Centers for Economic Planning
Large corporations and individuals possessed of large sums of money or credit are able to introduce products and services into the market and their shareholders benefit from the success of these activities. In a nation where public policy including appropriations are determined by investment politics, industry is able to decide public policy at the exclusion of public interests that do not coincide with the interests of industry. The people of the United States have very little power to decide production and law, because comparatively the people of the United States own very little individually as a share of the market. Town after town, city after city, and state after state we see the same businesses sprawling out across the country.
Centers for Economic Planning are essentially corporations where ownership isn’t determined by people purchasing shares, but through residency within the jurisdiction where a CEP is created. For example, if a city has a CEP all the people within the city are owners of the CEP. CEP will create investment strategies to create and acquire businesses based on direction from the public as well as appropriate the profits from the businesses it owns according to the will of the public. Management will be elected and the public will have direct input into and oversight over the investment strategy and appropriation of annual profits.
The purpose of CEP is to allow all people to have control over the decision of production. Where production can take place around ideas that benefit the community as opposed to only being the product of opportunists with money, which leave the majority of the population who is without money disenfranchised from participating in decisions of production. CEP also contributes to ensuring that the economy is growing and firing on all cylinders since CEP will always be investing. This has the effect of creating more opportunities for people to make money through the jobs created by CEP business creation and acquisition.
CEP also increases the quality of income opportunities available since the people who work for CEP owned businesses are also the owners of the CEP who own the company they work for. There’s no incentive for the CEP to only pay market wages to maximize profits for shareholders since the shareholders are the employees themselves. This will impact wages paid to employees of private businesses since private companies will be competing for labor with CEP owned companies.
CEP can also participate in political investment the same as publicly traded corporations. The profits from CEP owned businesses allows the public to influence public policy through political investment, which may make a third party feasible. The CEP becomes the lobby of the small business man and the public in a system where political investment controls public policy.
We seek to create 50 CEPs, funded through 50 1 billion dollar grants. 30 grants will be available for the 30 largest cities in the country determined by population. The remaining 20 grants can be applied for through joint municipal agreements to create a CEP to ensure rural communities have an opportunity to benefit from owning a CEP. A joint municipal agreement means a group of counties or cities agree to create one CEP for the people within their areas.
Many of the functioning details and mechanisms in regard to electing management, creating investment strategies inclusive of public input and oversight have already been thought out but are too numerous to put into an outline intended to serve as a promotional tool for consumption by the public. The details are available in the book “The American Prosperity Proposals” by Orion Simerl, available at LibertyAndTruth.org