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here we go

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So on behalf of everyone gathered. I pay respect to the spirit of country. Here in Nam, where we are meeting.

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I acknowledged the past, present, and present, cool and nation. Laundry we were on as the sovereign people here

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the cultural knowledge holders who maintain and promote the norm aboriginal law, customs and custodianship responsibilities for country and the people that country continues to stay and to sustain generation after generation into the future. For all of us

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I recognize the important contribution that first nations, thinkers have made sociology.

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including challenges to our dominant ways of thinking.

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We thank all first nations delegates in the room today for their contributions to knowledge in the discipline.

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So we'll as we did yesterday. We'll run the presentations, followed immediately by questions on each presentation, and we may have some time at the end for questions about All that. You know that to the panel as a whole.

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depending on how that goes, so it'll be 15Â min for each presentation, and then

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and then a few minutes for questions after you. You might already have seen this. But here are the socials. If you'd like to be active during the presentations.

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and we'll begin our first presentation, which is Lisa Atkins, Gareth Bryant

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Cameron. I can't. I don't know that you, Sarah, come in, and Martine Connings on the estimate is welfare state.

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Thank you so much. And then, and likewise I'd like to pay my respects to Els past, present and emerging. I hope everyone can be the

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speak up. Okay.

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this is tender. Yeah, that should be fine. Yeah, all right.

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So as pair noted where Gareth and I are writing this paper with our colleagues, Sarah Cameron and Martin Klein. And what we'd like to suggest in the time that we've got available is that the trajectory of the wealth and state is best understood as a transition from one kind of welfare state from another, specifically from a way germ as welfare state

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to an asset owner's welfare state.

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whereas the wage earners, welfare States work through the labour market and the worker to improve the prospects and conditions of wage.

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The asset owner's welfare state we're going to quickly demonstrate, subsidizes the ownership of access.

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and does so especially in regard to residential policy.

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Now, critically, this isn't simply a shift in resources.

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What we're going to show is that subsidies for asset owners are distinct from other forms of public spending because they're orientated towards the possibility of securing future capital gains for asset owners as a past.

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In other words, these subsidies have a distinctive speculative dimension.

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and we're going to explore this through the case of Australia

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gowns and

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it's transferred.

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Now, comparative political economy has added considerable nuance to our understandings of welfare. State reform existing research has shown that the impact of neoliberalism has has been very real, but also paradoxical

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patterns and levels of State expenditure have remained remarkably stubborn

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institutional variety has increased alongside the advance of market forces.

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We completely accept the arguments put forward by those who insist that the welfare state has not been wholly dismantled or a trench.

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But what we want to suggest is that the welfare state itself has nonetheless been financialized in very in a very specific sense

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that its expenditures have been repurposed to align with the logics of financial.

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Now a number of scholars have looked towards the growth of tax concessions, tax credits, and other kinds of tax expenditures. As an example of what Christopher Howard called the hidden welfare state.

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and this trend is particularly apparent in the area of housing.

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Recently Constantine, the Columbian and colleagues have created an index of what they term home ownership

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attractiveness

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that calculates these tax expenditures across a wide range of countries to enable intercountry comparisons of what they term their hidden home ownership, wealth, and state.

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But our understanding of this transformation differs from this one  in that we think

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we need to think about it not only in quantitative terms, but also the qualitative terms. And it's in in the quality of the qualitative by mention which we can see the different logic, the speculative logic.

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Now, the transition from a wage earner's welfare state to an asset owner's welfare state captures an historical shift that runs across many other institutional differences

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in all its diversity. The post War Welfare State

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was characterized by a central or core model which was absolutely centered on the wage.

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and the assumption of the viability of stable lifetime employment.

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a key pillar of the way Germans welfare state was in turn to enable wage earners to participate in the build up of property by home ownership.

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The inflationary pressures of the 1970 S. Provoked a series of party responses, the responses that began to weaken the link between employment and security, and saw a gradual re-purposing of a workplace state from one that supported people in their capacity as wage Germans to one that increasingly supported people in their capacity as as

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critically rather than representing a simple shift of State support from labour to capital. These were to some extent overlapping constituencies.

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The asset subsidies of the asset owner's welfare State can be differentiated from the wage earner's welfare State in 2 key ways.

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First, rather than a Indian counter, cyclical logic of automatic stabilization.

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They have

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what we would term a Minsky and pro-cyclical logic

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government subsidies. Here are the leverage to

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up prices and incentivize strategies, to capture the largest possible capital gains.

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Second, in the classical formulation of the way Germans worldwide state subsidies behind partnership.

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put down with pressure on other areas of public spending.

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In contrast, the size of the asset owner's welfare stake tends to expand with the values of the assets. It's subscribers. So it's not a theory sum game, and it's expansionary.

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So I'll now hand over to Gareth. Who's going to talk about the Australian takes.

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thanks, Lisa, I'm not so happy. So I can keep doing the the slides. so yeah, we we're looking at this argument empirically in relation to Australia, which we're taking to have some paradigmatic features

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more explicitly than elsewhere. The Post War, Australian Welfare State was organized around wages policy, and that was linked to opening up property ownership to wage earners.

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So when we're looking at using the term, the wage owners welfare state, we're developing, using that term our building on that term from Frank castles use of that term where he used the wage, and as welfare state as a way of differentiating the specific features of the Australian welfare state from the other liberal welfare States.

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our kind of angle is a little bit our reading of that is a little bit different to to usual. because, although that argument from from castles identified some some specific institutional features of of Australia that were different. we think that that kind of organizing the logic of welfare states around the wage, and it was a more universal kind of thing across the the Post World welfare States and other countries as well.

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and so with

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in. If we're understanding Australia as paradigmatic or the wage owners. Welfare state. We're also extending this argument to think about Australia as paradigmatic of the asset owners. Welfare state

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and this is comes in some ways out of the postball Welfare State because of the success of creating a home ownership society in Australia which created a kind of constituency that could be expanded and built on in the asset owners. Welfare State

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So the Australian Welfare State, long subsidized, owner-occupied housing as a pillar of the retirement system in particular.

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What we're looking at with the shift to the asset owners. Welfare state over the last 20 to 30 years is moves to expand and extend fiscal subsidies to to housing investors as well as owner occupiers So in in particular, looking at the role of fiscal subsidies in subsidizing investors who rent out properties outside the usual place of residents. And we're focusing on negative gearing and capital gains tax discount here.

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so many people will know that negative gearing refers to a tax arrangement that enables investors to deduct operating losses on their investment properties such as cost of interest payments from their tax liabilities. And since 1999 there's also been a 50% discount on capital gains tax payable for investors.

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And so this created the the highly tax-friendly regime for housing investors which absorbs many of the costs of being a landlord. So right now, for example, the the spiking interest rates whilst securing for investors a greater share of future capital gains.

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The Long House price boom that we've seen over the last 20 years or so or more, is often traced to the introduction of the capital, gains tax discount, and its interaction with community of gearing

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and increasing numbers of Australians responded by becoming housing investors. So this is usually people that own only one or 2 properties, and between 1,999 and 2,019. The number of landlords in Australia doubled to over 2 million. So it's around 15% of taxpayers.

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So the rapid house price inflation that occurred since the 2 thousands then we can see a self-reinforcing relationship with the asset owners welfare state in the way that Lisa outlined before. So asset owners welfare policies both underpin and then growing scale with house price inflation in that pro cyclical Minsky and fashion.

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In 2,022 most recent

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figures are showing that the total value of housing subsidies have reached 95 billion Australian dollars. And this is fast approaching the 145 billion that's spent on all all other income support payments.

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what's interesting about those those subsidies is that they're growing very quickly. So the kind of traditional income support payments are going at around 4% a year. But we see growth of up to 9, 16% a year for different asset owner subsidies

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the the politics of this asset on as well as that, and nicely captured here by this famous quote by Conservative Prime Minister Shawn Howard, whose government introduced a lot of this regime and who was politically willing to openly take credit for asset price inflation so

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Many people will be familiar with this quote in 2,003, he said, for people who are already in the housing market, the increase in the value of their homes has been welcome. I don't get people stopping me in the street and saying, John, you're outrageous under your government. The value of my house has increased. In fact, most people feel more secure and feel better off because the value of their home has gone up.

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and so this kind of positioning. We can see a a logic, a political logic developing. Where, then, the centre left Labor party ends up, providing support for much the same policies resulting in a major compression of the policy horizon in favor of the asset point. As welfare State

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we labor did flirt with some minor changes to some of these subsidies for housing investors in the 2,016 and 2,019 elections which they lost. and one of the lessons they took from those policies is that was too politically risky. And they dropped them ahead of the successful 2,022 election

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so just I probably got a couple of minutes left. I just want to very quickly go over some graphs that help explain some of these political dynamics. so the graph on screen shows the distribution of of benefits for landlord deductions. So not just negative gearing or landlord landlord deductions

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and it shows that unsurprisingly, most of the monetary benefit does go to those with high incomes.

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which speaks to the inequalities of the asset owners. Welfare state. so that's the blue bars. But the red dots shows the number of people who are receiving those deductions in in different income categories. And it's actually much flatter, and it shows that there are a substantial number of people across the income spectrum who have some kind of stake in these asset bonus subsidies who are a significant constituency.

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second. And this is Sarah Cameron's work, our co-author. it's some regression modeling that she's doing, which is looking at the using the Australian election study which she co-runs and looking at home ownership as a determinant of voting controlled for gender age and education, using that data? and so this one of the things. This, what this graph is showing is that

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asset ownership is becoming an increasingly significant determinant of voting patterns by the time in across subsequent elections.

