Economics is Taught with a Left Wing Bias

Are you seriously telling me that you don't think that there was ever such a thing as the Democratic-Republican party? Have you ever taken a US History course?

 

Study into the actual practice of capitalism. Ever read a corporate financial statement? Did you see a line indicating liabilities? Much or most of it is loans. Businesses normally borrow money to finance their needs, whether new equipment or cost of starting a new division or any number of other needs. And with all the corporations and all the combined debt, government has to help banking with the burden. At other times when corporations are flush they buy debt by loaning to the government. That is the situation today. The government spends their money and then it is owed back to the corporations. That is government debt too.

 

Why doesn't labor establish worker-managed businesses?

 

1) as if being a communist is not arrogant and condescending
2) obviously if you could confute my posts you would be all happy to do just that

 

Government helping banking is anti-capitalist.

Government owes money to its creditors. It matters now whether those creditors are private individuals, trusts, non-profits, worker co-ops, or foreign governments. It borrowed money, and it owes money to its bondholders. Nothing to do with capitalism.

 

or why doesn't management or owners establish it and make the company a fortune?? Obviously it does not work despite the daily freedom that capitalism affords to move in that direction

 

and if socialism has to slowly starve to death another 120 million human souls its worth the effort because one of these times socialism is going to work!!

 

WORKER OWNED COOPERATIVES

Much depends upon how the Worker Cooperative is structured. If it is for-profit, it can attract investors in order to expand. Which is the only point I am making. The money would come not from selling stock-ownership in the company, but loans.

The Worker Owned Company is owned by the workers, which also constitute the BoD. Non-voting outsiders can be asked to sit on the board, but without voting powers in order to give consultancy services.

There are quite a few Worker Cooperatives in the US (see report below), and with the failure of companies during the Great Recession here in Europe a good many have been formed. Most often to maintain an expertise that would otherwise have died, and is thus maintained.

Yugoslavia had companies owned and run by the workers. (When there was a Yugoslavia.) They worked well enough, but they were heavily supported by their principal client - the government.

Within the context of our market-economy, there is no reason why such a company cannot be owned and operated by the workers themselves. As long as the workers who have full voting rights regarding corporate operations. (In the US, each worker has one vote - which is like owning one share in the company.)

Rather than shutting down, companies could have the option of becoming a cooperative if the workers decided communally that they wanted to do so.The only contention is if the company declared bankruptcy and has significant debt-owed. Those owning the debt will want compensation - even if it just dime on the dollar of value. This is where the government can step in and pay the debt (at the reduced valuation) and become "part owner" of the company - with repayment of the reduced debt-owed on very soft terms that allows the company to make operational investments necessary to continue production. (In fact, the debt need not ever be fully reimbursed, the government not being a mortgagee.)

Another incentive to promote Worker Owned Cooperatives would be to allow them a Corporate-Tax-Free Status - at least during a five-year start-up phase.

This formula is working in numerous EU countries as well as America and mostly as regards small companies - typically never more than 100 workers. Worker-owned cooperatives is nothing new, many countries employ them. See here: List of worker cooperatives (by country).

As you will see from the WikiPedia article linked above, America has the most of them - or perhaps the author of the article could not get an exhaustive list for Europe ...

PS: Getting Rid of Bosses - excerpt:

 

The BoD IS the workers. And why would the worker-owners not with to make as much profit as they can?

 

In which case, those people wouldn't be investors. They would be creditors.

 

Haven't we been over this?

 

You offered no satisfactory answer. If a group of people wish to start a business, then they do so.

 

No, I ignored you because you seem more interested in personal attacks and boastful assumptions than in discussion of facts.

And who's talking about communists and communism?

 

And then there was this little thing called a "bailout".

Look into it.

 

More conspiracy theories based on cherry-picked data and then distorted for benefit.

 

The point is to not make it the top priority above all else. That would be "profit-driven".

 

That incredibly anti-capitalist government action called the bailout.

 

So a group of workers would start a business and they would not be driven by profits? People work in order to make money, right?

 

There are many barriers and difficulties with the deck stacked against them. See post 1059 for a list of helpful legislation we could call for. LafeyetteBiz posted some above in 1208, too.

 

Yes, and demanded by capitalist banks.

 

Digest what I posted. It's in there.

 

Yes, there are lots of barriers to starting a business. They should all be eliminated.

 

Demanded by cronies. Do you seriously think that the BoD of worker co-op banks wouldn't seek favors from government?

The fact that government can steal your money and give it to a bank (or anyone else who happens to be their crony) is the problem.

 

So the workers who are owners of a worker co-op don't want more money (profit) to buy things for them and their family?

 

Longshot is just trying to change the subject from neoclassical economics to economics. I have already said that economics is potentially an empirical science. It is modern mainstream neoclassical economics that isn't and can't be.

I agree it is the most widely accepted school, just as phlogiston theory was the most widely accepted school in chemistry before actual experimental chemistry.

No, that is false. Its axioms, definitions and assumptions are false, tendentious and absurd.

Marx was a quack. George's analysis has never been refuted, and most of the economists who correctly predicted the GFC used Georgist or George-compatible assumptions.

Economics is currently a bunch of false and dishonest theories masquerading as science.