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REPUBLICANS WANT CORPORATE OLIGARCHY. WE NEED ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY  
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Rashida Tlaib and Michael A McCarthy
March 6, 2025
The Guardian
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_ The GOP budget seeks vast cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and
more. Instead, let’s build an economy for everyone. The Republican
budget plan that passed the House last week calls for $4.5tn in tax
giveaways for the ultra-rich and corporations. _

A person holds up a sign as they protest against U.S. President
Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency
(DOGE) in Washington, D.C. on February 5, 2025. , Photo: Drew
Angerer/Agence France-Presse (AFP) // Common Dreams

 

Families in the US are exhausted. They deserve a government that
chooses them over billionaire donors. The Republican
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passed the House last week calls for $4.5tn in tax giveaways for the
ultra-rich and corporations. It will be paid for with enormous cuts to
Medicaid, food assistance and other federal programs that serve our
families and the working class. These are the folks Elon Musk
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“parasite class”.

The agenda of the billionaire president and the richest man in the
world is crystal clear: making the rich richer while working families
struggle.

Our democracy is dominated by the ultra-rich because our economic
system concentrates ownership and investment power into their hands.
Extreme inequality is often addressed by doing one of two things:
redistributing wealth, via taxes and social programs, or changing laws
and policies to increase worker incomes, such as raising the minimum
wage. While these strategies are certainly necessary, in both cases
our economy’s core institutions – the multinational corporations,
banks, pension funds and hedge funds – are left to run as usual. But
this is where so much power in the US lies.

There is a third option: creating a _democratic_ economy that widely
distributes the power that comes through ownership and
decision-making.  

In a democratic economy, ownership is extended beyond the wealthy few,
to public and private institutions driven by the interests of ordinary
people

In a democratic economy, ownership is extended beyond the wealthy
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private institutions, such as cooperatives and non-profits, driven by
the interests of ordinary people. In many worker cooperatives, for
example, the workers own the firm and elect the board on a one-member,
one-vote basis. This makes power on the shop floor and pay
scales much more equal
[[link removed])%20comprised%20almost].

In a democratic economy, ownership is extended beyond the wealthy few,
to public and private institutions, such as cooperatives and
non-profits, driven by the interests of ordinary people. In many
worker cooperatives, for example, the workers own the firm and elect
the board on a one-member, one-vote basis. This makes power on the
shop floor and pay scales much more equal.

The groundwork of a more democratic economy can already be seen across
our country, in community land trusts
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community development corporations, multi-stakeholder cooperatives
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community development credit unions, housing cooperatives
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community solar arrays, municipal broadband
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public Bank of North Dakota
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which has operated successfully for more than 100 years. Glimpses of a
new economy are there within the cracks of our failing system.

We have also seen political crises provide opportunities for larger
scale public ownership. In the wake of the 2008 crisis, the US
government became the largest shareholder of General Motors
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International Group
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While these stakes were eventually sold back, the next time, instead
of bailing out failed businesses, we should transition them
into democratic public ownership
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the municipal, state or national levels. Other firms might be
converted into worker cooperatives or multi-stakeholder cooperatives,
governed by workers, consumers and community representatives, ensuring
those same groups benefit from the company’s operations. And
monopolized banks and large asset managers can be converted into
democratic regional and local public banks
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serve communities rather than shareholders.

Beyond crisis moments, which this government is sure to produce, new
public options can be established or expanded in industries such as
education, childcare
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development
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healthcare, asset management
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more. These public options can provide needed goods and services at
prices accessible to all, while injecting competition into monopolized
industries.

From Los Angeles [[link removed]] to New York
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grassroots movements across our country building public options for
finance. Democratic public banks and public asset managers are not run
by a corporate board at the command of profit-driven shareholders
lounging on yachts somewhere on the other side of the world.
Instead, democratic finance
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people from across a community, through processes of random selection,
election or appointment, to deliberate over and make binding decisions
about how pools of assets should be allocated and invested. Without
shareholders or marketing expenses, and often tax exempt, these forms
of democratic finance can offer much lower-cost loans and services to
working people.

Powered by democratic mandates, they can make investments in renewable
energy, affordable housing, community wealth-building and other
institutions that meet people’s real needs. The Detroit Justice
Center, for instance, is working to develop community land trusts,
which are non-profits that establish community control of land and
permanent affordability of housing. Democratic public banks, such as
those promoted by the Public Banking Act of 2023
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could provide a ready source of capital.

In a democracy, power should be in the hands of workers, community
members, and democratically accountable representatives – not
billionaires who govern to enrich themselves
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The Republican budget is the natural outcome of an economy that
funnels power and wealth to elites, while leaving working people to
fend for themselves. Let’s show the billionaires we can build a
democratic alternative to their corporate oligarchy.

_[RASHIDA TLAIB represents Michigan’s 12th district. MICHAEL A
MCCARTHY is the director of community studies at the University of
California Santa Cruz and author of The Master’s Tools: How Finance
Wrecked Democracy (And a Radical Plan to Rebuild It)
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* democratic economy
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* Trump Budget
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* MAGA
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* GOP
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* Medicaid
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* Food Stamps
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* SNAP
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* food assistance
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* Social Security
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* Trump tax cuts
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* Elon Musk
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* Donald Trump
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* Working Families
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* Renewable energy
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* affordable housing
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* community wealth-building
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* Rashida Tlaib
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