I’ve already written several times about the book by Thomas Piketty that I’m currently reading, FÜR EINEN ÖKOLOGISCHEN SOZIALISMUS.
Right now I’m at the section where he writes about a global citizens’ dividend 🌍 — a regular monthly payment that every adult on the planet would receive ❤️
Here are a few thoughts this topic triggered for me 😉
Because the more you look at numbers and facts, stripped of capitalist propaganda and ideology, the more the classic mantra falls apart:
“we can’t afford it” and “people don’t deserve it.”
Numbers and facts don’t lie. 📊
EXISTENCE IS WORK. PERIOD. 🧠⚡
The mere fact that an adult human being keeps themselves alive is already objective labor. Every day, we expend an amount of energy equivalent to carrying an adult human up Mount Everest 🏔️
Once again: the energy required for our daily survival
(~1,700 kcal/day = ~7.1 MJ = ~2.0 kWh = 80–85 W over 24 hours)
would literally be enough to lift an adult human being to the top of Mount Everest within 24 hours ☝️
If that same amount of energy were produced and consumed by a machine 🤖, no one would say it’s “doing nothing.” Yet when every single one of us does this every day, we’re supposed to pretend it’s not a performance worthy of recognition or reward 🤦
Whether people are conscious of it or not is completely irrelevant.
Facts are facts. Life itself is hard work. 🔬
HOW MUCH IS ONE ADULT HUMAN “WORTH”? 💶
Global GDP per capita is roughly €14–15 thousand per year.
But wait ⚠️ — 30–35% of the population are children, who by definition do not produce wealth.
When you divide the same wealth only among adults, you get roughly:
➡️ €22–25 thousand per adult per year
➡️ around €1,800–2,100 per month
This is not ideology.
This is pure mathematics ➗
€6–8 THOUSAND PER YEAR FOR EVERYONE? NO PROBLEM AT ALL. 😎
If today’s global society, with the participation of every adult, produces €22–25 thousand per year per adult, then giving back €6–8 thousand per year as a citizens’ dividend:
❌ is not extreme
❌ is not a “reward for doing nothing”
❌ is not “something we can’t afford”
It is simply a minor share of the collective output of our global society 🤝
And the system still retains the majority of resources for infrastructure, investments, services, and profits.
Mathematically, there is no problem. ✔️
SO WHERE IS THE PROBLEM? 🤔
Not in money.
In power and privilege. 👑
And here comes hypocrisy on steroids 💉:
- when the poor get something “for free” → moral panic 😡
- when 1,5% elites own half of all global wealth → silence 🤫
- when billions are inherited without work → “perfectly legitimate” 🎩
If the logic of “merit” were applied consistently, inheritance would be the first thing to be cut ✂️
But inheritance within oligarchic capitalism is sacred. The problem is always redistribution from below 🤦
OBSESSION WITH WORK IS A HISTORICAL ANOMALY 🕰️
The idea that “if you don’t work, you don’t deserve a dignified life”
is a young, regional, ideological hallucination of capitalism 🧟♂️
For most of history, existence itself had intrinsic value ☝️
Work as a moral value is an invention of Protestant ethics — something that did not apply for 99% of human history.
Yet today we are so deeply indoctrinated into this narrative that we don’t even realize how marginal and radical this position actually is 🤦
We now live in a state where a person without a wage is treated as if they had no right to exist.
That is not a natural law 🌱
That is an ideological construct.
CONCLUSION, NO SUGARCOATING 🧨
✔️ human existence is a performance
✔️ every adult “carries” a system that produces €22–25 thousand per year per person
✔️ a citizens’ dividend of €6–8 thousand per year = €500–700 per month is entirely realistic
✔️ opposition to it is not economic — it’s about power
👉 If an heir is considered worthy of dozens or even hundreds of billions without work, but an ordinary person isn’t considered worthy of even a share of what we collectively create, then the problem is not with people.
The problem is with the system. 😡👊⚠️
