Democratizing Finance

    One of the goals of the Economic Democracy Act is to “democratize” ownership of capital.  By this we do not mean the collectivist “The People” own (meaning everything is owned by the State and controlled by whoever holds political power), the individualist “Democratic Capitalism” (meaning almost everything is owned by a relatively few private individuals holding economic power), or the collective-individualist/individual-collectivist “Servile State” (meaning virtually everything is owned or controlled by a private-public sector economic-political elite holding both economic and political power).

How to Get Out of (National) Debt

The U.S. National Debt is now climbing upwards of $39 trillion . . . although it’s not impossible to find some experts who claim the figure is more like $100 trillion due to unbooked estimates for Social Security and Medicare.  Of course, whether we’re talking $39 trillion or $100 trillion — yes, that’s trillion — it’s in the realm of the surreal, not the real.  That’s a lot of money.

Do You Grok Kelso’s “Second Income Plan”?

 It’s a bit of cultural trivia from Robert Heinlein’s 1961 science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land (it’s a Biblical reference), a with-it neologism that never really caught on, but had a certain vogue into the seventies among geeks and others (like us) grouped among the quasi-normal: “grok.”

What’s So Great About Louis Kelso?

 Louis O. Kelso is today best known as the inventor of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).  Despite the near-total global hegemony of Keynesian economics which assumes nothing can be done unless wealth is concentrated and government must be in charge of everything, the ESOP remains important to broaden the base of capital ownership.

Own or Be . . . What?

 AI — Artificial Intelligence — has been in the news a lot recently.  Possibly this is because the powers-that-be and so-called world leaders seem to exhibit so little of the natural kind.  That purportedly being the case, a regular reader of this blog began asking questions of AI (who better to ask?) about what people who have always worked for a living or who expected to have to work for a living are going to do when AI has taken all the jobs, the Universal Basic Income bites the dust, and the government can no longer fund welfare or even Social Security.

Five Levers of Change: Tax Policy

Today’s blog posting is adapted from the book, Economic Personalism, which you can get free from the CESJ website, or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

 

In 1891, Pope Leo XIII declared that “Many excellent results will follow” from expanding ownership to as many people as possible (Rerum Novarum, § 47). As he said,

Human Rights v. Property Rights

Some time ago we took part in a conference during which a participant made the statement that he was for human rights, not property rights.  This, while it garnered a large measure of applause, didn’t make any sense.  It was a little like saying he was all for meals but was against eating.  The startling fact that surprises so many people, especially today, is that property is a human right; only human beings are natural persons, and therefore only human beings have rights.

The Expanded Ownership Revolution

One of the many paradoxes involved in the Great Reset and similar proposals has to do with human nature and the natural law.  As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, despite centuries of failure adherents insist that the abolition of private property and redistribution will work if we just manage to change human nature, try harder, and commit sufficient resources to the effort.

The Expanded Ownership Revolution

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, Harold Moulton solved the problem of where to get the funds to finance new capital formation without cutting consumption, but it left unanswered the question of how people are to gain consumption income if they are being replaced by advancing technology and are unable to produce.

Citizens Land Cooperative

As we noted in the previous posting on this subject, distributism as presented by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc had the right idea: a wide distribution of private property in capital, by which they did NOT mean a redistribution of what belongs to someone else.  (See the final comment in What’s Wrong With the World (1910).

A New Monetary Paradigm

In the previous posting on this subject, we continued posting sections of our recent CESJ position paper, “Universalizing Capital Ownership.”  As we said before, of course, .  Of course, if you want to read the entire paper without waiting for the parts to be posted, just click on the link.

The Unacknowledged Right

In the previous posting on this subject, we started posting a recent CESJ position paper, “Universalizing Capital Ownership,” as a series.  Of course, if you want to read the paper in one go, just click on the link; it’s not very long, although putting up the whole thing as a blog posting is a bit much at one time.

The Principles of Economic Justice

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, the Great Depression of the 1930s revealed serious problems in the U.S. economy, problems that were not really addressed by the program of John Maynard Keynes, which really only made matters much worse than they needed to have been.

Louis Kelso, ESOP Association Address, 05/10/1984

Maybe the quality of the recording isn't all it should be, but here is an interesting recording may on May 10, 1984, a month after the founding of CESJ, at the annual ESOP Association Conference.  Kelso gave the keynote address:

Distributism and Ronald Reagan, IV

Last week we made a series of postings on the Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice, creatively titled Distributism and Ronald Reagan I, Distributism and Ronald Reagan II, and Distributism and Ronald Reagan III.  Today we conclude the series with (what else?) “Distributism and Ronald Reagan, IV.”  Making it easy for us, the conclusion of Reagan’s speech sums up things nicely:

The Accountable Capitalism Act

Senator Elizabeth Ann Warren (Democrat, Massachusetts) has created a bit of a stir with her “Accountable Capitalism Act” proposal.  The ACA is a proposed piece of legislation recently introduced by Senator Warren that she believes would restore accountability of corporations to their employees and to the public at large.  At the heart of her proposal is her oft-repeated declaration that “corporations are not people.”

Quit Modifying Capitalism!

A few weeks ago Andy Kessler raised an interesting point in his piece, “Quit Modifying Capitalism” in the Wall Street Journal of November 20, 2017 (page A15 if you’re curious).  As Kessler suggested, capitalism is capitalism, and socialism is socialism.  Why cover up with meaningless qualifications?  Kessler had in mind such modifications as "democratic capitalism," "social capitalism," "ethical capitalism," even "free market capitalism" — you name it.

Random ESOP Musing

As we may have mentioned once or twice in the past, we like to get questions from our loyal readers . . . “loyal” being defined as anyone with a query that does not begin, “Are you stupid-insane-crazy, etc., etc., etc., for saying something with which I disagree, misunderstand, or can’t pronounce?  (The answer, by the way, is “yes.”)

Puerto Rico: A Few Suggestions

It’s unverified (by us), but we’ve heard that the “Jones Act Waiver” for Puerto Rico is going to expire and won’t be renewed.  And what, exactly, does that mean?  The “Jones Act,” which dates from the 1920s, stipulates that cargoes going from one U.S. Port to another must be carried on U.S. flag vessels.  This presumably helps the struggling U.S. Merchant Marine by providing employment . . . and greatly increases prices in Puerto Rico. . . .

Democracy and Monetary Justice

Yesterday we raised the eternal question, if capital ownership is so good, why aren’t more people owners?  The answer is that the rich who control existing money and credit aren’t likely to let go of it, and most people who are not rich do not generally have access to new money creation that would enable them to purchase new capital that pays for itself out of its own future earnings, and thereafter provides income for the owner.