Sunday, June 30, 2013

We Need Economic Security Beyond Jobs


A commons sense plan to pay everyone dividends on our common wealth

A cushion of reliable income is a wonderful thing. It can help pay for basic necessities. It can be saved for rainy days or used to pursue happiness on sunny days. It can encourage people to take entrepreneurial risks, care for friends, or volunteer for community service.

Conversely, the absence of reliable income is a terrible thing. It heightens anxiety and fear. It diminishes our ability to cope with crises and transitions. It traps many families on the knife’s edge of poverty, and makes it harder for poor people to rise.

There’s been much discussion of late about how to save America’s declining middle class. The answer politicians of both parties give is always the same: jobs, jobs, jobs. The parties differ on how the jobs will be created—Republicans say the market will do it if we cut taxes and regulation. Democrats say government can help by investing in infrastructure and education. Either way, it still comes down to jobs with decent wages and benefits.

It’s understandable that politicians say this: it was America’s experience in the past. In the years following World War II, we built a solid middle class on the foundation of high-paying, mostly unionized jobs in the manufacturing sector. But those days are history.

Today, automation and computers have eliminated millions of jobs, and private-sector unions have been crushed. On top of that, in a globalized economy where capital can hire the cheapest labor anywhere, it’s no longer credible to believe that America’s middle class can prosper from labor income alone.

So why don’t we pay everyone some non-labor income—you know, the kind of money that flows disproportionally to the rich? I’m not talking about redistribution here. I’m talking about paying dividends to equity owners in good old capitalist fashion. Except that the equity owners in question aren’t owners of private wealth, they’re owners of common wealth. Which is to say, all of us.

One state—Alaska—already does this. The Alaska Permanent Fund uses revenue from state oil leases to invest in stocks, bonds and similar assets, and from those investments pays equal dividends to every resident. Since 1980, these dividends have ranged from $1,000 to $2,000 per year per person, including children (meaning that they’ve reached up to $8,000 per year for households of four). It’s therefore no accident that, compared to other states, Alaska has the third highest median income and the second highest income equality.
Alaska’s model can be extended to any state or nation, whether or not they have oil.

Imagine an American Permanent Fund that pays dividends to all Americans, one person, one share. A major source of revenue could be clean air, nature’s gift to us all. Polluters have been freely dumping ever-increasing amounts of gunk into our air, contributing to ill-health, acid rain and climate change. But what if we required polluters to bid for and pay for permits to pollute our air, and decreased the number of permits every year? Pollution would decrease, and as it did, pollution prices would rise. Less pollution would yield more revenue. Over time, trillions of dollars would be available for dividends.

And that’s not the only common resource an American Permanent Fund could tap. Consider the substantial contribution society makes to publicly traded stock values. When a company like Facebook or Google goes public, its value rises dramatically. The extra value derives from the vastly enlarged market of investors who can trust a public company’s financial statements (filed quarterly with the Securities and Exchange Commission) and buy or sell its shares with the click of a mouse. Experts call this a ‘liquidity premium,’ and it’s generated not by the company but by society.

This socially created wealth now flows mostly to a small number of Americans. But if we wanted to, we could spread it around. We could do that by charging corporations for the extra liquidity that society provides. Let’s say we required public companies to deposit 1 percent of their shares in the American Permanent Fund for ten years, up to a total of 10 percent. This would be a modest price not just for public liquidity but for other privileges (limited liability, perpetual life, constitutional protections) we currently grant to corporations for free. In due time, the American Permanent Fund would have a diversified portfolio worth trillions of dollars. As the stock market rose and fell, so would everyone’s dividends. A rising tide would truly lift all boats.

There are other potential revenue sources for common wealth dividends. For example, we give free airwaves to media companies and nearly perpetual (and nearly global) copyright protection to entertainment and software companies. These free gifts are worth big bucks. If their recipients were required to pay us for them, we’d all be a little richer.

Regardless of its revenue sources, the mechanics of an American Permanent Fund would be simple. Every U.S. resident with a valid Social Security number would be eligible to open a Shared Wealth Account at a bank or brokerage firm; dividends would then be wired to their accounts monthly. There’d be no means test—and no shame—attached to these earnings, as there are to welfare. Nor would there be any hint of class warfare—Bill Gates would get his dividends along with everyone else. And since the revenue would come from common wealth, there’d be no need to raise taxes or cut government spending. All we’d have to do is charge for private use of common wealth and feed the resulting revenue into an electronic distribution system.