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And third, and lastly, using that same Australian election study data this graph shows voting patterns between home owners and renters. and it shows increasing polarization between those 2 groups with homeowners increasingly, you know, favoring clearly favoring the conservative coalition and renters increasingly favoring labor and the greens. And so

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Just to to conclude this, this speaks to some of the growing political contradictions that we're seeing with the asset owners. Welfare state. The growth in asset prices over the past decade has created a situation as many are familiar as we're all familiar with Where the price of entry into the property market

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which is a requirement for then receiving those asset owner subsidies has become prohibitively high. and so this does create some political imperatives to act. You can see it with labor a little bit in favor of doing something for those who find themselves locked out of home ownership.

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mostly through the expansion of subsidies for first homeowners, which then, of course, turns into one of the drivers of further house price inflation.

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but as levels of home ownership on the decline And we say, these voting patterns become increasingly asset based. there is an interesting question, I think, developing about whether other political strategies, especially building off increasing basis of non asset owners, will start to be seen as a viable political one.

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Thanks.

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thanks to you and your team. A fantastic paper.

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and it's raised a few few questions. One quite general, a couple specific to the Australian case.

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 and what's up with a specific one? Because that's sort of in in my head. One of the things about what sort of housing policy in Australia was that we'll quite a lot of courts to have ownership in the post-p war period that have shifted away. I don't think it, Lawrence asked you with your story, because we've seen a shift from policies that support homeowners to ones that support.

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not to for home buyers to home owners. I mean, one of the things about the capital gains income tax that's specific to Australia is that it was only introduced in the mid 1980 s.

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Right. So before then, no one paid.

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Capital gains tax on anything. And so to what extent is that a new thing, or is it just continuing the old policy.

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and

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a focus on superannuation a bit. There is a question about how this story in Australia fits in with pensions. Policy given that the aged pension

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excludes the family home, and has done so since 1,910, and you know we have had this growth of superannuation, and I might leave it at that, because I can't remember my

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no question.

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Thanks so much for your comments. And I think actually, our paper really complements the paper that you gave yesterday, and some really interesting ways around superannuation.

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and I really

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really like the distinction.

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The argument that you've made about the shift from home buyers to home owners. It makes complete sense in terms of the data that we're working with as well.  in regard to superannuation. Obviously, this is a huge financial asset in the Australian context as well.

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And one of the things that we're finding in other.

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And so, for instance, we recently completed.

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which was looking at

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the strategies that young adults used to try to transition into the homemanship. and one of the really interesting findings was that parents were drawing some parents a drawing down on their superannuation to help finance their, their, their adult children's home ownership strategies.

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And to me that raises some really interesting questions around.

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You know, we've always thought of as superannuation as a retirement policy. you know, is it? Actually, it's more of a kind of intergenerational resource? Are we seeing a transformation in what superannuation is doing in the Australian context? And I think there's a really interesting question around, how super interacts with

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housing assets in terms of the software that they're putting forward. Yeah, it's the follow up thing along those lines as well, Matt, and that's still around. It's interesting research, the only 2 thousands looking at how individuals reach coming closer to a target age. We're taking out loans. Yes, to do renovations on their homes, you, and then you're assuming that that happens to you have to pay it back as well. So that sort of reinforces that dynamic as well.

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any other questions. I've chuckled. One more

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thanks, Gareth, Lisa and the wire team. I can see why it's a really compelling case in the Australian context. It rings very true, and I just wanted to give you the opportunity to tell us how you think it functions as a paradigmatic example, how it travels to other places.

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What the relationship between the paradigmatic case and the wider universe of welfare States might be.

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okay.

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Yeah, it is so that that paper that I said, maybe just become

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on Adam's work that that this government can't understand, that I'm the same thing as retirement policies

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about the

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like consumption, whether it's through attention, super innovation, or housing versus

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what what we're seeing is changed, and the way that sort of policies that have been in place for a while can get kind of repurposed in the thing of logics. towards that kind of

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specul. And I mentioned it particularly through logics of leverage. That's that's like the crux of what we're trying to do, and it's on to on path. Yes, he just seems to unpack the

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when you see a policy that's been around for a while, and the purpose thing change. That's one of the.

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So that was very useful for me

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in terms of the

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across. yeah, that that paper that Lisa mentioned around the home ownership tax Attractiveness index is is quite interesting. and you know a lot of ways that that sort of basically what that does is it creates indexes for different types of essentially asset kind of subsidies.

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versus rent to subsidies. to create a kind of index of what? Which countries are more and less friendly to to versus rent is, and so on. Australia. On that index comes out one of the worst in terms of renters. so the the rent is getting worse. Deal.

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the index that they create doesn't actually show that Australia puts Australia alongside. Really, a lot of other countries in terms of its support of

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owner occupies as well as turn it to an extent investors. So yeah, but

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that kind of suggests in some ways the

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that things are identifying, you know, in in in Australia are pretty. There's a lot of commonalities with with other countries. And there's like institutional differences in a way that certain types of subsidies are

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done in different ways. So you know, in a lot of countries I know occupies are able to deduct interest rates, or interest payments. That's not the case. in in Australia. But then Australia has these other kind of more unique kinds of subsidies. So yeah, that that's what we're sort of working across that. And kind of

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looking at.

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I guess, thinking, I think, about Australia as parad dynamic in the sense that a lot of the processes we're looking at and quite intense. But at the same time. Also, I think, like representative

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of certain kinds of

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logic's on a wider shift towards asset on his local state in particular.

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by. I guess you know, if if

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it's the sort of post office that has these categories, it kind of opens up the question of are the kind of varieties of asset owners who off this day or

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 but but to hide together with these similar logic. So

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So our next presentation is from Hunley top of households in China in the Us.

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Thank you.

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So I'm hanging Lee. So I'm a lecturer of Sociology and Macquarie University. So today. So I'm going to compare the top with the household between China and us, because the the

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people say the the recent growing wealth inequality is primarily driven by

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the Towers household, because the day

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on the lots of resources and the current increasing inequality is totally driven by the high concentration of wells or more Tavers, a household. But so far scholars have paid attention to single society. So we have a little knowledge about how institutional differences, who are different social context

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may influence the creation and the ownership of Tvers. So we decided to compare

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2 largest economies in the world, the Us. And China, and compare their characteristics of the the the characteristics of the Tibetan owners between the 2 countries. So we want to explore how institutional differences impact the creation and ownership of aitabers household.

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So this is the the overall risk inequality trend in the United States after World War 2. The worst inequality has had decreased before the late 1,900 eightys due to large expansion of a private pensions and homeownership. But after then the worst inequality

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increase the gay. So this is totally driven by expanding financial market and booming stock prices. So most people say.

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the growth of versus inequality is totally driven by financialization because Taiwan's household normally own much larger shares of a financial asset compared to other people. So the expanding financial market benefit more to the published household.

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Contrary to that in China, before 1,978. So actually, the owning West is

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literally impossible. So all where's the policy was controlled by the State, so they don't have any rest. So whereas inequality should be 0. So that was their assumption. But after 98 is 90, 78, especially in 1,989, so

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properly coding started, being sorted to its occupant at barely discounted prices, and after 1998, so housing market was totally marketized. So the housing. Ss. Are primary asset for most of the household in China.

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So and then

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so if you look at the worst inequality trend, so the up to 1998, raise inequality, starting increasing right? So, as you see. And this coincide with

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the booming housing prices.

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So Chinese people see housing asset as a loo-corative and attractive investment investment options, so many households started out in vertical houses. That's the reason why versus inequality

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has increased since 1,998.

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Then in this slide I would like to focus on 2 key characteristics of a tower's household. So education and entrepreneurship, so

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normally more educated people understand better financial investment options. So they normally make a better decisions in the financial market. So that's the reason why we see the high proportion of

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the

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people who have a domestic degree. And also we know big businessmen are mostly there in the Towers owners, right?

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I think, the same situations in China, but after the economy people. So people economy deform political collection, especially political collections to high executive officers in the public sectors, matters better than more. But after economic reform. So like a

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the we can see. China's Big business mens are from middle class people. Normally some kind of like the lower ashulars of like a public options, and they have a really good education background.

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So we normally say, it's a market transition theory. So people acronymically form political correction matters. But after the economic reform. So he will kept on errors more.

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And then, specifically, in this paper, we focused on the age effect on versus honesty. So because we think this effect might reflect institutional difference between the Us. And China.

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So normally in

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or the Western countries. As people get older, they normally.

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they are more likely to be in the top 1%.

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So because as they get older, they get more money and they save more. So that's the reason why we see, all the people are more likely to be in the T 1%. But after the retirement age.

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like the peak point, so so the chance should be

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the chance should start decreasing, but sometimes they just disable more just to in any more to their offspring. So we can see this kind of pattern as well.

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But in China I think the relationships should be different, because the Chinese older people didn't have a chance to accumulate wells.

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the poor economic reform. So they have a shorter period of accumulating, and another one is like, They are familiar with all the practices, so they are really good at making some political connections

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erez agmoni, but they have some difficulties in embracing new knowledge and the new practices that is a suitable for market-oriented economy, and also in China they have some culture, so Chinese. All the people transport their rest to their children in all the ages, like in 150

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50 S. Because in China

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home honestly is regarded as pre-looking for managing, so they normally transfer their wares when their children get married. So

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the for this reason, we think in China younger people are more likely to be in the habits, position, so test my assumption. So if I summarize, I can say the worst inequality is higher in the Us. Than in China, and

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Us. Coverage owners have a more diversified as a portfolio structure, because they own their houses businesses, and they invest their estimate in financial market. But, however, in China they mostly invest in.

