Labor's Capital
Labor’s Capital is the examination of the 120-year-old American system of privatized social insurance. Linking market forces, historical movements, and social norms in the evolution of pensions, this study is the first to focus on all major aspects of the system. Labor’s Capital concludes by presenting an ideal pension plan that would benefit both employer and employee and by offering predictions about pension plans of the future.
Praise for Labor's Capital
"A path-breaking and simultaneously definitive study of an important aspect of the evolutionary development of American capitalism, of how private pension programs distribute both income and power."
— Clark Kerr, President Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley
"Labor's Capital is an indictment of America's system of private pensions for workers. While some economists characterize pensions as 'optimal long-term contracts,' Teresa Ghilarducci shows that in practice, many pension plans are discriminatory, regressive, poorly understood by their supposed beneficiaries, and wide open to manipulations, including termination, by their corporate sponsors. In describing this reality, Ghilarducci has illuminated a neglected, abused, and indeed scandalous corner of American working life."
— James K. Galbraith, Professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin
"Labor's Capital is an interesting and sophisticated book about one of the most explosive issues facing the U.S. in the 1990s. No work on pensions in the last twenty years has covered so well the labor market and financial aspects of pensions. The practitioner and policymaker, as well as the scholar, will now be able to understand how pensions are being used by financiers to reshape the economy and how millions of workers are being cheated out of their hard-earned, promised pension."
— Clair Brown, Associate Professor of Economics, associate Director, Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, Berkeley