| title | author | year | isbn |
|---|---|---|---|
The Asset Economy |
Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper, Martijn Konings |
2020 |
9781509543465 |
the following are my notes on the asset economy. this is not a summary. instead, these are the ideas that caught my eye.
- 2 - generational analysis big in public debate, out of style in academia
- 4 - should not be too quick to say neoliberalism is only about the 1%
- 5 - 'rentier function' has become embedded across soscial life as a whole
- 5 - "The key element shaping inequality is not longer the employment relationship, but rather whether one is able to buy assets that appreciate at a faster rate than both inflation and wages."
- 6 - income still matters, but less possible to enjoy middle class life on wages alone; asset ownership more important than employment for class
- 6 - growing importance of intergenerational transfer; this is not return to earlier era but instead logic of speculation with strategic fund transfers
- 6 - "The new logic of inequality has mixed 'hypercapitalist' logics of financialization with 'feudal' logics of inheritance"
- 7 - wages stagnate, so asset prices important to households and macro
- 10 - only way to buy property in western cities is w/ parental help
- 10 - intergenerational transfer of wealth has become key mechanism in new logic of class
- 13 - taking commodity as main form of capitalist economy lacks temporal dimension which lets us understand uncertainty + speculation in econ life
- 15 - if we use only consider commodity, there's no need for finance, so it just looks parasitic
- 15 - "Value is always an expectation-driven practice of valuation oriented towards an uncertain future."
- 16 - participation in modern economy means illiquid investments - makes more sense to call it asset economy than debt or financialized
- 16 - "The asset economy requires not low-commitment participation in trading, but investment and exposure."
- 17 - minskyian household: no longer unit of subsistence / consumption, but a balance sheet of assets and liabilities to be managed
- 19 - keynes held onto idea that long-run market outcome would reflect real value, reluctant to accept that beauty contest is core logic of econ life
- 20 - "Liquidity buys us the time we need to make our investments work out."
- 20 - idea that we invest and wait for investments to work out predicated on taking liquidity for granted
- 21 - keynesian household bought a house that didn't change much; minskyian household hopes to achieve capital gains on house, concerned w/ house as an asset
- 21 - minskyian household under pressure to invest in assets that will become object of others' self-interest + speculation, so will appreciate
- 24 - piketty focused on absence of policy mechanisms to stop accumulation, didn't pay attention to new patterns, emphasizes state capture
- 25 - piketty + others depict neoliberalism as return to earlier era
- 26 - naidu's wild piketty looks at politically, legally constructed nature of property rights + speculative character of capital
- 28 - buying a house not as easy as moving money from bank account to investment account - requires down payment + leverage; lump sum means intergenerational transfers needed even for fairly high incomes
- 28 - those who can't afford a down payment increasingly forced to put their income streams in service of others' asset accumulation, like long-term renter paying landlord's mortgage
- 29 - real estate doesn't change much, little innovation happening, so "it is very apparent to buyers themselves that their willingness to buy at a certain price is bound up not with any beliefs about true underlying values but about the future of market sentiment and expectations about what others will be willing to pay."
- 31 - scholars have trouble understanding why asset inflation so hard to stop politically despite destabilizing effects
- 31 - elites always have outsized influence, but this policy looks irrational to everyone involved, so need better explanation of how it persists in democracy
- 31 - need to appreciate that housing created middle class and neoliberal policy happened in setting where property ownership was democratized, so initially building on that legacy -> middle class invested in asset appreciation
- 33 - stagnant wages, high asset prices not a natural tendency: took effort
- 34 - middle class homeowners benefited most from inflation, saw mortgage burden depreciate in value
- 35 - inflation eroded wealth of top decile, throughout 70s wealthy scrambled for assets to protect them; corporate stock value down since mid 60s
- 35 - wage + consumer price inflation translated to asset deflation
- 40 - "Milton Friedman's 'monetarism' served as a technical pretext for the deliberate creation of a recession." -> caused unemployment that broke labor power
- 41 - since 80s, central banks okay w/ + encourage asset price inflation, stay vigilant on wage-push inflation
- 44 - thatcher understood emotional appeal of people participating in asset economy to make up losses on lost labour income, offered working-class residents opportunity to buy public housing assets -> provide literal buy-in to psychology of investment, have former dependents see themselves as investors and rentiers, not workers
- 46 - stock option revival in tech appealing to third way types who saw it as real embodiment of human capital
- 49 - not possible to square asset inflation with program of public investment, greenspan told clinton -> "It was one thing or the other: high asset prices or public sector abundance."
