An Economic System
Not an ideology. One ratio, and what follows from it.
A drowning man doesn't ask who made the life vest.
The Instrument
If the top rises, the floor rises with it.
What We Name
The American deal was simple: work hard, own a home, raise a family, leave something better behind. Full-time work no longer reliably keeps that deal. The top disconnected from the bottom, and the disconnection was called progress.
Wages stagnated while executive compensation climbed. Rent rises faster than pay. Credit fills the gap that wages leave, at interest. The Wallet Test — does the wallet of the person at the bottom get heavier or lighter? — has been running on the current system for fifty years. The result is not in dispute.
Artificial intelligence and autonomous systems are eliminating entire categories of work. The single-operator company generating billions with zero human employees is a business model already forming. Under the current system, it owes the community it displaces nothing at all.
We do not tear the system down. We stand on its shoulders.
The Western system's productive core — property, markets, contract, enterprise — is the shoulders. The extraction layer that grew on top of it is the disease. Affordism keeps the shoulders and removes the growth. It is the outlook you get from that vantage point: the only system built to harness the future and fortify the present while honoring the past.
The Center of the System
The least-paid full-time worker shall make no less than 18% of the total compensation of the highest-paid employee — in any company deploying fifty or more full-time employee equivalents, human or otherwise.
THE 18% RULE · AFFORDISM · J. SAWMILLER
That is the whole center. Everything else in Affordism is structure, qualification, incentive, and defense built around that single relationship. The ratio is not a floor set by political negotiation and held static until pressure moves it. It is a living relationship, enforced not by ideology but by payroll — the document that already legally exists and already tells the truth.
The rule renders the minimum wage obsolete. A minimum wage is a number chosen in a hearing room and defended for a decade. A ratio is a relationship that adjusts the day the top adjusts — automatically, without a negotiation, without a strike, without an election.
The Choice Every Covered Company Makes
Affordism imposes nothing new. It offers something new — relief that is earned, not granted. The floor is not a mandate; it is the bar. No company is ever forced to meet it — and no realization at the top, however large, is ever carved out of it. Extract as much as you choose. The bar rises with you, and the status is yours to keep or forfeit.
Leaving the 18% is a right. It is also a confession.
A company may exit 18% status — but only going into the next year. No completed year can be escaped. An exiting company waits three years before it may return, and may elect an exit only twice in its existence. And existence is payroll: acquisition, renaming, and restructuring change nothing, because the payroll ledger is the company and the ledger remembers. The exit election is, by design, a full year of advance notice to every employee — and the community, the customers, and every competing 18% Company hiring that year will be reading it too. No regulator enforces this. The workforce does.
Documented, Not Asserted
Every figure below is from public disclosure — SEC filings, proxy statements, and published pay-ratio studies. The current system reports its own condition annually. Affordism simply reads it back.
Affordism's spread is not a return to 1965. It is tighter than 1965 — more American than the America that built the American century.
The honest arithmetic first, because the popular version fails division. Cutting one CEO's package does not fund a workforce's raise — $95.8 million spread across two hundred thousand workers is pocket change. The CEO number is the symbol of extraction. It is not the pool.
The Pool
2024 alone — roughly triple the combined income of the poorest 27 million American households. One company, Lowe's, spent $46.6 billion on buybacks over six years: the equivalent of a $28,456 annual bonus for every one of its employees, every year, that was directed to share count instead.
The Redirect
Affordism does not confiscate the pool. It re-prices the choice. A company that lifts its floor to 18% earns zero corporate tax and full relief. A company that keeps extracting operates under standard conditions — and forgoes the relief, publicly, every year, by its own filing. Payroll tells the truth either way.
The Instrument, Reversed
Under Affordism the question inverts. The company no longer asks "what can we pay the top?" It asks "what floor do we stand on?" — and the ceiling follows by ratio. Set the floor. Read the ceiling.
