-- Establish land taxes and expropriate or buy underutilized land to be used for agrarian reform and greater agricultural productivity;
-- Liquidate overseas investments and reinvest them locally; and
-- Maximize employment and reduce underemployment.
In cases where a country's taxable resources and overseas earnings are limited, FDI can help if used moderately and constrained. Ways to do it include maximizing "strategic national ownership and control" and relying on short-term deals that include training workers and contracting with skilled advisers for whatever technical help is needed.
One successful model reviewed is WEPC - Worker-Engineer Public Control or worker-managed enterprises (WMEs). Salvador Allende used them in over 100 factories in Chile while he was in office. They attained greater productivity, higher worker motivation and achieved significant social, health and working conditions improvements while they remained in place. WEPCs aren't problem-free, however, and the main one is they're targeted by imperial states for destruction because their policies aren't corporate friendly. Nonetheless, their advantages greatly outweigh the negatives. They include:
-- Minimizing tax evasion to increase state revenues;
-- Social investment in lieu of repatriated profits;
-- Avoidance of capital flight;
-- Emphasizing long-term R & D over speculative investment;
-- Social welfare and betterment over savage capitalism; and
-- Fixed capital and upwardly mobile labor over mobile capital and fixed labor.
The authors persuasively show that FDI is a cancer. Once established, it spreads like a virus, "corrupt(ing) local officials, brib(ing) regulators (and) present(ing) a different 'role model' for state executives - one attuned to luxury living, big salaries, privileges, and, above all" a neoliberal ideological commitment. Another way is possible and vital to the health, welfare and growth of developing nations. It "puts the worker-engineer public sector-led model at the centre of development," and empirical evidence shows it works.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Mondays at noon US Central time.
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
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