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like the housing market, so the their essence should be composed of mostly the the real estate property. So in China younger people are more likely to be in the tab 1%. But in the Us. All the people are more likely to be indeed.

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couple of percent. That's my hypothesis. So we used this, a kind of a standard data set for studying household. We so

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the Sol available consumer finance in the Us. And the Chinese finance. So Chinese household financial survey in China. So we combined 2,013 and 2,019 data set. And we harmonize this data set.

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So actually, I just classified household into these 4 categories, top 1% next to 9, next to 10 next 80, because I don't have much time. So they I will focus on 1 1.

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So, as you see in this table. So this shows the genie coefficient of averse. So, as you see.

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so the Us. Genie coefficient is a higher than Chinese, coefficient, so overall the versus inequality in the Us. Is higher than in China. So as I expected.

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So whereas is more concentrated among top 1% in the Us. So normally 35 to 37% of the total wears is

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controlled by carbon percent in the Us. But in China, 18 to 14% of October

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Total household wealth is controlled by 7% in China. So because of they have a short history over like accumulating race. So whereas inequality is much higher than the Us. Stand in China. So if you look at various composition, this is for us.

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So you you can see ladies colors. They are financial asset and bluish colors. They are known financial asset. So you can see diversified assets structures for T 1% in the Us.

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But in China you can see bluish colors there. So they they are, as they mostly come from their home and their investment properties, so I can say the Ss structure is more that diversified in the Us. Than in China. So

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then, so I just want to check

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the age effect on the tariffs ownership, so that I just learned the the multi-variable regression loaders. So this is for us, and this is for China. But yeah, I just to summarize these findings in this figure.

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So in this figure.

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So this is the age.

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So the red line is for us carbon percent household and the blue color.

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It is 4. How 1% of the red colour is from Chinese. The the blue current is for the Chinese coverage. So I controlled everything. So they are education. They are gender, and they are characteristics. They are of each. I can go to everything

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so, and then, as you see

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in the Us. So the chance of being in the tower percent increases before 65, and after them we started decreasing.

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So all the people are more likely to be in the public person.

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10 the younger generations.

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But in China.

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so, as you see, it increased until 45 to 54 categories. After then we started decreasing. So younger people are more likely to be in 1%.

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Then all the people in China.

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So

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these photos, on my third hypothesis.

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So my conclusion so.

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and I had shown all my hypotheses, was supported. So we indicate we significant.

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we

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institutional reverses all

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there's always

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so actually, we just the illumin, we, our social transitions in the social context.

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10 influence the shapes of the creation of. So this may propose some implication for making new policies.

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and also I would like to suggest.

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 I'm not sure whether this kind of trend will be consistent

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in the public

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years, because we know, after coming in, I'm here. China is here that's taken out in production for the first time.

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so they, they may influence a like a question.

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They have access structure. So I think it is necessary to observe youth strength

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in the coming years. So we that's my fault. Yeah. So this is the all. IP, okay, thanks for listening.

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thank you very much, Dr. Lee. That was a up. By the way, I'm Andrew Clark from the University of New South Wales. really, really interesting presentation. I I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had a couple of quick questions for you one, and I'm sorry if you covered this, and I missed it.

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But Just in that transition period other than privatizing public housing. Did the Chinese state

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implement any other policies to facilitate

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the accumulation of housing wealth. And my second question is, and you kind of were getting at whether we would expect this difference or this trend to persist. And you mentioned the impact of COVID-19. But I was wondering if we could expect

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convergence between the Us. And China for another reason, and that is that the institutional conditions you're talking about were very historically specific. But it was about the transition from a non-market to a market society. So as China

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that that history fades into the background, would we expect the Chinese to start to resemble the Us. Case? Thank you. Yeah.

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yeah. So thanks for really nice questions. So actually, so, a lot of like a new episode of

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but like the.

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it's always to be the thing that. So I used to focus on

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the inequality in housing market. So they, you imagine a lot of things. But I think the most conspicuous thing

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in my in these public council, and like based on my communication. You the expert.

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he said.

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So I think any longer. It suggests like that we found before, was the major reason why we see these kind of

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high proportion of like. How many, I said in the functional structure, and also right of why we can see, the

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next will be growing. Very

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so. Yeah, we I'm really interested in looking at other factors by making through those in the breed seriously important in China. But I

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I couldn't find a lot of factors yet. So we can take you speaking. I can say, we, how do we phone was in most into any shared factors, that it was very

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the question, and second of all, so I should. I do the same thing to you.

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This is just the postmaster.

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So we see the first a generation of the very.

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So we are not sure how they would react to this in this particular changes.

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They will try to limit their words to their offspring. However.

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I think that interesting photo you might do so. So we just need a lot of pretty good power in the market policy

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so contrary to the U. S. Or even the power in China, and much competent in the market power, so that they make change it about the United States structures, why, they may change some kind of like potential privacy.

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So it it to be very interesting to see how they evolved. In this case you were at the

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Hi. Thank you for the paper. It was really really interesting, especially the focus on housing. I'm Nick Mckenzie from the University of Sydney. I just wanted to ask you a little bit about gender, because you've obviously controlled for it in this regression. But what I find really interesting is that like? children get their housing assets before marriage, and and I was wondering if you've done any modeling or considered doing any modelling about how

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wealth and equality between genders might be different in the Us top, 1% and the Chinese top opposite.

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That's really location. So actually I that she.

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So we

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this copy in 2,021 so sociological paper. So like I.

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But in China, so we can see larger percentage of a household is led by female possible

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compared to the United States, because in China, probably sort of again make money outside of the and it. Really.

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they spend the more time in just like a hunting, for I of the United States.

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So

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it's where I look. So I can.

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So like a many the Chinese like. Really. they are really engaged in the easing universe.

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so they might. It's great. Why do we see, like a high proportional work that you a led also in?

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Yeah.

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that's all the time we've got for questions for now. Thank you very much.

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Correctly. Okay.

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our next presentation is from

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sorry.

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right? The first name makes

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 is from Matthew Lizot.

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mlizotte: Yes.

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mlizotte: you're there. Okay. Great.

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What's that? Yeah. Can I?

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you in a minute? Let me get my alright.

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mlizotte: if you stop sharing, I'll be able to share my screen.

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mlizotte: Okay, great.

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mlizotte: The options not appearing quite yet.

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mlizotte: There we go, great.

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mlizotte: perfect. I'm just gonna go full screen and clar. Just click. Confirm that everything's good.

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yeah, that looks fine. Yeah.

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mlizotte: yeah, okay, correct.

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mlizotte: Perfect. So hello, everyone. I was hoping to come in Melbourne and person. Unfortunately. I just became a father a few months ago, and yeah, that is best to stay at home. I'd be too stressful to be so far.

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mlizotte: I'm not in Ottawa, and he just went to sleep, or you know, you might hear him in the background, but he started the process. So my presentation today, as the title says, is on the evolution of wealth, inequality in Canada and the United States in the aftermath of the 2,008 financial crisis.

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mlizotte: So this project is meant as a sort of autopsy, if you will. Of the 2,008 financial crisis in terms of its impact on household wealth and wealth. In quality

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mlizotte: he's meant to give an empirical portrait, detailing the different impact that the crisis had in Canada in the United States. So the goal of this comparative approach is to highlight the importance of regulating financial markets to maintain political stability. So I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my

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mlizotte: my reach and my one of my master's students who help me out with this project. So as a preamble before moving on to the project and results, I'd like to discuss why we should be concerned about wealth and quality. In the first place. Well, there's several key. Political, economic, and moral reasons.

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mlizotte: Excessive wealth, inequality leads to power and balances and impediments to the democratic process.

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mlizotte: Excessive wealth. Inequality increases political instability between the haves and the have nots. More recently this taken the form of the growing Populist parties. Excessive wealth inequality also leads to a decrease in social mobility.

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mlizotte: Disparities in wealth lead to effective reduction in equal opportunity. It makes it harder for children of poor or modest families to achieve upward mobility. This is a big deal, since equal opportunity is a central tenant of political liberalism, one of the central pillars of liberal democracies.

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mlizotte: one might say cynically, at least rhetorically so. Now, of course, equal opportunity is an ideal in the sense that perfect equal opportunity cannot be achieved, but with wealth, inequality, Wealth. Inequality certainly distances us from this ideal and brings us closer to a crisis of the legitimacy.

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mlizotte: Economically speaking, excessive. What concentration can hinder economic growth and consumer spending. It can also access to capital for people who are talented and motivated, otherwise like resources. But of course there are plenty of moral reasons, as you can imagine

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mlizotte: cheaply what level of poverty, crime, and health disparities are we ready to tolerate as a political community in the context of rising inequality?

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mlizotte: Now I like to move on to why we should be concerned about financial volatility.

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mlizotte: So briefly put, financial volatility is not akin to the weather

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mlizotte: like any economic phenomena. It is a condition that emerges from certain forms of political and legal regulations. It stems from a given site of institutional, political, and social norms and practices.

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mlizotte: There's an important literature on financialization in sociology is basically defined as the increasing dominance and influence of financial motives, institutions

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mlizotte: and practices in this, in all spheres of social life.

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mlizotte: So it refers to the growing importance of finance in shaping economic, social, and cultural processing.

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mlizotte: So why compare

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mlizotte: What compare Canada and us. Essentially, this project is an exercise in stratification and comparative research in comparative politics. Comparing these 2 countries helps to understand the effects of 2 different types of policy regimes. It highlights different ways of finding the proper balance of responsibility and accountability between individuals, families, markets, and governments at all levels.