WANT A HIGHER CEILING? RAISE THE FLOOR. THAT IS THE ENTIRE SYSTEM.
| The Current System | Under Affordism | |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate tax | Flat 21% federal plus state — owed regardless of how the workforce is treated, minimized by accountants, unconnected to the floor. | Conditional. Zero for 18% Companies — earned by thirteen months of proof. Standard rates for everyone else. The tax bill is answered by payroll, not negotiated by lawyers. |
| The lowest wage | A minimum wage — a static number set in a hearing room, defended for a decade, worth less every year it stands still. | Rendered obsolete. The floor is a ratio that rises the day the top rises — automatically, without a negotiation, a strike, or an election. |
| Executive compensation | Average S&P 500 package: $18.9M. Unbounded above, disconnected below, disclosed once a year and forgotten. | Rises as high as success justifies — carrying every worker's floor up with it at 18%. Painful for a handful. Gainful for the many. |
| Total compensation | Salary is the headline; the substance hides in stock awards, options, deferred plans, aircraft, housing, vehicles. Founders take a $1 salary and live on loans against stock — full purchasing power, zero salary, zero tax. | Everything counts. Salary, bonus, equity awards, options, perquisites — the jet, the housing, the cars — plus realized gains from insider stock sales and borrowing against pledged shares. The ratio reads the whole package, disclosed on forms insiders already file. There is no side door, and the $1 salary is not one either. |
| Paper wealth | Confused into every debate — proposals to tax unrealized gains rise and die, while actual untaxed purchasing power flows through loans against stock. | Untouched until it moves. Stock on paper is not compensation. Leveraged or sold, it counts — at the dollar amount realized, on the day it becomes purchasing power. Purchasing power is compensation, however it arrives. |
| The golden parachute | The underperforming executive exits with tens of millions — extraction's final act, rubber-stamped by the board on the way out the door. | The floor is not a mandate — it is the bar. Any realization by the top, of any size, raises the bar with it. Pay the failed executive $50M and the company forfeits its 18% status: zero-tax gone, relief gone, the thirteen-month clock reset, in public filing. Nothing is banned. Extraction is simply priced at everything the company earned. Boards will rethink how they hire. |
| The zero-human company | Owes the community it displaced nothing at all. | Pays 18% of its operator's total compensation to its host city — directly, permanently, for the life of the company. |
Sources: SEC proxy disclosures · AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch 2025 · Equilar/AP CEO Pay Study 2025 · Institute for Policy Studies 2025 · Oxfam America 2025. Full workings in the Whitepaper.
The Manifesto in One Table
Eight dimensions — Liberty, Freedom, Independence, Creativity, Material Wellbeing, Community, Sustainability, Human Development — each scored 0 to 3, the same scale for every system without exception. Every score carries its source: D documented from implementation, T theoretical by design logic, P projected from design with partial precedent.
Against the record: eight systems have been implemented. Their results are documented, and the documentation is the indictment — five decades of stagnant wages, drained wallets, and floors held up by political will instead of owned assets. You want empirical proof? The current system has decades of it. That is exactly why something new is proposed.
Against the designs: Hayek's Austrian framework and Yarvin's neoreaction have never been implemented in pure form. Neither has Affordism. All three compete on design logic — and Affordism is the only one of the three that specifies its mechanism down to the payroll line.
| System | Lib | Free | Indep | Create | Wallet | Comm | Sust | H.Dev | Total | Src |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Record — implemented systems, scored on documented results | ||||||||||
| Welfare State | 2 | 2.5 | 1.5 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 17.0 | D |
| Socialism (democratic) | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 14.0 | D |
| Keynesianism | 1.5 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1.5 | 1 | 1.5 | 12.5 | D |
| Capitalism | 2 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 2 | 1.5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 11.5 | D |
| Mercantilism | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1.5 | 0 | 6.0 | D |
| Supply-side | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 5.5 | D |
| Communism | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2.0 | D |
| Financialized Capitalism | 1 | 0.5 | 0 | 0.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2.0 | D |
| The Designs — never implemented, scored on design logic | ||||||||||
| Affordism | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 3 | 2.5 | 3 | 22.5 | P |
| Austrian / Hayek | 3 | 1.5 | 2 | 2.5 | 1.5 | 1 | 2 | 1.5 | 15.0 | T |
| Neoreaction / Yarvin | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 8.0 | T |
D = documented · T = theoretical · P = projected from design with partial precedent (Fordism's $5 day, cooperative economics, ownership-participation research). Full per-score justifications in the Manifesto.
Because three of its scores cannot be claimed before the test is run. Material Wellbeing (2.5) is measured by the Wallet Test applied to a real Float City™ — that test has not yet been run, and the design does not award itself the result in advance. Sustainability (2.5) — the fuel Affordism runs on, human potential activated by ownership, is the only fuel in this comparison designed to compound rather than deplete, but no system's regeneration is proven until it has regenerated. Creativity (2.5) — the design builds the conditions for human making; it does not manufacture the making itself.
