If I’m lucky enough to build a company around my work, I hope to create “Basic Income Nest Eggs” for as many employees as possible. These “nest eggs” are just a lump sum for 50 years of “living wage,” defined by the factors in MIT’s Living Wage calculator, set three years into an employee’s employment. They receive the nest egg as soon as they fulfill metrics that are also set three years into employment. The goal is to give motivated individuals a basic income to live off of for the rest of their life.

Example

Jane comes to work for Equalify. She is hired because she is motivated to build $5M of new business for the company. Three years into her term, she is living in San Francisco with two kids and a spouse working full-time. When Janeb builds $5M of new business, she receives $3,357,660 in payouts over 50 years.

Limitations

The Basic Income Nest Egg idea, as it is now, raises lots of questions: How would the nest egg change depending on life circumstances? How are they different from retirement plans? Wouldn’t employees who had more “high impact” work unfairly receive their payout before others? Can a company sustain rapid departure of its highest performing talent? What happens when an employee dies?

Those questions and others need answers before implementing the approach.

Why are Basic Income Nest Eggs good for business?

Basic Income Nest Eggs:

• Push Work Forward: We work best when we’re working toward a bigger goal than what the widget I’m building does. (See Economics of Pro-Social Work.)
• Gives employees incentives to work toward with clear metrics they are expected to fulfill.
• Attract High Caliber Talent - these individuals are usually the smartest people: folks who don’t want to work for money their whole lives.
• Create Sustainable Succession: Since the nest egg fund is controlled by the company, employees are incentivized to hire replacements that help the company succeed.
• Provide a Model for Basic Income: Hopefully other companies copy this framework so our whole world can efficiently work to their own basic income. (Read more about My Utopia.)

... This is an evolving idea. In order to be truly an ethically good idea, I hope it changes and adapts to the values and experience of future collaborators.

What similar ideas exist?

Nest Eggs are built on different Universal Basic Income premises.

The future of humanity institute also published an idea for a “Windfall Clause” which offer a similar outcome that I propose:

To track my progress, see Ethical Metric Targets (Archived)