I mean, imagine if CNBC devoted a half-hour every morning right around the morning bell to something called “What We Owe to the Workers,” or if the Wall Street Journal ran weekly editorials or op-eds laying down in black-and-white just exactly how dependent on social stability corporate profits are, and that among the necessary policies we need to enact to preserve that is to ensure that low- and middle-income workers and their families are insured against catastrophic injury and illness, and have access to affordable routine medical care. It would be a very different world.

(Incidentally, I agree that there is a condescension in redistribution done via specially-purposed transfers. That’s part of the reason I don’t much like vouchers as a general approach to safety nets, though they definitely have benefits of efficiency and accountability to the purpose for which the funds are appropriated. But I think you’re right to think that in a social debt conception, the condescension might be a more important consideration.)

That said, I entirely expect to find out that someone far more accomplished than I came up with a similar or identical formulation long ago. Something I’ve learned over the last two years is that no matter how original an idea you think you have, there’s always someone more famous than you who’s thought of it before. A lot of times, it’s even an idea that has been around in some form or another for literally milennia.

I’m trying to figure out a way of expanding upon it, but there’s several different directions I could take it.