Comment by em500

Of course you can tax GDP, every country in the world already does it. Surprisingly few people seem to be aware that GDP is the same thing as GDI, the sum of all income earned in a country in a year, the vast majority of which is already taxed.

About 60% of all US income (GDI) is compensation for labor (salaries, wages, benefits), 40% compensation for capital (dividends, interest, rents). Both parts are already taxed, at varying rates. The total amount of taxation is about 33% of GDI, while total spending is about 36% (the deficits is filled by borrowing).

Since the entire article looks like a big tax and transfer proposal, it's pretty bizarre to omit almost all basic government accounting, except for a throwaway footnote. The analogy with joint-stock companies or Homestead acts are neither here nor there. The government owned a lot of American land back then. It doesn't not own a large share of of current American corporations, nor many laborers. So the way to pay any significant "citizen's dividend" is boring old taxes.

A much better discussion with concrete numbers and speculation on incentive effects can be found here: https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1286141&s...