The highest salary in an organisation should not be greater than 7-10 times the lowest salary in an organisation. Seriously. I really do not see why anyone needs so much more than everybody else. Obviously I understand the need for incentive, the need to feel the value of your work recognised, but there are limits. When supposedly around 300 people in America hold around 90% of the wealth, something is seriously wrong. When a footballer in the UK earns more in a week than most people can hope to earn in a year, something is seriously wrong. Yes, football is a time limited career, but that’s what saving accounts and pension schemes are for.
A minimum of x% of
profit should be held by companies as capital/invested into the business.
Dividends should not be greater than reinvestment, or wages.
As a society we should look to measuring wealth by living
standards rather than GDP, a move away from the profit and loss balance sheets
capitalism hold us accountable by would ensure a better standard of living for
the more vulnerable.
An acceptance that as we have moved from a less patriarchal
model, we have a greater available workforce. Combine this with the knowledge
that people are often more productive working shorter hours (greater health,
more energy, more creativity) and look at a socio-economic model that allows
part time work to support living standards (see the first point).
A recognition that essential services run by private
companies operate for profit. Profit means they are not running it to provide
the maximum benefit to their user group. Everyone except the government knows
this. Transport links to rural communities closed for reasons of “profit”
isolate communities, lower opportunities for employment, and generally suck. I’m
unsure what point there is in high speed rail, when many communities have
little or no decent transport links at all. Investment in nuclear power from foreign firms guaranteed more than double the current unit price for energy does not benefit those it should, it benefits shareholders, rather than acting to create a better standard of living for a population.
A recognition of what welfare, and national insurance should
be. Key word is “insurance”. By helping those who need it, when they need it,
without effectively placing them in the poorhouse, allowing them to keep social
networks intact, children in the same schools, their chances of getting back
into work would increase significantly. When all peoples time is occupied by
fatigue and shopping for the cheapest of everything, the time for job seeking
goes down. When family networks have been broken down through enforced moves,
and there is no spare money anywhere, how do mothers pay up front for childcare
and new work clothes?
A model that favours community and localised services rather than centralisation. Localised provision, be it in governments, dairies, agriculture, healthcare provides employment, fosters communities and creates jobs, centralisation causes unemployment and only favours profit. Localisation in our food industries allow for a more sustainable model, offer the prospect of better quality, less packaged green groceries, the prospect of reusable packaging (glass bottles, glass yogurt pots) in dairy, and less plastic leaching into our food products. Localised slaughter, butchery would offer the same thing. We are constantly looking for ways to reduce packaging, reduce transport miles for our food. LOCALISATION. Again, highly specialised services can operate better from a central model, yet for so much more all we reap is the price of alienation.
A model that favours community and localised services rather than centralisation. Localised provision, be it in governments, dairies, agriculture, healthcare provides employment, fosters communities and creates jobs, centralisation causes unemployment and only favours profit. Localisation in our food industries allow for a more sustainable model, offer the prospect of better quality, less packaged green groceries, the prospect of reusable packaging (glass bottles, glass yogurt pots) in dairy, and less plastic leaching into our food products. Localised slaughter, butchery would offer the same thing. We are constantly looking for ways to reduce packaging, reduce transport miles for our food. LOCALISATION. Again, highly specialised services can operate better from a central model, yet for so much more all we reap is the price of alienation.
We live in a society that values money alone, we exist to
serve the machine. What ever happened to the notion that businesses are there
to service our needs?
Our society should serve us. Not the other way around.
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