Progressive Ponderings - Green Bay Packers

09/23/2005

by Joe Mayer
September 22, 2005

Jackson, a new grandson born this past summer in Milwaukee, may be able to purchase Green Bay Packer tickets some time in middle age to early retirement if he signs up today.  How is it that this franchise in by far the smallest market in major league sports is one of the most stable and most secure?  So stable and secure, in fact, that all major sport leagues have banned its unique ownership structure for any other franchises.

The Packers are owned by a non-profit corporation in which stock is owned by thousands of Wisconsinites.  No profits are ever paid out.  No threats are ever made to move the franchise.  No problem with stadium expansion or renovation – just sell more stock.  These Wisconsinites forsake profit and invest in PRIDE.

Some businesses in the U.S. are employee owned.  They experience a similar “Packer” PRIDE.  Employees are stockholders and thus stakeholders.  Productivity is always higher than in corporations owned by absentee stockholders.  No threats to move the business to gain employee concessions.  Environmental practices are good since owner/employees live in the results if pollution occurs.

Vastly overpaid CEOs of corporate America frequently argue that the millions that they “earn” in salary, stock options and benefits are necessary to “motivate” them.  These same people then attempt to “motivate” employees, especially those at the lower end of the pay scale, by threats.  Such thinking has always been present in those who believe in a hierarchy of human value and utility.

The problem with current conservative and political thought is that the actuality it produces refutes the values it proclaims.

Progressives need to take the lead and proclaim that the American economic system, as it now functions, is not the final chapter in human economic progress.  The deep divide in wealth in the U.S. and around the world denounces its universal effectiveness.  When a dictatorship such as the Saudi Arabian monarchy and a supposed democratic government such as the U.S. both produce similar discrepancies in wealth distribution, then we know that neither the economic system nor the governmental system are serving the vast majority of people.  Isn’t that what “promote the general welfare” is supposed to mean?

Some Packer fans may be hard to tolerate but their sense of community is to be admired.  Employee ownership not only builds community, its wealth distribution is much more democratic.