What is a social culture photographer?

What must society (culture, government, economy, etc.) be like to allow equitable opportunities for economic and social advancement for all?

• In most of the modern world, we have a capitalist system of economy. While allowing some opportunities for the brilliant, hard-working and talented, capitalism tends to favor those with wealth (capital) to begin with. Here in The Philippines, a developing country, the government reports 7% GDP growth in the last year. Sounds good for big business. But there's a grumbling among the masses that such economic growth doesn't trickle down to them. The common worker still tries to make ends meet with his/her mediocre wages. "The rich get richer, the poor get poorer", so to speak. What must the government, economy, culture, etc. be like to allow everyone to prosper equally, in proportion to their talent or quality of work? Is such a scenario even possible and/or beneficial?

• Answer:

  Society should cry out for more ownership of business. No, not government ownership of business (top down socialism), but employee ownership. An ESOP, or employee stock ownership program, is a business that is owned by the very employees who keep it running. Take any measure you want; employee satisfaction, marketplace competitiveness, meritocratic advancement, managerial success, gap between upper management and lower pay grades, benefits and bonuses, and you will find that in general an ESOP is a better way to run a company (better for more people).[1] Even more radical is cooperative ownership, like the Mondragon corp. in Spain. [2] There are significant tax benefits to an ESOP in the USA, which incentivizes a transition from traditional types of ownership to an ESOP. Advocate for these types of incentives in the Phillipines, tell all your overworked and underpaid friends that they should be asking their superiors for stock renumeration whenever possible. This seemingly socialist policy actually increases the competitiveness of many companies in a capitalist system. The benefits for society are increased social mobility, better work ethic, an expansion of the middle class, increase in productivity overall, and with the expansion of productivity and the size of the middle class a decrease in trade deficit. The drawbacks are that presumably there would be relatively fewer ultra rich to throw around their wealth and "create jobs". Another drawback is instructive from history; both Enron and United Airlines were ESOPs, both ran into trouble for different reasons. Enron executives were cooking the books so that their smallish piece of the pie looked bigger. Increase the size of the overall pie, and your make more money. UA had a faction of employees that became too powerful, the pilot's union, which was able to secure cushy retirement and benefits at the expense of the company. Their voting bloc was so powerful that they installed a CEO sympathetic to their cause, and nearly destroyed the company. The Wikipedia on ESOP goes into these cases in more detail. Have a look: [1]http://www.nceo.org/articles/studies-employee-ownership-corporate-performance [2]http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation