THREE INITIATIVES

Conservatism and Liberalism – Finding Common Ground

To help find that sometimes elusive but inherent national interest Americans share, The HAL Project’s website will turn information into knowledge and then to understanding. The website’s interactive features will illuminate the living income, wealth disparity, and national debt proposals factually, coherently. It will show how public policy can improve individual lives and shape the country’s future. Instead of argument by misinformation, the public will see numbers they can test, models they can adjust, and consequences they can grasp. These interactive tools will explore how our three initiatives, by working in tandem, will increase net worth for all.

To make data accessible, The HAL Project’s website will translate our proposals into real-world terms. For example:

How a living income policy not only increases the net worth of the recipients, but it grows the country’s economy.

How mitigating the nation’s wealth gap raises everyone’s net worth, including the wealthiest citizens.

How retiring the national debt reduces the cost of government, which increases the country’s wealth.

The website turns abstraction into comprehension. Users will see how policy proposals would affect them personally and the nation collectively. With accurate data and open debate, Americans can build a fairer, stronger, and more prosperous democracy.

LIVING INCOME INITIATIVE

The Fame Bottom Foundation believes that all jobs should earn a living wage. When a job fails to provide such a wage, the government can augment the worker’s income. When the private sector is unable to provide employment for able-bodied Americans, the government should employ them to advance the public good. The Living Income Initiative ensures that every American has enough income for a basic, dignified life.

WorkFair, Not Welfare

Today, the working poor and the unemployed receive a mix of cash and in-kind benefits from federal, state, and local governments along with assistance from charitable organizations. We believe that the current nanny-state system – whereby Americans must rely on the government or charities for need-based assistance – should be ended.

Defining a Living Income

A living income means more than subsistence. It is the amount needed to secure a basic but dignified life – covering food, housing, healthcare, transportation, and other essentials – without government or charitable need-based assistance. Because no two regions are alike, the benchmark would adjust for local costs along with household size, ensuring fairness across the board. Our aim is a guarantee that every working American has sufficient income so that no one goes hungry, all have a roof over their head, and everyone can receive medical attention when sick.

Policy Reflection

The United States does not live up to its potential when millions of working Americans still struggle to meet basic needs. When workers live in poverty, the economy suffers and the promise of opportunity collapses. The fiscal health of a nation depends on the financial security of its citizens.

It is in the country’s interest to ensure that if the private sector fails to provide a living income, the government should make up the difference, ensuring that every working American can live decently from the fruits of their labor. A prorated living income will be available for those who prefer part-time work. Those unable to work due to physical or mental disabilities should not be relegated to a life of poverty.

All Americans should also have access to a job. Because of the multiplier effect, it makes economic sense for the government to provide work for the unemployed. Wages paid through public employment do not end with the worker; they ripple outward as income is spent on goods and services, businesses respond to increased demand, and additional jobs are created. This cascading economic activity magnifies the initial public outlay, strengthening the economy while reducing the long-term costs of unemployment.

Work is essential – individually and societally. When the private sector cannot meet employment demands, government has both the capacity and the obligation to provide socially beneficial jobs, such as improving infrastructure, providing elder care services, and maintaining public spaces. Put simply, unemployment imposes costs on both the government and the broader economy. When the government instead pays citizens to provide needed services, the resulting multiplier effect and Economic Value Added produce a net positive outcome for individuals, the economy, and public finances.

Under such a living income policy, need-based programs would be rendered unnecessary, giving way to a single, coherent framework – simpler, fairer, and more efficient. At the same time, poverty will be reduced and the economy will grow even stronger.

The transition to a living income system can be introduced gradually to maintain fiscal stability. Change must be deliberate and just. The first recipients can be the working poor – people earning too much to qualify for assistance, yet too little to meet basic needs. From there, expansion can proceed step by step, guided by real-time data and fiscal prudence.

Website Functionality

Users can explore the fiscal ramifications of implementing a living income policy. The HAL Project’s interactive features will calculate costs, offsets, and savings as need-based programs are replaced by a living income framework. The website will display models allowing users to make comparisons of current government expenditures, the cost of a living income system, and increased tax revenue from a living income-based economy.

The website will demonstrate how various income thresholds and phase-in schedules can balance fiscal responsibility while rewarding work. To turn policy proposal into understanding, it will make the living income concept concrete through several interactive tools including the following:

Public Expenditures Calculator: Displays current federal, state, and local spending on need-based programs, such as SNAP, housing subsidies, and Medicaid along with expected savings from a reduced bureaucracy.

Living Income Calculator: Tests different income thresholds to project the costs of a living income framework and the resulting increases in tax revenue from higher employment and earnings. The calculator will also model the multiplier effect by estimating secondary economic activity generated as additional income is spent throughout the economy. Users can select a living income level and compare total costs to savings from ending need-based assistance, increased tax revenue, and broader economic growth.

