This Brand New PREFAB HOME is Coming to a Community Near You!

By Kerry Tarnow.

This would be a good fit for an employer owned firm that wanted to do the whole smart growth, cooperative housing kind of thing - from Single Family homes for workers with families and apartments for new workers and interns still in school. I have a few books about this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LNJJCQH https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DBYPVRV

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1097350568

An Honest Discussion About A Universal Basic Income

By Economics Explained.

Comment:

Universal is not necessarily fair, especially not to large families. The Zero Population Growth movement and the UBI movement have some overlap. If every person got $1000 per month, we would be in business and could fund it with consumption and asset value added taxes. With every trade, put on a 25% bite (20% of price). The rich will pay.

Minimum wages need to go up to something like $12 per hour in US, or $11 if work week is shortened to 32 hours. Anyone who cannot get a job at that rate can do training (ESL, GED, AA) and be paid the minimum wage to participate. Include $1000 per child per month additional pay for wages or government benefits, funded as an offset to employer paid subtraction value added taxes. 

With 3 VAT streams, plus salary surtaxes on income over $85,000 up to 52% and there is plenty of money.

Change by in China

No. China Is Not Going To Collapse... Yet

https://youtu.be/V30VyMMce9s 

The Communist Party can fall in a few ways. The Marxist way is for industrial workers without urban benefits to demand them and start a revolution. The second is for the new middle class to get tired of authoritarianism. The most likely way is for someone or some faction within the Communist Party decides they want change and move against leadership.

How US health care rates and its future

Watch "What experts say about who has the world's best health-care system | Opinion" on YouTube
https://youtu.be/wfsJXo1h1G0

Ideally, employee owned and controlled cooperatives would include doctors to provide health care to members and their families.

For now, a subsidized public option and Medicare Part E would replace Medicaid and parts of Obama care. Fund it by a broad based tax on employers, revoke pre-existing condition rules and automatically enroll those denied into the public option.

Of course, Medicare B&D, Medicare C,  Medicaid, ACA, FEHBP and private insurance are moving to fusion. My doctor is in Kaiser, which takes all the above payers. You can go from program to program in the same system.

The real future of work

Watch "What's The Future Of Work In The United States?" on YouTube
https://youtu.be/N0QySpidyd0

Management likes to OWN their employees. Capitalism is authoritarian system marked by paid obedience rather than a free exchange of services for money.

The only way out is cooperative or worker corporate ownership. This should also include cooperative finance - a bit more integrated than credit unions, cooperative purchasing where feasible, cooperative housing, education, medicine and human services should the members so choose. They implicitly make these choices now. If such choices were explicit, they might be made differently.

Workers need to demand this. Management will not ask nicely. If tried it may work and if so, this will be the future of the workplace - and not just here.

Questions for cooperatives, employee-owned and unioned owned companies

The hallmarks of cooperative ownership are the employees controlling the means of production and that control being democratic.  How to do that has always been the challenge in expanding cooperation and making it not seem scary to the general public.  Better cash and prizes are the answer - not only do workers vote for the means of production, but they vote for the market basket of consumption.  Most workers make these choices implicitly by working for money.

Expanding cooperation allows another way.  Workers would first decide whether they want the firm to provide the good for free, at cost, provide the means for the employee to make the good itself or provide money to let the employee-owners buy the good independently.  Let me illustrate.

In the old corporate socialist IBM model, Breakfast and Lunch could be purchased at the employee cafeteria. Employee-owners could make this free.  Either way, members can decide whether to grow its own food and process it or buy it on the open market - or from cooperative members.  Or it can not provide this service and workers could eat at home, either after growing the food or buying it at a cooperative store or an outside supermarket. Some employees may face this question differently.  Younger employees might have a dormitory apartment and cafeteria in the dormitory area, which might even include dinner.

Housing for younger employees could be in dormitory apartments, outside apartments or eventually in single family homes - either purchased through a cooperative credit union (or through an account at work) - and possibly with the cooperative building the homes.  Homes could either be standard or food producing in what we call Inter-Independence. This would have been a nice option to have in the age of SARS2. 

A key decision employee-owners make is how to attract and grow new members.  I propose getting them after sophomore year in college and keeping them as long as the fit is good . It is not peonage if they have an ownership stake. This plan also discusses how doctors and nurses are trained – assuming the cooperative wants to do medical care in-house.

