MCWS

“………….. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.” (Matthew 23:23 – NKJV)

MCWS stands for Middle Class Wealth Solutions.

We are a Canadian company with registered office in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

If we could distill the essence of our vision, it is to preach the gospel of ownership, and convert middle class folks (MCFs) to it in large numbers.  The middle class needs to shift its focus away from ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ to ‘own, own, own’ – elected officials should certainly continue to focus on job creation, MCFs should continue to  get academic education, but whatever happens, MCFs should be laser-focused on ownership (of income producing assets). The middle class is almost homogeneous in its adherence to the gospel of academic education, certificates, diplomas, professional certifications, trade licenses and so on.  But like the quote (at the top of the page) above, MCFs have ‘dropped the ball‘ in matters of ownership (of income producing assets) or ‘left it undone’.  And, guess what? While MCFs were busy acquiring certificates and academic/trade education, rich folks were hard at work buying up all the income producing assets in sight – what is ironic is that rich folks have found a way to monetize the obsession of the middle class with academic education and profit from it on many fronts  (ownership of educational institutions, student loans, etc). MCFs were content to just do their jobs and earn a decent living – many are now finding out that rich folks even want your job. They are happy to take it away from you and give someone else thousands of miles away as a means of lowering costs and increasing profits. It is time for the middle class to ‘pick up the ball‘ and be converted to the gospel of ownership – in the final analysis, that is what counts. All the certificates in the world cannot prevent you from losing your job (some certificates may help you in quickly finding a good replacement – many certificates may not even help you with that) – on the other hand, with a proper structure and good management, your ownership stake in income producing assets is not easily taken away, does not become obsolete (unlike some professional certifications) and can be passed on to your heirs/estate in direct contrast to a job, associated benefits, wages/salaries and/or pensions.

To that end, we are focused on serving the middle class and bringing to them, wealth building opportunities currently reserved exclusively for the rich.

Yes, we will explore on this site, our main website (still under construction), and our blog posts,  the various problems and challenges we see keeping the middle class down. But we also realize that if we focus on the problems without proffering solutions, we only create disillusionment, frustration and hopelessness in our readers – that is not our aim – which is why we have the word solutions in our name.

We are focused on providing a platform for middle class folks to come together, identify challenges and hurdles (keeping the middle class down), develop solutions (from a middle class perspective) and implement the solutions (in a manner that protects the interests of the middle class). In other words, wealth solutions of the middle class by the middle class for the middle class.

Many of the options currently available to the middle class (bank deposits, mutual funds, unit trusts and so on) are actually tools provided for the middle class by the wealthy class with an agenda in mind – keeping the middle class down, and enriching the wealthy few at the expense of the middle class. For many in the middle class, there are not too many credible options to the various financial weapons of  mass destruction (of savings, hopes and dreams) being peddled to them as retirement or other (kids’ college/university for example) investment solutions. We are providing that much needed credible alternative.

We want our readers (and hopefully, prospective clients) to have a sense of increasing hope, enthusiasm, empowerment and control (over their future and present lives). This is not about selling products or buying products (i.e. multi-level and/or network marketing) as most of the wealth building opportunities targeted at the middle class are – we are serious about bringing the world of the rich to your doorstep. We think that most rich folks (at least the ones we know) do not have their wealth and/or income dependent on selling (or buying) multi-level (pyramid or network) marketing products – so, we don’t think that should be your only option.

We would only bring to you, the type of opportunities that rich folks could get excited about – there is nothing new in what we are doing other than that these opportunities (we hope and with your support and patronage) would become available to folks outside the country club set. In general, these opportunities only get presented to rich folks – the types who can write cheques for $10,000 or $100,000 or $1 Million or $10 Million (or whatever other amount is required) at short notice. We think the same opportunities should be available to middle class folks (MCFs) who may be able to afford only $10, or $100 or $1,000 (if you can afford more, you’re still welcome – we are about inclusion rather than exclusion). So, we may have to find larger numbers of these MCFs to get a new opportunity going but we think MCFs should at least have the chance to get in on these opportunities.

Typical opportunities may include the acquisition of a private corporation with a solid track record (the type that currently gets raped in a leveraged buyout with resulting loss of many middle class jobs and the creation of a high debt profile for tax advantages which shift the tax burden to the middle class), or the purchase of oil and gas wells, commercial real estate (office, industrial, retail, residential), gold mines, other precious metal (zinc, copper, uranium and so on) mines. What is unique about these opportunities is the focus on cash flow – predictable, tax-efficient and increasing. We are obsessed with (and about) cash flow because many of the financial challenges faced by MCFs are directly traceable to unpredictable cash flow – if you asked a typical middle class financial planner (more often than not a mutual fund salesman) about how long it would take to get your money (invested funds) back, you would probably get a blank stare. This is the key question a rich, sophisticated investor is focused on – but MCFs are not supposed to care (even if you ask, you get told how the stock market has typically returned x% over the last x years even though past performance is not a guarantee of future returns – meaning the MCF is living or hoping to live in fantasy land). The opportunities we bring to you would allow you to invest your funds in a tax efficient manner (most of it structured as a loan with a fixed interest rate tied to the purchase price relative to income stream predictability), have the funds returned to you (for example by replacing the original loan from MCFs with other – possibly bank, or financial institution – debt) as quickly as possible, while you continue to retain your ownership interest in the enterprise forever (or until the enterprise is sold).

