1+1 My own straw-horse to help find what we have in common …
*** PHILOSOPHY ***
Use the best old and the best new ideas and techniques to create and maintain a caring sharing community that strives toward a happy/fulfilling life for current and future generations – people and planet.
Community and democracy centric, supporting individual liberty, effort and enterprise while recognising that no man is an island, totally responsible for her or his own actions, successes or failures. Striving toward a secure and sustainable material habitat that enables a decent life for all, whatever gifts they inherit, without threat or harm from others. Let us make no war on anyone for material gain. Let us not suffer to know others suffer without making every effort to help and to remove the cause of that suffering.
*** POLICIES ***
1. Maximum earnings differential 12 (min wage 18K max wage 216K p.a.)
2. Community provision of universal services:
- housing
- health
- education
- travel
- energy
- research.
3. Employment for all – using all of the following when and if necessary:
- state investment / intervention in selected industries
- part-time work (work sharing without differential loss)
- state invested research and development.
4. Contribution-based welfare ensuring basic standard of living for all, as follows:
- ‘unable to work’ fully supported
- ‘prefer to work less’ supported with low end differential
- ‘prefer to work more’ supported with higher differential
- success in generating efficiencies/advances supported with higher differential
- elderly prefer to work /not work, full supported.
5. Personal Liberty
- Freedom of speech/expression fully supported
- Freedom of action supported except actions agreed by the community to be harmful to others/the planet
- Private ownership supported
- Private capital accumulations supported with appropriate tax rules that mandate reinvestment of company earnings into the business, cap non-business accumulation / offshore banking / financial tools used.
6. Political reform
- Business funding of political parties illegal.
- Personal funding of political parties capped to % of earnings.
- MPs and candidates paid by the community only (as MPs are today) .
Gerry Cavander 
How did you get to £216k maximum income?
Cambridge housing co-op making the news. Sounds dreamy!
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/08/marmalade-lane-co-housing-cambridge
very clear – and calm, for you:)
could you expand on why you’ve included ‘Private ownership supported’?
Got a book out of Birzeit University today, ‘The Founding Myths of Israel’ by Zeev Sternhell -covers the apparently socilaist ideology upon which the state was founded and how it developed/died.
Thanks Freda! re Private ownership. After many years working in businesses, I believe in vigorous evolution rather than revolution – and the inevitable increased ‘hurt’ the latter usually involves. Currently our society is mostly based on private ownership and its going too far. But it’s certainly just not possible to ditch it in one fell swoop. And maybe not desirable even in the long run. Cuba and China are moving away from total state ownership. It’s easy to say that this is just ditching communism but the Cubans I’ve talked to have convinced me that Cuba is the real experiment we want to see. They are trying to optimise the economy for the good of all and are committed to a country run on sharing/caring grounds – coming out of the probably necessary shadow of dogmatism, to find the best way. I want to own some stuff (Sidney Betchet records for example!) AND I want the main essential things for a happy and fulfilling life to be available to everyone alive. Extremes and extremists often sway society that’s not a reason for more reasonable people to outlaw proven ideas which can be effective when used appropriately: a private business with maximum pay differentials and capped personal accumulation? Whadya think?