Revolutionizing Prosperity: How NIEPP Empowers the Grassroots to Tackle Income Inequality

The New Income Expansion and Prosperity Project (NIEPP) is a grassroots-led economic research initiative organized to address income inequality from the ground up. We operate to a large scale, "big think" vision with the long-term potential of delivering massive new social impact and economic prosperity to society, particularly future generations.

NIEPP empowers grassroots individuals from all walks of life and professional disciplines to engage each other professionally, team up, collaborate, and tackle income inequality while simultaneously growing and expanding their careers. If you choose to contribute professionally, you will engage NIEPP part-time online within your field of expertise or area of professional interest, with the ability to grow and expand your professional income, career, or business in conjunction with the growth and expansion of this project. Given the scope and vision behind this project, your income is only limited by your attention to detail and the value of your professional contribution.

There is much to learn, but it's not complicated—no participation cost. Just be willing to dig in part-time, learn, and engage in operations when comfortable. Start by completing your review of this article.

NIEPP Economic Vision

Consider this: WHAT IF, in the future, the hourly wage and salary become an obsolete form of workplace compensation? In other words, just as the horse and buggy are obsolete forms of transportation today, in the future, according to this vision, hourly wages and salaries will be obsolete forms of compensation.

According to this vision, the average individual or employee will be financially empowered with wealth and prosperity to the point where no one in their right mind will consider working for a mere wage or salary. It will be a completely obsolete form of compensation. People show up for work to build more wealth in collaboration with employers, not just to earn a paycheck-to-paycheck living as most do today.

Look at it from a historical perspective. During the Industrial Revolution, the wealth-building capacity of the average worker increased significantly as workers migrated from farms and small shops to earn a wage in factories. It was a historic transition.

As we undergo this information revolution, shouldn't there be a corresponding historical transition that dramatically improves the wealth-building capacity of the masses? If so, where is it? What we see today is a decreasing middle class and a rising gap between rich and poor, leading to income inequality.

So, it's time to consider a large-scale transition of this scope, especially for future generations. This economic research initiative will determine the economic feasibility of this approach.

The workplace model supporting this vision is called the Empowered Employee Compensation Model (EECM). It represents at least a threefold increase in the income-earning and wealth-building ability of the masses (at least conceptually).

Therefore, we are launching the New Income Expansion and Prosperity Project to teach this new vision and encourage aspiring entrepreneurs and other professionals to get involved and help build an economic bridge to lead the masses away from age-old wage and salary dependence to this new Empowered Employee Compensation Model or whatever model survives the research. This process is formally called Income Reengineering.

To bring this vision to life, we are staffing the New Income Expansion and Prosperity Project (NIEPP) with professionals from all walks of life or professional disciples:

1) Career Professionals: Career Professionals participating part-time as independent contractors (i.e., accountants, administrative assistants, computer programmers, project managers, etc.);

2) Home and Small Business Owners: Home and small business owners participating part-time as independent contractors (i.e., consultants, coaches, product producers/owners); and

3) Aspiring Entrepreneurs: Aspiring Entrepreneurs participating part-time as independent contractors (i.e., all professional disciplines).

4) Affiliate/Referral Marketers: Affiliate/Referral Marketers participating part-time as independent contractors (i.e., all professional disciplines)

Are you open to contributing professionally part-time online to help test this vision? This is a question you should consider as you review the remainder of this article.

Background: The Income Inequality Issue

This economic research initiative addresses the core issue of income inequality, which is the uneven distribution of income across a population. It's also known as the gap between the rich and poor, wealth disparity, or wealth and income differences.

Think about it. Income inequality has been an issue for years, and we always look to the government and associated institutions to solve or address this issue. What if the best way to address this issue is from the ground up, led by the grassroots sector, not the government? This is a question we address in this research.

Here's why. Over the years, the government, institutions, think tanks, and other organizations have spent millions researching and addressing the problem, with little to no results. Here are just a few examples of the solutions the government and supporting organizations put forth to address this issue:

a. Tax credits: Refundable tax credits for low-income families can help reduce gender bias and encourage labor force participation. Source: www.imf.org

b. Social safety net: Strengthening the social safety net can protect people from losing income due to illness, accidents, or childbirth. This can be done by mandating or incentivizing paid sick leave and parental leave. Source: www.changelabsolutions.org

c. Apprenticeships can help individuals upgrade their skills and earn more without taking on student debt. They can also help businesses address skilled labor shortages. Source: www.americanprogress.org

d. Wealth redistribution can be achieved through steeper inheritance taxes, promoting broader ownership, and socializing or redistributing capital and land equally. Source: www.britannica.com/

... just to name a few.

All of these are great ideas, but, even collectively, they will not put a dent into the income inequality problem.

The Economic Policy Institute noted that the primary cause of income inequality is the fact that workers do not share in the productivity gains they help create (https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/). Therefore, all productivity gains and profits go to corporate CEOs and stockholders. As a result, workers are left with stagnant wages and salaries that barely keep up with inflation. So, the rich get richer, and everyone else struggles. As you will see below, the hypothesis feeding our economic research aggressively addresses this issue.

