Josh Davis

We should never forget that the point of our movement is to place economic power into the hands of those who do not currently possess it, which necessarily entails taking power away from those who have it now.

Lately, I’ve been mulling over what I think is a better metaphor for the cooperative movement, or rather, a better metaphor for what I hope to see the cooperative movement become: not an ecosystem, but an organism. Not a collection of disparate entities occupying the same space, each working for its own survival, but rather a single entity with many parts and pieces that play different roles in the functioning and health of the larger whole; a whole which in turn supports each of its constituent parts.

In a "letter from Mondragon", recently published by on the Cincinnati Union Co-op Initiative (CUCI) website, Armin Isasti, makes some incisive and thought-provoking observations that I think we in the worker co-op movement would do well to consider.

While it’s great to see the staff at the Federation of Worker Cooperatives  helping worker co-ops harness the power of cooperation in their benefits packages, there are a number of aspects of the 401(k) model of retirement saving that I think should be cause for concern among cooperators.

Unlike a UBI, a Job Guarantee (JG) is not an untested policy in our country.

There was a time in this country’s history when knowledge of the fundamentals of the monetary system was wide spread among the common citizens, not just Wall Street financiers and academic economists.