We’ve been attending the annual ESOP Association conference
this week. The big thing being addressed
was the threat to eliminate the tax-deductibility of dividends paid through an
ESOP. It is being characterized as some
sort of “tax subsidy.” We’re not certain
of the logic behind this, but tax deductibility of dividends paid through the
ESOP is no more a “tax subsidy” than any other form of compensation that is
deductible as a legitimate business expense.
Another troubling aspect of the government’s lack of
understanding of private property through an ESOP is the spread of the idea that
professionals who value company shares in the ESOP should be fiduciaries. This would be an extraordinarily bizarre
thing to do. A valuation is by law
required to be "fair" . . . and someone doing a valuation really cannot be expected to be fair if he or she is not independent, and can hardly be independent if he or she is a fiduciary!
This would be a “Catch-22”-type law, in which you must both be and not
be independent (or be and not be fair) in order to do a valuation.
In other news:
• Some people at the ESOP conference were very interested in
the Homeowners Equity Corporation (HEC) as a possible solution to the ongoing
housing crisis. Despite what you hear in
the news about prices recovering, the situation remains grim for people in the
real world. The HEC is described inthis free download.
• Mid South Building Supply, Inc., a 100% worker-owned
company, won two communications awards this year instead of their usual
one. The communications materials were
very attractive, but did not sacrifice the main purpose, which is to
communicate the importance of worker ownership.
• In a completely unexpected development, we were describing
the Just Third Way to some fellow attendees at lunch, and one of them asked if
we had ever heard of something called “distributism.” We of course said yes, and explained how the
Just Third Way differs with respect to the source of financing for widespread
ownership and the role of the State.
(There is also the fact that the neo-distributists of today have
redefined private property and claimed a “mandate” for small ownership in place
of Chesterton and Belloc’s preference,
but that is an issue for another day.)
There does seem to be a growing dissatisfaction with what is
increasingly viewed as a “Chestertonian” or “distributist” elite establishment
out of touch with people in the real world, and intent on silencing all
opposition to a “way” for which people not “in the know” have a hard time
discerning the principles in any way that makes sense. There is still (at least potentially) a great
deal of good that could come out of the distributist movement and the
Chestertonians, but they seem far more interested in imposing their views on
others, right or wrong, and in alienating possible allies, than in working for
meaningful and achievable worker ownership in a politically effective manner without destroying the current
system.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 65 different countries and 54 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from
the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and India. People in El
Salvador, Pakistan, France, Portugal, and the United States spent the most
average time on the blog. The most popular postings this past week were “Thomas
Hobbes on Private Property,” “Aristotle on Private Property,” “Social Justice
IV: The Characteristics of Social Justice,” “Defining Money, VII: The Expanded
Law of Reflux,” and “Defining Money, II: The Medium of Exchange.”
Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we
know about. If you have an
accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at
mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into the next
“issue.” If you have a short (250-400
word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog —
do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated anyway, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#
