From: Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM
Date: Wed Nov 10 2004 - 08:43:37 EST
Jurriaan wrote: > As I have mentioned before, in Marx's time taxation and social insurance > was a much more marginal phenomenon. The claims of taxation on current > income & revenues were not so large. In reality, however, the data show > that stock ownership is not very dispersed (see e.g. Edward Wolff's work > on this) and that the amount of stocks directly owned by ordinary workers > is small. Right. My question primarily concerned _indirect_ stock ownership in the form of pension funds. > If ordinary workers directly receive profits from stocks, then they > obviously do participate in the share-out of surplus-value, but as > mentioned, this phenomenon is quantitatively not so significant. If > workers pay into pension, mutual or insurance funds, however, the payout > they get later is normally a cost to the pension, mutual or insurance > business, not a direct disbursement of the income of that business, which > proceeds to invest these funds. Depending on the specific nature of the pension plan, workers don't necessarily have to "pay into" pension funds. Whether workers should or should not pay into pension (and health insurance) funds is an issue that is hotly contested between corporations and unions. In the US historically, workers who received pensions via collective bargaining contracts generally did not have to pay into these accounts; it was only with the "concessions movement" of the 1980's, that mgt. was able to shift some of the burden for pensions to workers. [NB: a significant % of workers in the US have no pension plans.] > Hence it should be seen not as part of > surplus-value, but as a distribution of revenue. In principle, the Marxian > economic concept of surplus-value applies to the valuation of the output > of production; though surplus-values can of course be realized in > exchange. Only the payout from insurance funds can be considered part of > the real wage, assuming that the worker is earning a wage. Some definitions of pension funds refer to pensions as "deferred compensation" (see below). From that perspective then pensions could be viewed as deferred wages. Even though pension fund investments are not directly controlled by individual workers, unions have a say (often limited) in how these funds are to be invested in the stock market. If individual workers invested in the stock market and made gains would that represent a claim on a (very small) portion of the surplus value? If so, then when workers' pensions are invested on the stock market, why can't the gain be thought of as a claim on s? The reason why pension fund monies are invested in the stock market is connected to the subject of *inflation*. I.e. during inflationary periods the rate of interest offered by banks is generally less than the rate of inflation. Hence, if pension funds were invested in bank accounts then real savings would diminish over time. This forces the trustees of benefit funds to search for the greater rates of return that are often found in the stock market. Although these funds usually invest monies in (so-called 'blue chip') stocks which are deemed to be more 'safe' and although the stock investments are in the form of very diversified portfolios, this exposes workers' pensions to a higher level of risk than is the case with federally insured bank accounts or government bonds. In a crisis if there is a crash in the stock market then the workers' pension plans are at risk. (NB: on a related note, the Bush administration's plan for the reform of social security would expose workers' SS accounts to greater risk as a result of fluctuations in the stock market. Yet -- and this is why it is being pushed by Bush -- it would inject funds into the stock market and thereby benefit corporations.) In solidarity, Jerry http://www.imf.org/external/np/sta/ueps/2002/eng/pitzer.pdf
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Nov 11 2004 - 00:00:01 EST