Please discuss these points below and contribute your own ideas.
At a time of anti-corporate protests there is a need for a solution to the excesses of our corporate overlords. I also want to stop rampant capitalism and rampant corporatism. But I always remind myself of the score from the 20th century:
Nazis: 8 million people murdered
Communists: 60 million people murdered
These two tyrannies were unspeakably evil. The nazis were defeated but the communists have just gone underground. Nazis are now a peripheral minority but some of the communists are brazen as journalists, economists, members of student gangs etc. and are still spreading their dystopia (and some are hidden - see The roots of New Labour).
So how do we tame capitalism without descending into tyranny? What is needed is an "Occupy" manifesto. This is surprisingly simple, the chief problem lies with greedy employees such as directors and bank staff who steal from shareholders and greedy apparatchiks who steal from the public sector, it is not with the "capitalist" pensioners and others who invest. To tame capitalism we must tame corporatism, we must stop the globalizing apparatchiks and thieves. The policies required to accomplish this are listed below and each point is then considered in more depth.
Stopping the apparatchiks and thieves:
Limit the power of senior corporate employees, including directors and public sector senior officials.
All incomes plus benefits, expenses, gains and bonuses should be limited to 30 times the median income per individual.
Public sector wages must be limited to 10 times the median income.
Tax dividends and personal capital gains at the same rate as income tax.
Corruption should be punished by a fine of at least 100 times the corrupt payment plus prison, MPs should be subject to the same anti-corruption legislation as civil servants.Every police force should have an anti-corruption squad.
Ensuring employment:
Regulate the banks and insurance companies
Ensure favourable trading conditions for UK manufacturers.
Abolish corporation tax for UK companies
The NHS and public sector must train and employ British staff and favour British suppliers..
Renegotiate the terms of EU membership to allow these policies and to allow our national government to opt out of regulations at any time.
Impose limits on the foreign ownership of companies operating in Britain See How far do countries permit foreign ownership
Stop immigration. See The benefits of immigration to the UK economy.
Reduce the dependence of Higher Education on Foreign students and hence boost UK youth employment by discontinuing automatic rights to stay in the UK. See Should universities and colleges be immigration agencies?
Simplify employment rules for small businesses.
Ensure that the public sector is no more than 30% of employment in any region.See Is Labour any more than the public sector party?.
Localism.
Protecting democracy:
Restructure higher education so that education is free. See Its education stupid!.
Lobbying of MPs and Government should occur in proper forums. Consultations on changes of law consult Trade Unions and Special Interest Groups and few other people, this should be broadened.
Half day holidays for political meetings perhaps twice a year.
Legislate that all schools should issue a warning about the media at least once a week to the whole school. See The London riots and the mediocracy
Change the electoral system to PR so that the government represents the people and politicians do not gang up against us
Stop immigration. There is no possibility that England will have a healthy democracy if in 25 years about half of the people under 40 come from abroad. (see ONS Predicted population of Britain).
Schools should announce one good thing about Britain at every assembly, teach British history and encourage community activity. See The teaching of history
Localism.
Senior employees such as directors are the evil face of capitalism although they are not themselves the capitalists. How can we control these "servants" who are feathering their own nests at everyone's expense?
The investors, who are the true capitalists can help, they should be able to sign on the internet to follow and vote at Company Annual General Meetings, they should have one vote each when remuneration and golden handshakes are considered (with a limit of £300 shareholding to get a vote - otherwise companies will be held to ransom by pressure groups). Perhaps there should even be perks for small shareholders who actually participate in Corporate governance, such as higher dividends. The senior staff in banks set the multi-million bonuses and scream that they have such expertise that they deserve the money. This claim is false, they are just gamblers. A bank might have 100 people gambling for it, they pay the 50 winners ridiculous salaries and demote or dismiss the 50 losers - the 50 who got the money were not clever, just lucky. It really will make no difference if salaries and commissions are limited. The government should try out limiting bonuses to say, £100,000 and see if this works.
Favourable conditions for UK manufacturers could be most easily imposed by a green, "distance tax". The distance tax would be, say, 30% on products produced outside the UK and reduced on a sliding scale to 0% for products produced within 20 miles. All products would be coded with exact latitude and longitude of origin. It would be levied by local authorities.
