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COMPASS — Community Outcomes Measurement for Prosperity, Accountability, Security, and Sustainability — is the measurement system. Every US census tract scored continuously across eight equally-weighted quality-of-life domains; published quarterly by the National Statistics Board.

What the architecture serves

Three national goals

Goal 1
Debt retirement within 50 years
The Debt Sunset governor enforces it. payroll tax and the top marginal rate move in coupled 0.25-point steps to keep the trajectory on track. Statutory, not optional.
Goal 2
Climate mitigation
Carbon fee $80/ton, +$30/yr to $680 cap, automatic. Energy stipend rebates households up to $160/ton. Revenue above the ceiling flows to the ring-fenced Climate Adaptation Trust — funds critical-infrastructure mitigation (coastal defenses for dense settlement, grid, wildfire, water), not individual residential buyouts.
Goal 3
Near-top status on metrics of civilization
The aspirational goal. By 2050: top quartile of best peer democracies on every load-bearing domain; top decile on research capability and crisis resilience — the two domains where right-to-endure is most directly measured. The mission is durability, survivability, and the right to endure — intrinsic, not a zero-sum race against rivals. COMPASS is the public yardstick.
Goal 3 made measurable — the international comparison

Where the US stands today

Top quartile of advanced democracies on every load-bearing domain by 2050; top decile on research capability and crisis resilience — the two domains where right-to-endure is most directly measured. Aspirational peers below are democracies the Accord would have the country match; figures rounded for scannability.

Life expectancy
US:~79 yrs (32nd OECD)
Peer:Switzerland 84 · Japan 84
Target: Top quartile by 2050
Infant mortality
US:5.0 per 1k (33rd)
Peer:Norway 1.6 · Japan 1.7
Target: Top quartile by 2050
Housing affordability
US:Median price/income 5×
Peer:Germany 4.5 · Japan 4.1
Target: Top quartile by 2050
Educational attainment
US:OECD median tertiary
Peer:Korea 70% · Canada 64%
Target: Top quartile by 2050
Civic trust / press freedom
US:Press Freedom 55th
Peer:Norway 1st · Denmark 3rd
Target: Top quartile by 2050
Income security (Gini)
US:0.41 (high)
Peer:Nordics 0.27 · Germany 0.32
Target: Top quartile by 2050
Research capability
US:#1 absolute output
Peer:Switzerland · Israel · S. Korea per-capita
Target: TOP DECILE by 2050
Crisis resilience
US:Mid-tier today
Peer:Singapore · Switzerland · Norway
Target: TOP DECILE by 2050

Sources: OECD Better Life Index, UN Human Development Index, Social Progress Index, Reporters Without Borders, World Bank. Live tract-level data on the map; the international layer stays here on the landing rather than crowding the map.

How COMPASS slices the world

Three axes of measurement

Outcomes track the person; place tracks the geography; systems track the institutions and rules. The same domain (e.g., child wellbeing) shows up in all three: a child's lifespan (outcome), the lead-pipe concentration of their neighborhood (place), the integrity of the elections that govern both (system). Each axis takes different interventions.

Axis
Outcomes people carry
What each American carries through life — lifespan, education, household income, mortality, mobility. Largely independent of geography; person-scoped, not place-scoped.
Axis
The place itself
Tract and county quality of the physical and economic environment — broadband, food access, lead pipes, eviction rate, environmental burden, school cultural capacity. Place-scoped, not person-scoped.
Axis
Systems and institutions
Governance and institutional integrity — press freedom, election administration, judicial speed, financial stability, statistics quality. Mostly statutory and procedural; mostly non-spending interventions.
Measurement discipline

How we measure

Two rods, both narrated
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Triggers raise the floor, not the median
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Funding steps down when a tract climbs out
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Capped as a share of GDP, allocated by formula
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Where one index isn't universally accepted, average two or three
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Where dollars-to-outcomes studies exist, we cite them
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Indicator → goal → response

