Social Security for everyone
Today Social Security pays you when you stop working. This proposal pays everyone, every week, from 18, because in an economy where machines do more of the work, the old line between working years and retired years stops making sense.
How it works
Every adult citizen and permanent resident gets one deposit a week, the same amount for everyone, into a bank account in their own name. Each child brings half that amount, up to $25,000 a year: paid to the parents' account, with an equal deposit into the pooled Social Security Trust Fund in the child's name. The amount is set each year by what the Direct Payment Fund holds after the lean federal budget, the local grant and the banks' fee; it rises with the economy. Retirement and disability get the same weekly deposit, with a separate lean program for long-term care and severe disability that cash cannot buy.
Nobody already on Social Security gets less. In 2027 the universal amount, about $22,000, is below today's average retired-worker benefit of about $24,900. Current beneficiaries are topped up to at least that average until the universal amount passes it (2029 at 5 percent growth, 2033 at 3 percent). The model carries that cost: about $160 billion in the first year, about 1.5 percent of what the fund pays out.
What it replaces
Social Security retirement and disability, SSI, SNAP, TANF, unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the child tax credit and most housing aid. Each has eligibility rules, an application, reviews, appeals, and a cliff where earning a dollar more costs benefits. None of that survives: everyone qualifies, nobody applies, and earning more never costs the deposit. What stays is a lean federal budget for what cash cannot buy: a health public option with a catastrophic cap, long-term care and severe disability, veterans' health.
What could go wrong
A payment into a housing shortage becomes rent; that is why the banks' fee builds homes (proposal 6). Eligibility for new arrivals is open: when does a new permanent resident join? About 4 percent of households have no bank account3; the system cannot launch until every bank offers a free basic account opened with the same identity check the deposit relies on. And a payment this large changes how people work: the model assumes the machine share of work rises to 65 percent by 2045 regardless; the open question is what people do with the time.
Sources (4)
- Cost-of-living adjustment for 2026 — Social Security Administration, via Axios · original · average retired-worker benefit about $2,071 a month ($24,852 a year) in January 2026. Not yet locked.
- Monthly Statistical Snapshot — Social Security Administration · original · about 70 million beneficiaries a month, almost entirely by direct deposit. Not yet locked.
- National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, 2023 — Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation · original · about 4 percent of households have no bank account. Not yet locked.
- Universal Social Security master model — Policy Lab, PLACES I NEVER HEARD OF · original · every number on this page is computed in your browser by the shared model.
Numbered references in the text point to this list. "Locked" means we hold a dated copy of the file on the PLACES platform so the figure can be checked later even if the publisher changes the page.