Business Wage Calculator: Estimates the living income tax owed by a firm that pays less than a living wage and compare that liability to the cost of raising wages to the living income level.

Tax Revenue Calculator: Projects the additional revenue as a result of phasing out certain tax deductions and credits, such as charitable deductions and the Earned Income Tax Credit. This tax credit is a nascent living income policy.

A living income policy is a crucial step in reducing the nation’s wealth disparity.

WEALTH DISPARITY INITIATIVE

A healthy democracy cannot endure when the gap between the few who have and the many who do not becomes extreme. The question is not whether inequality should exist – it will, which is not inherently bad – but rather, how much inequality a just and vibrant society can tolerate before its institutions weaken. The objective is to expose inequality as well as to enable citizens to participate in discussions about what degree of disparity is consistent with democratic values and economic vitality.

The HAL Project’s website will provide comprehensive, transparent information on wealth disparity in the United States in both absolute and percentage terms – by year since 1910 – measured in constant-dollars to allow honest comparisons. This record, presented in interactive charts, will illuminate how wealth has accumulated over the last several decades and how the disparity is growing even wider. Users can model historical, current, and projected wealth distributions and engage in a dialogue on what level of inequality a democracy can sustain.

Policy Reflection

The goal is not perfect equality, but a healthy balance: enough difference to reward ambition, but not so much as to deny mobility. Democracy depends on broad participation and shared opportunity. When wealth concentrates too narrowly, power follows – and freedom erodes.

The Fame Bottom Foundation’s purpose is not to dictate a target, but to provide the evidence and analytical tools that enable a conversation grounded in fact rather than assumption. There is no single correct answer on what constitutes a healthy balance, but there must be informed debate.

An informed public should decide what balance of wealth best serves a democratic society. The website’s tools will help users to understand the projected wealth disparities and to consider alternative targets. Our role is to supply wealth distribution data and the space to debate this issue – fact by fact, chart by chart – honestly, intelligently, and non-ideologically.

Website Functionality

Our website will allow users to explore alternative wealth distributions. The aim is to foster an informed, national conversation about how to avoid the current path towards a two-class society.

Wealth Inequality Tracker: Interactive charts showing the distribution of net worth across various time periods held, e.g., by the top 20%, 10%, and 1%. Users can then compare them with user-selected targets, e.g., the bottom 50% and 80%.

Comparative Tables: Side-by-side visualizations comparing today’s inequality to the 1950s through the 1970s when wealth distribution was most balanced.

Scenario Builder: Sliders that let users model wealth distributions – such as the top 1% versus the bottom 99% – over a period of time and view net worth disparities in constant-dollar amounts.

Narrowing the wealth disparity is a crucial step in retiring the national debt and financing a Rainy Day Fund.

THE NATIONAL DEBT AND RAINY DAY FUND INITIATIVE

It should be economic gospel to have surplus budgets when there is full employment and dedicate those surpluses to retire the national debt. When everyone has a job, debt-free government is not a dream; it is good governance.

For every dollar spent servicing the national debt, one less dollar is available to increase the country’s wealth. While deficits are justified in times of crisis, chronic deficits depress economic growth. The Rainy Day Fund – reserved for recessions, wars, natural disasters, and other emergencies – would replace the need for deficit spending when adversity strikes.

Website Module

The HAL Project’s interactive tools will display how budget surpluses can retire, in due course, the national debt while financing a Rainy Day Fund by:

Examining the current national debt, annual debt-service obligations, and budget trends.

Explaining how debt-service dollars are an opportunity cost.

Simulating how surplus budgets accelerate – through both the compounding effect of reduced debt service and the multiplier effect of sustained economic growth – debt reduction.

Demonstrating how as the budget deficits decline, the resulting savings from interest costs would finance the Rainy Day Fund.

Modeling the projected growth of the Rainy Day Fund under varying interest savings and investment assumptions.

Through these tools, citizens can see how surpluses today yield benefits tomorrow. The website will make abstract fiscal policy tangible and will clarify how retiring the national debt strengthens America’s resilience.

POTENTIAL REVENUE SOURCES SUPPORTING OUR INITIATIVES

The HAL Project’s website lets users see, in dollars and cents, how existing policies affect their own lives and the nation’s finances along with how alternative policies would change those outcomes. It will showcase data sources, calculators, and assumptions.

A comprehensive fiscal strategy must combine fairness with practicality. The website identifies multiple potential revenue streams, each of which can be examined and debated through modeling. Proposals to finance a living income, to reduce wealth inequality, and to secure long-term solvency will have their own interactive calculators showing projections based on various criteria. These calculators will have user-controlled variables and accountable computations.

Guiding Principles

The HAL Project is guided by this set of core principles.

Issues: Precarious incomes, extreme wealth inequality, and high debt service.

Goals: Increase the wealth of individuals and the country by guaranteeing a living income, narrowing the wealth gap, and eliminating the national debt while financing a Rainy Day Fund.

