We The People

An architecture for shared prosperity

The We The People Platform is a federal-policy reform proposal package. It documents a comprehensive architecture for shared prosperity built on twelve interlocking policy pillars: universal healthcare, universal childcare, universal mental health access, universal paid family time, universal long-term care, a sovereign investment fund, modernized civic infrastructure, an education trust, criminal-justice reform, environmental stewardship, an anti-corruption framework, and a participation guarantee.

Each pillar has its own substantiation document explaining the funding architecture, the expected costs and benefits, the implementation path, and the interactions with existing federal programs. The platform also includes worked examples (showing what the architecture means for households at different income levels), a fiscal impact analysis (reconciling the platform's contributions to its commitments at steady state), a sovereign-fund design document, and an interactive calculator that lets a household enter their income and see the personalized comparison between the current federal tax architecture and the platform's proposed architecture.

What this site contains

The platform consists of 115 documents organized into seven folders, all linked from the platform index page. The index lets you filter by document type, by pillar, by folder, or by reading path (separate paths for different audiences: skeptical reader, policy professional, household curious about personal impact, etc.). Each document can be read directly in the browser as an HTML version; the original .docx files are available for download.

Architecture stance

The platform takes a substantive position: it argues that the federal architecture should pool risk and provide universal coverage for healthcare, childcare, mental health, paid family time, and long-term care, funded through payroll contributions (split between employer and employee shares) plus modest high-earner surcharges and wealth taxes on net worth above ten million and fifty million dollars. The Sovereign Investment Fund is funded by wealth-tax revenue and grows over sixty years to one-hundred-twenty-two trillion dollars, providing disbursements that finance modernization commitments without raising payroll rates.

The platform is not a partisan document; it is an architectural proposal that draws on policies that already exist in other developed countries (Germany's long-term care insurance, the United Kingdom's National Health Service, Norway's sovereign wealth fund) and adapts them to the United States's federal structure. The proposal documents are written for skeptical readers — the open-issues registry tracks every architectural decision, the substantiation documents cite federal data sources for every cost estimate, and the calculator shows the math behind every comparison.

Architectural decision principles

The platform's twelve-pillar architecture was not designed top-down from theory. Each pillar's specifications — contribution rates, floor levels, threshold percentages, time horizons — were grounded in empirical evidence and stress-tested against existing successful implementations. The decision principles below shaped how empirical data drove design choices.

1. Stay within the empirical evidence base. Quantitative parameters use values within the range where rigorous research provides reliable estimates. Wage floors sit within the range studied by the Dube and Zipperer 2024 NBER meta-analysis where employment effects are well-characterized; the platform does not commit to parameter values outside that tested range.
2. Adapt proven models rather than invent new ones. Each pillar draws on a real implementation with a track record: the UK's National Health Service (universal healthcare), Germany's Pflegeversicherung (long-term care insurance, since 1995), Germany's KiTa system (early childhood), Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (sovereign fund, 25-plus year track record). Adaptations preserve the structural logic that made the original work while accommodating the United States's federal structure.
3. Authoritative data with provenance. Every cost estimate, every projected revenue, every wage figure cites a specific federal data source (BLS, IRS, SSA, CBO, Federal Reserve). Verbatim snapshots of the underlying source data are preserved in the package with cryptographic checksums so any reader can verify the platform's claims against the exact data the platform was looking at on the extraction date.
4. Annual recalibration on smoothed bases. All quantitative parameters recalibrate annually using three-year smoothed moving averages to stay current with economic conditions while dampening year-to-year volatility. This mirrors how Norway's sovereign fund manages its spending rule and how BLS itself uses six-panel rolling samples.
5. Open issues are tracked, not hidden. Every architectural decision left ambiguous is logged in the Open Issues Registry with status, required expertise (legal, actuarial, economic), and proposed resolution path. The registry currently tracks eighty-one entries (fifty-three closed, twenty-eight open) so readers can see exactly what is settled and what is still under analysis.
6. Threshold-based progressivity. Burden scales with capacity to bear it. Wealth taxes apply only above ten million dollars (0.5 percent) and fifty million dollars (2.5 percent) of net worth. High-earner income surcharges apply above two-hundred-fifty thousand, five-hundred thousand, and one million dollars at five, ten, and fifteen percent. Everyone below those thresholds pays payroll-based contributions split between employer and employee.
7. Long-horizon design with intergenerational fairness. The Sovereign Investment Fund's sixty-year growth horizon ensures modernization commitments are funded by long-run investment returns rather than annual contributions. Future generations inherit the fund's productive capacity, not its liabilities.
8. Worked examples test architecture at household level. Every major design decision is checked against household-level impact at multiple income levels (single, married, with or without children, low, mid, and high income) to verify the architecture works for real people rather than only in aggregate statistics.

The proposal is fully substantiated. Every contribution rate has been modeled. Every cost has been projected across a sixty-year horizon. 112 documents make the integrated argument: substantiation analyses, fiscal impact studies, worked examples, presentations, and external reviews.

You can engage at your own pace. Reading paths guide first-time readers through curated sequences. The document index supports targeted research. The interactive calculator illustrates what the proposal means for your specific situation.