Gar Alperovitz - Latest Comments

Re: Congratulations to the workers of the New Era Windows Cooperative!

jona — Fri, 10 May 2013 16:17:23 -0000

go coop! don't stop! go coop! don't stop! :)

Re: Congratulations to the workers of the New Era Windows Cooperative!

Luke — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:18:43 -0000

woohoo!

Re: When Martin Luther King Came to Cambridge: An Historic Conversation about an Historic Moment

elsa labonski — Mon, 06 May 2013 17:35:35 -0000

I enjoyed your interview on WLRN, in South Florida today - Have you heard of Move To Amend - We are a grassroots organization trying to amend the US Constitution to overturn the Citizens' United ruling - I would like to post your book link on our Broward County website -

Re: The Question of Socialism (and Beyond!) Is About to Open Up in These United States

Adam Eran — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:52:37 -0000

When I kidded a coworker who was about to be promoted to management about his entry into the pointy-haired Dilbert boss realm, he told me "Management can't possibly know what the technicians do. What managers need to do is manage their own ignorance."

...Maybe a new model might make managing ignorance more productive.

Re: Laura Flanders talks to Gar Alperovitz about What Then Must We Do?

UrsusMajor — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:16:06 -0000

We have nothing at all like representative Democracy in this "country." The states have never been "united." The USA must break up into manageable regions, or even independent nations. California would be the 5th richest nation in the world. Califia Rex!

Re: The Question of Socialism (and Beyond!) Is About to Open Up in These United States

Ralph Haygood — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:37:47 -0000

Thanks for this post. I've recommended it to my friends as a nice, concise overview of many of your ideas.

Regarding large enterprises, it's conceivable, even probable that the need for them will decrease as technology improves. For example, solar, biogas, and other renewables will reduce the need for the environmentally and politically problematic fossil fuels industry and for industrial-scale energy production more generally; 3D printing and related technologies could largely obviate the centralized manufacture and long-distance distribution of many everyday goods; etc. To be clear, I don't imagine technological improvements will solve the problems of large enterprises by themselves, but they may well help.

Re: Wall Street Journal More Interested in Caviar and Foie Gras Than Worker Ownership

Daniel Platt — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 19:31:26 -0000

This proves better than anything where the priority lies in the eyes of media magnates. Is it that they think coverage of cooperative business models and worker-ownership won't sell? Do they simply not care? Whatever the case may be, these numbers just prove what already is pretty obvious. Thank you Gar Alperovitz for your insight, as sharp as ever. I discovered your writing here (http://empiricalmag.blogspot.c... and have never been disappointed.

Re: If You Don’t Like Capitalism, and You Don’t Like Socialism, What Do You Want?

Macrocompassion — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 10:45:06 -0000

What I Want to See - Land Value Taxation, because..
Its not Money but Opportunity that is Lacking Speculation in land values causes useful land to be withheld, which drives up prices and stops opportunity. Problem is solved by taxing land values instead of earnings. 14 ASPECTS OF Land Value Taxation Adds to the national income. Costs less to collect than other production-based taxes. Stabilizes the macro-economy, stops the 18 year housing boom/bust cycle. Is progressive , owners pay tax in proportion to the site value. Owners pay regardless of how land is used. When leased to tenants the resulting ground-rent is the tax. Stops speculation in land prices. Withholding land from proper use is too costly. Reduces the sales price of sites, although their value (usefulness) may continue to grow. Land owners are unable to pass the tax to their tenant renters, due to less competition for land use. Speculators in land values will want to foreclose on mortgages and withdraw money for re-investment. LVT to be introduced gradually, allowing investors time to transfer money to company-shares, where the expansion will meet the increased demand. Causes incentive to use land for production, rather than it lying idle or being partly used. Causes greater working opportunities to exist due to cheaper land and a greater number of available sites. Consumer goods cheapen since entrepreneurs have less difficulty in starting and running their businesses. Demand grows, unemployment drops. Investment is withdrawn from land and placed in durable capital goods. The collection of taxes from productive effort and commerce is socially unjust. LVT replaces this extortion by gathering the surplus rental income which comes without exertion. It is a natural system. Bribery and corruption cease. Before, this was due to the leaking of news of municipal plans for housing development.