The NHS is a massive employer that offers jobs of all grades but it is importing vast numbers of employees from overseas rather than training people. These imports are due to two factors, the first is that British staff need absurd levels of qualification, such as degrees to be nurses, whereas foreign staff can be simply trained as nurses in their own countries. The second is that the management are unable to keep wage rates at a practical level. About 8% of the increase in joblessness in the past year was due to foreign workers in the NHS displacing British workers. If the figures are limited to female workers then about 15% of female jobs were displaced. The effect of the NHS foreign preference on employment of the British underclass who could be cleaners, porters and nursing assistants is enormous. Who do our politicians represent, their constituents or foreigners? Asking this question is not being a "little Englander" or "racist" it is simply sympathising with poor English people. The NHS and public sector should only employ foreign staff where their contribution is exceptional, for instance top oncologists or nobel prize winning economists.
The public sector are in a position of trust. They have abused this trust in recent years by linking their wages to those of bankers and other crooks. This must be stopped because every penny on a public servant's wage is a penny of tax. It impoverishes everyone. Public sector wages must be limited to 10 times the median income.
Provided that companies are allowed to keep their wealth there is no reason why the employees of these companies should be paid astronomical sums. Huge wages cheat the shareholders. A limit of 30 times the median wage should be imposed, any excess being taxed at 100%. This would lose £12 billion in tax revenue if implemented suddenly, a slow implementation over 5 years would allow lower paid staff to have higher wages and so make up for the tax shortfall. The top rate of tax should be no more than 50% to provide an incentive for hard work. The fear that this will lead to a "brain drain" is rubbish. Top professors and musicians usually work for far less than 30 times the median income. Gamblers in the banks and pension fund managers have been shown time and again to be little more effective in their investment strategies than children or throwing dice, what happens is that the half of these people who are lucky over a two or three year period are feted as geniuses.
Another reason for limiting top incomes is that excessive differentials in income lead to a progressive transfer of property into the hands of the wealthy. The wealthy use property and land as their principle asset investment. This drives up the price of property which in turn makes poorer property owners susceptible to increasing their indebtedness by taking out loans on their property for current spending. The poorer property owners then get into trouble paying interest and eventually lose their property to the wealthier investors. As well as a limit on top incomes there should be a limit of 4.5 times income for property loans and tighter rent controls. Immigration must be halted to stop population pressure on house prices.
We should abolish corporation tax because the money held by limited companies and PLCs is only useable for business. It is re-invested to make more money and this benefits everyone. (Investment by corporations in domestic property and land should be subject to special controls and dividends would be taxed normally). "Capital Allowances" should be voluntary and fully tax deductible.
The lower rates of tax on dividends compared with income is a scandal - all forms of income should have the same rate of tax and National Insurance (inc. employer's nic) should be abolished to create a single tax regime.
Foreign ownership of companies allows British capitalists to live abroad and avoid taxes and responsibilities. It also deprives companies of the higher functions such as R&D and senior management. A limit of 75% foreign ownership should be set for any market sector, less for strategic industries. British citizens living abroad should be subject to British taxation on dividends, income and gains from UK companies even if they change their nationality.
The banks must be regulated so that they cannot lend more than 4 times their assets, the limit introduced over a decade, starting at 15 times assets. Banks are licensed by government to have the special boon of lending money that they do not possess. This license must limit their lending ratio. It should be illegal for high street banks to deal in fantasy operations such as derivatives - if they wish to do this they should set up separate companies that are not banks to do it and these should be regulated as a form of gambling.
Higher education should be restructured so that universities offer academic degrees and polytechnics offer vocational degrees in collaboration with industry. Many of the current universities should be converted back to polytechnics so that only 10% of the population passes through the universities and 30% passes through polytechnics. It is crazy to have 40% of the population with academic degrees that have no value in the labour market. All higher education should be free and employers should be encouraged to pay for polytechnic training "on the job" with incentives such as enforceable 6 yr contracts for trainees.
The regulation of lobbying is required. MPs should hold public consultation meetings and canvass for written opinion on major issues. Any MP or government official who accepts lobbying outside of these constraints should be fined and dismissed. Any company or individual who maintains that they can gain preferential access to MPs or government should be charged with fraud and jailed because such an eventuality should not be possible.
