Cooperative Firms, Worker Remuneration, and the Role of the State

Abstract

The paper deals with some aspects of state intervention in cooperative or partnership enterprises, according to the thesis put forward by Martin Weitzman and in particular by James Meade. Meade’s hypothesis of a social dividend as a means of encouraging the spread of cooperative firms is discussed. The author shares Weitzman’s idea that some specific contrivance is necessary in order to give a fiscal incentive to the share economy, but instead of proposing a lower rate of taxation, a system of taxing a part of workers’ income on an average of several years is suggested. A second proposal of this paper concerns a particular feature of the inheritance tax. The idea is that of combining a ‘real’ tax on inherited firms with a system of gradual acquisition of the ownership by the state, with the aim of promoting a partnership enterprise.