Here's how to change the world

[RainDog]

24. I didn't say I was idealistic

In fact, my OP demonstrates pragmatism, not idealism. Because I framed this pragmatism in a positive way, you perceive it as something else.

I didn't say I wasn't willing to work with communists - but there is no viable communist party in the U.S., afaik.

But my focus, in the OP, isn't simply about economics or politics. It's about a whole spectrum of issues. However, since you talked about communism, I turned my focus to your issue.

I'm familiar with co-ops - I've been part of more than one and am part of one now. I simply noted that modeling behavior, again, is what gets others to follow. If no one started a co-op, many others would never participate. That reality is a demonstration of what I mentioned in the OP. But there is no state-level application of this sort of system.

I agree with you that austerity is a direct attack on social democracies by capitalists. What Iceland did, that seemed to work, is to nationalize banks located within their borders (not international banks, iow). Companies in western Europe must have x percentage of workers on their boards, etc. These help to provide some corrective, but strikes work, too. You just don't see that in the U.S. because unions have been decimated as the major jobs in industries with unions have been outsourced.

This is the cause of the current economic instability in the U.S.

The guy who talks about pitchforks doesn't mention this. There's another corrective a nation can do, that some have tried on limited bases. That's a basic minimum income. Switzerland has a mobilized group working for this.

Unease about income inequality and concerns about out-of-control capitalism are rising even in Switzerland, a nation long regarded as a business-friendly bastion—welcoming even the most questionable forms of wealth. At $80,000 per year, Switzerland’s income per capita is the third-highest in Europe after Luxembourg and Norway. But confidence in the economy was rocked at the beginning of the global financial crisis in 2008, when UBS (UBS), the nation’s largest bank, required a $60 billion government bailout. The anger and anxiety that led to demonstrations and riots in other countries have been channeled into a flurry of mostly populist referendums. “We on the right haven’t been doing our job correctly,” says Thomas Minder, a Swiss toothpaste manufacturer and politician. “Because there’s no self-regulation on the right, we basically punt the ball to the left. And maybe, sooner or later, one [goal] is going to get through.”

Early last year, Swiss voters approved an initiative championed by Minder that gives shareholders a greater say over executive pay and bans signing bonuses and golden-parachute pay packages for departing executives. In November the Swiss rejected as too extreme a proposal to cap top salaries at 12 times that of a company’s lowest-paid worker. This year, initiatives up for consideration include the introduction of a minimum wage of more than $24 an hour, a 20 percent estate and gift tax, and nationalization of basic health care.

Switzerland’s referendums often don’t pass, though last year the success rate was more than 50 percent. Even those that fail have the power to set the terms of political debate at home—and sometimes abroad. Once a proposal draws the requisite number of signatures, the executive branch must produce a report on it, and Parliament must debate it. The idea behind the failed proposal to cap executive pay found its way into the electoral platform of the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party. “It was surprising how much attention it got,” says Florian Vock, international secretary of the Switzerland Young Socialist Party, which championed the initiative. “Every big television station in the world was asking for an interview.”

The vote on a minimum income for every Swiss citizen may still be some time away, but it has already generated headlines around the world. Philosophically, the idea has a long history, drawing support from the likes of the English-American revolutionary Thomas Paine and the economist Milton Friedman. Every European country except Italy and Greece has welfare programs designed to keep citizens out of poverty, says Gianluca Busilacchi, a professor of the sociology of welfare at the University of Macerata in Italy. The most generous program is Denmark’s, which gives its poorest citizens roughly $1,800 a month, enough to pull the destitute over the poverty threshold.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-16/inequality-fight-swiss-will-vote-on-minimum-income

I highlighted what the capitalist said - because he's basically admitting that the herd mentality of capitalists creates the condition for reform to be taken out of their hands - either through violence and instability or through legislation.

In this country, if it takes fear to make the herd change direction, the capitalists should be very, very afraid.