NIEPP Mission Objective

To address this issue at the grassroots level, we start with the following mission: to conduct grassroots-led economic research into how to apply the Internet and other information technology to help the masses increase their workplace income at least 3 times over.

As you can see, this is a very bold mission. Once completed, it will represent an aggressive solution to the income inequality issue. The sections below offer you a view into how we plan to carry out this mission and the part you can play professionally.

Grassroots-Led

Grassroots-led means we do not rely on investors, venture capitalists, financial institutions, big corporations, or the government to fund or conduct this research. It’s 100% crowdfunded and run by the grassroots public.

Next, consider the phrase we refer to as peer-to-peer collaboration and co-creation. Peer-to-peer means people engage each other professionally outside of the box of a traditional company or corporation. A good example is where open-source software developers from all over the world collaborate to develop software completely independent of corporate control or corporate funding. Crowdfunding is also an example where entrepreneurs raise capital from their peers and not a financial institution.

More specifically, people can use the internet to collaborate and form new large-scale collaborations or alliances. These alliances can harness economic power far beyond what any individual can accomplish. These alliances can then strategically deploy this economic power to create new economic value and wealth for each participating individual within the alliance;

Don Tapscott, in his book called Wikinomics, has a simple but famous quote: “Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.

Economic Research

Next, what do we mean by economic research? Whether we are doing scientific research, economic research, or otherwise, all research must start with a hypothesis or a guess as to how to meet our objective. Then we conduct the research to field test, evaluate, and validate the hypothesis. If the hypothesis doesn’t work, we present a new one and start over.

Our starting hypothesis states that: according to our theory of operation, we need to integrate a new worker-ownership business and compensation model into the mainstream workplace in ways that benefit both employees and employers.

Think about it. What better way to address the income inequality problem than to ensure workers own more of their workplace productivity instead of just renting it out for an hourly wage? Plus, as noted earlier, the Economic Policy Institute noted that the primary cause of income inequality is the fact that workers do not share in the productivity gains they help create.

Next, consider this. Harvard Business School published a research paper regarding how employee ownership or worker ownership leads to broad-based wealth:

"The median household would see its net wealth nearly double, from $121,760 to $230,076"

"The median wealth of families without a high school diploma would increase fourfold, from $20,780 to $83,955."

"The median wealth of black families would increase even more, from $24,100 to $106,271."

This is amazing. However, this is net or median wealth, primarily driven by the application of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), not income. Our mission statement is to help the masses increase their workplace income at least 3 times over. This said, the Harvard study does illustrate the power and benefits of worker ownership when compared to traditional employment.

Now, worker ownership thinking is not new. According to Rutgers University, the first Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) came into being in 1956, which was 68 years ago. However, in 68 years, we only see a 0.02% saturation of worker ownership. This is pitiful given the benefits large-scale worker ownership can have on society.

There are many reasons for the slow adoption. The main ones are:

a. Complexity: The rules and regulations around operating an ESOP can be complex and time-consuming to comply with. Source: forbes.com

b. Financing: It's harder for co-op entrepreneurs to get access to start-up capital. Source: certifiedeo.com

c. Management: Some management may be uncomfortable with the idea of employees as owners. Source: esop.org

We address all of these issues in our economic research activities in three parts:

1) Introduce, test, and validate a new worker ownership business and compensation model. We start the testing and validation process with the Empowered Employee Compensation Model (EECM) as the starting hypothesis. If the EECM doesn't work out, we use what we learn, create a new model, and start over.

2) Ensure that whatever model emerges from the process helps the masses increase their workplace income at least threefold while offering corresponding benefits for employers.

3) Use the power of large-scale peer-to-peer collaboration and co-creation to secure the necessary capital, remove complexity, and strategically integrate the model into the mainstream workplace in mutually beneficial collaboration with employers.

4) These large-scale peer-to-peer collaboration and co-creation models are underwritten by new blockchain-enabled solutions called Virtual Income Machines (virtual wages, virtual bonds, virtual dividends, and virtual stocks). As you can see from the illustration, the Virtual Income Machines serve as supplemental benefits to the Empowered Employee Compensation Model (EECM)

The bottom line: All of these models and assumptions must be tested and evaluated in the real world. This is the essence of the economic research initiative.

How Do We Put This Model to the Test?

To put this new worker-ownership model to the test:

1) We set up an online platform and launch crowdfunding campaigns

2) We encourage aspiring entrepreneurs and other grassroots individuals to come online part-time and collaborate toward forming new worker-owned enterprises according to the new Employee Empowered Compensation Model (EECM);

3) We use crowdfunded dollars to motivate this online collaborative activity and we crowdfund the resulting enterprises.

4) Depending on your professional contribution to research and associated operations, you can access crowdfunded dollars either directly or indirectly.