Democracy is the most important protection for the citizen. There should be two half day holidays each year for attendance at political meetings. Employers should be recompensed for half a day's pay on the presentation of an attendance ticket with their corporate tax returns. Parties are currently registered as political parties if they accept subscriptions so any registered party that truly holds a meeting should be able to issue the free tickets. The apathetic will go on holiday but those with even a marginal interest in politics will begin to join parties and re-vitalise civil society. This change will also help to finance political parties and avoid state funding.
The media have become the most powerful organ of modern society. Modern society has become a Mediocracy. The media have opted for the philosophy of "post modernism" because it increases their viewing/reading/listening figures. Unfortunately post-modernism replaces truth with "personal truth" - the lies we tell ourselves for comfort, statistics with entertaining anecdotes, "strong opinions" with avoiding the issue, ethics with the requirements of sponsors, expertise with entertaining eccentricity, structure with the tale of the hero who overcomes structure. The media are solely for entertainment, they are about stories that sell, they no longer produce valid social, political, scientific or economic analysis. We must train all children, from 5 years onwards that the media must not be believed. In fact "post-modernism" is no more than the way you would run a paper or TV station to get readers or viewers, the media and post-modernism are the same. Modern directors and senior executives have adopted post-modern values, they believe they have their own truth, that personal fame and success transcends social or professional duty and that their own free movement is all that matters.
Incidentally, if you do not agree that the media shapes a society can you explain how propaganda changed Germany and Russia into willing tyrannies? If a controlled media can do such damage you can understand the damage that an anarchic media might do.
Put all these policies into effect and capitalism will be tamed, there will be full employment and people will feel that they belong.
Further reading:
The advantages of globalization
Could the credit crunch have been foreseen ?
The UK National Debt and the credit crunch
The worst governments since the first world war
Executive pay
Communism did not deliver what it promised
Marxism and the credit crunch
The London Riots and the mediocracy
Murdoch, Blair, Cameron and the police
Communism and the education system
Source URL: http://indahrahmadewi.blogspot.com/2011/10/occupy-manifesto.html
Visit Indah Rahma Dewi for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection
At a time of anti-corporate protests there is a need for a solution to the excesses of our corporate overlords. I also want to stop rampant capitalism and rampant corporatism. But I always remind myself of the score from the 20th century:
Nazis: 8 million people murdered
Communists: 60 million people murdered
These two tyrannies were unspeakably evil. The nazis were defeated but the communists have just gone underground. Nazis are now a peripheral minority but some of the communists are brazen as journalists, economists, members of student gangs etc. and are still spreading their dystopia (and some are hidden - see The roots of New Labour).
So how do we tame capitalism without descending into tyranny? What is needed is an "Occupy" manifesto. This is surprisingly simple, the chief problem lies with greedy employees such as directors and bank staff who steal from shareholders and greedy apparatchiks who steal from the public sector, it is not with the "capitalist" pensioners and others who invest. To tame capitalism we must tame corporatism, we must stop the globalizing apparatchiks and thieves. The policies required to accomplish this are listed below and each point is then considered in more depth.
Stopping the apparatchiks and thieves:
Limit the power of senior corporate employees, including directors and public sector senior officials.
All incomes plus benefits, expenses, gains and bonuses should be limited to 30 times the median income per individual.
Public sector wages must be limited to 10 times the median income.
Tax dividends and personal capital gains at the same rate as income tax.
Corruption should be punished by a fine of at least 100 times the corrupt payment plus prison, MPs should be subject to the same anti-corruption legislation as civil servants.Every police force should have an anti-corruption squad.
Ensuring employment:
Regulate the banks and insurance companies
Ensure favourable trading conditions for UK manufacturers.
Abolish corporation tax for UK companies
The NHS and public sector must train and employ British staff and favour British suppliers..
Renegotiate the terms of EU membership to allow these policies and to allow our national government to opt out of regulations at any time.
Impose limits on the foreign ownership of companies operating in Britain See How far do countries permit foreign ownership
Stop immigration. See The benefits of immigration to the UK economy.
Reduce the dependence of Higher Education on Foreign students and hence boost UK youth employment by discontinuing automatic rights to stay in the UK. See Should universities and colleges be immigration agencies?
