Every second, the world runs billions of tokens of automated labour. This is what a small
levy on that machine work — ring-fenced into Reparation Bonds — would already have raised. No direct levy on any household.
since 21 July 2026
AI tokens generated worldwide (est.)
0
—
The machines are doing the work. So why collect a fraction?
CautiousAmbitious
Cautious · 3%
£0
At this rate · 4%
£0
The gap we leave on the table
£0
Drag it. The gap between cautious and ambitious is not an accident of arithmetic — it is a choice about how much of the machines' labour we ask for. Above a flat few percent a single rate would raise the token's price and, by Jevons, cut usage — so the honest way to reach the ambitious end is a graduated levy: a light touch on cheap/budget tokens, a heavier one on high-margin frontier tokens (sold at $12–30 / million, whose buyers barely flinch). The slider shows the ambition; the graduated design is how you collect it without shrinking the base.
It took Britain 182 years to pay the enslavers. This is how the machines could pay the enslaved.
The 1833 debt
£20,000,000
≈ 40% of the government's annual budget that year · ≈ £17 billion in today's money (by relative income — £2.4bn by inflation, £100bn+ by share of economy) · serviced for 182 years, cleared February 2015.
This mechanism, over the same 182 years
£0
at the slider rate · illustrative: current usage held flat — the real base grows with the AI economy.
Reparations levy accrued (est.)
£0
at a 4% levy on billed inference revenue
Original 2024 concept superseded
£0
"Fractional Mill Tax" — a fixed $0.0001 per token. The paper's ad-valorem rate replaces it because a fixed charge many times a token's selling price would raise the effective price and — by the same Jevons logic the AI industry itself cites — cut usage, shrinking the base being taxed. A modest rate on a large, growing base collects more over time and scales with the AI economy. Shown for provenance.
Share of the UK liability settled
0.0000000%
of the Brattle Group (2023) UK figure, £18.6 trillion
Elapsed since publication
00:00:00
Zenodo v1 · DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21476321
What would your own tokens pay?
Every token you generate is a sliver of automated labour. See what the levy — and the original per-token idea — would raise on yours.
tokensa short chat ≈ 2ka long session ≈ 50kheavy user / month ≈ 5m
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THE SOVEREIGN GPU DIVIDEND · sovereigngpudividend.org