5) This applies to individuals from all professional walks of life --- regardless of whether you are a wage earner, entrepreneur, aspiring entrepreneur, or business owner.

6) You don’t have to be a rocket scientist. Just be willing to learn operations, determine how you can contribute professionally, and be consistent.

7) Think of Facebook, but instead of just sending messages and videos, people engage and collaborate toward the formation of new worker-owned enterprises motivated by crowdfunded dollars;

8) We start with the formation of enterprises that operate part-time online.

9) This presents an opportunity for people to work part-time online as co-owners working within their field of expertise or area of professional interest and earn the three ownership-based compensation resources associated with the model part-time online.

10) We monitor and evaluate online collaboration activity as a function of the economic research processes and make the necessary adjustments when applicable.

11) If online operations prove successful, we move operations offline and start nurturing, forming, and crowdfunding new full-time enterprises.

12) Over time, we package the applicable crowdfunding resources to help people build a financial foundation leading away from paycheck-to-paycheck dependence so they can make a comfortable financial transition into full-time worker ownership

13) As steps 1 through 12 continue successfully year after year, at some point in the future, the worker ownership solution matrix will eventually integrate into the mainstream corporate sector via natural economic evolution, especially given the benefits applicable to employers. Large-scale integration is applicable for future generations of workers once we have mature, proven models with appropriate regulatory oversight.

This online platform will be freely accessible to the public via the Internet as this process grows and expands.

The Four-Stage Business and Management Plan

We grow operations according to the following four-stage business plan:

1) Prelaunch to Stage I (Early Introduction)

2) Stage I (Early Growth and Development)

3) Stage II (Building the Foundation)

4) Stage III (Main Operations)

5) Stage IV (Corporate Integration

...and we fund each stage with a unique crowdfunding solution:

1) Prelaunch Phase I: Early Crowdfunding Support;

2) Prelaunch Phase II: Empower the Crowd First Crowdfunding System (ECFCS) – start-up;

3) Stage I: Empower the Crowd First Crowdfunding System (ECFCS) – main;

4) Stage II: Gradual Entrepreneurial Allocated Resource System (G.E.A.R.S);

5)Stage III: The Virtual Income Machines (virtual wages, virtual dividends, virtual bonds, virtual stocks)

As you can see, we support each stage with a unique crowdfunding solution that stimulates and motivates the grassroots sector to support this economic research initiative.

Many details are involved stage by stage, but the basic crowdfunding concept is simple. We use our top-level mission objective to raise funds: "to conduct grassroots-led economic research into how to apply the Internet and other information technology to help the masses increase their workplace income at least 3 times over". Those providing the funds benefit in multiple ways, from receiving educational and support benefits to earning income from their support. Details vary from stage to stage of operation. We refer to this plan and the associated crowdfunding solution as the Income Reengineering Process.

In general, pre-launch phase I to Stage II is all online. Then, beginning in Stage III, we expand offline to crowdfund and staffing enterprises 100% owned by worker-owners.

Online Income and Career Development Opportunities

You can help carry out this research and earn significant part-time or full-time income STARTING NOW!

1) Aspiring entrepreneurs who want to take the lead in forming one of these new worker-owned enterprises. You get immediate access to crowdfunded resources and free marketing for the products or services your enterprise creates.

2) Career professionals who want to come online part-time and collaborate with aspiring entrepreneurs toward the formation of one of these new worker-owned enterprises. This is how you earn the ownership compensation resources mentioned (i.e., accountants, administrative assistants, computer programmers, project managers, financial specialists, etc.)

3) Home/small business owners who want to come online, collaborate with aspiring entrepreneurs, and use this system to grow and expand their businesses (business consultants, coaches, product producers/owners, financial service professionals, etc.)

4) Affiliate/Referral Marketers who want to earn significant referral-based income simply by referring others to this new online platform, which is freely accessible to the public. So, yes, this platform is freely accessible, and you can still earn significant income by referring others.

As noted above, operations start online and then expand into the mainstream economy.

Current Operational Status (Prelaunch, Phase I)

The primary focus of this early Prelaunch, phase I period is to:

1) Get Feedback: We need your feedback, positive or negative. As a grassroots-led system, grassroots feedback is the guiding force behind this system. Please feel free to comment below with your feedback.

2) Secure Early Crowdfunding: Do you want to see this economic research move forward based on our top-level mission statement of conducting grassroots-led economic research into how to apply the internet and other information technology to help the masses increase their workplace income at least three times over? If so, please review and consider our prelaunch, phase I crowdfunding option.

3) Spread the Word: If this is a mission you want to see move forward, please repost this article and/or pass the word to others.

4) Pre-Staff For a Stage I Launch: If you are interested in learning how you can position yourself as a participating aspiring entrepreneur, career professional, or home/small business owner in the system during this early prelaunch period, then do a deep dive into the New Income Expansion and Prosperity Project (NIEPP) and learn more.