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mlizotte: So moving on more concretely to the project. So my main objective here was essentially this, this question, how did wealth inequality evolve in Canada in the United States, in the aftermath of the 2,008 financial crisis.

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mlizotte: To be precise, I examined the periods both before during and after the crisis.

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mlizotte: So basically, from 1998 to 2,016. The plan of analysis goes as follows, so I compared the the evolution of the media network

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mlizotte: across the period of interest. I compare the evolution of the wealth genie coefficient, and I compare the evolution of the median network.

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mlizotte: Buy wealth decides.

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mlizotte: So as for the methods, I use the data from the Luxembourg wealth study. This is why I ended my research at 2,016.

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mlizotte: For comparative purposes it was necessary. So this study is the lesser, well known counterpart of the Luxembourg income study. So basically it standardizes as much as possible the wealth and assets surveys of participating countries. It has grown quite a bit in the last 10 years, and now offers more opportunities for comparative research. So I would highly recommend it. we use all reference points available for the 1998 to 2,016 period.

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mlizotte: We did not have the same reference points between the 2 countries since the survey sample different years. But it's not a cost for concern when comparing trends over a larger period.

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mlizotte: So I'll not take the time to go into all the details about the formulas we use, which are very standard in the literature, the only exception being, I actually for the gene a coefficient which I will discuss in due course. Suffice to say, for now that we use wolves, definition of marketable well.

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mlizotte: which is the sum of assets, finest debts, basically we excluded the pensions from now on I'll probably refer to it as naturally as I go along.

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mlizotte: So let's move on to the results. So here we see the evolution of the Median network of households.

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mlizotte: We can already see here. vastly different

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mlizotte: trajectories between the 2 countries. The Median net worth of Canadian households grew steadily from 106,000 to 225,000, from 1,999 to 2,016. This is largely attributable to rising real estate prices. This increase, wealth, inequality between homeowners and renters, and made it harder for the latter to buy a home.

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mlizotte: This is a huge contrast to the medium network of households in the Us. We' the massive decline of network.

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mlizotte: We see here that the substantial rise in the media network

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mlizotte: from 233 to 354,000, between 1998 and 2,007 came to an abrupt halt between the 2,007 and 2,010 period

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mlizotte: the crash led to a massive decrease in the median network from 354,000 in 2,007 to a hundred 38,000

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mlizotte: in 2,010. So of course, these are snapshots in time. Okay, so for example, if Canada had sample in 2,009, we certainly would have served a decline of networks.

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mlizotte: but decline in Canada was really sort of the real estate market went down on average by about 100,000, but it recovered within 9 months.

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mlizotte: that being, said the greater third to highlight, the financial practices and regulation between these 2 countries that led to vastly different outcomes.

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mlizotte: So moving on now to the evolution of the genie coefficient.

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mlizotte: First of all the limits of the genie are well known as Pkt. Made quite clear. The genie does not measure changes in wealth, inequality in the top percentiles. It's not sensitive to these changes. This is not a concern to us here, since we want, we want to examine the impact of the financial crisis across the whole well, distribution.

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mlizotte: Another well known limit is the bias induced by negative values, which is a huge problem.

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mlizotte: And this issue actually is even more important when analyzing wealth, inequality as opposed to income inequality, because there are a lot more households with negative networks than household with negative income. There's a whole literature actually on what's the best way to control for this, you know, classically, sometimes we would remove the negative values. But this has. it's problems. I actually kept the negative values. But I used

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mlizotte: refugees at alls modification of the genie coefficient to reduce this bias. This allows a better comparison, because in between years, you have different percentages of negative households. And this really creates bias. So it's hard to compare the trends.

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mlizotte: basically, their approach is to transform the wealth, distribution into absolute values to retain the information of all households. So what did the results show? They show that wealth, inequality increased by approximately 2 points of the genie in Canada between 1,999 and 2,016

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mlizotte: in moral terms. It is important to say that even though it's only 2 point, it's actually a huge increase in rough inequality.

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mlizotte: maybe an import nuance. I would not give much credence to the 2,005 data point for Canada, since it has that year has a much reduced sample. I think. Probably we saw a steady incline.

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mlizotte: and it's probably due to a sampling error. Basically. So once again, the greater picture here is the following, while both countries experience the rise in the quality as measured by the gene. The increase in wealth. Inequality was much higher in the Us. An increase of 2 gaming points in Canada versus an increase of 7 G points in the Us. I think from the earlier presentation he showed that maybe a 5 point increase.

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mlizotte: But I would say that this is a methodological difference, because I use this index which controls for negative values. So in this case it would seem to so that well, I don't know which measure he use. So I can't say. But if you use a more classical formula, for instance, it looks like it would underestimate the inequality.

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mlizotte: So that's a concern. yes. So now I'm moving on. So how does this substantial rise in the genie coefficient translate to household wealth across wealth decades.

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mlizotte: So now I'll go rather quickly here. There's frankly enough information to discuss this for a whole hour, but I don't want to get. I don't want to drown you in the details, so to speak. So let's focus once again on the great picture.

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mlizotte: Basically, we summarize a situation for each country, using 3 tables each. The first table sets the prelude the few years before the 2,008 financial crisis. The second table shows the situation in the crisis years, and finally the third table. The post load

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mlizotte: shows the situation in the aftermath of the crisis, so the structure of the table is always the same. We estimate the median network by wealth that Kyle, not by income.

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mlizotte: And for the sake of simplicity. Let's just focus on the line that shows the change in wealth and percentages. It's it's the last line at the bottom. So let's go. I will start with Canada, as we can see. There was a rather once again. Just I would advise you to just concentrate on the bottom room. There was a rather steady growth of wealth in 1,999 to 2,005 especially from the fifth, decline up

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mlizotte: when we move on to the crisis. Years from 2,005 and 2,012, we observed higher growth than before from the fourth decades. And above. this is kind of surprising, because, as you know, this is during the years with financial crisis where there was a huge crash. But once again, If we had data from 2,009, I'm sure we would have captured a sort of a crash, but it it only lasted for about 9 months.

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mlizotte: as we know, because of financial volatility. It changes the values of the

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mlizotte: of possible wealth on a more or less daily basis. If you are now, if we move to the post loop from 2,012 to 2,016, we observed once again slight growth

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mlizotte: from the fourth Dec. Out and up. I should mention that I'm not commenting the lower deck out here because a slight change in wealth can actually lead to really, really high levels in terms of percentages. So it actually makes more sense for the lower deck. I' to look at it in absolute dollar change, which is not the focus of this presentation today. So now for the dramatic results of contrast, if you will.

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mlizotte: let's look at what happened for the same periods for the United States. So if we look at the prelude we observed a very high wealth increase for all the cows as other presenters. As I mentioned, this was another.com bubble, years, and so forth.

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mlizotte: So there was a huge well increase for all that costs except the first. Already. This is a huge difference with Canada. We experience a relatively slight increase

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mlizotte: moving on to the crisis years. we see just how bad the crisis affected household wealth. In the Us.

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mlizotte: We see percentage declines around 40% for the third to fifth decades. And between, let's say, 16 to 36% decreases

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mlizotte: for all the higher decades, which is a huge crash.

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mlizotte: Now, this is cross sectional data, right? if we had longitudinal day, not What we would see actually, is people that were formally before the crisis, let's say, in the look, in the middle to lower middle class that were actually pushed in the first decade because they became household and had negative networks. Actually.

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mlizotte: But now the question becomes,

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mlizotte: We're us hospitals able to recover their wealth during the post- at least until 2,016. This is highly unlikely given what we saw earlier with the median networks.

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mlizotte: So let's look at it now. So this last slide shows the Us. Households. It shows that us households experience a very slight growth of network during the 2,010 and 2,016 period. It also confirms that household web had not recovered

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mlizotte: to the 2,007 pre- crisis left level by 2,016. And this holds for all that, Kyle, even the top that comes So this is really the the big contrast really between the 2 is

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mlizotte: Us. Households suffered massive decline getting households were largely fair, and even continued to

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mlizotte: to progress sometimes as well.

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mlizotte: now, the different post crisis outcomes between Canada and us are typically explained and follow that with the following factors, strong regulatory environment, Canada has much stricter regulations and oversight on its financial institutions compared to many countries, and especially during the Us. it's much more conservative, as we say this in a way. This is

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mlizotte: of often said with the staying towards Canada, in the sense that they are too conservative, that they they they don't have access to great growth and glory, but, on the other hand, it does protect them from

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mlizotte: unsound financial innovation, you know, such as these toxic subprime and that kind of stuff

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mlizotte: Canada's mortgage market at much stricter lending standards, and, more importantly, lower prevalence of subprime mortgages compared to the United States. This limited the impact of the housing market collapse and reduce the number of mortgage defaults. The actual number of sub prime holdings in Canada was around 60 billion, which was like a drop in the ocean of the subprime industry.

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mlizotte: also another reason to explain these different, these divergent outcomes conservative fiscal policies in Canada kind of had relatively strong fiscal policies and lower debt to Gdp. Ratios compared to other countries. In the Us. Also, conservative consumer behavior is often said discussed to explain these differences

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mlizotte: as a final discussion. Now, the goal of this presentation was not to say that Canada has been a regulation per se. The point was to highlight. how different regulations, policies, and practices can lead to vastly different outcome. So it's really to highlight here. The the political stakes.

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mlizotte: However highlighting the importance of sound regulation is much easier than actually formulating policy recommendations and passing through effective legislation.

