How is pension fund socialism going?

From https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2019/01/who-owns-all-the-stocks-bonds/

How is pension fund socialism going?

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Source: OECD Pension Fund Statistics..

@PikettyLeMonde pension fund socialism has finished taking over #capitalism #Piketty

Peter Drucker first pointed out in the 70s that the retirement savings of ordinary workers will end up opening the majority of public listed companies. That day has come much to the disappointment of the Leftover Left ranging from Thomas Piketty to Max Rashbrooke.image 

Source: CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: US Corporate Stock: The Transition in Who Owns It.

Any call for higher taxes on investment incomes and capital and even tax havens is an attack on the retirement savings of ordinary workers.

New Zealand physical and human capital (by a skill level), 1986 – 2001

New Zealand working class is wealthier than the entire capitalist class. Their human capital, shown in the chart below as the human capital of the unskilled and non-degree workers, far exceeds the value of the physical capital stock of New Zealand.

image

Source: Lˆe Thi. Vˆan Tr`ınh, Estimating the monetary value of the stock of human capital for New Zealand, University of Canterbury PhD thesis (September 2006).

Only part of this physical capital stock is owned by the capitalist class given we live in the era of pension fund socialism. About a 3rd of that physical capital stock is owner occupied homes.

image

Source: Lˆe Thi. Vˆan Tr`ınh, Estimating the monetary value of the stock of human capital for New Zealand, University of Canterbury PhD thesis (September 2006).

The only reason that the share of unskilled and non-degree workers is in any way declining is the withering away of the proletariat. More and more people are joining the middle-class and going on to higher education.

 .

How is pension fund socialism going?

If ‘socialism’ is defined as ‘ownership of the means of production by the workers’ — and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition — then the United States is the first truly ‘Socialist’ country (Peter Drucker, 1976, p. 1).

Figure 1. Evolution of aggregate stock ownership

Figure 2. Stock ownership of US mutual funds and pension funds

HT: via How tax policy drives the structure of stock ownership | VOX, CEPR’s Policy Portal.

Macintosh HD:Users:aiqinc:Desktop:domestic-equity-ownership-of-US-equity.png

via The Rise of Mutual Fund Power | Advice IQ.

Piketty and Pension Fund Socialism

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Any attack on capitalism these days is a direct attack of the retirement savings of ordinary workers. We live in the age of  what Peter Drucker called pension fund socialism in 1976. As Drucker added in 1991:

The rise of pension funds as dominant owners and lenders represents one of the most startling power shifts in economic history.

The first modern pension fund was established in 1950 by General Motors.

Four decades later, pension funds control total assets of $2.5 trillion, divided about equally between common stocks and fixed-income securities. Demographics guarantee that these assets will grow aggressively for at least another ten years.

The majority of equity capital is owned by pension funds and other collective investment vehicles corralling the savings of ordinary people. Much of the rest of physical capital is owned by workers through home ownership.

In the age of human capital, 70-90% of all capital in the economy is human capital. The notion of unskilled workers labouring away with the capital supplied by the bosses is 19th century throwback.

The rentier rich has been long replaced by the working rich. They make their fortunes in their own life times – sometimes as business entrepreneurs, sometimes through rent-seeking.

It is also the age of specific human capital, with a proliferation of technologies and products. The rising specialisation of firms and their production inputs has forced firms to try harder to find those inputs that suit their needs best. Management has the task of finding the right inputs. The role and reward to managers has therefore risen.

When the rise in returns on investments in human capital is beneficial and desirable, and policies designed to deal with inequality must take account of its cause. Growth in education levels has been a significant source of rising wages, productivity, and living standards over the past century.

The initial impact of higher returns to human capital is wider inequality in earnings, but that impact becomes more muted and may be reversed over time as young people invest more in their human capital.

The rentier class has been replaced by the working rich. The evidence on the top 1% is most consistent with theories of superstars, skill biased technological change, greater scale and their interaction of these factors.

Individuals who are really good at making money can now apply their skills to larger amounts of capital and reach far larger audiences  and markets for their products and services. That favours CEOs, athletes, celebrities, corporate lawyers, successful entrepreneurs and other working rich Who have a skill  or talent that can be supplied at little cost on a much larger scale. Some have a special dark place in their hearts for people who earned their money through honest hard work.

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