Status Updates From The Asset Economy

Of central importance here is the fact that the policies that have enabled returns on assets to outstrip those on labour took place in a historical and institutional setting where property ownership had already to a significant extent become democratized.

Class possitions have become asset-based, the Minskyan household has replaced the Fordist household, and these trends have led to the emergence of asset-driven lifetimes, shaped profoundly by the dynamics of appreciation and depreciation and the struggle for liquidity.

If central banks had once [before '79] sacrificed the value of assets to permit wage growth, they now strove to repress wages and consumer prices in the service of asset price appreciation.

luv the economy, 'ate assets, simple as

big stuff happening, authors getting into the debates on class analysis (Graeber, Nuffield, Bourdieu) and predictably have beef with all of them

Very cool. We need to think less in terms of commodities than in terms of assets re: our contemporary economies. This in turn means we have to rethink class - less the means of production than the means of rent and interest become key class markers. Also displaces the big emphasis on 'debt' that, say, Graeber and others focus on (assets are illiquid, not just a number to be paid off). And barely a few pages in!