We will work with your existing team to develop democratic solutions for employee and union owned companies. We provide a fresh approach to cooperative finance and purchasing, pay equity, recruiting and educating the next generation of workers and rewarding innovation.
The vast majority of Russia has no infrastructure. Neither does Alaska or northern Canada. Cities have roads, but are not interconnected. There is a reason for this - no people.
Russian and Chinese population figures are not honest. They don't have the same census infrastructure found in the United States - and overestimation is endemic. The only obstacles to freedom for Russia Asia is for the ethnic Russians to leave (the inevitable result of the war on Ukraine) and the expense of food. If American style lab grown meat and Dutch green house technology is developed from the Urals to Greenland, this obstacle is overcome - provided resource extraction income is adequate until an independent economy is developed - which takes people to do. Lower food prices will mean more population - especially if jobs are created.
South Asian Russia, which is Muslim, needs to be set free for Turkic and Persian nations to absorb. Inuit, Mongolian and First Nation peoples can reunify to an ethnically similar nation, provided they are allowed a fair share of extraction income. They could be the Saudis of the north.
Trump has broken the back of neoliberalism - as his voters wanted. He mimics their social biases (which he does not believe privately - except the racism) and has essentially thrown the wealthy and upper middle class under the bus.
He has also created industrial policy, with tariffs which, with correct support, can be used to provide what his voters want while making prices rise for everyone else. He has also created conditions for value added taxes. The question is whether he or a successor adopt this solution and the extent to which exemptions and exclusions from the VAT are allowed and, if so, who controls them. The Congress cannot really do the fine work on doing this fairly that the executive branch can - like tariff policy.
The question is whether or how to give more money to the bottom third of income holders - which is about 77% of the population - either through a higher minimum wage & higher child tax credits - distributed through wages rather than either the IRS directly or indirectly through individual tax filing.
Also, the financial assets that hold pensions are not doing poorly. The speculative side is losing money. His voters don't care. I don't either. The bottom 77% of households have tax free income (and if they are invested in speculative assets, they are getting what they deserve) or are temporarily poor because they have had business losses - including those carried over. Switching to a VAT economy eliminates these advantages - especially if an ASSET VALUE ADDED TAX allows for employer based taxation of high wages, dividends and interest and ignores individual capital gains and losses. The latter can also lead to employee ownership - an essentially cooperativists concept that libertarian socialists support.
A tariff policy favors workers (and by implication overseas workers) over capital. Because it (or VAT) can be manipulated by the executive branch, using them (or VAT exemptions) creates industrial policy that the Soviets and Chinese would envy.
While Trump voters do not understand this, the Russian and Chinese systems where the connected have the power are the same as the old Soviet system. Oligarchs and senior party members have the some crony relationships with the supreme leader (and his secret policy) in either case. For some reason, American conservatives don't get the joke. Too funny.
Capital is the stock of productive equipment. The capital your chart refers to is wealth. Wealth uses finance to allocate value. Wealth increases are under taxed in Trump world and his donors want this to continue. The way to overcome this is an Asset value added tax that can be adjusted to regulate the velocity of finance.
The problem with the wealth I'm balance is the power the wealthy have over workers/consumers. The only real cure is the rise of a cooperative system that abandons finance by having worker controlled firms provide non-financial debt and democratic control of the means of consumption (make v buy).
In the Kingdom of the Netherlands, there exists a right to squat in Amsterdam (if not the realm) to claim space in a building that has gone out of use. Whether this is granted by the sovereign or their government is immaterial. In the United Kingdom, the poor have a right to a dole - a place to live and a pension provided by His Majesty's government.
In the United States, especially in the original colonies, land is inherited from what was owned by the Crown with payment to the state every year fee simple - a dollar per year plus other taxes. In non-colonial states, the land is granted by the commonwealth, except tribal land which the tribe owns in perpetuity with the government acting as their agent - often badly - with use of such land permitted for grazing - as well as other public land. Public land can also be taken as a squat, which includes certain rights, hence the term, squatter's rights. I use the plural above because multiple people squat on skid row.
Rock Creek is behind me as I make this video, actually, the western branch inside of a regional, rather than the national, park. There is plenty of wood there and if it is not cleared, it is a fire hazard. I have purchased a book that shows how to do a house on such land for less than $50. I doubt, however, that Montgomery County would recognize a squatter's right to do so.
On Skid Row, in Los Angeles, a square block has been set aside for use by the homeless - mostly because no one wants to help these people and they have a constitutional right to refuse such help - and no one wants the infamy attached to forced removal - as such an action would be televised - both on Cable TV, local TV and the blogosphere.
That we let people rot in public is infamous. It is "a stain on any sanctity the society assumes for itself" (written, not said - feel free to repeat). The right to be unhelped should not be enshrined in law - however the law has other ideas. Instead, we give benefits to people who are disabled by mental illness because they are unable to work for people who are not as smart. Note to normies - yes, people who are either bipolar or schizophrenic are smarter than you - and if you make allowances - would run whatever enterprise you manage better than you would. So we give these people money to support themselves and supportive housing as individuals rather than putting them in a substandard asylum setting that would also invite infamy - or already did.
So, what can, indeed what must, we do about the squatters of skid row. The answer, of course, is to pay them off for the their squat. In human evolutionary history, if you squat on land, it is yours. The residents of that zone, and all the homeless, claim such a right to property and person. Evolutionarily and legally, they are not wrong.
Let's develop skid row, but the price to be paid must include a perpetual payment (with additional offer of services) for their squatter's rights. If housing is developed, then they must be provided with free housing plus the profit that would have otherwise been collected for that space - with that amount deducted from property taxes owed to the City and County of Los Angeles. If they agree to be located off-site - and must be during construction - they must still be given that payment, as well as the right to relocate. The right should not be perpetual or inheritable, but still be durable during the life of the squatter. If given locational residency, they must still abide by common rules, but will not lose their squatter's compensation. They should be hard to evict, as well, and if evicted provided with housing.
If California ever creates a duty to be rehabilitated, then people must be compensated for agreeing to rehabilitation - in other words, pay them for seeking help through counseling and education, as well as paying the providers for doing so (as well as for case management). As a society, we can afford it. As moral agents, it is our duty to provide it.
So let's create such legal structures and clean up skid row, but in doing so recognizing the inherent rights of those who now live there.
I've written a few books on moving to a more cooperative economy, taking employee-ownership to the next level, to include consumption, finance, housing, human services and cooperating on local infrastructure with other cooperatives.
