As Sen. Bernie Sanders returns to the campaign trial, he starts off by unveiling a new proposal that would both roll back President Trump’s tax cuts and give more power to U.S. workers by allowing them seats on corporate boards and ownership shares in the company they work for. He calls this proposal a “Corporate Accountability and Democracy” plan.
According to Common Dreams, his “Corporate Accountability and Democracy” plan, proposes, among other reforms:
- Giving workers the power to directly elect at least 45 percent of their firm’s board of directors;
- Requiring large corporations and all publicly traded companies “to provide at least two percent of stock to their workers every year until the company is at least 20 percent owned by employees”;
- Rolling back “all of the disastrous corporate tax breaks enacted under Trump, closing corporate tax loopholes, and demanding that large corporations pay their fair share of taxes”;
- Halting corporate mega-mergers and retroactively undoing mergers that have taken place under Trump; and
- Eliminating corporations’ use of offshore tax havens.
Sanders has been a long-time advocate for fighting rampant inequality with a dependable social welfare state. To gain funds for his social programs, his plan is to significantly raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations. This comes at a time when new research shows massive disparities and inequalities between the rich and middle-class.
This “Corporate Accountability and Democracy” plan focuses mainly on shifting large companies’ power to their workers.
“The idea is to require large companies to contribute 2 percent of their stocks annually to an employee-controlled fund until workers control 20 percent of the company, and then pay out the dividends to those workers. The campaign estimates the plan would impact 56 million workers at more than 22,000 companies in the United States,” reports Vox.
The Sanders campaign estimates raising $3 trillion in revenue for this venture over the course of ten years. $2 trillion would be contributed to his Green New Deal plan.
“The establishment tells us there is no alternative to unfettered capitalism, that this is how the system and globalization work and there’s no turning back. They are dead wrong. The truth is that we can and we must develop new economic models to create jobs and increase wages and productivity across America,” Sanders writes on his website.
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