The View | It pays to share
If Thomas Piketty and others want to see labour regain its profit share against capital, they could learn from banks' special brand of Marxism
Last week Britain's Guardian newspaper asked a number of financial commentators why Thomas Piketty's book on inequality has become an international best seller.
In his response, the economist Bradford DeLong noted that last generation's Michigan governor and American Motors boss George Romney lived in a nice house, but not a mansion, and headed a company that created good jobs at good wages.
This generation's Massachusetts governor and Bain Capital CEO Mitt Romney has houses worth about US$25 million, and has been accused of exploiting legal anomalies to raid the pension funds of Kansas City steel workers.
It is distaste for these trends that has spawned the Occupy Wall Street movement, led to legislation to curb financial sector bonuses, and made a numbers-laden tome like Capital in the Twenty-First Century such a popular read.
But there is one aspect of financial sector remuneration which is intriguing, and perhaps even worth replicating in some fashion: bankers share the plunder.
Not with steel workers, mind you, but among themselves, and that is more than we can say for most other business sectors.