Hello Old Trapper,
https://www.newsweek.com/2014/02/07/why-thomas-jefferson-favored-profit-sharing-245454.html
President Obama's State of the Union speech last week focused on America's severe and growing inequality, but he stopped short of repeating the Founding Fathers' many warnings that this condition could doom American democracy.
The founders, despite decades of rancorous disagreements about almost every other aspect of their grand experiment, agreed that America would survive and thrive only if there was widespread ownership of land and businesses.
George Washington, nine months before his inauguration as the first president, predicted that America "will be the most favorable country of any kind in the world for persons of industry and frugality, possessed of moderate capital, to inhabit." And, he continued, "it will not be less advantageous to the happiness of the lowest class of people, because of the equal distribution of property."
The second president, John Adams, feared "monopolies of land" would destroy the nation and that a business aristocracy born of inequality would manipulate voters, creating "a system of subordination to all... The capricious will of one or a very few" dominating the rest. Unless constrained, Adams wrote, "the rich and the proud" would wield economic and political power that "will destroy all the equality and liberty, with the consent and acclamations of the people themselves."
James Madison, the Constitution's main author, described inequality as an evil, saying government should prevent "an immoderate, and especially unmerited, accumulation of riches." He favored "the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigents towards a state of comfort."
Alexander Hamilton, who championed manufacturing and banking as the first Treasury secretary, also argued for widespread ownership of assets, warning in 1782 that, "whenever a discretionary power is lodged in any set of men over the property of their neighbors, they will abuse it."
What a great article. It would make some of these defenders of the wealthy just cringe:
"Blasi suggests that Congress embrace that 1792 model. For example, he says Congress could allow accelerated depreciation - quickly writing off the cost of new buildings and equipment for tax purposes - only at companies that pay workers in part with a share or profits or shares of stock. Companies that declined would still get the full write-off, but it would take longer, costing them more taxes in early years.
Madison once extrapolated the U.S. population into the early 1900s and concluded that not everyone could farm. But he wrote that since no limit existed on businesses, government could encourage ownership shares to counter what he wrote were the "evils" of concentrated wealth.
Blasi and his co-authors show that in the late 19th century, paying workers a share of profits helped build the fortunes of many of the most successful businessmen. John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil, George Eastman of Eastman Kodak, William Cooper Procter of Procter & Gamble and grain merchant Charles A. Pillsbury all used profit-sharing to attract the best workers, discourage unions, reduce turnover and give employees a greater incentive to make their businesses prosper. "They did it, for sure, out of self-interest," Blasi says, "but it was an enlightened self-interest that benefitted society as a whole.""
Sounds like a great idea to put the capitalist profit motive back into workers.
Currently most workers are not chasing the carrot, they are running from the stick. They word hard because they fear losing their job, income, health care, and ability to own a home. They accept poor treatment and untenable working stresses because they are afraid to speak up.
They are not motivated to do anything helpful either, or make any waves. They are like zombies who just want to put in their time, get their paychecks and get out of there. The system creates that:
"There are nearly 140 million business employees in America, but just 19 million own stock in their companies, and most of that is as a match in a 401(k) plan. Management typically restricts the rights to these shares: Managers vote the shares and workers cannot sell before age 55 or leaving the company.
Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), created in 1956 in what is now Silicon Valley, are out of fashion, even though companies with ESOPs tend to be significantly more profitable. San Francisco financier Louis O. Kelso, who taught that every worker should be a capitalist, invented the ESOP. Critics called him a Marxist and worse. Kelso's lawyer, Robert Ashford, says that the idea of owning shares and sharing in profits has been lost on most Americans, although millions of them are grumbling that the economy is growing, but their paychecks are not.
Ashford, a professor at Syracuse's College of Law, teaches that if more Americans could buy stocks with the dividends paid by companies, the whole country would benefit. The wider distribution of capital, he says, would give most Americans a direct stake in the success of business.
And that, say Ashford and Blasi, is exactly the future envisioned by the framers more than two centuries ago - an America in which every worker is a capitalist."
