Story here. The details haven’t come out yet. I’m suspecting it’s going to be tied to seniority. But let’s say for the sake of discussion that each worker is going to get offered something like 60 grand to walk.
My dad just retired from Ford. He told me once about an older (white) worker he used to talk to. They stopped talking when my dad casually asked him about investing. We know what the black/white wealth gap looks like. What we don’t know is how much of this gap is due to a knowledge deficit rather than a pure resource deficit? Whites living in suburban Detroit can make money just off of their house, because as long as their neighborhood is 90% white or more, people will want to move into it. The only piece of knowledge the average white homeowner needs to know here is the knowledge he has as soon as he recognizes that “white” is more than the absence of color.
But how much of this knowledge comes from older co-workers telling him what do to with his money? Telling him how to invest, what to invest in?
I’ve already heard about one brother who quickly went belly up after taking a buyout from GM.
I’m thinking a WHOLE lot more are soon to follow.
The surplus financial resources required for investment in market companies represents only one form of capital. The knowledge required for acquiring the surplus financial capital to invest is another form of capital: labor-focused human capital (this increases the per/hour value of labor to a level that enables the laborer to share some of the surplus created by the resources invested by the capitalist for whom he/she works). The knowledge of how to use surplus financial capital to successfully invest in the market is another form of capital: technical investing know how-focused human capital. And, the ability to acquire the accurate, valuable, and timely information (the best of which is not for sale via websites or other information service providers) required for the most lucrative investments of surplus financial capital is yet another form of capital: social capital (this is the vein through which accurate and valuable information about the market travels through social/professional networks).
All who could profit from investing their surplus financial capital in the market must first have some combination of the abovementioned forms of capital. This combination could be represented mathematically, and we could compare one person’s total capital function against another’s.
I suspect the average Black, who earned the same surplus capital via his/her salary as a comparable White and who had as much technical investing know how as a comparable White, would still earn less money in the market from his/her investments, because the social network of the average Black would not transmit accurate and valuable information about the market as quickly as the social network of his White peer. And, I suspect (at least it has been my experience) that substantial success with respect to wealth accumulation via the investment of surplus financial capital in the market is predominantly a factor of one’s timely access to accurate and valuable market information (the best of which is shared among the most wealthy and those closely connected to them via their social networks first). Therefore, I also suspect the strength of an investor’s social network and the timeliness with which he/she obtains accurate and valuable information becomes an increasingly important contributor to the wealth building process/competition as an investor accumulates more surplus financial capital from his/her successful investments.
My hypothesis is technical investing know how-focused human capital is a more important contributor to the wealth gap for novice investors than social capital, yet social capital is a more important contributor to the wealth gap for successful and experienced investors than technical investing know how-focused human capital. And, I believe the average Black at all levels of technical investing know how, investing experience, and wealth levels lags behind his/her comparable White peer with respect to one or the other or both of these variables.
I think there are several economical ways to effectively decrease both the technical investing know how-focused human capital gap for novice investors and the social capital gap for more successful and experienced investors; however, I’d need tens of thousands of words and a few months of research to communicate my ideas to others responsibly.
you know what? i think you may have missed out on an excellent opportunity to be a social scientist. your comments here are more than on the mark.
Lester:
I enjoy entrepreneurship too much to teach or research on a full-time basis. 🙂 However, if the gatekeepers at one of the elite law schools to which I’ll apply this year determine that I deserve an opportunity to pursue my formal legal education with them, then I’ll contribute a few well-researched essays and books to the Academy or the public.
I’m only 33, and I stay healthy, so I should have a few decades left. I’m disciplined enough to devote my evenings and weekends to good research and writing. Yet, if our gatekeepers determine that I don’t deserve the opportunity to pick up the elite education, academic relationships, research experiences, and prestigious credentials that are often required of smart folks who seek to publish their novel ideas in respected and widely-read scholarly journals, then I’ll trust their good judgment.
I realize there may be too many others who are more deserving or cleverer to justly grant a seat at an elite law school to a brother like me. And, I’d be content to continue to test the bulk of my intellectual strength against that which I’ve done best heretofore (enterprise), keeping my novel (yet underdeveloped) scholarly ideas to myself. 🙂
All I have to say is, why not? American workers have compelled capital to a new stage through its resistance and so capital is now looking for a more pliant working-class so that it can exploit labor-power at a higher rate.
And since the production of relative surplus-value (the decreasing of the necessary labor time, the time required to reproduce the value of the laborer’s mean of subsistence, in order to increase the surplus or unnecessary labor time through revolutionizing the instruments of production) has been capital’s mode since workers have struggled to minimize the working day (which began in England in the 1830s), it is searching for places where absolute surplus-value can be obtained…where working people have not yet set limits on how long the surplus labor time can be accumulated.
The national tendency, to me, is saying that America will eventually become a complete deindustrialized economy. Until Asian workers begin resisting on a political level (they already are on an economic level–as many as 83,000 worker revolts a year alone in China) will production be universalized throughout the world, or until computerized production pushes all workers outside of the production process, which will be a fucked situation.
I dunno, I guess I would be more inclined to take 60k and walk instead of waiting five or ten years and being told to get out for nothing.
But that sucks about your pops and the white worker. All too often they get won over on the basis of privilege (which only subordinates them to the interest of the bosses) instead of on the basis of class. That white worker could very well have been my pops, but it ain’t me.
Good piece Les. Peace.
By the way, the comment above is not to disparage Asian workers in any way, only to highlight their stage of development as a relatively new industrial working class. Also, they are resisting politically as well. The events of 1989 are an example of such resistance. But until they have even a glimmer of democracy, they will be reduced to unorganized violence and the destruction of means of production as has been the traditional revolt.
Because of the ruling bureaucracy’s censorship, it will be difficult to investigate any tendencies towards worker control of production, but that in no way means it hasn’t or isn’t happening.
Krisna Best
Interesting Doc, Ed took more words to say the same thing;basically the White worker was willing share tips on the Piston but not the bottom line.Something similar go to a bank and apply for loan to buy a Cadilac,then try to get a small business loan for half the cost.