The Citizens Standard: Transition Architecture and Migration Mechanics

The Citizens Standard (Neo-Solon, 2026a) proposes a constitutional monetary architecture whose destination is well-specified. This paper addresses what the architectural paper defers: the path from the current discretionary monetary system to that destination. The central finding is that the Citizens Standard does not require a monetary revolution to begin. Its most powerful mechanism — universal locked equity compounding — can be launched today as a parallel sovereign wealth layer within the existing monetary system, requiring no Federal Reserve replacement, no constitutional amendment, and no banking restructuring at inception. We specify a five-phase migration architecture in which each phase is self-contained, generates observable evidence, and creates the institutional conditions for the next phase. The phases span approximately 40 to 60 years from launch to full constitutionalization. We then address quantitatively the four hard transition problems the architectural paper acknowledges but does not resolve: existing government debt conversion mechanics, banking separation and credit stability under phased reserve requirements, equity valuation effects of universal systematic ownership flows, and the timing of constitutional lock credibility. A central quantitative finding concerns the debt transition: a naïve analysis suggests Mode B requires a $2.3 trillion annual primary surplus to stabilise debt/GDP — an apparently impossible fiscal demand. This paper shows that analysis is incomplete. As legacy high-coupon nominal debt rolls to price-indexed instruments over approximately six years, the average sovereign coupon falls from 4.5 percent to approximately 1.0 percent under Mode B, collapsing the interest-growth spread from 3.2 to 0.3 percentage points. A Mode C bridge during Phase 1 and Phase 2, combined with modest fiscal consolidation of approximately 1 percent of GDP over ten years, produces a D/GDP trajectory declining from 127 percent at launch to 84 percent by Year 50 — materially better than the CBO's March 2025 projection of 156 percent by 2055 under current law. International analogues from Chile, Norway, Estonia, and Singapore provide empirical grounding for each phase's feasibility.