DIRECTED FUSION

The citizen dividend

If citizens are the shareholders, they should get the annual report, and a share of the results.

By Kurt Selden

Working draft · updated October 23, 2026

The clause

The United States keeps its books the way a public company must: audited financial statements every year, published in plain language. Every citizen is an equal shareholder, and when the country delivers results the public can verify, every citizen shares in them through a dividend.

Why

A public company owes its shareholders an annual report, an independent audit, and a say in how it’s run. Citizens fund a far bigger enterprise and get far less clarity about it.

Run the government’s books like a company’s, treat citizens as the owners, and a dividend gives every owner a direct reason to care whether government delivers. The same idea could work at a smaller scale, such as a state or a district, as long as the results are announced in advance and verified independently.

What already exists

  • The Treasury already publishes a Financial Report of the United States Government every year, kept on an accrual basis as a company’s books are, along with a short Citizen’s Guide (Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service).
  • The Government Accountability Office audits that report, and it has not been able to give an opinion on the government-wide statements in any year since the first audit, for fiscal 1997. Problems in the Defense Department’s books are a main reason (GAO).
  • Alaska has paid an annual dividend to its residents from the oil-funded Permanent Fund since 1982 (Alaska Department of Revenue).

How we’d know it’s working

  • A clean audit opinion from GAO on the government-wide statements.
  • The Financial Report published on schedule, with its plain-language guide.
  • Any results-based dividend paying out only on measures announced in advance and checked by an independent auditor.

The hard questions

  • A government isn’t built to make a profit. What counts as “results”: a surplus, debt paid down, outcomes? The federal budget last balanced in 2001.
  • Should any dividend wait until the debt is under control?
  • Does paying local dividends for local results reward places that were already doing well?
  • Who chooses the measures, and what stops them from being gamed?
  • Is this a universal basic income under another name? It differs in one way: it’s paid on results, not regardless of them.

Further reading