An emancipation proclamation for the Oooooonership Society (that will drive red statists bananas)
This NPR story describes a transforming insight in Montana that deserves wider dissemination.
In nuce: Some employers (not just the usual suspects: Wal-Mart, Costco, Kmart, e.g.) stay competitive by paying so little they drive some employees to seek help from the government. Their Wal-Martian bonanzas leave room for some to qualify for publicly-subsidized healthcare and housing.
A state bill would tax retailers on gross receipts above $20 million a year unless they pay full timers something approaching a living wage.
Right now, says one legislator, "Their employment practices are shifting costs on the rest of us."
Retailers would be exempt from the new tax so long as they pay each full-time employee $22,000 a year including benefits, as long as at least 3/4 of their workers are indeed full time.
Large surprise: business organizations are opposed. We compassionate their screams.
The current USian Middle Class Dystopic bottom line goes like this: the retailers' bottom line business model drives the costs of survivability from employers to public support funded by the rest of us, at a time when Ooooooooonership society ideologues aim to eliminate major building blocks of public support while supporting business models that send work to China or Medicaid, and workers and their families to the Dumpster.
An "actual" Ownership Society might consider holding employers responsible for enabling their workers to belong to it.
In nuce: Some employers (not just the usual suspects: Wal-Mart, Costco, Kmart, e.g.) stay competitive by paying so little they drive some employees to seek help from the government. Their Wal-Martian bonanzas leave room for some to qualify for publicly-subsidized healthcare and housing.
A state bill would tax retailers on gross receipts above $20 million a year unless they pay full timers something approaching a living wage.
Right now, says one legislator, "Their employment practices are shifting costs on the rest of us."
Retailers would be exempt from the new tax so long as they pay each full-time employee $22,000 a year including benefits, as long as at least 3/4 of their workers are indeed full time.
Large surprise: business organizations are opposed. We compassionate their screams.
The current USian Middle Class Dystopic bottom line goes like this: the retailers' bottom line business model drives the costs of survivability from employers to public support funded by the rest of us, at a time when Ooooooooonership society ideologues aim to eliminate major building blocks of public support while supporting business models that send work to China or Medicaid, and workers and their families to the Dumpster.
An "actual" Ownership Society might consider holding employers responsible for enabling their workers to belong to it.
posted by Tom Matrullo at Wednesday, February 09, 2005
1 Comments:
A superb business model: trash what you own (which includes Iraq?).
A better business model: haul off USian trash at $.01 on the pound.
Billions to be made, while the trashmaker fades into oblivion.
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