What We Could Do With a Postal Savings Bank: Infrastructure That Doesn’t Cost Taxpayers a Dime
“The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is the nation’s second largest civilian employer after Walmart. Although successfully self-funded throughout its long history, it is currently struggling to stay afloat. This is not, as sometimes asserted, because it has been made obsolete by the Internet. In fact the post office has gotten more business from Internet orders than it has lost to electronic email. What has pushed the USPS into insolvency is an oppressive 2006 congressional mandate that it prefund healthcare for its workers 75 years into the future. No other entity, public or private, has the burden of funding multiple generations of employees who have not yet even been born.”
What Then Can I Do? Ten Ways to Democritize the Economy
Snapshots:
1. Democratize Your Money!
Put your money in a credit union – then participate in its governance.
Credit unions are commonplace financial institutions that typically facilitate loans for everyday purchases like homes and cars. But behind their unexciting veneer lie transformative possibilities. Unlike the large commercial and investment banks responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, credit unions are nonprofit cooperatives that are member-owned and controlled. These democratized, one-person-one-vote banks already involve more than 95 million Americans as participant-owners. Theylend to minorities and low- and moderate-income families to a far greater extent than do commercial banks. Taken together, they hold roughly $1 trillion of assets – the equivalent of one of the largest US banks, knocking Goldman Sachs out of the top five.
2. Seize the Moment: Time For Worker Ownership!
Help build a worker co-op or encourage interested businesses to transition to employee ownership and adopt social and environmental standards as part of their missions.
The most common form of worker ownership is the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Although there have been difficulties with some ESOPs, research has shown that workers in ESOPs are much less likely to be laid off than those who are not. Furthermore, ESOPs tend to be more profitable, more productive and more efficient – especially with training in self-management – than comparable firms.
An ESOP works like this: a company sets up a trust on behalf of the employees, into which it directs a portion of its profits. The trust uses that money to buy the owners’ shares for the workers, either all at once or over time. Currently, there are 10,000 ESOP firms successfully operating in virtually every sector - 3 million more individuals are now worker-owners of their own businesses than are members of unions in the private sector.
3. Take Back Local Government: Demand Participatory Budgeting!
Organize your community so that local government spending is determined by inclusive neighborhood deliberations on key priorities.
Participatory budgeting, pioneered in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 1989, is a bottom-up process through which community members collectively decide how their local tax money is spent. While Porto Alegre’s initiative involved up to 50,000 people and 20 percent of the city’s annual budget, participatory budgeting (PB) has been adapted to the differing contexts of 1,500 other municipalities worldwide, from small towns in Europe and Africa to bustling metropolises like Buenos Aires and São Paulo.
4. Push Local Anchors to do Their Part!
Make nonprofit institutions like universities and hospitals use their resources to fight poverty, unemployment, and global warming.
Hospitals and universities are increasingly recognized as important “anchor institutions” in their local communities. Unlike other large economic actors, they are geographically tethered to their localities. Their missions, invested capital, nonprofit status or public ownership, and other relationships contribute to their permanence. By encouraging anchors to play a responsible role in their local communities, activists often can influence and partner with them to solve social, economic, environmental and health issues.
5. Reclaim Your Neighborhood With Democratic Development!
Build community power through economic development and community land trusts.
Unlike corporate developers, a variety of nonprofit organizations manage the ownership of real estate in ways that promote inclusive and sustainable use. The structure and mission of community development corporations, community land trusts and housing co-ops allow them to democratize the stewardship of land.
6. PublicMoney for the Public Good!
Organize to use public finances for community development.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, some cities in Oregon responded to organized constituents and set in motion an effort to keep municipal money circulating locally in ways that help build the local economy. Until this point, cities could make federally insured deposits only up to $250,000 in credit unions. A state-led program now provides regular oversight and insurance, allowing local governments to deposit more than $250,000 safely. Cities such as Portland and Beaverton already have started shifting their money.
7. Stop Letting Your Savings Fuel Corporate Rule!
Get your workplace to offer more retirement-plan opportunities for responsible investment.
If you have retirement savings, chances are that they are currently being invested in Wall Street and are thus being invested in ways that work against workers and communities. As British historian and sociologist Robin Blackburn has observed, the “boring world of pension provision now fuels the glamorous world of high finance, property speculation, rogue traders, media and technology mergers, and stock exchange bubbles.” However, socially responsible investing (SRI) is now an important and expanding realm and can increasingly be applied to pension plans. Pushing your employer for more SRI options, and in particular supporting the community-investing sphere of SRI can lead to important impacts on the national and local economy.
8. Democratize Energy Production to Create a Green Economy!
Get involved in public and cooperative utilities to fight climate change.
Public utilities always have been important in providing energy to US homes. In fact, more than 2,000 public utilities supply power to tens of millions of Americans. On average, their customers pay 14 percent less than customers of private utilities. One obvious reason: they get pretty much the same work done for far less. CEOs at investor-owned utilities earn on average almost 25 times more than their counterparts at public power companies. State and local governments benefit more too. Although public utilities do not pay taxes like traditional private utilities, they transfer to state and local governments a greater percentage of their median revenues than the median taxes paid by private energy firms.
9. Mobilize the Faith Community!
Get your religious organization to move its money to a local financial institution involved in community development.
Religious groups and faith-based organizations, often strongly tied to local communities, have been pioneers in the field of community development. Black churches have long been involved in equitable neighborhood development, and much community investing as it is understood today is a consequence of earlier efforts by Catholic women’s religious orders that tied the stable retirement of nuns toinvestment in nonprofit food banks, affordable housing and community land trusts. Today, congregations of the Sisters of Mercy, through their Mercy Partnership Fund, invest directly in nonprofits like women’s and day care centers, as well as cooperative business.
The potential to leverage the capital of faith-based institutions committed to economic justice is immense. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility’s 300 faith-based investor members boast more than $100 billion of combined assets. More and more religious institutions are beginning to dedicate “1% or More in Community Investing,” as encouraged by the Social Investment Forum, a membership organization advocating responsible finance.
10. Make Time for Democracy!
Fight unemployment by joining the fight against work
Even in economic hard times, the United States already has an economy that produces the equivalent of over $190,000 for every family of four. At some point we must ask when enough is enough. Although the economy has steadily been producing more goods and services in less time with less effort, most workers’ wages havelargely stagnated and work hours have increased for the past four decades. The long-term solution is not a dash for growth, imposing a greater ecological toll on the planet. Rather, it is redirecting an already-productive economy toward redistribution and community needs. Also, as sociologist Juliet Schor has argued, one key step toward such a shift is to encourage more leisure time. This can also include taking advantage of opportunities to share work, and – where possible – to work less, discouraging excessive overtime, and pushing employers and legislators for a reduced workweek.