December 20, 2015
Brad posted a short note commenting on my paper on rents as the basis for upward redistribution in the last thirty five years. The paper outlines ways in which rents in various areas can explain this upward redistribution, as opposed to the sort of argument advanced by Thomas Piketty that it is some natural process that is inherent to capitalism.
Brad suggested that Piketty would respond by saying that the beneficiaries of this upward redistribution are behind the mechanisms (e.g. stronger and longer patent protection and a bloated financial sector) that have led to this upward redistribution. I agree that this is likely Piketty’s response, but I would raise two points.
First, do we believe that all of these mechanisms were somehow preordained? Was it inevitable that we would have TRIPS, extending and strengthening patent and copyright protection throughout the world? Was there no way to avoid the financial deregulation that gave us too big to fail banks and an explosion of short-term trading and proliferation of new financial instruments? We can look back and know who won these battles, but surely it was possible that some or most of them could have gone the other way.
The other point is how we envision political battles going forward. We know the rich will fight any policy that jeopardizes their wealth and power, but let’s consider two scenarios. On the one hand, we have policies that give shareholders more power to contain CEO pay and proposals to publicly fund clinical trials so that new drugs can be put on the market at generic prices. On the other hand we have a proposal for a global tax on wealth. Which direction has better prospects?
Addendum
Joe Seydl raises a good question in his comment, asking: “who are the selfless activists who are supposed to continuously keep competiton fair?”
The answer is that I am not expecting anyone to be a selfless activist. I am expecting people to act in their own interest. The pharmaceutical companies rip people off by getting longer and stronger patent protection. Doctors rip people off by creating protectionists barriers that restrict supply. The financial industry rips people off on the fees they charge to manage pensions, IRAs, and 401(k)s, and CEOs rip off shareholders by paying themselves exorbitant salaries.
This is not a story that requires selfless activists, but there is a collective action problem. For example, people paying more money for their health care due to high doctors’ pay have to act to remove the protections that get them high pay. The shareholders being ripped off by CEOs have to act to check CEO pay.
Collective action problems are difficult, but the other side has managed to overcome them. They have been able to reduce or eliminate trade barriers that allowed U.S. manufacturing workers to enjoy relatively high wages. The same story applies to the reduction or elimination of agricultural subsidies that have supported small farmers.
The problem for progressives is figuring out how to mobilize people who have a direct stake in leading the efforts to rein in abuses. In the case of the drug companies, the insurance industry would be an obvious suspect. In the case of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals who could do many of the tasks that doctors try to preserve for themselves, would be an obvious group. Also foreign educated physicians who are excluded from the U.S. could make an appeal to all the “free traders” who consider any protectionist barrier a crime against humanity if the beneficiary is a less-educated workers. (Yes, these people are pathetic hypocrites.)
Anyhow, the point of the rent argument is that there is money on the table. We just have to get people to notice the money so that they will take it.
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