All these are also available in the public stock markets with the supposedly added benefit of liquidity – you will find out though that the average MCF is relatively ill equipped to maximize public market opportunities. When there are thousands of instruments to research and you have to go to a day job (which takes up  8 – 12 hours of your day including the commute) as well as juggle different activities for your kids – it is just almost impossible for most MCFs to get the best deals. There are services and newsletters that could take the research burden off you and point you in the right direction but given the limited resources available to most MCFs, this is also not a viable option.

Our platform for example could allow MCFs who want to trade in the public markets to pool their funds together for best results. How? If we aggregate (from various MCFs in sums ranging from $10 to $1,000 for example) a total of $10 Million, we could conceivably spend as much as $50,000 on research (analyst reports, newsletters etc) but it would only be 0.5% (a $5 cost to a middle class investor with $1,000 in the pool) of the funds available for investment. Furthermore, the per trade transaction fee (which could be as high as $20+) on 1,000 trades for the whole pool would amount to 0.2% (a $2 cost to our MCF with $1,000 in the pool – the same MCF would have found it very expensive to execute 10 trades costing $200 or even $50 at a discount brokerage). Additionally, the pool size means it would be possible to use a full service (not discount) brokerage, the pool would be considered an important customer because of the size (the kind of importance that would not attach to a middle class investor with $20,000 for example) and in some situations of limited availability (like certain highly sought after initial public offerings e.g. Google’s in August 2004) the pool stands a better chance of securing access to scarce units than individual MCFs would.The pool would be overseen by the MCFs who own it – the owners would get to choose a substantial majority of the directors or trustees in a free vote . Those directors would owe allegiance only to the owners (not some other powerful entrenched interest) and continue to serve at the pleasure of the owners – if the owners are not satisfied with their performance, they would be voted out. Our platform means that all member-owners of the pool would have the opportunity to vote directors of their choice online – they cannot be excluded because the annual (or special) general meeting is holding in some far off location and the incumbent directors then get to vote proxies on their behalf.

Our accountability guidelines, and commitment to client rights would place any MCF in a better position than most (if not all) competing or alternative opportunities. Furthermore, we are focused on the fact that working together, middle class folks can achieve a lot more for the benefit of the middle class than the current systems in place.

MCWS is also interested in advocating middle class best interests; right now, in policy debates all over the world, the rich and powerful corporations have front row seats – there is no one advocating for the middle class. When the rich and powerful finish (behind closed doors) the act of selling the middle class into slavery (via increased tax burdens, reduced wages and benefits and limited options for upward mobility), they come out and get the same (unfortunately, ignorant) MCFs to vote their candidates into office to execute their plan (it matters not whether right, left, centre right or centre left political ideology/platform is used)  using whatever slogan works best for a particular election cycle. One cycle, they may say it is about abortion, or guns and then in a subsequent cycle, it may be about change (except that the planned change is for enhancing the privileges of the rich). We would seek to use various tools and means to educate the middle class – education is ultimately the most powerful weapon (and we are not talking about just academic type education but education in tax matters, governance matters, what elections and government appointments are all about and so on) – for example, in the US, over the last 30 years, the social conservatives  (many of them, MCFs) that voted Republican were hoping for a Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) that would overturn Roe v Wade (we are not holding our breath for that) but even if they have to wait for their anti-abortion wishes to come to pass, the rich and powerful who engineered those elections and the appointment of SCOTUS justices predisposed to their interests have saddled their country with the Citizens United ruling which now allows these rich and powerful interests to buy elections without any regulatory restraints (they bought elections prior to that – but with restrictions). The point here is not to endorse or oppose abortion or choice as the various political ideologies like to frame it but to show that, more often than not, the rich and powerful have been able to coax MCFs to vote against middle class interests in the name of different distractions (gays, guns, abortion, change and whatever other label is required). At the end of the day, nothing material changes on the distraction (abortion, gays, guns and so on) front but the tax laws may be rewritten to benefit the wealthy and powerful interests or those interests could successfully loosen rules that make it difficult to buy elections and so on. So, MCWS would use every tool, medium and platform available to promote middle class interests including (the list is not exhaustive – we have to continually study what the rich are doing and try to match or outdo them):

  • Videos
  • Documentaries
  • Movies
  • Comedies
  • Drama
  • Policy Think Tanks
  • Media Ownership