Policy White Paper
The American Resource Dividend
A detailed framework for treating America's natural resources as sovereign public wealth and using that value to fund nonprofit healthcare, free public education, and public auto insurance.
This country is not broke. It is being robbed. The American Resource Dividend starts from a simple claim: the oil, gas, minerals, timber, water, and land of this country were created by time and geology, not by private capital, and their value should be governed for the people who live here.
$45T
Estimated U.S. natural resource wealth across energy, minerals, timber, water, and land.
$390B
Conservative annual National Resource Trust revenue projected at full early implementation.
$15K
Estimated annual relief for a working family when healthcare, auto insurance, and school-funding extraction are reduced.
Part One: The Asset Base
The white paper argues that the United States already holds one of the largest natural resource bases on earth, but public returns are structurally suppressed by royalty and lease arrangements that let private operators capture most of the value.
In fiscal year 2024, Bureau of Land Management activity generated about $245.4 billion in total economic output while public collections from royalties, rents, and bonus bids remained only about $12 to $15 billion. The document frames that gap as a governance failure, not a scarcity problem.
- Energy resources on federal lands and offshore territories, including oil, natural gas, and major coal reserves.
- Mineral resources including gold, copper, silver, lithium, phosphate, potash, and rare earth elements.
- Timber and forest resources across BLM land and national forests.
- Agricultural land, water infrastructure, irrigation rights, and navigable waterways.
- Strategic mineral deposits essential to electronics, manufacturing, defense, and energy transition supply chains.
The National Resource Trust
The proposed National Resource Trust is a federally chartered, not-for-profit sovereign entity that governs American natural resources in the public interest. Instead of leasing public wealth to private extractors and collecting a thin royalty, it would manage production directly and sell domestically at cost-plus pricing.
The model is structured around sustainable extraction, direct public management, market-price exports, and governance that excludes anyone with a financial interest in commodity markets, private equity, or institutional investment.
- Hold sovereign title to natural resource infrastructure on federal land and waters, plus assets acquired through eminent domain or voluntary sale.
- Price domestic resource sales at production cost plus wages, maintenance, environmental compliance, and a modest operating surplus.
- Sell exports at full market price and direct export revenue into the American Resource Dividend fund.
- Use a tripartite board made up of labor, environmental, community, and federally appointed public-interest leadership.
Conservative revenue projections in the paper
Energy
$15B current annual royalty revenue
$175B annual Trust revenue
Minerals
$180M current annual royalty revenue
$65B annual Trust revenue
Timber
$2B current annual revenue
$30B annual Trust revenue
Agricultural land
$500M current annual revenue
$40B annual Trust revenue
Rare earth and strategic minerals
$1B current annual revenue
$60B annual Trust revenue
Part Two: Nonprofit Healthcare
The paper describes the current $5.3 trillion U.S. healthcare system as an extraction system rather than a care system, arguing that private equity and institutional investors have captured hospitals, nursing homes, physician practices, home health, pharmacy distribution, and insurance.
The proposed response is a National Nonprofit Health System that receives divested assets from mandatory private-equity and institutional-investor exits. Private care would remain legal, but the nonprofit system would become the guaranteed floor beneath every American regardless of ability to pay.
Estimated incremental healthcare funding from the dividend: about $150B to $170B annually.
- Ban private equity and institutional investors from controlling hospitals, practices, nursing homes, urgent care, pharmacy benefit managers, distributors, and insurers.
- Require divestiture over seven years, with federal right of first purchase.
- Use public bargaining power to negotiate drug prices around actual development, manufacturing, and distribution cost plus fair return.
- Use the Resource Dividend to cover the uninsured, fund community health centers, and bridge pharmaceutical price reform during transition.
Part Three: Education
The education section argues that the current system is debt by design: K-12 funding is distorted by property-tax inequality and higher education leaves millions of Americans carrying lifelong debt for access to basic participation in the economy.
The framework expands federal education support to stabilize K-12 funding, establish a national teacher salary floor, repair failing school infrastructure, provide universal pre-K, and make community college and trade school tuition-free.
Estimated education funding from the dividend: about $300B to $320B annually over ten years.
- Expand federal K-12 contribution from roughly $120B today to $300B annually over five years.
- Set a national teacher salary floor of $75,000, indexed to real inflation.
- Fund universal pre-K for every child age 3 and 4.
- Make community college, trade, and vocational education tuition-free nationwide.
- Keep four-year public universities accessible through interest-free federal loans as a transitional public option.
Part Four: Public Auto Insurance
The white paper treats mandatory private auto insurance as a captured market: most drivers are legally required to buy coverage, yet private carriers retain pricing power and pass fraud, underwriting, and profit extraction costs through to the public.
The replacement is a National Public Auto Insurance Fund with universal enrollment, no underwriting or credit checks for base liability coverage, and optional comprehensive and collision coverage sold at cost-plus pricing instead of shareholder-return pricing.
Estimated Resource Dividend support for the Public Auto Insurance Fund: about $35B to $45B annually, declining toward self-sufficiency over ten years.
Estimated annual savings for the average driver: about $1,800 to $2,000 per year.
- Provide universal liability coverage for every licensed U.S. driver at zero premium.
- Offer comprehensive and collision coverage at actuarial cost plus modest administration.
- Capitalize the system through a proposed $75 annual registration fee plus a dividend-backed contribution during the establishment phase.
- Turn safe driving into personal discount reserves for drivers instead of insurer profit.
Part Five: The Funding Picture
At full first-decade implementation, the paper allocates approximately $160B to healthcare transition, $320B to education expansion, $40B to public auto insurance, $30B to Trust operations and reinvestment, and $30B to a land-value compensation bond reserve.
The paper closes the early funding gap by pointing to lower healthcare costs once private-equity extraction, administrative waste, and leveraged debt service are removed, plus revenue growth as the Trust matures toward an estimated $500B to $550B annual base by the end of the first decade.
Illustrative household outcome in the paper
A family with $78,000 annual income currently loses about $19,500 to health premiums, out-of-pocket costs, auto insurance, and education-related property-tax pressure.
Under the framework, standard healthcare costs fall to zero premium and zero standard out-of-pocket, liability auto coverage becomes public, and education funding reduces property-tax dependence.
The paper estimates a total annual relief of roughly $15,000, making that household live more like a $93,000-income household without a wage increase.
Part Six: The Challenges
The white paper is explicit that implementation would trigger major legal, political, administrative, and workforce-transition fights. It does not present the framework as easy; it presents it as worth building despite the resistance it will face.
- Legal challenge: expect constitutional and commerce-clause litigation around eminent domain, healthcare divestiture, and the public insurance fund.
- Political challenge: expect concentrated opposition from private equity, insurers, pharmaceutical firms, institutional investors, and resource extraction interests.
- Implementation challenge: phase the Trust first, then healthcare transition, then education expansion and auto insurance as revenue matures.
- Transition challenge: fund retraining, bridge income, and job placement for workers displaced from extraction-driven industries.
Part Seven: Governing Philosophy
The document rests on a single governing premise: the resources of this land belong to the people who live on it. Healthcare is framed as a public function, education as a public obligation, and mandatory insurance as a public affordability responsibility whenever the state requires purchase.
Its conclusion is that the real question is not whether the country has enough wealth, but who gets to govern that wealth: financial intermediaries with purchased access, or the public whose inheritance created it.
This page summarizes the white paper. The full PDF includes the longer argument, legal framing, funding assumptions, and phased implementation logic behind the American Resource Dividend.