A system that grades itself perfectly on its own rubric is demonstrating ambition, not delivery. Affordism claims what its design produces, marks the rest projected, and invites the Wallet Test to settle it. The half-points are not hedges. They are the standing invitation.
Every system runs on something, and its fuel determines its ceiling. Capitalism runs on capital, which compounds and concentrates. Socialism and the welfare state run on political consensus, which shifts with elections. Communism runs on coerced compliance, which collapses the information it needs. Supply-side runs on accumulation at the top, whose transmission to wages is the documented failure of the era. Financialized capitalism runs on intermediation and debt, which drains the base it feeds on.
Affordism runs on human potential activated by ownership — the worker who becomes a stakeholder, the stakeholder who becomes a homeowner, the homeowner who becomes a shareholder, the shareholder who helps the next worker into a boat. It is the only fuel in the comparison whose productive use makes more of it.
Ask the Worker
Strip away the theory and ask the only question that matters: what must the worker do, and how long must the worker wait? Every system in history has an answer. Only one of them is "nothing, and one payroll cycle."
| Under | What the worker must do to rise | When it arrives |
|---|---|---|
| Capitalism | Work hard, wait, and hope to become the titan — a promise held out to all and delivered to almost none. | Someday, maybe |
| Socialism | Organize, vote, and hold the political consensus together — the floor lasts exactly as long as the coalition does. | Next election, if won |
| Communism | Surrender ownership and trust the party that now owns everything, including the worker. | Never arrived. Anywhere. |
| The welfare state | Qualify, apply, and depend — secure, but on a floor held up by a budget vote the worker doesn't control. | Until the next austerity |
| Supply-side | Wait beneath the top for the trickle. Fifty years of documented waiting. | It did not come |
| Affordism | Show up Monday. The company crossed the threshold Friday. The floor is now connected to the top by ratio — no strike, no ballot, no revolution, no permission. | One payroll cycle |
Every other economic transition in history demanded blood, ballots, or decades. This one happens between shifts. No one lies their way into power, steals it, or corrupts it — because the change never passes through power at all. It passes through payroll.
Capitalism's oldest defense is that anyone can become the CEO. The defense deserves its arithmetic.
The Seats
CEO chairs in the S&P 500.
The Workers
Full-time American workers told to aim for one.
The Promise
A lottery ticket sold as a career plan. Affordism doesn't ask you to win the lottery. It connects you to the winner.
Where the Power Goes
Affordism strips power from the schemers and returns it to the MAP — Money, Access, Power — the pathway that belongs to the people who do the work.
Money that compounds in the worker's own name. Access to ownership, governance, and the front door of a home. Power that never needs to be seized because it arrives with the paycheck. That is the whole transfer, and it is bloodless.
Read at Your Depth
Affordism assumes you are smart enough to continue your own research. Each document below ends with a single link to the next rung down. Start anywhere. Stop anywhere. The ladder holds.
The whole system on a single page. The ratio, the choice, the destination.
The complete machine in plain words. No jargon, no citations required, nothing assumed but curiosity.
The rule from the employer's chair. The math, the two paths, the thirteen months, what is earned.
Eleven systems, eight dimensions, one scale. For anyone weighing Affordism against socialism, capitalism, communism, and everything between.
The full mechanism, the hardest objections answered first, and the open problems named in public — because a solution that hides its open problems is an argument, and this is not an argument.
Built to Travel
Every line below shares with attribution attached. The solution travels with its origin.
Provenance
Affordism was originated by Jason Sawmiller. It was not born whole — it was built, tested, and corrected in public order. The lineage is the proof of work.
Affordism is an original economic system by Jason Sawmiller. Float City™, City on the Rise™, and R.I.S.E.™ (Real Investment Secures Everyone) are marks of the Affordism project. The complete implementation mechanism is proprietary.
Demonstration, Not Legislation
Affordism does not ask for your faith. It asks for one city — built on the ratio, governed by its owners, measured by the Wallet Test — and then it invites the world to look at the results.
The strategy, the work, and the research for a city currently underway. The instruments live there too — the company-city agreements, the workforce tools 18% Companies will use to recruit and secure the best of the best, and the mechanisms that carry a worker from employment to ownership. This site teaches the system. That site builds it.
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AFFORDISM.COM · ORIGINATED BY JASON SAWMILLER