Using overseas labor, a decision some cooperatives will inherit, is important - especially how to compensate the overseas labor as members in a way to not cost American jobs. There are even rules for dealing with former communist cooperatives that need to be capitalized.  Excuse the pun We sent a form of these to the Washington firm advising the new Russian Federation in 1992. Sadly, they added making shares fully marketable rather than being held until retirement - and the Putin Oligarchy was born.

Large firms and cooperative networks can either use public roads or build an electric car/electricity distribution and power generation system. 

A big reason to go cooperative is to rationalize pay, so workers at age forty won't be fired for two recent grads.  If firms do it right, workers will get more incentive to innovate than they have in the average hierarchical capitalist firm.  See how here.

There are many ways to get to cooperativism.  One is to convert ESOPs or union-owned firms to a more advanced management structure - part of which is to check out the choices in this essay and exploring whether these would be desired by cooperative members.  If so, governance is important, which is highlighted here

Aerospace firms can shift to cooperativism or start that way - and such firms should be increased for space exploration and away from munitions.  Some of these cooperatives will be in orbit or on Mars, so money is not an option. They can also provide an example of how cooperatives can best be used. 

The way to get most of the economy into cooperativism is Social Security reform, which we published in Labor and Corporate Governance in January 2003. Throwing money into Wall Street is not the answer to our demographic problems, as we illustrate. 

Our ownership options dovetail with the tax reform options advanced for the past 21 years by the Center for Fiscal Equity. Once this sector is ready for prime time, there are many avenues for expansion beyond the current boutique model. Here is how to do so in the age of SARS.

To see how some of these proposals were made to Chrysler for the 2009 bailout, Had the fix not been in, great progress could have been made.

Cooperativism can also be used to replace governmental functions, so instead of paying taxes for education and mental health care services, they can be provided - either directly or through a secular or religious partner. 

Taken together, these proposals that you can employ can maximize freedom and well being and minimize government.  Who doesn't want that?

Please contact us at 240-810-9268 if you have any questions or would like to use our services..

ESOP-COOP in the time of COVID - Public Policy

This is part three. Read it last.

Joint action between ESOPs and COOPs should include publicly or privately available insurance for ownership shares. One third if voting and preferred shares would be traded to a central pool in return for pool shares. If 25% +1 of a firms *sharehold requests it, the fund would use insurance fund voting shares to investigate, possibly suspend and, if cause were found, reorganize management, add or shed components. Taking either too much or too little risk or any corruption would be cause for reorganization. This is better diversification than playing the Wall Street roulette wheel. The workers win, not the house.

Multiple ERISA changes may be required to maximize the opportunities cooperation affords. Additional changes in public finance are also worth noting.

Enacting an employer-paid subtraction VAT to replace payroll, corporate, property and low rate income taxes would fund or virtually fund education, childcare and child income, healthcare and retirement services. These would either be provided by the government or by the employers in lieu of tax payments. 

Employer payment or reporting is a different version of present reporting and tax flows, but with virtually no household filing requirements. This change would also eliminate the incentive to have a gig economy, franchises and 1099 employment disguised as contracting. Liabilities are turned to tax credits. Longevity and childbirth are also encouraged. In time, incentives will no longer be required, but this is not that time.

Higher income earners would pay salary surtaxes or these could be replaced with higher tier subtraction VAT rates on such income. Some high wage individuals could sell their services as consultants, but these firms would have to pay the subtraction VAT instead. For people with large personal staffs, this may be preferable for all concerned. Salary surtaxes could be prepaid with bonds and either would fund debt reduction and payment of net interest on the national debt.

A Credit Invoice VAT would fund domestic military and civilian spending. Like a carbon VAT, receipt visibility would induce pressure for spending cuts and environmental good citizenship. This tax also funds legacy OASDI benefits.

The most relevant change is to move taxation of capital income (rent, dividend, interest, pass through), inheritance and gains taxes to an Asset VAT at point of sale or distribution. All such activities, short or long term, would be taxed.

The tax would be marked to market price at option exercise or the first sale after inheritance or gift. Most importantly, sales to qualified ESOPs and COOPs would be tax free. This includes sales at or during retirement.

The requirement to sell all shares at this point would be eliminated. This lowers dividend rates required to build up share balances because distribution would continue during spend down. Note that a big ERISA change is required here.

The A-VAT, with or without the S-VAT, will encourage ESOP formation and growth. By applying it to all stick sales, it will reduce trading volume, volatility and purchase prices. Passive investment by heirs and trusts to avoid taxation will go away because S-VAT and I-VAT liability and the A-VAT ESOP exemption end their utility, as well as the need for a large public sector.

*Either 25% retained ESOP shares or 25% of COOP members.