The United States isn’t broke, as some Republican say; we’re a very wealthy and productive country. The problem is that our wealth and productivity gains flow disproportionately to the rich in the form of dividends, capital gains, rent and interest. If we want to remain a middle class nation, that needs to change. Jobs alone won’t suffice. We need to complement wages with non-labor income from the wealth we all own. That would truly make us an ownership society.

—PETER BARNES
Photo by Wikinut Wealth & Job Creation

Editor: Another chapter in Celebrating the Commons: People Stories and Ideas for the New Year from Commons Magazine being presented each Sunday at EYNU.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Who Needs Government?


What’s right and what’s wrong with Libertarians’ vision of a volunteer society

Libertarians, the Tea Party and other so-called conservatives devoted to slashing all government spending not related to the military, prisons, the drug war and highways have an easy answer when asked what happens to people whose lives and livelihoods depend on public programs. They point to volunteerism—the tradition of people taking care of each other, which has sustained human civilization for millennia.

It’s a compelling idea, which evokes the spirit of the commons. Volunteers working largely outside the realm of government—neighborhood organizations, local fire brigades, blood banks and other civic initiatives—are obvious examples of commons-based sharing and caring.

So that means John Boehner, Ron Paul and Sean Hannity qualify as commoners, too, despite their adamant skepticism about Medicaid, environmental regulations and campaign finance limits? Not so fast! Volunteerism never rises above a convenient smokescreen, which right-of-center politicians use to justify shredding the social safety net. Increased support for the people and institutions that help the poor and the sick, strengthen our communities, protect the environment and generally make America a kinder and gentler place (to quote the most ardent proponent of volunteerism, George H.W. Bush) never make the final cut in the right-wing blueprint for our future. They’re a lot of talk, and but little action when it comes to actually supporting the kind of cooperative efforts that make a better world.

Theoretically you could imagine a classical conservative model of a commons-based society based upon strong incentives for everyday citizens people to fill the void of services now provided by federal, state and local governments—everything from police protection to basic scientific research to the Public Health Service. But to actually create such a society, however, would mean some sweeping changes to current economic and social policies that today’s right-wing spokesmen would never tolerate.

To truly encourage widespread volunteerism, we’d need to make sure that everyone (not just the well-to-do) had the time to do it. Most people today, working longer hours for less pay, are frantic just to get through the day. Finding extra time in their crunched schedules to manage upkeep at the local park or take care of elderly neighbors looks impossible.
What it would take to make this happen would be a dramatically expanded vacation time, family-leave benefits and probably a four-day workweek—or at least stringent enforcement of overtime provisions for all people working more than 40 hours a week.

Even more important to brightening what George H.W. Bush called the thousand points of light would be a return to the days of the family wage—the period before the 1970s when a middle-class household could get by on one workers’ wages. And unlike the days before the 1970s, minorities and low-wage workers would not be excluded from this social contract. And since we live in a different social era now, it’s likely that many couples today would elect to both work half time. But any way you want to do it, this would trigger a volcanic eruption of volunteers. The place to start would be enacting a Canadian-style health care system and tripling the minimum wage right away.

I cannot imagine political leaders who call themselves conservative these days would stand for any of the ideas laid out in the previous two paragraphs—although some of the people who vote for them might, including evangelicals, traditionalist Catholics and “conservatives” who are actually in favor of preserving community values rather than sacrificing them in the name of exponentially expanding corporate profits.

Boehner, Michelle Bachmann and many Democrats, too, would recoil at these ideas because they shift the balance of power in society from the wealthy who finance their campaigns to the poor and middle-class who, in the famous words of Bill Clinton, “work hard and play by the rules.”

These pro-volunteer, pro-commons policies also depend on government playing an important role: Enforcing new vacation, family leave, work hours and minimum wage laws, as well as making sure everyone has adequate health care coverage and access.

Politicians and pundits on the right often accuse progressives of being naïve about human nature for not recognizing the true motives that drive people’s behavior. That’s debatable in light of new evidence from many fields that our cooperative instincts are stronger than our selfish ones.

But we certainly have a case of the pot calling the kettle black right here: Conservatives laud volunteerism as the best way to maintain our social fabric, yet they naively believe that this will happen with no provisions to stop unscrupulous employers from stealing so much of people’s time with low wages and stingy vacations policies that they have no time left over for the common good.

