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The Road to Serfdom, Part II
by Michael Hudson, OCCUPY:
Finance Capitalism vs. Industrial Capitalism and their Respective Modes of Exploitation
These are indeed eternal problems between employers and employees. But today’s labor is exploited increasingly in a financial way. Corporate raiders empty out their pension funds (or at least, downsize pension payouts by threatening bankruptcy) and seize Employee Stock-Ownership Plans (ESOPs), while bankers charge labor directly by personal loans, mortgage loans, and student loans.
The Financial, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector has shifted the tax burden off itself onto consumers and financialized saving in advance for Social Security to produce a fiscal surplus that is used to cut taxes on the wealthy. The corporate sector and the economy at large have been “financialized,” their surplus consumed in the form of debt service rather than invested in new capital formation to employ labor and produce more to raise living standards.
