Age Shock: How Finance is Failing Us

by Robin Blackburn

Overview

Most countries face the future with an ageing population, yet most governments are cutting back on pensions and the care services needed by the elderly. Robin Blackburn exposes the perverse reasoning and special interests which have combined to produce this nonsensical state of affairs. This updated paperback edition of Age Shock includes a new preface explaining why the credit crunch and eurozone crisis have had such a devastating impact and outlining a way to guarantee decent pensions and care provision.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781844677658
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	01/02/2012
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Robin Blackburn teaches at the New School in New York and the University of Essex in the UK. He is the author of many books, including The Making of New World Slavery, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, Age Shock, Banking on Death, and The American Crucible.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition ix

Introduction: The Need for a New Collectivism 1

The Grey Wave 12

Overall Pension Needs 16

Questioning the Anglo-Saxon Model 20

Chapter 1 The New Life Course: Its Shape and Costs 29

The Debt Generation 34

Old Age Poverty and the 'Risk Shift' 39

The Third Age 46

Crisis, What Crisis? 51

Raising the Birth Rate 57

Pension Costs as a Share of GDP 61

Chapter 2 The Divided Welfare State and the River of Time 75

The Puritan and the Baroque 82

The Option for Pay-As-You-Go 88

The Divided Welfare State 92

Generational Arbitrage 96

Frailty and Free Time 102

Chapter 3 Commercial and Corporate Failure 109

DC Plans as Leaky Buckets 116

The Agony of 'Defined Benefit' 125

Jobs versus Pensions 131

'Turn-Around Kings' or 'Vulture Capitalists?' 135

Public-Sector Pension Schemes 145

Thumbs Down for Private Pensions 147

Chapter 4 The Murky World of Grey Capital 153

A Double Accountability Deficit 156

Passive Investors and CEO Enrichment 164

Financialization and the Disposable Corporation 172

High Finance and Distressted Debt 175

Perilous Ways of Hedging Risk 177

Fooling the Tax Man 182

Chapter 5 The Limits of Reform and Shareholder Activism 195

Gaming Your Customers: The Emptiness of Mutuality 204

The Scope of the New Regulations 210

Insurance Lost in the Bermuda Triangle 213

Putting the Brooms Back in the Closet 215

Shareholder Activism and SRI 217

Chapter 6 The Need for Strong Public Pensions 227

Privatization Proves a Hard Sell 230

A Scheme of Inter-Generational Justice 237

Unemployment Saps European Solidarity 242

Swedish Wage-Earner Funds 245

The Logic of Pay-as-You-Go 248

Chapter 7 How to Finance Decent Pensions - and Tame the Corporations 263

Searching for the Best Taxes 267

How a Share Levy Would Work 272

The Yield of a Share Levy Over 27 Years 275

Theoretical and Practical Objections 277

The Scope for Re-regulation 285

Implementing the Fund Network 292

The Shape of the New Pensions Regime 296

Transitional Measures Towards Responsible Accumulation 299

Epilogue: Living in the Presence of Our Future Selves 311

Afterword: Social Protection after Globalization: Proposal for a Global Pension 321

Index 349

Editorial Reviews

A serious and finely argued attack on contemporary market fundamentalism in a vivid phrasemaking style, which is even entertaining when it is not depressing you with the facts.”—The Guardian

“An ambitious recasting of pensions strategy for an aging society.”—Göran Therborn, New Left Review

“An impressive book ... Blackburn argues that the hard-won state systems and the private pensions that supplement them have come under threat.”—New York Review of Books

“Blackburn’s book is a serious and finely argued attack on contemporary market fundamentalism in a vivid phrasemaking style.”—Steven Poole, Guardian

From the Publisher

An impressive book ... Blackburn argues that the hard-won state systems and the private pensions that supplement them have come under threat.

New York Review of Books