Simplify employment rules for small businesses.
Ensure that the public sector is no more than 30% of employment in any region.See Is Labour any more than the public sector party?.
Localism.
Protecting democracy:
Restructure higher education so that education is free. See Its education stupid!.
Lobbying of MPs and Government should occur in proper forums. Consultations on changes of law consult Trade Unions and Special Interest Groups and few other people, this should be broadened.
Half day holidays for political meetings perhaps twice a year.
Legislate that all schools should issue a warning about the media at least once a week to the whole school. See The London riots and the mediocracy
Change the electoral system to PR so that the government represents the people and politicians do not gang up against us
Stop immigration. There is no possibility that England will have a healthy democracy if in 25 years about half of the people under 40 come from abroad. (see ONS Predicted population of Britain).
Schools should announce one good thing about Britain at every assembly, teach British history and encourage community activity. See The teaching of history
Localism.
Senior employees such as directors are the evil face of capitalism although they are not themselves the capitalists. How can we control these "servants" who are feathering their own nests at everyone's expense?
The investors, who are the true capitalists can help, they should be able to sign on the internet to follow and vote at Company Annual General Meetings, they should have one vote each when remuneration and golden handshakes are considered (with a limit of £300 shareholding to get a vote - otherwise companies will be held to ransom by pressure groups). Perhaps there should even be perks for small shareholders who actually participate in Corporate governance, such as higher dividends. The senior staff in banks set the multi-million bonuses and scream that they have such expertise that they deserve the money. This claim is false, they are just gamblers. A bank might have 100 people gambling for it, they pay the 50 winners ridiculous salaries and demote or dismiss the 50 losers - the 50 who got the money were not clever, just lucky. It really will make no difference if salaries and commissions are limited. The government should try out limiting bonuses to say, £100,000 and see if this works.
Favourable conditions for UK manufacturers could be most easily imposed by a green, "distance tax". The distance tax would be, say, 30% on products produced outside the UK and reduced on a sliding scale to 0% for products produced within 20 miles. All products would be coded with exact latitude and longitude of origin. It would be levied by local authorities.
The NHS is a massive employer that offers jobs of all grades but it is importing vast numbers of employees from overseas rather than training people. These imports are due to two factors, the first is that British staff need absurd levels of qualification, such as degrees to be nurses, whereas foreign staff can be simply trained as nurses in their own countries. The second is that the management are unable to keep wage rates at a practical level. About 8% of the increase in joblessness in the past year was due to foreign workers in the NHS displacing British workers. If the figures are limited to female workers then about 15% of female jobs were displaced. The effect of the NHS foreign preference on employment of the British underclass who could be cleaners, porters and nursing assistants is enormous. Who do our politicians represent, their constituents or foreigners? Asking this question is not being a "little Englander" or "racist" it is simply sympathising with poor English people. The NHS and public sector should only employ foreign staff where their contribution is exceptional, for instance top oncologists or nobel prize winning economists.
The public sector are in a position of trust. They have abused this trust in recent years by linking their wages to those of bankers and other crooks. This must be stopped because every penny on a public servant's wage is a penny of tax. It impoverishes everyone. Public sector wages must be limited to 10 times the median income.
Provided that companies are allowed to keep their wealth there is no reason why the employees of these companies should be paid astronomical sums. Huge wages cheat the shareholders. A limit of 30 times the median wage should be imposed, any excess being taxed at 100%. This would lose £12 billion in tax revenue if implemented suddenly, a slow implementation over 5 years would allow lower paid staff to have higher wages and so make up for the tax shortfall. The top rate of tax should be no more than 50% to provide an incentive for hard work. The fear that this will lead to a "brain drain" is rubbish. Top professors and musicians usually work for far less than 30 times the median income. Gamblers in the banks and pension fund managers have been shown time and again to be little more effective in their investment strategies than children or throwing dice, what happens is that the half of these people who are lucky over a two or three year period are feted as geniuses.
Another reason for limiting top incomes is that excessive differentials in income lead to a progressive transfer of property into the hands of the wealthy. The wealthy use property and land as their principle asset investment. This drives up the price of property which in turn makes poorer property owners susceptible to increasing their indebtedness by taking out loans on their property for current spending. The poorer property owners then get into trouble paying interest and eventually lose their property to the wealthier investors. As well as a limit on top incomes there should be a limit of 4.5 times income for property loans and tighter rent controls. Immigration must be halted to stop population pressure on house prices.
