At 11:24 AM 10/1/2003 -0700 d.brin wrote: >These are some long-term palliatives that are long overdue. Tax laws >should favor, rather than inhibit, employee stock plans that >gradually ramp up worker ownership of their own companies.
I don't know that this is a "long-term palliative." 1) Employee ownership of companies has a decidedly mixed record. Indeed, the most prominent example of this is United Airlines, which of course, recently went bakrupt. Part of this problem is that it is hard for employees to coordinate their interests. Thus, when you are talking about employees acting as owners, you are essentially talking about Unions - and Labor Unions have their own track record of mismanagement and corruption that strikes me as being similar to that of corporations. Moreover, and we saw this clearly with United, unions have shown a definite proclivity to vote themselves short term gains which may sacrifice the long-term health of the corporation. 2) If I was an employee I am already bearing a large amount of income risk by likely having all of my income coming from a single source - my employer. If my employer goes belly-up, be it for mismanagement or just plain bad luck, I'm out of a job. As such, as an employee I would be strongly opposed to have a significant amount of my savings tied to the exact same risk factor as my income. There is no way I would want to bear the risk of my employer going belly-up and losing my income AND my savings. Without clear statistical evidence that employee ownership provides a positive externality in corporate governance, I think that the laws should either neutral to possibly slightly discouraging employee savings being tied to their employers. I totally agree with you that the laws on the independence of corporate directors need to be strengthened 200% though. JDG P.S. This issue was The Economist's cover story this week. The first part of the story is free and can be accessed here: http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?Story_ID=2121856 _______________________________________________________ John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
