In this article for The Hill, Democracy Collaborative Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow Marjorie Kelly describes the growing movement toward broad-based ownership and how communities are coming together to take control of their local economies. Kelly highlights some of the innovative strategies used by communities on the ground, such as the cooperative ownership business conversion, which is poised to achieve expanded scale in the near future:
A shift in public policy from wealth concentration and extraction to one of assets rooted in communities is both feasible and broadly beneficial. Employee-owned businesses, for example, pay 5 to 12 percent more in wages than traditionally owned companies. Workers at these firms have more than double the retirement accounts, and are one-fourth as likely to be laid off. Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) companies, over a ten-year period, showed 2.5 percent higher job growth than other firms. Employee ownership also brings increased productivity and higher profitability to companies... Read full article.