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mlizotte: As a final reflection, I would like to emphasize the difficult positions that households are in. If they refuse to invest in the financial markets, their savings loses 2 to 5% of its value every year through inflation.

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mlizotte: just 1% of inflation over 35 years means you lose half of your purchasing power, which is you when you have 2 or 3% inflation. You lose half over, you know, over maybe 20 years, 15 years, depending And, on the other hand, on the flip side. If they do invest and do so without proper risk management, they can lose thousands of their savings.

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mlizotte: But, more importantly, and of course, this is more important if you were in a in a country with a welfare state where there's no, there's no sound pensions and so forth. So it makes you much more vulnerable to these to this financial volatility. But I would say more importantly, if the financial sector is not properly regulated, financial crisis can have devastating impacts on the an underlying economy, in which case everyone uses that

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mlizotte: homeowners lose out to a decline in real estate prices and tenants lose out to the various consequences of the recession.

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mlizotte: Ultimately everyone uses out as improper regulation leaves the population at the mercy of financial volatility, which leads to increased wealth, inequality, and ultimately to political instability.

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mlizotte: The greater political instability. Sorry, the greater political stability that Canada had in the last 15 years, compared to the Us. Is fundamentally tied to the different outcomes into the aftermath

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mlizotte: of the 2,008 financial crisis.

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mlizotte: Alright. Thank you.

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Thank you.

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We have time for one or 2 questions.

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One that you?

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Yeah, sorry. I'll just grab the microphone.  thank you, Mattie. I'm Jacob Brown from the University of Western Australia. It was a representation.

361
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 when you are highlighting the different possible explanations for the data you presented. One thing that struck me that I didn't see was the a sort of more traditional Marcus, or structural explanation of the different positions of

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the Us. And Canada in the world economy, and how the origins of the crisis. the sort of us housing market. And it's broader linkages with

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global financial markets might also speak to the things you're talking about. I wonder if you have any comment on

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on that. Thank you.

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mlizotte: I think that's a very interesting point. This is a common critique I normally get with my work. I come from the standpoint sort of a classic stratificationist. So my goal, we, I'm really more interested in showing the results in the outcome than really exploring the the causes. The causes are very important. however, I wouldn't say it's my expertise or something, but in the in the paper this isn't published yet, but I do explore that

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mlizotte: a bit more. But it's true. It's it's a it's a it's a comment I normally get.

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We've got time for one more question before this.

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Okay.

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a. From National University of Singapore. So I wonder how you are comparing wealth in quality. But you really.

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people can still lend money, borrow money if if they have a cash flow. So so in that case the income inequality can be related to those financial. But it will let you know the variation of the financial conditions for households.

371
01:05:24.090 --> 01:05:36.579
So I wonder if it could improve your argument if you can compare also people, you know, by a different cold tile, because the income inequality and then those were linked to their

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mlizotte: their capacity to borrow money from financial institutions. Also. Thank you. Yeah, that's that's a great point. I'm actually very concerned from the center of stratification is it's really hard actually to actually say where which position a household will will occupy in the economic stratification. because it's hard to integrate both income and wealth at the same time.

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mlizotte: I did. I did some work this it's unpublished work. But I did create an index to actually measure the the discrepancy between income and wealth.

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mlizotte: So of households as as a sort of like attempt to integrate both income and wealth in terms of a measure of a household economic power, if you will. But I haven't found a way yet to integrate it in a succinct way. But yes, I think for for future presentation it'd be interesting to also take into account,

375
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mlizotte: or at least acknowledged that people. when you look at wealth inequality it, it kind of disregards the cash flow in the way.

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mlizotte: Yes, thank you.

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Thank you very much, Matthew. We'll have to leave it there, I think, but I appreciate your presentation.

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mlizotte: Thank you.

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And next we have Tom Barnes considering us at best inequality through the lens of career, development and loss.

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My, so

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okay, so, as is often the case with these things, the title has changed at work in progress, and all that. So with the labor in the asset economy question mark lessons from the study of

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precarious older workers, and this is a revise

383
01:07:33.870 --> 01:07:36.650
version of a paper which I

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which I gave at the Australian Sociological Association Conference back in November, and as of the the timing of these things is never perfect like this. So this paper is actually there. There is a written paper. This paper is actually under review at the moment. So I'll just present a bit of data from the from the paper. I think that's okay.

385
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and and I guess the paper tries to intersect with the debate about the asset economy and acetalization on one hand, and the origins of contemporary inequality on the other.

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a debate. But you know debate in which you know several of my K- panelists are are protagonists within, and and you know there is an one item which seat which attempts to jettison traditional class-based analytics by sharply contrasting employment with asset ownership in housing. But there are also innovations which which attempt to retain emphasis on the importance of work and employment in the distribution of life chances.

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And so my my paper tries to address or advance this debate by addressing a couple of questions. First of all, how serious is the asset economy for working-class people? And secondly, to what extent does labor still matter in an assetized world and

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the The evidence for the for the paper is drawn from a study of workers who who lost their jobs following the closure of car manufacturing in Australia. And look, there are before you ask, what's that to do with assets? Well, there are 3 main reasons why I think this is an instructive case study. First of all, we're talking about a cohort. Primarily older workers.

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The average age was 50 at the time of the closure of the car industry in Australia, which was back in 2,017, and older people are often framed in the literature as these kind of intergenerational benefactors, with a capacity to pass on accumulated wealth to the next generation.

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But at the same time scholarship was also kind of moved away from simplistic notions of intergenerational divides by looking at intra-generational inequality. So inequality within similar age cohorts, and that this case study is very much such an example. The second reason for this is this, the selection of this case study

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is that you know it deals with Australia, and I do think, as as several of my co-panelists would agree that Australia provides very fertile ground for this kind of

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study as a kind of post home, Home Home Ownership Society, where the treatment of residential housing as an asset has become dominant, politically and socially, leading to growing numbers of people locked out of home ownership, an increasingly burdensome mortgage debt, I mean, where we are in Melbourne. I think the the Median House price in Melbourne at the end of last year was something just shy of $900,000. Australians. It's about the fifth or sixth least affordable property market in the world.

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and and the final reason for the The selection of this this papers. Case study is that you know that large numbers of workers who lost their jobs after the closure of car manufacturing tended to move either into precarious work or unemployment or a combination of the 2. So prior to the closures around, 85% of workers were in permanent full time jobs after the closures, you know. there was, you know, more. There was huge large numbers of workers who are who are unemployed.

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you know, around 15% still unemployed. 3 years after the closures, that of those who had jobs about 3 2 thirds at a permanent contract, and the rest for casuals or various kinds of insecure employment. And and again, what does this have to do with assets? Well, it does have a lot to do with assets, because those with greater asset based security

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were less exposed to the negative effects of precarious work, whereas on the flip side, those with weaker, asset-based security of the national security were more exposed to these effects, and more likely to feel compelled to settle for poor quality or undesirable jobs.

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So this paper uses a a kind of three-step methodology, and that the data for the paper is drawn from a longitudinal study of the closure of the car, the car industry in Australia. The first. This began with a survey. The first the way one of the survey was in 2,020,

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we we drew 1,277 unique responses. And this paper draws data from wave 2 of the survey in what? in 2,021, which had 886 participants, and that asked questions about workers, asset wealth, their financial security, their housing status as well as their labor market status and their employment conditions.

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so the first, the first up step is ordinal regression of subjective financial security and subjective well-being, and their kind of proxies based on answers to so specific survey questions. So for subjective financial security, workers were asked, how secure do you feel about your overall financial situation?

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And then we we I've scaled their responses into a 3 scale, ordinal, variable for low medium and high subjective financial security, and then subjective. Well being is, it is similar, so based on the answer to the question, how much better or or worse off as your life as a whole changed since you finished in the automotive industry. And again. I've rescaled that into a 3 scale ordinal variable of worse, the same or better.

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And then the second step was regression modelling for asset wealth, and I'll explain more about that in a moment. And then finally, this, the final step of the paper compares the results for this quite specifically, in many ways atypical cohort with Australia's working age, population. In terms of the, I should say, as well in terms of the

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the predictor variables for the models. There are 13 different variables grouped into 3 categories. So you have social variables like age.

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gender, birthplace, and so on. labor based variables such as labour market status. So whether or not work has had a job wage, let wage levels and also occupational status. And then asset based variables like housing status. So whether or not you're a renter or a mortgage, or a outright homeowner.

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Investment, property, acquisition, and confidence about retirement savings, or what is known in Australia as superannuation. Now. in terms of some results. you know.

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I know how much everyone loves, like highly complex statistical slides, with loads of information that are impossible to to to interpret in in a couple of minutes. So I'm not going to force you to do that. I'm just going to highlight some of the key findings. So this is looking at predictors of subjective financial security and subjective well-being. looking first of all here, predictors of subjective financial security for all workers in the cohorts. And this this presents findings which are, and these these findings are highly

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significant, statistically, and so in terms of ordinal scale. Remember, I said before, ordinal regression. So we're looking here at the shift from low to medium, subjective financial security and then medium to high subject subjective financial security and in the model. The predictive variables are so Beta, bp, it's birthplace.

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So whether you were born in Australia or from in a country that's predominantly English speaking

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and then beta super, which is retirement savings level of confidence in retirement savings beta Lms, which is beta labor market status. Whether or not, you have a job. beta! Housing, which is your housing status, whether you're a renter, a mortgage, or an outright homeowner, and Beta i. P. Which is investment, property status. How many investment properties do you own, if any

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and the results are not not just significant, but highly impactful. In fact, the model is particularly strong at predicting those who are the most financially secure. So, in terms of odd ratios, an increase in any one of the predictive variables

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leads to an on a a, an honest ratio over 50, 50 times nearly 53 times, for an increase from medium to high subjective financial security, or in probabilistic terms. That's the 98% probability.

