Get Inspired

A Main Street, bipartisan solution to income inequality & social mobility

Common Ground and Real Solutions

Republican Stance:

Income inequality = class warfare and redistribution of wealth, taxing the rich to give to the poor

Prefer to emphasize opportunity and upward mobility

Government should do little; prefer laissez-faire “free” market so that a growing economy will create opportunity

Democrat Stance:

Feel that Republican ideas to overhaul education, job-training and safety-net programs often double as budget-cutting initiatives

Hold current political advantage on policy prescriptions

Strong public support for investing more in education from preschool through college, increasing the minimum wage and raising taxes on the highest earners

Common Ground:

Expanding mobility and opportunity = more appealing to middle-class voters for 2014 midterm elections

Americans less concerned about inequality of outcomes, more concerned about equal opportunities for rising generations 

THE SOLUTION:

Deploy worker ownership to progress from the “Me” to the “Us”
Expand greater workplace equity, reconnect workplaces to community wellbeing, and empower local living economies.

Facts about Worker-Ownership

Companies with broad-based ownership:

  • are more stable
  • produce fewer job losses 
  • outperform companies with greater disparity between executive and employee compensation

Yet, worker-ownership in America is a fraction of what it should be.

  • Only 400 worker-owned cooperatives in America representing between 4,000 to 5,000 worker-owners
  • 29,000 member-owned cooperatives account for:
    • $3 trillion in assets
    • $500 billion in revenue
    • over 1 million jobs

There are over 11,000 employee-owned companies,  but only in 4,000 companies do employees own the majority of the stock.

Read more about Mondragon and some of the Articles inspiring our work.