The Citizens Standard: A Constitutional Monetary Architecture with Mode-Selectable Inflation Regimes

This paper proposes the Citizens Standard, a constitutional monetary framework built on a dual-circuit pool architecture and a three-channel issuance mechanism that allows a society to constitutionally select among three operating Modes while preserving a single underlying Model. The framework replaces discretionary central banking with formula-bounded, citizen-anchored monetary creation distributed equally to all verified citizens at issuance. The architecture defines two pools — a circulating money pool used for wages, prices, and commerce, and a Stable Floor pool of locked, individually owned, total-market index shares (technically termed the Citizen Equity Stake) — and three issuance channels: K1 (citizenship endowment), K2 (growth dividend), and K3 (citizen dividend, active in Mode C only). Mode A targets approximately 1.6 percent annual deflation through minimal indirect circulating expansion (~0.35 percent of M2 annually via capital markets). Mode B targets approximate price stability with mild deflationary drift (~−0.5 percent annually) through K2 issuance calibrated to half the real-growth-matched amount, deliberately conservative to provide a meaningful Stable Floor without runaway accumulation. Mode C targets approximately 2 percent inflation through price-level path targeting, producing a citizen dividend that ramps from approximately $173 per month per citizen at launch to approximately $280 per month at steady-state, with annual calibration and monthly distribution.