First of all, financial times, please find people who can get to the point in the first 16 paragraphs. Relevant bit:
After Bezos, Amazon’s largest stockholders are BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. These asset managers are also the largest stockholders in Tesla, after Musk. They are also the largest stockholders in Prologis. And they are likely to be among the largest stockholders in most other companies you might think of. (The equity of AerCap is provided by a slightly different group of asset managers.)
BlackRock and its competitors are not beneficial owners, of course; they run index funds that invest in everything and also offer active management through pooled funds and on behalf of large institutional investors, such as endowments and pension funds. Some of these institutions are large direct investors in equities; organisations such as Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the more than trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund of Norway, and Calpers, which funds the pensions of California’s public employees.
One of modern capitalism’s greatest achievements has been convincing workers they really own a stake in their own shackles. If you want to survive in your old age, you need a pension fund, which invests in equity. If you want what scraps you saved not to lose their value, you give your money to someone else to put in an index fund.
“At that point what difference is there between you and Musk or Bezos?” asks some illiterate moron. Well, it’s simple really, even an imbecile writing for FT can get it. As far as a normal person who doesn’t drink children’s blood is concerned, investing in private equity provides lower returns that just playing the stock market after the extract all the hidden fees they want. In some usian states, it’s apparently illegal to disclose the details of an equity’s financials. Furthermore, people who happen to be giving their money to the parasites running this charade through pension funds and whatnot have less say in their running than the homeless guy sitting outside their offices.
The notion ”I own a small part of the firm that owns a small part of the firm that owns this plant and rents it to the airline therefore I’m a capitalist" is so removed from reality that even liberals shouldn’t be falling for this shit. From the same article:
400
The number of times greater that Jeff Bezos’ $200bn wealth is than Andrew Carnegie’s. Over the same period, US national income has risen only by a factor of 50
That’s a whole lot of rubbish to say “the rich have gotten richer”
lackRock and its competitors are not beneficial owners, of course; they run index funds that invest in everything and also offer active management through pooled funds and on behalf of large institutional investors, such as endowments and pension funds. Some of these institutions are large direct investors in equities; organisations such as Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the more than trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund of Norway, and Calpers, which funds the pensions of California’s public employees.
They have meetings that probably aren’t dissimilar to that one scene in Spectre https://youtu.be/o8wvQkZkxyQ
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
401k’s and such do function to mentally invest you in capitalism. My 45+ year old coworkers are obsessed with the stock market as their retirement accounts swing wildly by 80k from time to time and get mad at whatever they perceive as the cause. Occasionally it’s Musk or Bezos but equally as often it’s unions or any tiny bit of government spending that might actually do a sliver of good. It’s sad to watch.
