Before you jump to any conclusions, do remember one of the core tenants of Marixism. Marx claimed that all capital (K) is really stored-up labor. For a quick primer, read here.
The idea behind this is simple. All capital stores the value of labor that went into making that piece of capital. Thus, a piece of farm equipment stores the inherent value of the labor required to produce it (and the capital needed to produce the farm equipment and so on and so forth). Eventually, all capital boils down to some labor.
In our modern society, this theory works if we expand the definition of labor to include human capital. Thus, the value of all capital is equal to the labor plus the human capital required to create that capital in the first place. Enough with the theory.
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Swaminom…
This article makes an interesting attempt to bridge together the Marxist Theory of Value with our modern day financial system. I do not think the author does the job well, but I think he is on to the right idea. If you look at the 2008 crisis, the owners of firms, from the shareholders in big banks to the pension funds which invested in crap assets to the shareholders in Big Three auto companies, all were fucked, and they were fucked hard.
The employees of these firms managed to extract a significant amount of value from the firm, by arguing that their labor and superior minds created that value in the first place. Instead of profits returning to capital, as should be expected in a capitalist system, profits returned to labor. Thus, returns on equity metrics have slumped, while returns on labor, such have soared. This is a perverted Marxist dream.
The financial system is such that these traders and bankers were extracting value from the assets that were built from real sources of capital, which in Marxists arguments, were extracted from labor. Thus, a worker created some piece of machinery, which created profits for the capitalist in the form of higher equity returns, which was extracted by the trader by moving that asset around the financial system. Its a complicated and messy theory, but the underlying idea has some merit.
Entertain the idea. I'm not suggesting its necessarily true. I'm just introducing it as a topic of discussion. Are we seeing profits return to laborers instead of capitalists? If so, will this trend gain acceptance in other areas of our economic system? Could Marx's ideas play out in a way we didn't really anticipate?
"Are we seeing profits return to laborers instead of capitalists?"
from mark cuban's blog: "I know that sounds crazy, but the stock market has gone from a place where investors actually own part of a company and have a say in their management, to a market designed to enrich insiders by allowing them to sell shares they buy cheaply through options. Companies continuously issue new shares to their managers without asking their existing shareholders."
Ford factory workers average around $108 in all in compensation.. not exactly blue collar pay in my opinion. Unions served a purpose years ago but now they are the source significant issues that threaten the financial stability of companies who are forced to deal with them. My elementary art school teacher retired making 120k a year. I find it hard to believe that giving her a raise each year was justified, I don't think she taught any better year after year.
A good read on this topic, at least tangentially: "While America Aged".
It's basically a case study on the disaster that is our modern pension system. One of the sections focuses on GM, and the author makes an interesting observation about the shifting ratio of profits distributed to the owners (shareholders) vs the laborers (employees). Over the course of 50 years, unions essentially eroded the true ownership interest by diverting capital to themselves.
And if you like that one, read the section on San Diego - where pension obligations are constitutionally guaranteed (i.e. bankruptcy is not an option, and taxpayer joe has to pay no matter what)!
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