Dr Alf’s Two Cents: Money in the Wrong Places: What Marx Got Right – David Blake

Threadneedle Street – 001 (Photo credit: Neil_J_Smith)

The Bank of England in Threadneedle Street, London. Deutsch: Sitz der Bank von England in der Londoner Threadneedle Street. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One protester scaled pillars to hang banners outside the Bank of England along the bank’s front on Threadneedle Street in London’s financial district on Wednesday April 1, 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is a well researched, MUST-READ article by David Blake. Check it out!

via MONEY IN THE WRONG PLACES: WHAT MARX GOT RIGHT – Montrose Associates – Strategic Analysis and Advice.

I was alerted to this article from a citation in Gavyn Davies recent blog in the FT entitled the “Real under-pinning of equities”.

David Blake’s article is very easy to read and provides hard statistical evidence that in the last thirty years, the wealthy have taken a far larger share of the cake than the workers. There is clear evidence that the the rate of growth in earnings for the top 1% has far outstripped the other 99%. Modern industries are less dependent upon unionized labor, and globalization has transferred many unskilled or semi-skilled jobs to China and India. Technology too has replaced unskilled labor.

The article makes a brilliant point about financing consumer demand with increasing debt until the bubble burst in 2008. Meanwhile since 2008, equity prices have benefited from central banks policies of QE (quantitative easing) – printing money. The conclusion of the article was that things are going to get much tougher still for the workers.

From my perspective, I envision:

Continued down-sizing of the public sectors around the World, especially in countries like the UK and Southern Europe
Increasing outsourcing and offshoring, further reducing jobs and driving down the cost of labor
Increasing commoditization of goods and services, driving down costs
Further subordination of environmental and green issues, in the quest to drive down costs
Increasingly globalization and migration of labor from low cost to high cost areas
Reduced power for organized labor, i.e. less trade-union membership
Countries like France that are at the mercy of organized labor to become increasingly less competitive, with reduced growth and prosperity at the national level
Increasing social tension between the wealthy and the workers
Politicians and policy-makers will continue to take a myopic perspective, relying on their cronies for counsel, so the absence of cohesive strategy and coordinated policy delivery is likely to have limited impact on the global imbalance between the wealthy and the workers.
There will be an increasingly risk of policy-makers becoming embroiled in lengthy wars to deploy available labor