 |
| Manuel Pastor |
Manuel Pastor, whose picture appears above, once taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is now a Professor of Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Chris Benner (pictured below), was formerly at USC and is now a sociology professor at UCSC. Benner and Pastor are suggesting a "tech dividend" for workers in the Silicon Valley.
The Benner-Pastor proposal, which has to qualify as "radical," since it suggests that wealth should be "shared," not siphoned off to those at the very top of the economic pyramid, is just one way that we might go about repairing our badly-damaged economy. We really are "all in this together," and the incredible wealth produced in our economy needs to be allocated so that everyone shares in the benefits of economic success. Worker cooperatives, and stock payments to workers (another way to spread ownership to all who work in a common enterprise) have been mentioned in this blog before. Here's another idea!
And as a final word, how about we make tech businesses internalize their costs, too? That would mean, among other things, that the companies creating jobs would have to take a large share of the responsibility for making sure that adequate housing was built for the workers that are needed, as new jobs are generated.
 |
| Chris Benner |
The proposed tech dividend would be modeled after Alaska’s oil-industry annual permanent fund payments, which means that it would not be available only to tech workers. Click right here for a brief explanation, published in the Mercury News.
The Benner-Pastor proposal, which has to qualify as "radical," since it suggests that wealth should be "shared," not siphoned off to those at the very top of the economic pyramid, is just one way that we might go about repairing our badly-damaged economy. We really are "all in this together," and the incredible wealth produced in our economy needs to be allocated so that everyone shares in the benefits of economic success. Worker cooperatives, and stock payments to workers (another way to spread ownership to all who work in a common enterprise) have been mentioned in this blog before. Here's another idea!
And as a final word, how about we make tech businesses internalize their costs, too? That would mean, among other things, that the companies creating jobs would have to take a large share of the responsibility for making sure that adequate housing was built for the workers that are needed, as new jobs are generated.
Image Credit:
(1) - https://news.usc.edu/75355/manuel-pastor-pledges-himself-to-civility-and-social-change/
(2) - https://sociology.ucsc.edu/about/directory-faculty.php?uid=cbenner
(2) - https://sociology.ucsc.edu/about/directory-faculty.php?uid=cbenner
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comment!