We should abolish corporation tax because the money held by limited companies and PLCs is only useable for business. It is re-invested to make more money and this benefits everyone. (Investment by corporations in domestic property and land should be subject to special controls and dividends would be taxed normally). "Capital Allowances" should be voluntary and fully tax deductible.
The lower rates of tax on dividends compared with income is a scandal - all forms of income should have the same rate of tax and National Insurance (inc. employer's nic) should be abolished to create a single tax regime.
Foreign ownership of companies allows British capitalists to live abroad and avoid taxes and responsibilities. It also deprives companies of the higher functions such as R&D and senior management. A limit of 75% foreign ownership should be set for any market sector, less for strategic industries. British citizens living abroad should be subject to British taxation on dividends, income and gains from UK companies even if they change their nationality.
The banks must be regulated so that they cannot lend more than 4 times their assets, the limit introduced over a decade, starting at 15 times assets. Banks are licensed by government to have the special boon of lending money that they do not possess. This license must limit their lending ratio. It should be illegal for high street banks to deal in fantasy operations such as derivatives - if they wish to do this they should set up separate companies that are not banks to do it and these should be regulated as a form of gambling.
Higher education should be restructured so that universities offer academic degrees and polytechnics offer vocational degrees in collaboration with industry. Many of the current universities should be converted back to polytechnics so that only 10% of the population passes through the universities and 30% passes through polytechnics. It is crazy to have 40% of the population with academic degrees that have no value in the labour market. All higher education should be free and employers should be encouraged to pay for polytechnic training "on the job" with incentives such as enforceable 6 yr contracts for trainees.
The regulation of lobbying is required. MPs should hold public consultation meetings and canvass for written opinion on major issues. Any MP or government official who accepts lobbying outside of these constraints should be fined and dismissed. Any company or individual who maintains that they can gain preferential access to MPs or government should be charged with fraud and jailed because such an eventuality should not be possible.
Democracy is the most important protection for the citizen. There should be two half day holidays each year for attendance at political meetings. Employers should be recompensed for half a day's pay on the presentation of an attendance ticket with their corporate tax returns. Parties are currently registered as political parties if they accept subscriptions so any registered party that truly holds a meeting should be able to issue the free tickets. The apathetic will go on holiday but those with even a marginal interest in politics will begin to join parties and re-vitalise civil society. This change will also help to finance political parties and avoid state funding.
The media have become the most powerful organ of modern society. Modern society has become a Mediocracy. The media have opted for the philosophy of "post modernism" because it increases their viewing/reading/listening figures. Unfortunately post-modernism replaces truth with "personal truth" - the lies we tell ourselves for comfort, statistics with entertaining anecdotes, "strong opinions" with avoiding the issue, ethics with the requirements of sponsors, expertise with entertaining eccentricity, structure with the tale of the hero who overcomes structure. The media are solely for entertainment, they are about stories that sell, they no longer produce valid social, political, scientific or economic analysis. We must train all children, from 5 years onwards that the media must not be believed. In fact "post-modernism" is no more than the way you would run a paper or TV station to get readers or viewers, the media and post-modernism are the same. Modern directors and senior executives have adopted post-modern values, they believe they have their own truth, that personal fame and success transcends social or professional duty and that their own free movement is all that matters.
Incidentally, if you do not agree that the media shapes a society can you explain how propaganda changed Germany and Russia into willing tyrannies? If a controlled media can do such damage you can understand the damage that an anarchic media might do.
Put all these policies into effect and capitalism will be tamed, there will be full employment and people will feel that they belong.
Further reading:
The advantages of globalization
Could the credit crunch have been foreseen ?
The UK National Debt and the credit crunch
The worst governments since the first world war
Executive pay
Communism did not deliver what it promised
Marxism and the credit crunch
The London Riots and the mediocracy
Murdoch, Blair, Cameron and the police
Communism and the education system
Source URL: http://indahrahmadewi.blogspot.com/2011/10/occupy-manifesto.html
Visit Indah Rahma Dewi for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection
