Month: April 2025

Is it Time to Rethink Work?

by Greg Snyder

Working is a difficult concept. Individuals have to figure out what they want to do for work. Ideally, it is something they enjoy doing. But, just that first step, figuring out what kind of work to do is a difficult process for most people.

For most people, work is a reality in which they have no say or power. It doesn’t have to be that way. But finding an alternative to it requires creative thinking and problem-solving and/or a commitment to more active participation, communication and team playing. It also requires a desire to be more empowered and autonomous. For many people these requirements are too much to accept so they are at the mercy of seeking private sector employment in already established businesses.

Employee-owned companies and collectives, stores, and businesses that produce goods and services are a way out of the slavery that working for a hierarchical, management-heavy, for-profit business can be and often is.

Even when people who work in such companies enjoy the work that they do, it can often be in a hostile environment that is degrading, demeaning, and that does not value the contribution of the worker, especially in terms of compensation, labor rights, and benefits.

Employee-owned businesses can be the solution and a way out of the slavery and drudgery of working for a company that does not value the work and contribution of its workers and whose sole interest is the profit margin of the owners, shareholders, executives, and corporate boards. The sad fact of capitalism is that the working side of business, the workers who actually do the work and are the productive members within the business itself, usually have no say or power in this type of business model and do not share equally in the profit generated by the goods and services they produce. It’s the owners and shareholders who most benefit from this type of business model. And they don’t do any of the work. The workers do the work.  

Employee-owned businesses can develop and adopt any form of business model that they want to follow and structure themselves any way they want. They can be egalitarian and equitable. That is the beauty of employee-based business: it can provide a good living for workers, create a good work environment that allows for the workers to enjoy doing what they like to do while providing them with better compensation and benefits without having to struggle and fight for them and face opposition (owners and CEOs) that has deeper pockets for ligation and lobbying and which will do anything it can to protect and maintain its bottom line which usually means keeping costs and overhead as low as possible which translates to paying low wages and strictly limiting or eliminating paying benefits or giving cost of living increases.

The establishment of employee-owned or collective businesses is a process that relies almost entirely on the expertise and experience of core people who know how to start a business from scrap with very little or no outside financial assistance which is a formidable task. Depending on outside financial assistance can be a minefield and expose the new business to predatory, indebted servitude to banks or private equity that most often take a company that often starts with the goal of being a self-sustaining company and breaking it. A lot of thought, planning, and a solid business plan are required to avoid that pitfall and demise. It requires enough people coming together to bring it to fruition who are willing to be part of it and commit to making it work so that being dependent on outside financial assistance is not and does not become necessary.  

So, if it is time to rethink work, there are alternatives to the traditional business model that are egalitarian and give the workers their fair due. It’s not the easy way to go and there are costs and risks. But, in the end, if workers are treated fairly and everyone is compensated well and is able to thrive in a work environment, wouldn’t it be worth it? Americans have always been entrepreneurs. But they haven’t scaled it up to the point where small businesses and employee-owned and collective businesses are the dominant business model. That may never happen. But it doesn’t mean that the potential for that happening does not exist.

3,000 Against 263,000,000

by Greg Snyder

There are around 2,500 billionaires now. They own the 273 Republicans in both houses of Congress and 6 of the Supreme Court Justices.

But we are 340 million people. There are more of us than there are of them.

Our constitutional democracy was created for “We, the people.” Not for a delusional, sociopathic, mentally sick wannabeking or dictator and his aristocracy (oligarchy) and their political lackeys.

77 million people voted for what we are all experiencing currently. Hopefully, some of them are beginning to understand that they willingly fell for being conned and voted accordingly and now, as a result, they are being injured by a thousand little cuts to their income, their standard of living, their retirement, their rights, their constitution, their laws, their justice system, their currency, their safety, security and well-being. All of those things are now being assaulted head on by the Trump administration.

It’s not just the people who voted for him and the chaos that he has brought with him who are suffering and will be made to suffer much more in ways that they never could have conceived as even possible as time advances. Their vote for Trump is forcing ALL OF US to go through this horrible nightmare. We are all suffering as a result.

People, good people, do not do that to themselves, their friends, their family, their community, and their nation. They need to understand that for themselves and figure out the reasons and causes that led them on a path that took them so far away from our values as a nation. No one of us can do that for them. It will have to be a personal moment of reflection that brings them to their own understanding if it’s going to happen at all.

I suspect that somehow the 2024 vote that brought Trump to office for a second term could have been manipulated to give Trump those “11.7 votes” that he needed to push a win across the finish line. I believe some interesting information is beginning to surface now about how the vote in some states may have possibly been manipulated to limit the vote of democrats in those states. I am not proposing a conspiracy theory, but a strong suspicion based on data that needs to be either verified or found to be false. However, if states themselves do not do the forensic investigations that would be needed to fully understand this, it will not be done and the truth will remain hidden.

Getting back to my original point at the beginning of this essay:

There are about 2,500 billionaires now and they own the 273 Republicans in both houses of Congress and 6 of the Supreme Court justices.

But, We, the people, number 340 million people, minus the 77 million people who fell for the con and cannot be relied upon to do the right thing and stand up to save the country until they themselves have come to that on their own. I wish that they would and hope that they do join with the rest of us.

So, until they do that, that leaves 263 million Americans who can reliably, if they want to do so, fight back. Fight Trump. That is millions more people than the fewer than 3,000 billionaires and their republican sycophants and tools thatapparently want everything all to themselves and nothing for everyone else. That is millions of people to fight Trump’s inner circle and cabinet. Fight the oligarchs. And fight the sick insanity that has occupied the entire executive branch of our federal government. That is enough people to shake up these offenders who have all lost their minds and deeply offended and injured the American people.

So, the time for standing up and making our voices and demands be heard and implemented is not over yet. Not with the first of the mass national protests that occurred on May 5, 2025. Actions will undoubtedly still be necessary for some time to come.

But I have confidence and hope that the people will prevail. They can if that is what they want. It takes consent to be governed. It takes good governance to merit consent. That’s what we need to stand up for.

Come together. Join hands. It’s going to be a long march.

General Boycott of paying your Taxes

by Greg Snyder

If you do not like what the government is doing under Trump/Musk and the republican party, next year, in April of 2026, for the 2025 tax year, if you can, please consider not paying your taxes.

If enough people do not pay taxes and it truly gets the attention of Congress, it could serve as incentive for Congress to rewrite the tax code; a tax code that is fair and does not increase the tax on people making less than 400k a year but taxes all upper levels of income, imposes a responsible corporate tax burden, cuts wasteful and fraudulent subsidies, waivers, exclusions, limits, creates more tax brackets for the upper levels of income that have not been adequately taxed since the 1970s, closes tax shelter loopholes and offshore tax-free havens by making them taxable accounts, we would finally have the tax code that is fair that we need.

There are penalties for not filing your taxes at tax time. Filing your taxes prevents having to pay penalties for not filing them. The two options are filing, or not filing your taxes.

There are late fee penalties if you don’t pay your taxes.

If enough people do not pay their taxes that it gets the attention of Congress and makes Congress realize that it has to do something and fix the tax code, penalties for not filing taxes and for not paying them during a boycott should be rescinded. But this needs to be a condition that is understood by Congress by the people not paying taxes until there is a new fair tax code in place. We, the people, we, the tax payers, can resume paying our taxes as we have always done, after we have a fair tax code and when we have a guarantee from Congress that there will be no penalties for having not filed or paid taxes until then, however many years that may take.

Not paying taxes for as long as it takes to get Congress to rewrite a new fair tax code could take a long time. It may take years. However, not paying taxes for one, or two, or more years until we have a fair tax code, if we end up with a fair tax code, would be worthwhile.