Funny how socialism ALWAYS fails.... no exception... and yet it's ALWAYS someone else's fault.
Have you heard of Mondragon?
Mondragon Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The
Mondragon Corporation is a
corporation and
federation of
worker cooperatives based in the
Basque region of
Spain. It was founded in the town of
Mondragón in 1956 by graduates of a local technical college. Its first product was
paraffin heaters. It is the tenth-largest Spanish company in terms of
asset turnover and the leading business group in the
Basque Country. At the end of 2014, it employed 74,117 people in 257 companies and organizations in four areas of activity: finance, industry, retail and knowledge.
[2]"
Perhaps your ignorance of US History is legitimate.
If so, you are missing all the Big Questions.
Mondragon S. COOP.: CEO and Executives - Businessweek
Javier Sotil... CEO of Mondragon. Total CEO compensation, $22.1 Million.
https://www.glassdoor.ie/Salary/Eroski-Salaries-E13233.htm
Salary of retail store workers for Mondragon's Eroski stores... $19,000 a year... which is roughly $9 an hour.
People at Walmart are averaging more than that.
Moreover....
Mondragon: Spain's giant co-operative where times are hard but few go bust
The co-operatives have repeatedly cut wages, in order to avoid laying off people.
The US Unions prevented that with GM and Chrysler, which is exactly why they bankrupted, and ended up laying off a ton of people.
What's my point in all this?
Mondragon is nothing special. It's another International Capitalist, multi-billion dollar corporation. They cut pay, open stores, and sell things, just like any other capitalist company.
I worked for a company where the Owner and CEO, decided to put all employees into a stock purchase program, and called it a "Co-Operative". Not one thing changed. The CEO was still the CEO. The executive pay was still the executive pay. The Employees still were employees, and still paid employee pay.
But since we technically owned the stock of the company, magically we were an employee owned co-op.
http://www.economist.com/news/busin...s-largest-group-co-operatives-trouble-workers
Moreover, even Mondragon itself, doesn't show as much about socialism, as it does Capitalism.
When the Fagor co-op fell into trouble, they went the workers co-ops of Mondragon and asked for help. The other groups CHOOSE to get money to the Fagor co-op. That's not socialism. That's Capitalism.
I'm a Capitalist. I CHOOSE to give money to charity groups, and other ideals that I believe in.
And when Fagor came back again and said they needed more money, the other workers co-ops, said "no".
That right there... is the essence of free-market capitalism. They owned their own money, and when they choose to give it away, they did, and when they choose to keep it, they kept it.
Socialism is like Medicaid. If I choose to not give money to medicaid, I still end up giving money to medicaid, because if I refuse men with guns show up and force me to.
You people on the left, try and make a big deal out of co-ops, as if that means something. Co-Ops are not even close to real socialism. Co-Ops are just regular capitalist based business, where they feign employee ownership.
In the extremely few examples of businesses with real employee ownership.... it's nothing.
I remember a decade ago, when people pointed to Mondragon the book store in Winnipeg, as a brilliant example of successful true employee ownership.
Mondragon closing doors for good this month
Never mind the fact it was less than half a dozen employees, and never mind they all made little to no money.... but they closed anyway.
So much for the workers paradise of unemployment.