Principles become precedent become rules. Faced with a question no rule answers, the Fund abstains, consults its principles, and writes down an answer that governs every like case after.
Private equity offers to buy the JJC plant outright at a 25% premium. The Jay family, whose wealth has been locked in the company for three generations, is enthusiastic. The workers divide — a slim majority of them tempted by the payout, the rest unwilling to trade the life of the plant for it. A sale is a fundamental change to the charter itself.
The standing “no” turns every fundamental change into a decision workers and investors must carry by supermajority on their own. The community neither initiates nor vetoes — a unanimous 70 would have cleared the bar. It only raises it.
Tiltly has launched a popular app, which has quietly been tuned to reward outrage, because outrage keeps people scrolling. Everyone can see it; workers grumble, investors shrug, users complain. But no one has put anything to a vote.
This is why G-Corps aren't state control. Unless the workers or investors initiate a vote, the community charter has no power at all. It cannot reach into the business on its own. This passivity is a design element, not a flaw.
A year later, a near-identical “streamlined testing” proposal comes around at Tiltly — this time with explicit safety carve-outs. Again, the workers are wary, but the investors are for it. But now the question is no longer new.
Precedent hardens into rule. What once required staff judgment now resolves automatically, the way every standing rule began.
Method. This deck is illustrative, not exhaustive — six situations chosen to show how the charter behaves, not a catalogue of every vote a company faces. The positions of the investor and worker blocs are stipulated per scenario; only the Fund’s vote is computed from the rules you set. Share weights are the charter of the company each situation happens at — the same four companies you can build on the previous tab, and no two of them chartered alike (Big M Markets 40/30/30, JJC 30/40/30, Tiltly 20/40/40). That is why the same 30-point community class is decisive in one situation and not another. Every resolution is a mechanical reading of the charter — the Fund holds no discretion the charter has not written down.