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But in terms of the up, the paper's theoretical concerns, which is really to compare the magnitude of effects between the predictor variables.

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the, the the biggest impact there is on, but is from birthplace, whether where you were born in Australia or overseas.

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But secondly, there that the second biggest impact is from confident level of confidence in retirement saving. So here assets are very, very important. But they're not necessarily assets held in housing here we've got assets held in retirement savings. And then the next most significant is labour market status. Whether or not you have a job, and then that's quite similar. It's slightly above, but quite similar to housing status. and then it's it's more than investment property.

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status. So the the the rest of the information on this table looks at the predictors for workers that that sub-cohort who who are in employments, and we also look at predictors for subjective well-being. But I'm not going to go through all of that because there isn't time. So 3 key conclusions from the first step of the methodology is, is first of that non-housing assets, such as retirement, savings, or superannuation, are often more important than housing assets.

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labor-based predictors are often, or at least as important and often more important than asset-based predictors. But but yes, asset-based predictors are influential across the board. So hence this is why it's important to look at predictors of asset ownership, which is a second step

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of the the paper, and so again, to condense this down into a couple of key highlighted points. So predictors of asset ownership. And here we're looking at predictors of home ownership, predictors of investment, property, ownership and predictors of retirement. So confidence in retirement savings. So the first model here which looks at.

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again, ordinal scale. Yeah, whether you're a renter, a mortgager, or an outright homeowner. And here we find that the the predictor variables are occupation, age and career. in fact, occupation has the biggest impact there. And again, the models. So the models quite produces some quite strong results with with with acquisition of investment, property.

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investment properties. The sole

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predictor for this model is occupation.

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So, and this is a five-scale occupational model. So it's kind. This is based on the gold thought model. It's it's modified from the gold port model kind of classic model of occupation of occupation as a proxy for social class. So you've got manual processed workers at the bottom of their manual craft workers, then servicing clerical workers, professionals, and managers.

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and so it's occupation which is the predictor of investment, property acquisition there and then. Finally, confidence in retirement savings

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that the the the table talks about that. But there isn't time to go through that. So 3 key conclusions from this, this, this, this, this step. First, the occupational status, was the key driver of asset ownership and wealth for this cohort. Secondly, labor conditions, including occupational status, but also job tenure

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predicted asset ownership via working class working life histories, and then the final point is well. But but in terms of social significance, like, how does this compare to the working age? population? So this kind of brings me to the main conclusions of the of the of the paper

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here, you know, I guess the first that the first conclusion here is that

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you know I mean the material benefits, including

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asset-based wealth accumulated by auto workers, was driven by job tenure and and relatively stable careers as well as occupational status and other labor-based predictors. But

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again I said before, this is an atypical cohort. So these workers had to particularly long careers on average 20 years with their previous employer. Over 75% of them had been with their previous employers for 10 years or more. If you look at that for the working age population, it's more like 25. It's a very long job tenure.

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So one conclusion is that therefore, workers with more typical job tenure, lower job tenure and and and fewer internal labour market opportunities will have much less social protection when dealing with unemployment and precarious jobs.

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third, a second main conclusion is that assets drive financial security and well-being certainly, but no more so than labor based factors for this for this cohort.

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And so I guess my, I guess the kind of final conclusion or the punchline from this analysis is that the deterioration of the labor condition in terms of rising precarious work lower wages greater, like greater labour market uncertainty. You know, this should not be seen as a historical problem in a asteroid society asset higher societies. It's very much a contemporary and ongoing problem. So I guess, just to just to conclude with the nuance of this, I mean the the conclusion is not that labor

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trumps, assets and the determination of life chances. Rather, I want to show that the relationship between assets and labor is a combinatory process, not a matter of preferencing assets or labor in the determination of life chances, but an assistance that assets and labor work

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in dynamic interaction over the life course. So therefore, it's not so much about looking at the bi directional causality of assets versus labor as it is understanding the idea of cumulative reciprocities or the circular and cumulative, cumulative causation of assets and labor

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labor and assets interact in a historically circular and cumulative relationship with the effects of historical job security and occupational pathways. for some workers, enabling them to benefit from asset ownership through housing and retirement funds during relatively long careers, while asset-based gains work in tandem with labor-based variables, such as new jobs with permanent contracts to maximize workers. Life chances in the present, including after job loss. So

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that's that's that. I guess that's my conclusion. It's not. It's it's that. It's not simply the logic of the asset economy that is shaping workers lives by driving new transfers of intergenerational wealth.

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or, conversely, by locking present generations of young workers out of home ownership, or condemning older workers to debt, service, debt, servicing long into retirement. It is also the deterioration of the labor condition itself.

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the weakening of internal labor markets, the decline of skills and mass employment in manual industries and the rise of in insecure employment relationships that is, distorting the relationship between between people and assets. This. This erosion of late of the labor condition is not, therefore, a matter of history, but very much a contemporary problem and an ongoing problem for workers living within asetized societies in Australia and across the world. Thank you very much.

436
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Some questions.

437
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So

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just one clarification problem. So you know the recent relationship by us local labor market basically, people lost their job because of their short from China.

439
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So I just wonder what kind of news, what kind of reasons those closure of those automobile manufacturers in Australia? What's the real? And then, if it's because of the supply chain change. What? What kind of social policy support, or what kind of economic

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opportunities for those workers?

441
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Thank you.

442
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Well, that that is very complex, so I can't really answer that question in a in a very succinct way, other than to say that that was a map that was and is a matter of great political controversy in Australia, I mean, I guess many people in the debate would blame the previous

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Federal Government for for that in terms of not providing.

444
01:23:48.180 --> 01:24:07.730
We have, I guess, a neoliberal orientation towards industry policy, and not providing sufficient support for for car manufacturing in this in this country, but I think there are other reasons to do with the peculiarities of the Australian market in terms of having a a large geographical space with a relatively low population, a relatively underdeveloped market compared to North American Europe, and so on. So I think there are

445
01:24:07.890 --> 01:24:11.010
there. There are many reasons for that

446
01:24:11.110 --> 01:24:18.340
which have to do with policy as well as global production networks. And you know, geographical factors.

447
01:24:24.710 --> 01:24:28.650
That was a great paper, Tom, and I think really useful

448
01:24:28.890 --> 01:24:41.909
to engage with this sort of debate. I just wanted to. your reflection on. I think one potential response is that your cohorts, unique in a particular way? Which is, it is reflective of a of an earlier economy.

449
01:24:42.070 --> 01:24:43.739
and that

450
01:24:43.830 --> 01:24:54.859
part of the dynamic that we're seeing is a shift in that economy. That means that that relationship between labor and assets which I think is as you exactly as you're describing.

451
01:24:54.970 --> 01:25:05.329
might be different in and in an era where, even like a lot of professional jobs, are relatively precaritized, and that asset ownership might start to have an internal logic of accumulation.

452
01:25:05.560 --> 01:25:10.470
I just wonder what your thoughts are on on thinking about it in that lens.

453
01:25:12.520 --> 01:25:17.610
yeah, like the I guess the the the nuance of that

454
01:25:17.870 --> 01:25:20.840
of my position on that debate is is kind of

455
01:25:21.450 --> 01:25:29.629
better explicated in the paper itself than I could that I could do here because I don't have any. If I try to explain that I have an either raw kind of position, which is.

456
01:25:29.680 --> 01:25:33.969
you know, I'm not sort of saying. For example, I disagree with the idea.

457
01:25:33.980 --> 01:25:48.500
that you know the asset that the asset economy has reshaped the class structure and so on. I'm not, you know. I'm not so disagreeing with that in Toto, but I guess I have a more and more nuanced position which would reject the idea that

458
01:25:48.500 --> 01:26:08.610
labor is no longer. You know, labor based components are no longer no longer have a strong influence over that. So yeah, it's true that there is an there is an atypical character and a historical kind of character to this cohort, but I try it in the paper to to to use that very atypicality, to compare them with the rest of the workforce.

459
01:26:08.680 --> 01:26:17.429
to understand those changes I mean But one thing which I think does follow through is occupation. I do think that you know the occupational status.

460
01:26:17.640 --> 01:26:29.490
It does have an influence on your ability to participate in the asset economy through, for example, residential housing, I mean, I know there are differences in professionals, as you said, but if you're a professional or a manager.

461
01:26:29.670 --> 01:26:45.219
I think that you you can. You can afford to participate in residential housing markets, even in Melbourne and Sydney, and other very expensive housing markets in a way which is not true for kind of lower status occupations. So the role of occupations. And it's it's interlinked with more traditional

462
01:26:45.450 --> 01:26:48.929
models of class is not something that we should jettison. And why do you?

463
01:26:49.830 --> 01:26:54.900
Thanks for the questions?

464
01:26:58.540 --> 01:27:03.529
And now we have our final paper from end-space butcher. And

465
01:27:03.640 --> 01:27:05.560
Adam, said he, what

466
01:27:08.790 --> 01:27:09.970
you you

467
01:27:10.750 --> 01:27:27.919
yeah. And I thank you very much. And and thanks to everyone in this panel. This has been fantastic. and yes, we'll note that we've we've added to all co authors in the the time before, between when we submitted the abstract, including Young, who is with us and presented earlier and and dust, and Julian vega from

468
01:27:28.760 --> 01:27:47.599
Of course it's an implication here universalad Australia as well, which is fantastic. and We're still in it. We're going to. I'll set this up in here, with a slightly distracting the moving around, isn't it? Now you put it up on a very big screen.

