A new Harris poll for The Guardian found that the majority of Americans believe that the U.S. is in a recession. This is patently untrue.� The U.S. is experiencing an ...
There needs to be laws passed that change the structure of “fiduciaries”
Companies should exist for their employees first, customers second, and then shareholders, in that order. Pay the people creating the product/service as much as possible, put out the best possible product/service at the most competitive rate possible, and if there’s anything left over the shareholders get their cut.
Ironically, if corporations actually did this, they’d likely have plenty of success
There is such a business structure. It’s called a worker co-operative. They’re pretty common in some areas (e.g. grocery) where they are able to compete with and even win against traditionally-owned grocery store chains. For example, one of the largest grocery co-operatives in the US, WinCo foods, competes with and actually beats the likes of Walmart and Kroger (called Fred Meyer here) in the price department. They do have some outside investment (IIRC), but the stores are mostly owned by the employees that work there.
I think we ought to encourage these types of businesses through extremely favourable tax treatment. I’m talking a 0% tax rate on dividends paid by co-operatives to workers. At the same time, it’s understandable that most people start businesses for personal profit, which drives the creation of most businesses, so I think a hybrid system wherein the owner starts with a maximum of 50% equity in the company is fair, and the rest is owned by the workers. Imposing an expiration on the owner’s shares (say, 50 years?) would mean that after the founders die, the entire company will be owned by the workers, while not extinguishing the motivation for people to establish businesses in the first place.
There needs to be laws passed that change the structure of “fiduciaries”
Companies should exist for their employees first, customers second, and then shareholders, in that order. Pay the people creating the product/service as much as possible, put out the best possible product/service at the most competitive rate possible, and if there’s anything left over the shareholders get their cut.
Ironically, if corporations actually did this, they’d likely have plenty of success
There is such a business structure. It’s called a worker co-operative. They’re pretty common in some areas (e.g. grocery) where they are able to compete with and even win against traditionally-owned grocery store chains. For example, one of the largest grocery co-operatives in the US, WinCo foods, competes with and actually beats the likes of Walmart and Kroger (called Fred Meyer here) in the price department. They do have some outside investment (IIRC), but the stores are mostly owned by the employees that work there.
I think we ought to encourage these types of businesses through extremely favourable tax treatment. I’m talking a 0% tax rate on dividends paid by co-operatives to workers. At the same time, it’s understandable that most people start businesses for personal profit, which drives the creation of most businesses, so I think a hybrid system wherein the owner starts with a maximum of 50% equity in the company is fair, and the rest is owned by the workers. Imposing an expiration on the owner’s shares (say, 50 years?) would mean that after the founders die, the entire company will be owned by the workers, while not extinguishing the motivation for people to establish businesses in the first place.