Do not cast your bread before swine

Let's see if we can suggest an alternative approach to economics that gets government out of many of the  nitty gritty details of wealth distribution and yet creates a much improved framework for increasing economic, and perhaps environmental, equity in our beleaguered democracy.

US'ns should change our corporate tax structure, eliminate the vast majority of loopholes and subsidies, except for employee-owned B-Corps such as King Arthur Baking. This follows the premise of taxing what we want less of. Although  we have not researched the topic, we suspect that the wealth of many of the billionaires whose net worth has increased while the minimum wage has stayed stable is based on their stock holdings. It isn't all cash sitting around in a savings account. Taxing it to create a basis for redistribution puts politicians in the middle and makes working class folks (99% of us) dependent on politicians for things like the "relief/stimulous" funds amounts and distributions. There are few politicians I would trust very far to have my best interests at heart. How about you?

a boule of our own sourdough artisan bread

Photo by J. Harrington

If employees were the majority stock holders in a corporation, and that corporation were structured as a B-Corp, employee wealth would increase as the stock value rose. Instead of executives benefiting from stock buy-backs, employees would sell their stock holdings to other employees in a tax-advantaged transaction. The B-Corp. angle provides an alternative to the fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for the shareholders and allows additional values to be incorporated into the company's priorities.

The preceding is just a bare outline and clearly needs lots of development and details worked out. However, it seems to offer an approach that addresses many of the issues we're facing these days and may even offer some opportunities to address the urban-rural divide. We want more folks to have what's known as "skin-in-the-game," don't we? Instead of putting the government in the middle of balancing our equity and equitable accounts, let's handle it ourselves through a number of smaller, more local businesses organized into regional networks instead of structured as oligarchs and mega corps.

We ended up wandering into this theme today because it's cold out and we're inside and King Arthur Baking sent us an email informing us that they're offering a series on Artisan Bread. Since we've been using their products for some years now, and fancy ourselves as an artisan bread baker, we'll be checking the series out, at least until mid-summer's heat shuts down the kitchen. We're also tired of reading about the Democrats, who supposedly represent the working class?, quibble about who gets how much relief/stimulus funding from the government.

Bread

By Richard Levine

Each night, in a space he’d make

between waking and purpose,

my grandfather donned his one

suit, in our still dark house, and drove

through Brooklyn’s deserted streets

following trolley tracks to the bakery.

There he’d change into white

linen work clothes and cap,

and in the absence of women,

his hands were both loving, well

into dawn and throughout the day—

kneading, rolling out, shaping

each astonishing moment

of yeasty predictability

in that windowless world lit

by slightly swaying naked bulbs,

where the shadows staggered, woozy

with the aromatic warmth of the work.

Then, the suit and drive, again.

At our table, graced by a loaf

that steamed when we sliced it,

softened the butter and leavened

the very air we’d breathe,

he’d count us blessed.

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