We need a recognition in America that we should deliberately begin to broaden the productive capital ownership base in a way that is consistent with the laws of property and the Constitutional safeguards of the rights of men and women to own property and be productive.
Apple should not only pay a quarterly dividend but should fully pay out the full earnings of the company through dividends, and issue and sell new stock to raise monies to grow the company.
The federal government should acknowledge its obligation to make productive capital ownership economically purchasable by capitalless Americans using capital credit. Historically, capital has been the primary engine of industrialization. But as used, as binary economist Louis Kelso has argued, has, as well, “been the chief cause of the institutional deformities that have created and maintained two incompatible classes: the overcapitalized and the undercapitalized.”
We need to arrive at a new market economy structure in which on one level the employees of a corporation could walk into management and demand, in collective bargaining, the use of an ESOP—not just to trade a single block of stock for wage concessions, but to redesign the future of the company and its employees. We need, as a society, the assurance that as a corporate employer grows, it builds ownership into its employees (and others who are not employees). All of them! When people are in a position to earn the wages of their capital as well as the wages of their labor, their company is in a position to be more competitive through lower labor costs and increased technological innovation, while achieving higher employee incomes through the employee’ capital.
We can achieve this by extending capital credit to employees of companies and other citizens, with payback from the future earnings of the new capital assets. One fully paid for, the earnings should be fully paid out as dividends to the new capitalists, and serve as a growing source of income.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-apple-cook-20120320,0,7700902.story