Each indicator gets its own customized response

Outcomes people carry
Life expectancy at birth
▸
US:~79 yrs
Peer:~83 yrs (Switzerland / Japan top)
Infant mortality
▸
US:~5 per 1,000
Peer:~3.5 (Norway / Japan top)
Income inequality (Gini)
▸
US:0.41
Peer:0.32 (Nordics 0.27)
The place itself
Broadband access (≥100/20 Mbps)
▸
US:~80% of households
Peer:~95% (Korea 99%, Singapore 97%)
Food access desert
▸
US:~14% of tracts USDA-defined low-income / low-access
Peer:advanced-economy share probably 5–8% (methodology differs)
Eviction filing rate
▸
US:~3.6% of renter households/yr
Peer:~1.5% (Germany 0.5%, Netherlands 1%)
Lead service line concentration
▸
US:~9.2M LSLs estimated
Peer:replaced by ~2003 statutory deadlines
K-12 art and music density
▸
US:uneven; deserts cluster in low-income districts
Peer:uniform via national curriculum mandates
Systems and institutions
Press freedom (RSF World Press Freedom Index)
▸
US:rank 55 of 180 (2024)
Peer:top-20 (Norway #1, Denmark #3)
Judicial speed
▸
US:civil-case median ~22 months (varies wildly by jurisdiction)
Peer:EU median ~11 months (Germany 8, France 13)
Election administration quality
▸
US:50-state variance is enormous (top-quintile peer-comparable, bottom-quintile not)
Peer:tightly bunched at top (Nordics, Estonia)

This is an illustrative cross-section. The full COMPASS suite covers ~14 indicators across the three axes; live data is on the map.

What fires when a tract hits the bottom

Five place-triggered initiatives

Each fires automatically; each sunsets after two cycles above threshold. Wedge bands set nationally by audited methodology; localities vote within the band — no race to the bottom, no local quota fights.

Family Stability Corps
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Truancy Response Network
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Playground & Third Place Build-out
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Eviction Prevention Legal Utility
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Care Work Bridge for elders
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Incremental triggered spend, total
Roll-up across the five initiatives plus tightly-triggered desert offsets (opioid, maternity, CHW, middle-mile broadband): roughly 0.4–1.5% of GDP per year — low-discipline ~0.4%, base case 0.7–1.1%, high-ambition ~1.5%. Incremental on top of universal Distributed Healthcare and the Social Stack. Press freedom, election admin, and statutory broadband preemption are reforms, not spend, and don't inflate this number.
What “persistent deprivation triggers automatic federal investment” means in practice

The forensic audit cascade

Triggers fire on the first reading; intervention scales as the indicator persists. Five cycles in the bottom decile is not a slow-rolling complaint — it is a statutory audit obligation. The cascade is the discipline that prevents both under-response (worst tracts ignored for decades) and over-response (a transient bad cycle becomes a permanent program).

Year 1
Trigger fires
Tract crosses the bottom-decile threshold. Linked Accord program activates automatically — Family Stability Corps, Eviction Prevention, Truancy Network, etc. No application; no waiver.
Year 2
Implementation review
FCP-site liaison files a one-page status. Take-up rates, staffing, named obstacles. Public, machine-readable.
Year 3
Comparative diagnosis
NSB compares this tract against peer tracts that exited the bottom decile within two cycles. What worked elsewhere; what did not work here.
Year 4
Forensic audit
Independent audit team (NSB-appointed, Senate-confirmed) examines fund deployment, contractor performance, captured rents, missing capacity. Findings public.
Year 5
Intervention escalation
If the indicator has not moved, the Expert Board for the relevant domain takes operational authority over the program in this tract. Local capture is named; replacements are appointed; or the program is restructured against audit findings.

The cascade ends two ways. The indicator clears the bottom-decile threshold for two consecutive cycles and the program steps down. Or the audit finds the architecture itself is mis-fitted to this tract's conditions and the program is restructured at the federal level. Either way, “tried and failed” is not a permanent budget line.

Anti-bloat by construction

What COMPASS makes impossible

  • Permanent block grants
  • Programs without outcome measurement
  • Local capture without sunset
  • Politicized application systems
  • “We tried” without a metric moving
What the Accord does not do

Explicit scope exclusions

The architecture works at population scale. It does not litigate individual edge cases. Naming what we don't do is itself a commitment — it stops scope creep and keeps the framework legible.

No flood-plain buyouts
NFIP raised to actuarial market rates. Climate Adaptation Trust funds infrastructure mitigation — coastal defense, grid hardening, water resilience — not individual residential buyouts. Means-tested transition assistance during the five-year glide is the only individual-household exception.
No per-displaced-worker transition support
Skills Wallet ($20K lifetime, accrues from age 18) is the national program. We don't litigate per-job transition packages; we deliver retraining capacity at population scale. The Reallocation chapter (Blueprint Ch 30) names this discipline explicitly.
No cultural-export subsidies
We measure cultural capacity at the K-12 density level (above) but don't subsidize national cultural exports. The US is already winning that competition; an Accord program would be solving a problem that doesn't exist.
No caseworker-mediated benefits
FedCard delivers; benefits flow automatically to eligible Americans. No applications, no means tests, no caseworkers for core services. Architecture beats application.
Open the map

See the indicators on a map

ZIP-anchored

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