In [6438] Gil wrote in part about workers' ownership plans (ESOP)* : This reminds me of the current situation with Enron. Workers and managers alike who owned billions (?) of dollars worth of Enron stock -- and could not sell them -- lost practically all of their savings (mostly invested in pension funds) when the corporation went into bankruptcy. This is a pretty appealing path for other corporations in the US who offer ESOP and find themselves in financial crisis, isn't it? Will many other corporations follow Enron's example? While this is an appealing variant on a standard way of overcoming a crisis (lowering wages below the value of labour power), I tend to doubt whether the funds in these accounts are large enough to jump-start the macroeconomy again. What do others think? However, if we combine the loss of earnings from ESOP with the loss of workers' savings in pension funds and losses in mutual funds, etc. we are talking about a much greater amount of $. This cumulatively represents a significant loss in the equity owned by the US working class (and as I have noted before, for workers with savings accounts, especially retired workers on a fixed income, the loss of income due to declining interest rates has lowered the standard of living of a significant percentage of the US working class). Taken together, this represents a significant redistribution of income and wealth from one class to another. Even so, are these losses of a scale great enough to significantly help the capitalist class restore profitability and macro growth? If not, then what *is* required ??? In solidarity, Jerry * ESOP = Employee Stock Ownership Plans
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Feb 02 2002 - 00:00:06 EST