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Wealth creation and macroeconomics: The parasite problem
IT IS a running joke among my friends that none of us does anything useful for society. Lawyers, bankers, chartered surveyors; all of them exist to advise other people who have created wealth. One of my friends was an engineer (he actually designed a railway bridge) but joined the useless brigade by becoming a consultant. Your blogger is the lowest of the low; a parasite on parasites. Financial journalists exist to comment on the habits of other people who simply shuffle pieces of paper (or rather rearrange digits on a computer screen) for a living. But when you start to think along these lines, it becomes very hard to decide who is actually creating all the wealth.
Resources | Community Shares
The Community Shares Unit will develop a number of valuable resources to support communities, investors and other organsiations exploring the possibilities of community shares. For now, there are a number of useful resources which were produced as part of the Community Shares Action Learning Project 2009-2011: The Practitioners' Guide to Community Shares was launched at a Community Shares event on 7th July 2011. For your copy of this latest and most comprehensive guide on how to undertake a share issue and meet best practice guidelines Download here To order printed copies of The Practitioners' Guide to Community Shares @ £15 each see the order form below (bottom of page word document) Community Shares: Practitioner’s Guide to Governance and Offer Documents July 2010 This publication provides guidance on two topics: the legal and governance formats for organisations offering community shares; and community shares offer documents, inviting the public to invest in community shares.
Cooperative
A cooperative ("coop"), co-operative ("co-op"), or coöperative ("coöp") is an autonomous association of persons who voluntarily cooperate for their mutual, social, economic, and cultural benefit. [ 1 ] Cooperatives include non-profit community organizations and businesses that are owned and managed by the people who use its services (a consumer cooperative) or by the people who work there (a worker cooperative) or by the people who live there (a housing cooperative), hybrids such as worker cooperatives that are also consumer cooperatives or credit unions, multi-stakeholder cooperatives such as those that bring together civil society and local actors to deliver community needs, and second and third tier cooperatives whose members are other cooperatives. In the United States, the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA) serves as the sector's national membership association.
The MONDRAGON Corporation is a corporation and federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain . It was founded in the town of Mondragón in 1956 by graduates of a local technical college. Their first product was paraffin heaters .