469
01:27:48.250 --> 01:28:11.120
So we we, I suppose, at the first stage of this research, where we want to get some feedback on the approach we're taking. And particularly we're interested in. We're making an argument about the nature of comparison. in the wake of financialization. And how we think about the comparison of welfare States, which I think actually links up quite well from some of the papers we had earlier.

470
01:28:11.950 --> 01:28:34.560
so we're we're thinking about welfare states traditionally, as being institutions which are designed to deal with the commodification and decommodification of labor. So framing and thinking about both the sorts of risks that people face and how to protect people from those risks. by using public finance, to be able to insulate workers from the risks that markets create?

471
01:28:35.080 --> 01:28:50.300
And to what extent does the processes of financialization which underlie the a shift to an asset economy reshape those social risks, particularly through An intensification of the commodification of land and of money.

472
01:28:50.500 --> 01:29:11.019
And to what extent do we do? We need to have different ways of thinking about. those kinds of risks, if those forms of commodification are central or more central to the kind of organizing logics of market society. So that's The the I suppose the underlying question is, Does how does that shift things?

473
01:29:13.130 --> 01:29:21.210
 And then we we also want to ask about how that changes the nature of comparison.

474
01:29:21.540 --> 01:29:42.929
So we start with the asset economy thesis. And I think, particularly, we're going to be thinking today because we're focused on the nature of crisis and of protecting insulating people and societies from social risks in moments of crisis. So when risks are realized as bad outcomes, you might say, at a mass scale.

475
01:29:43.210 --> 01:30:04.219
we're particularly interested in some of those risk management, Minsky and logics that underly the acid economy as much as we are probably more so than we are with the changes in the way that social stratification is organized as a result of the asset economy. Those are both important. But we're going to be focusing on how risks are realized here?

476
01:30:04.650 --> 01:30:16.320
so we we take covert as one of those moments. And we're interested in thinking about, how does the institution of the State respond to moments of crisis?

477
01:30:16.380 --> 01:30:19.380
In an asetized or financialized economy?

478
01:30:19.670 --> 01:30:28.889
And given that, we think, well, what? What is it that we're looking at? How does that change? And where should we look? And so how do we think through the nature of comparison?

479
01:30:29.460 --> 01:30:54.409
So we want to suggest that there are. the logics we want to look for are those that are connected connected to the maintenance of asset prices to financial valuations, but also, and particularly to logics of liquidity, and how liquid is is linked to to well-being, how how people's ability to be able to service debts. To be able to accumulate is is linked to those

480
01:30:54.410 --> 01:31:14.329
their their well-being. And so we identify these 3 key domains that we want to look at. So the demand of housing, which we've heard a lot about here, we're going to focus also on cash transfers, which was a dominant policy response during covid, but in our model is also a a key mechanism for maintaining household liquidity in a moment of crisis.

481
01:31:14.380 --> 01:31:32.639
And we're going to think about pensions which are kind of a bit of both, that is, that pensions are partly for some parts of the population, a form of liquidity to be able to maintain being able to spend for another part of the population, particularly in asetised economies. Like Australia. They they are a form of wealth, so they are. They are one of the asset prices that are being managed.

482
01:31:34.510 --> 01:31:48.730
 And we wanted to think about how. those structures might change, how we compare. So we're doing something here that we're at the beginning of thinking through. And I'm sure there are some people in the room who know more about some of our cases than we do at the moment.

483
01:31:48.760 --> 01:32:17.320
And we really welcome that. But instead of thinking about the logics in terms of history and institutions that led to welfare States being the way they are, which is how we normally compare Welfare States. We say, you know, they were English. Speaking of the Continental Europe. They they had this class structure, and they produce these kinds of policies, and they endured, we want to say, does the the moment of asetization of financialization mean. There are particular structural features of states which become more important in their relationship to the financial economy.

484
01:32:17.350 --> 01:32:19.199
then, those histories.

485
01:32:19.300 --> 01:32:47.210
and to test that we thought, well, we want to compare countries that look very different, but have features that are likely to bring that out. So first of all. We think that they have to have the high income countries in order to be able to have the fiscal base to be able to manage crises. there's just clearly a a big gap in state capacity between different states to be able to manage financial crisis. We think that they will be sensitive to household needs and risks in different ways to non-democracies.

486
01:32:47.230 --> 01:33:13.960
And we want to think about states that don't already have established institutions of social insurance. So where they already do have those. We know from some previous research that Adam and Gareth and I did. And so the rest of the literature social insurance systems do still do a lot of good risk management. Even in financialized economies. We want to look at the crisis response of non-social insurance models.

487
01:33:14.090 --> 01:33:27.769
So. we have 3 cases, Australia, South Korea, and Chile which have these similar features. We've got underdeveloped welfare States. They're rich, relatively rich. They're in the Oecd. They're democracies.

488
01:33:27.770 --> 01:33:40.890
They actually have completely different histories. Yeah, so, but we're we're seeing that as an advantage for our of thinking this through. So South Korea is in some ways on a trajectory towards being a a social insurance state. But isn't there yet?

489
01:33:40.890 --> 01:33:59.929
Australia developed this very unique, well, somewhat unique wage in a model. That means that it relied on flat rate. payment structures rather than social insurance. And chile obviously, is the archetype of neoliberal reform that really did smash things apart and kind of create a financialized space.

490
01:33:59.970 --> 01:34:07.240
We also know that in terms of the research has been done on covid flight rate benefits were ubiquitous, pretty much

491
01:34:07.350 --> 01:34:26.680
and somewhat reflect the basic income, at least for parts of the population or guaranteed minimum income, but that that was most pronounced in the Asia Pacific region, and that Korea was one of the notable cases that had at least some payments that went to everybody. and that has had a life political debate that's about cash payments going to everybody.

492
01:34:26.960 --> 01:34:35.880
It also has very high levels of household debt associated with an expansion of the housing market that looks remarkably similar to the kind of dynamics that we've seen in Australia.

493
01:34:36.020 --> 01:34:45.090
And that chile and Australia stand out as having privatised pension systems, or at least market-based, will debate how privatized super is.

494
01:34:45.660 --> 01:35:05.070
 do I? And so here's just just to give you an idea. This is from the World Bank, overview of all of the policy responses during Covid from a very large number of authors led by you. Go, Gentilini, and you can see that in East Asia and the Pacific oops.

495
01:35:06.360 --> 01:35:23.569
Sorry, going backwards outside of Africa, which actually has very, very small responses to Covid. There is a a predominance of social assistance, and within that social assistance is predominance of cash payments.

496
01:35:24.530 --> 01:35:27.150
and I might hand over for Adam for the rest of the paper

497
01:35:27.790 --> 01:35:29.440
to the almost, yeah. This.

498
01:35:31.400 --> 01:35:33.620
Okay, thanks. Ben.

499
01:35:36.440 --> 01:35:44.380
so yeah. What I'd like to do now is start with some initial comparisons, and then move on to each of the 3 countries that we've

500
01:35:44.470 --> 01:35:46.209
included. At this point

501
01:35:46.450 --> 01:35:48.220
of our analysis.

502
01:35:48.400 --> 01:35:59.480
so initially, we drew on Oec data from 2018 to compare some key social and economic indicators for Australia, chile, and Korea before the COVID-19 pandemic

503
01:36:00.670 --> 01:36:05.560
right? So the first thing that we can note from this table is that

504
01:36:05.570 --> 01:36:18.720
none of the 3 countries have the expansive social insurance systems that are typical of many European welfare sites for richer countries. They all tend to have lower levels of spending. Australia, though.

505
01:36:19.700 --> 01:36:30.329
does have higher social spending than the other 2 countries at 16.6% of Gdp right? Which compares to 11.5% in Chile and 10.9% in Korea.

506
01:36:31.430 --> 01:36:35.070
we've got a few

507
01:36:35.360 --> 01:36:41.469
so indicators that compare levels of income and rates of Gdp per capita.

508
01:36:41.530 --> 01:36:54.360
The one I'd like to focus on here is Gdp per capita purchasing power parity. us dollar prices because it provides us with a comparative metric that's more easy to compare.

509
01:36:54.590 --> 01:36:56.430
and we can see that

510
01:36:57.190 --> 01:37:03.609
Gdp per capita is highest in Australia, followed by Korea, and then chile

511
01:37:04.950 --> 01:37:08.200
and we've also got some indicators of

512
01:37:08.500 --> 01:37:15.500
income inequality up here as well. I'd like to draw your attention to the genie coefficients for disposable income.

513
01:37:15.690 --> 01:37:26.739
We can note that Australia has the lowest. Wow! 5Â min duty competition, followed by

514
01:37:27.680 --> 01:37:38.270
Korea! which is actually got a very similar genie coefficient. And then chile, And we can note that Australia has lower levels of poverty.

515
01:37:38.500 --> 01:37:43.399
But this isn't the same across life course with Korea having level levels of child poverty.

516
01:37:44.500 --> 01:37:55.149
Okay? So in the next 5Â min, I want to characterize the social protection systems of Australia, chile and Korea. Then talk about their covert responses.

517
01:37:55.450 --> 01:38:02.840
Okay? So Australian public expenditure is lower than the Oecd mean and overall, it's highly targeted

518
01:38:04.200 --> 01:38:17.740
and On top of the so social expenditure there's tax incentives for private assets and insurance. So if we first look at or first comment on cache transfers. They're means tested and low, right?

519
01:38:17.799 --> 01:38:31.039
for working age groups, including families with children, the unemployed young people and single parents in Australia. Despite recent declines. There's still comparatively high rates of home ownership.