- 49 - govt took advantage of credit boom to push income-poor to invest in housing, causing cycle to push up housing prices, creating collateral that would allow more credit (sounds like minsky lol); greenspan urged clinton to use wealth effect and relax rules on credit (wow sounds like crisis origin)
- 50 - third way govts talk big about knowledge economy and end up resorting to asset (house or stocks) inflation
- 50 - impossible to create new class of high paid knowledge workers while also suppressing wages + doing austerity
- 50 - housing preferred instrument bc it was already democratized
- 51 - "The combination of inflated capital gains and deflated wages progressively closes the gates to newcomers, who struggle to buy their way into housing on wages along."
- 59 - analyses that focus on debt fail to recognize role of collateral: debt often necessary for asset holding
- 63 - oh no an actual class taxonomy ... this is nutty lol. doesn't account for the case of a renter who could afford a house but invests wages in different assets instead
- 67 - boomers make useful scapegoat to draw attention from class + to argue for austerity
- 69 - liquidity lifeblood of minskyian household more than keynesian household
- 72 - tadiar: some lives capitalized to yield future returns, others commodified, unable to store / retain value'; wrong for a few reasons
- 72 - necessary to save + invest bc welfare states weakened so private income now needed
- 73 - idea of bifurcation between asset economy and commodity prevents us from seeing that all of us are exposed to logic of asset appreciation, inflation
- 73 - wage deflation means human capital devalued even though education debt remains, like an underwater mortgage but undischargeable
- 73 - young graduates often drained of liquidity by ed debt, depriving them of opportunities for new investment + changing course
- 75 - future doesn't disappear under capitalism, southwood calls it frenetic inactivity or non-stop inertia
- 75 - "What we end up with is an exhausting, nerve-racking combination of need for constant vigilance in combination with the absence of clear rewards."
- 75 - idea that generation locked out of asset ownership is inaccurate when you consider intergeneration transfers
- 76 - inheritance + living transfers important outside of even 1%
- 82 - minsky was post-foundationalist, moved away from idea that there's true/underlying value
- 85 - charge of commidification primarily cultural, accepts orthodox econ but with negative normative twist
- 87 - exclusion of housing from inflation doesn't match experience
- 89 - large parts of the electorates invested in ongoing asset price inflation, tax concessions, minimal inheritance tax -> housing generator of inequality
- 90 - piketty says it's natural economic laws, but it's better understood as a function of specific interests of specific constituencies / class; hard to cater to middle class without preventing entry of rest of society
- 91 - no easy way out of the asset economy
- 14 - keen 2011 on why it's dumb to use barter economy model
- 16 - feher 2018 on investment
- 21 - feher 2009 on investment
- 25 - chwieroth & walter 2019 on asset ownership
- 25 - naidu 2017 on wild piketty, sounds like a really great book
- 28 - whole lot of papers:
- aalbers & christophers 2014
- fuller 2019
- keen 2017
- schwartz & seabrooke 2009
- weber 2015
- 46 - lazonick 2009 on stock option compensation
- 68 - adkins 2019 on housing purchase
- 72 - tadiar 2012, 2013 on futures commodified
- 75 - southwood 2011 non-stop inertia
- 75 - elliot 2018 menu of bad options
- 86 - lury 2013, et al 2012 topological inequality
- 86 - muniesa 2011 value as practice