Re: Beyond Corporate Capitalism: Not So Wild a Dream

Markus Kanerva — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 17:17:48 -0000

Hi, you wrote that "
A recent Pew Research Center poll found that a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of corporations—a significant shift from only twelve years ago, when nearly three-quarters held a favorable view. At the same time, two recent Rasmussen surveys found Americans under 30—the people who will build the next politics—almost equally divided as to whether capitalism or socialism is preferable. Another Pew survey found that 18- to 29-year-olds have a favorable reaction to the term “socialism” by a margin of 49 to 43 percent." I'd like to refer to those mentioned Pew surveys but can't find them and you dont' provide any source information here. Could you help me out?

Re: Speech at Strategies for a New Economy Conference

Eric Edge — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 23:32:20 -0000

the point on democratic take over of local credit union (coop) banks to fund new economic ventures is brilliant. this strategy needs to be shouted from the mountain tops.

Re: The Cleveland Model

Canobs — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 01:03:50 -0000

All USA workers unions are also proletarian communism organizations

Re: The Cleveland Model

Canobs — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 00:57:16 -0000

What is so bad with communism, which means using the resources for the community, cooperatives are a communist system, some religious groups like the Amish and Mennonites have a communist system, your city town hall is for the commune then communist ____ The soviet system had to be modernized and democratized, and certainly not destroyed ___ Except for the most ignorant American Republicans who think they are in a democratic honestly run country. ___ Read more at - webofdebt.com/articles - and - canobs.livejournal.com

Re: The Cleveland Model

Canobs — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 00:44:33 -0000

__Looks like a PPP, private public partnership, which later become a PP, private partnership, then a , fully private recuperated venture, thanks to their well paid convincing administrators lobbeyists, as happened several times in Europe ____ Hoping this will not happen with this one on the long run.

Re: The Cleveland Model

Bill f — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 21:35:56 -0000

Sounds like communism to me.
What we need are fair systems that encourage and support individual and cooperative development.

Re: The Cleveland Model

Thomas Kuna — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 15:04:05 -0000

This is what we'd like to do with our Vet's Green-Energy Coops. But we don't have cash enough. We need a 1% tax on financial transactions over $50,000 to go towards grants for the Pro-Life, Pro-Green Economy non-profits to install non-nuclear, non-fossil-fuel energy production in counties and groups of counties, And we need 20-hours work for 40-hours pay with the difference not paid for by the employer, but by Earned Income Credits funded by a special Social-Profits-Sharing sur tax on the net incomes of persons netting more than the Adult-Per-Capita GNP of their nation, after costs of doing business, investments, savings and donations. See: www.w-e-r-co.com

Re: How Big Banks Run the World – at Your Expense

Thomas Hanna — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 10:00:23 -0000

The securities are government debt issued by the US Treasury.

When the government needs
to borrow money, they create a security giving a certain rate of
interest. It gets bought by a bank. If the Fed wants to increase the
money supply, it can print money (electronically create it) and buy up
some of these securities from the banks.

The general argument is that
instead of doing this process through private banks (and thus having to
pay a great deal of interest on the debt), that the Fed should just buy
the treasuries (or other debt instruments) directly from the government
(at low or no interest).

I suppose that if there was years
of surplus and the national debt was paid down to zero, then the
government would not need to issue securities to pay for things, and as
such the ability of the Fed to use this way of increasing the money
supply would be limited. However, that is completely unlikely and
implausible.

Plus, the Fed still has other
tools to increase/decrease the money supply (setting the reserve
rate & setting the discount rate)...

Re: How Big Banks Run the World – at Your Expense

Ralph Haygood — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:31:02 -0000

"The Federal Reserve uses these to buy up securities owned by banks": What kinds of securities? Is the Fed's ability to inject money into the economy through such purchases at all limited by the availability of such securities? Or are banks able to manufacture them at will? I'd appreciate clarification.