—JAY WALLJASPER
Photo by Jam Creative - Encinitas Marine Safety

Editor: Another chapter in Celebrating the Commons: People Stories and Ideas for the New Year from Commons Magazine being presented each Sunday at EYNU.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Business Based on What We Share

                            COMMONER                             



Latino entrepreneur Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin returns to his roots with a local food project

“Common sense” is a term entrepreneur Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin uses with ever increasing enthusiasm to describe the local food initiative he is creating with immigrant Latino farmers in Minnesota.

“I come from the commons,” declares Haslett-Marroquin, who grew up in Guatemala, where his family still farms com- munal lands. “And I am going back to the commons.”

He is the co-founder of the fair trade Peace Coffee Company, and leads the Sustainable Food and Agriculture Program at the Minneapolis-based Main Street Project. In 2006 founded the Rural Enterprise Center in Northfield, Minnesota, which like many Midwestern communities has attracted growing numbers of Latin American immigrants.

In times of economic stagnation, many people worry that immigrants are taking jobs needed by native-born Americans. These fears are especially keen in small towns, where the impact of the continuing economic crisis hits hard. Haslett-Marroquin, however, sees an opportunity that can benefit both immigrants and the community as a whole.

He noticed that many people around Northfield were eager to eat more locally raised, healthy food but were unable to afford it or sometimes even find it. At the same time, he saw that Latino immigrants had lifelong experience as sustainable farmers but lacked the financial means to take up farming. The solution was obvious. Find a way to get Latino farmers back on the land and connect them with consumers seeking wholesome food. This is exactly what Haslett-Marroquin did in launching a free-range poultry enterprise, market garden and family farmer training program, all designed to put good food on local dinner tables and income into the pockets of family farmers.

“Agripreneurship” is how Haslett-Marroquin describes this effort to revive family farming for local markets by taking advantage of immigrants’ first-hand knowledge of small-scale sustainable agriculture practices. “Commons sense,” he says, is another word for what he and his colleagues are doing.

This training center and enterprise are a shining example of an emerging idea known as commons-based development—a strategy that strengthens the commons by making sure that economic expansion projects help the community as a whole.

While commons work is often seen as an activist or community cause more than a business model, Hasslett-Marroquin’s projects embody fundamental commons principles: a commitment to future generations, a focus on sustaining the earth, and a means of providing a benefit to everyone.

As Haslett-Marroquin says, “the commons is a very straightforward common-sense approach to creating systems that sustain society and sustain life on the planet.”

—JAY WALLJASPER

Editor: Another chapter in Celebrating the Commons: People Stories and Ideas for the New Year from Commons Magazine being presented each Sunday at EYNU.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

The Foundation of Commons-Based Solutions


Six elements of a new paradigm

  1. We understand that everyone belongs—and everyone has a stake in any decisions made. No exceptions.
  2. We act out of sufficiency (“there is enough”) and share a mutual responsibility to take care of this abundance and pass it on.
  3. We value the humanity of everyone.
  4. We seek a rough social equity in decision-making, outcomes and across society as a whole.
  5. We take history into account—everyone’s history. Who we are, what we’ve experienced and where we come from.
  6. We put structures, systems or rules in place to make sure everyone belongs and ensure continuity of this work into the future.

—THE ON THE COMMONS TEAM
Photo by Ben Strader.

Editor: Another chapter in Celebrating the Commons: People Stories and Ideas for the New Year from Commons Magazine being presented each Sunday at EYNU.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Stealing the Common from the Goose


A 17th century rhyme that stands the test of time

This 17th century folk poem is one of the pithiest condemnations of the English enclosure movement—the process of fencing off common land and turning it into private property. In a few lines, the poem manages to criticize double standards, expose the artificial and controversial nature of property rights, and take a slap at the legitimacy of state power. And it does it all with humor, without jargon, and in rhyming couplets.

– James Boyle, Professor at Duke Law School

The law locks up the man or woman 
Who steals the goose off the common 
But leaves the greater villain loose 
Who steals the common from the goose.

The law demands that we atone 
When we take things we do not own 
But leaves the lords and ladies fine 
Who takes things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don’t escape 
If they conspire the law to break; 
This must be so but they endure 
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman 
Who steals the goose from off the common 
And geese will still a common lack 
Till they go and steal it back.


Editor: Another chapter in Celebrating the Commons: People Stories and Ideas for the New Year from Commons Magazine being presented each Sunday at EYNU.