520
01:38:31.530 --> 01:38:50.329
the main supports tax subsidies for owner occupiers and investors with public subsidies for private rental and very limited social housing. Right? So if we look at the table here, we can see that this tiny little bar here is the amount of social expenditure on housing.

521
01:38:51.350 --> 01:39:01.389
with pensions. We can note that Australia has a low rate and affluence-tested public pension. Right? So it's affluence tested. It excludes the very wealthy.

522
01:39:01.719 --> 01:39:15.799
About two-thirds of Older folk receive the age, pension or part of it, and compulsory public. So compulsory private superannuation provides other retirement savings for most workers.

523
01:39:16.910 --> 01:39:28.620
Okay? So Australia's fiscal response to the pandemic combined income subsidies and asset-based measures for superannuation and housing, I'm going to go over this very quickly. So there were

524
01:39:28.660 --> 01:39:38.360
the job seeker payments which was a temporary increase of the unemployment benefit, and there were a job

525
01:39:38.370 --> 01:39:53.819
keeper benefits, which was a temporary wage subsidy that contributed significantly to employees or to workers with housing. Some of the support took less typical

526
01:39:53.980 --> 01:40:02.910
social policy form. There was a lowering of interest rights by the Rbi and that significantly reduced mortgage repayments for many households.

527
01:40:03.280 --> 01:40:18.209
 the Rba and Apra also coordinated mortgage holidays, or supported private banks to give, and and other lenders to give mortgage holidays to their clients, a national cabinet

528
01:40:18.330 --> 01:40:42.729
So the Federal and the State and Territory Governments negotiated rent fees, and there was also the Home Builder scheme that was quite small, so I won't mention in great detail. interestingly, in Australia. There was also the early release of superannuation scheme through which, you know, people were able to access 35 billion dollars as a privatized form of social stimulus, the fiscal stimulus.

529
01:40:43.900 --> 01:40:46.640
Okay, let's move on to Chile.

530
01:40:46.720 --> 01:40:57.980
So chile was a pioneer of neoliberal social policies under the pinochet regime, and it continues to have lower public social expenditure than other Oecd countries

531
01:40:59.250 --> 01:41:05.850
The cash transfers in Chile are very limited, include very limited social systems, programs and unemployment support

532
01:41:05.900 --> 01:41:12.020
private compulsory unemployment insurance was only introduced in 2,002,

533
01:41:12.120 --> 01:41:19.859
and the tripartite contributions are administered by approved private pension funds.

534
01:41:20.160 --> 01:41:44.939
There's high rates of home ownership in Chile with the Housing Solidarity Fund offering targeted public subsidies for low income groups, and when it comes to pensions in chile social insurance pensions were fully privatized by the pinochet regime, meaning that employer and State contributions were ended and only worker contributions remained.

535
01:41:46.480 --> 01:41:56.899
there you can still see, though here on the chart, that there's still some public expenditure for old age, and this includes the minimum and welfare pensions.

536
01:41:58.120 --> 01:42:07.970
Okay, so chile, massively expanded public social expenditure during the pandemic rising from 11.7 7% of Gdp to 19% of Gdp

537
01:42:08.880 --> 01:42:14.390
the fiscal response largely included cash transfers and early access to private social insurance.

538
01:42:14.550 --> 01:42:20.569
Right? So there were a couple of cash transfer programs that were targeted at different

539
01:42:20.690 --> 01:42:26.700
 the it different segments of the workforce.

540
01:42:26.810 --> 01:42:36.229
Right? so there was a minimum guaranteed minimum income payment for formal workers, aged 18 to 65 years.

541
01:42:36.500 --> 01:42:44.499
 there was a middle class protection plan that included one of benefits for workers on formal incomes.

542
01:42:44.590 --> 01:42:51.070
There were also cash transfers for informal workers for up to 3 months

543
01:42:51.550 --> 01:43:10.749
similar to Australia. But it came to the private pension scheme. Individuals were able to withdraw their private savings from the private pension funds, the Pension Fund administration organizations, and there were 3 withdrawal cycles which, compared to Australia's 2

544
01:43:11.030 --> 01:43:17.829
individuals were able to withdraw 10% of contributions from unemployment insurance funds as well.

545
01:43:17.910 --> 01:43:22.170
and that was for people who were able to access unemployment insurance directly

546
01:43:23.530 --> 01:43:25.460
and

547
01:43:25.780 --> 01:43:38.939
 During the pandemic. Up until October 2021 social security contributions were actually taken over by employers as well, which was, I think, a

548
01:43:39.340 --> 01:43:41.720
reasonably interesting departure

549
01:43:41.830 --> 01:43:44.520
from pre-covered policies.

550
01:43:44.800 --> 01:43:59.259
Now, to briefly talk about Korea. So Korean public social expenditure remains lower than many other Oecd countries. social protection, though, does consist of social insurance with limited assistance for vulnerable groups.

551
01:43:59.750 --> 01:44:08.040
So there are social insurance programs for unemployment, health and work injuries with very limited public cash transfers for the working age. Population.

552
01:44:08.220 --> 01:44:21.069
 When it comes to housing they're mixed housing 10 years. there are high home ownership rates overall in Korea. They have a unique John. Say,

553
01:44:21.960 --> 01:44:42.610
system of private rental that I don't have time to go into, but I can talk about in discussions if there's time, and more conventional private rent rentals along with publicly administered housing. the Korean Land and National Housing Corporation administers about 15% of housing stock. But this, this doesn't just include social housing or public housing, as we

554
01:44:43.160 --> 01:44:44.770
tend to understand it.

555
01:44:44.820 --> 01:44:53.290
the national pension is the main social insurance scheme. The basic pension is a highly targeted residual scheme.

556
01:44:54.320 --> 01:44:58.379
So again, Korea rapidly expanded public expenditure. During the pandemic

557
01:44:58.630 --> 01:45:10.479
as far as cash transfers go, there was a one off universal emergency relief payment. there were temporary regular payments for the bottom, 30 30% of households by income.

558
01:45:11.040 --> 01:45:21.959
there was unpaid leave subsidy program. that supported workers for up to around 6 months And there were other targeted cash programs to support vulnerable populations.

559
01:45:23.130 --> 01:45:31.149
When it came to housing. It was targeted housing support government lowered interest rates for low income from the low income household plan from 4.5

560
01:45:31.380 --> 01:45:42.050
percent to 2 to 3% and to help small business, there was a 50% tax reduction for the the land, for

561
01:45:42.620 --> 01:45:43.810
for landlords.

562
01:45:44.160 --> 01:45:50.210
 In contrast to Chile and

563
01:45:50.790 --> 01:45:52.120
Australia.

564
01:45:52.210 --> 01:45:58.639
 individuals, individuals weren't able to access pensions early but

565
01:45:58.950 --> 01:46:09.559
the pension contributions were supported via temporary expansions of contribution reliefs and the extension of installment catch up plans. Okay, now I know we're over time, but I'll

566
01:46:09.720 --> 01:46:17.680
invite. Then back to in 2Â s. I just say so. I think what we found is that there are asset-based logics in all 3 of the countries.

567
01:46:17.700 --> 01:46:22.079
but they work differently and look different, and it's very hard to compare them.

568
01:46:22.330 --> 01:46:35.379
And so I think that's just a function of the tools we have for comparison. Aren't you designed for this? So the next step of this is to work out some useful ways of making comparisons to start building an architecture. That's

569
01:46:35.440 --> 01:46:38.220
you know, about asset-based economies. Thanks.

570
01:46:44.200 --> 01:46:46.740
One question.

571
01:46:47.950 --> 01:46:48.930
Yes.

572
01:46:52.430 --> 01:46:53.569
Set up. Yeah.

573
01:46:53.630 --> 01:47:02.950
So thanks. So much for your paper, and you mentioned at the start that you were going to talk about the nature of comparison and the implications that your paper has for

574
01:47:03.250 --> 01:47:11.780
for scholarship on comparative welfare States. and you ran out of time. So I wondered if you'd like to say a bit on that.

575
01:47:12.260 --> 01:47:12.980
and

576
01:47:13.290 --> 01:47:15.570
thanks for the free parsley.

577
01:47:15.810 --> 01:47:29.920
yeah. So I I think that as we were saying initially that those liquidity logics, the use of pension withdrawals, the focus on trying to maintain housing liquidity. We're commenting, all of them.

578
01:47:29.980 --> 01:47:47.800
and so I. They are partly common through a lot of other countries, too. So one of the nature of this is to try and think about what's distinctive in places that don't have social insurance, fully developed. Social insurance logics, and therefore to what extent? Can we understand? Crisis responses?

579
01:47:48.200 --> 01:48:03.520
as the State, having to respond to these largely external structures of the economy which we think are more likely to be common because of the structural position of countries to the international economy rather than their in internal histories.

580
01:48:03.700 --> 01:48:17.790
I would say, we don't know that at the moment. But one of the real problems that you face is like withdrawals from pension schemes, changing interest rates, getting mortgage holidays and rent. There isn't. There aren't actually very good tools for working out the equivalence between them.

581
01:48:17.940 --> 01:48:29.560
So that's why we need to start. If if asset-based logics really are starting to dominate the way that states respond to crisis. Then I think we need to start developing tools that that look at those different purposes.

582
01:48:32.280 --> 01:48:45.670
Thanks very much. And and Adam and co-authors, and thanks everybody on the panel, and to those who participated yesterday as well, and all of you for being here, it's been a great discussion. I think. Thank our panelists, and we're done