Fairness: Every person, entity, and institution should contribute to the nation’s welfare.

Transparency: Every dataset, calculation, and assumption will be open for public review.

Accountability: Policies will be judged by evidence, not ideology.

Resilience: Tax reform must strengthen the nation’s capacity to attend to the needs of its citizens and to finance crises without mortgaging our future.

Method: Reshape the tax system to make it more equitable.

In order to fund The HAL Project’s initiatives, a major overhaul of the tax code is needed. The Fame Bottom Foundation supports the following tax reforms.

NONRESIDENT ASSET TAX

Who Pays: Expatriates and non-U.S. entities holding assets within the United States.

Tax Base: The market value of their U.S. assets. This tax will be modest so as not to discourage foreign investments.

Purpose: To ensure that expatriates and non-U.S. entities benefiting from the American economy contribute to its fiscal health.

Website Tool: Users can input asset types and values to project revenue under differing tax rates.

LIVING INCOME BUSINESS TAX

Who Pays: Businesses whose workers earn below the living income threshold.

Tax Base: A percentage of public funds required to bridge the gap between actual wages and the living income standard. This tax will be modest so as not to discourage employment.

Purpose: To balance responsibility between business and government to ensure a living income.

Website Tool: Users can input wage data to project revenue under differing tax rates.

OUTSOURCED LABOR TAX

Who Pays: Businesses that outsource jobs.

Tax Base: A percentage of what outsourced jobs pay and what would have been paid to U.S. workers to earn a living income, as well as lost tax revenue resulting from outsourcing jobs.

Purpose: To reduce the fiscal advantage of outsourcing and to encourage domestic employment, which will grow the U.S. economy.

Website Tool: Users can input outsourced data to project revenue under differing tax rates.

NET WORTH TAX

Who Pays: High net worth individuals, trusts, and foundations.

Tax Base: The value of their net worth. This tax will be modest so as not to decrease anyone’s wealth.

Purpose: The revenue will be earmarked to retire the national debt.

Website Tool: Users can model projected revenue by adjusting thresholds and tax rates.

REFORM OF SPECIAL TAX BENEFITS

Scope: Identify preferential tax treatments – such as the oil-depletion allowance and corporate agricultural subsidies – that should be reduced or repealed.

Process: Encourage users to nominate tax provisions they deem unfair. This approach transforms partisan grievance into shared analysis and encourages a constructive, data-driven dialogue rather than prescriptive judgments.

Website Tool: Users can model projected revenue by adjusting types of preferential treatments and tax rates.

REASSESSMENT OF INSTITUTIONAL TAX BENEFITS

Religious Institutions

Constitutional Question: Does granting tax exemption to religious institutions constitute a form of state endorsement of religion, contrary to the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause as well as equal treatment under the law?

The Fame Bottom Foundation’s Role: Support constitutional research and legal analysis and, where appropriate, amicus briefs examining whether tax exemptions meet constitutional standards of strict separation of church and state.

Website Tool: Users can model projected revenue by adjusting types of religious exemptions and tax rates.

Private Educational Institutions

Policy Question: Should taxpayers subsidize private schools and colleges through tax exemptions while many Americans cannot afford an education?

Website Tool: Users can model projected revenue by adjusting types of educational exemptions and tax rates.

ACCOUNTABILITY

By translating data into usable knowledge, The HAL Project’s website will give users the ability to see, in concrete terms, how public policies and tax laws affect both their finances and the economy. It will offer factual, fully sourced information, and a suite of tools that make complex fiscal relationships easy to visualize and explore.

The website’s tools will provide data sources and allow users to adjust key parameters, such as costs, savings, revenue sources, and tax rates. The interactive calculators will show the fiscal ramifications of various policy designs. In addition, they will enable skeptics to replicate the computations.

Our purpose is to transform policy proposals into comprehension. The website will have data dashboards and plain-language explanations. It will invite users to test assumptions, to experiment with data, and to visualize trade-offs – to see not only ideas but choices. The interactive tools will enable all to engage directly with publicly available data.

Equipping citizens to think critically, argue honestly, and act responsibly will elevate public discourse above partisanship. By turning policy into numbers that anyone can see, test, and debate, a user’s opinions will be based on attestation rather than ideology. Empirical evidence is key to being accountable to one’s opinions.

As abstract data is converted into tangible insight, a clearer picture appears. Facts may not end political differences, but they dignify them by anchoring debate in shared reality.

Facts clarify choices. Data may not dictate beliefs, but it will make unsupported beliefs harder to hold. An informed electorate is the strongest foundation for a just and prosperous democracy.

A democracy grounded in knowledge cannot be easily divided, deceived, or sold short. With imagination and accurate data, The HAL Project seeks to give the American people a better understanding of the nation’s wealth – and the means to shape our future wisely.