Stephen Yearwood
1 min readAug 17, 2024

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Well, you did ask.

Mass production is necessary to make necessary things affordable for the 'mass' of people. So we need to retain that.

I do agree that shareholders are entitled to nothing.

I would vote for a ban on dividends.

I would vote for a limit on how much a corporation can accumulate in cash and extraneous assets (including, but not limited to stocks of other corporations, real estate, and bonds--with an exception for bonds of the federal government). [That would ensure a huge demand for those bonds, meaning 'too much' federal debt would be pretty much impossible, and it would maintain downward pressure on the costs of borrowing for the federal government.] It would be a kind of meta-tax, with the excess profits going to the federal government.

I would vote for a ban on bonuses (money as well as stocks/stock options).

I would vote for a legal limit on the ratio of the highest-compensated employee and the lowest-compensated employee (say, 20:1) in any organization with at least one employee.

Those few things would take us a long ways towards a more equitable economy, but we need to do better yet. We really must address the general well-being of society beyond those narrow bounds. I have done that.

If curious, "A Most Beneficial Economic Change" is a "2 min read" here in Medium with links to more about a breathtaking (but eminently doable) proposal--with nothing I publish here behind the paywall.

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Stephen Yearwood
Stephen Yearwood

Written by Stephen Yearwood

M.A. in political economy (money/distributive justice) "Please don't confront me with my failures/ I'm aware of them" from "These Days," as sung by Gregg Allman

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