Bernie Wants You to Own More of the Means of Production

Authored by jacobinmag.com and submitted by progressive-alliance
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Bernie Sanders released a proposal today that would gradually shift 20 percent of corporate equity into funds owned and controlled by the workers in each company. The plan, which would apply to all publicly-traded companies and large closely-held companies, would move 2 percent of corporate stock into worker funds each year for a decade. Once the shares are transferred into the funds, workers would begin receiving dividends and have the ability to exercise the voting rights of the shares, including the right to vote on corporate board elections and on shareholder resolutions.

Sanders’s plan is by far the most radical worker ownership proposal put forward by a presidential candidate in recent memory. By last count, the market value of publicly-traded domestic companies stood at $35.6 trillion. This means that the Sanders plan would shift at least $7.1 trillion of corporate equity into worker funds by gradually diluting the value of previously-issued corporate stock.

Those who stand to “lose” from the proposal are the incumbent owners of corporate equity, which are overwhelmingly affluent people. At present, the top 10 percent of families own around 86.4 percent of corporate equities and mutual fund shares, with the top one percent owning 52 percent by themselves. Closely-held businesses, which will also be affected by the scheme if they are large enough, have similarly concentrated ownership, with the top 10 percent of families owning 87.5 percent of private business equity and the top one percent of families owning 57.5 percent of it.

Of course, these incumbent owners will not actually lose anything in an absolute sense. The average historical return of the US stock market has been 9.8 percent per year, while the average return of the last 10 years has been just over 13 percent. The effect of the two percent share issuances is to knock the total rate of return down by two percentage points, meaning that incumbent owners still get richer year-over-year, just less so than they would absent the Sanders plan.

_TheDoctorPotter on October 27th, 2019 at 14:50 UTC »

The Republicans paint free healthcare as socialism.

They paint free college as socialism.

But when Bernie comes out with a policy that is literally the definition of socialism (shifting ownership of the means of production to the workers) then they're curiously silent.

Why? They don't actually know what socialism means.

codacoda74 on October 27th, 2019 at 14:37 UTC »

Automation is more prevalent than we realize in wealth consolidation (think algobot nano second trades that make low margin high volume wins). But the talking points here are more about public ownership and control (police, firefighter, etc). Things that should be are under threat (education, water) and things that aren't should be (health, insurance). It's not communism, it's barely even socialism in the classic sense. It's more a Stop Look Listen moment within this globalist economy to assess how the 1% hoard wealth while the rest of the population slides backwards.

ultrachrome on October 27th, 2019 at 13:11 UTC »

" At present, the top 10 percent of families own around 86.4 percent of corporate equities and mutual fund shares, with the top one percent owning 52 percent by themselves. "

Time to share some of the gains we've had from technology and automation.