This book in my view says nothing new. The author has already rehearsed many of the arguments in Banking on Death (Blackburn Reference Blackburn2002). I do not understand where he is trying to take us, apart from the revision and repetition of a Meidner plan (Swedish socialist and an architect of the Swedish Wage-earner Funds) which he has repeated many times. The book is an unoriginal summary of issues in pensions, relying on quotes from and references to others.
The author summarises the never-ending litany of financial scandals, corruption, self-serving Chief Executive Officers and disgusting self-interest, all of which are intrinsic to the private system of pensions that prevail particularly in the United States and United Kingdom. For those who follow this trail of rip-offs and unapologetic merchants of self-aggrandisement, there is nothing original here. In fact the flaw of the book is that there is no theoretical framework to offer a deeper understanding of the system; just one thing after another in a sometimes tiresome, descriptive and revelatory manner. Tut-tutting is all very well, as page after page reveal yet more outrageous episodes. The author's ‘analysis’ could not hold a candle to something like Charles Kindleburger's book, Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (Kindleburger Reference Kindleburger1996), in which there is a riveting attempt to explain rather than just describe. There is no reference to this in the book.
The numerous typos are annoying, and the reference in the index to Chile does not exist. I also wish that pension experts, of whom I guess Blackburn is now one, would ensure that their references to the seminal and destructive World Bank (1994) report, emphasised the word ‘and’ in its subtitle: Averting the Old Age Crisis: Policies to Protect the Old AND Promote Growth. The fact that the author has missed this suggests to me that he does not understand the real arguments for private pension provision. Financial scandals are neither here nor there given the economic growth arguments proposed for the extension of private pensions, and the subsequent collapse of the thesis on its own terms.
After the first 264 pages in this vein, the author repeats his obsession with Meidner. I have heard Blackburn suggest that Meidner should have received the Nobel Prize for Economics. And he's right: the author's attempt to update the Swedish proposals for share levies, localised investment agencies and radical investment agendas deserves discussion. But he has already discussed them, and I don't see what they have to do with pensions per se. That is the mistake of the book. Blackburn is laying out a transformation of relationships between corporations, shareholders, workers and investment practices. The book's title is therefore misleading. Why not have entitled it A Meidner Plan for Britain and have done with it, and stop trying to ‘shock’ us?
Indeed, the title or phrase ‘Age shock’, reminds me of all the other shock-horror descriptions of the increasing numbers and proportions of old people in the world. Pensions' ‘time bomb’ was one; ‘doomsday scenario’ another. The World Bank excelled in warning us that governments would go bankrupt and that the metaphorical roof was about to cave in because of us wrinklies. At the conference where I heard the author commend Meidner for a Nobel Prize, another paper explained how the amount of money required for the increase in pension liabilities over the next 50 years in the European Union of the time was nugatory (Concialdi Reference Concialdi2006). Nor is there mention of that contribution in the book.
Blackburn has fallen into a right-wing trap: the pension shock requires more private solutions of one sort or another. More regulation and social ownership (Mondragon is dragged in as part of the cause), and we will have a better structure of investment. A new collectivism will banish the financial scandals. There are already plenty of commentaries on Mondragon and a few other local, co-operative experiences. What does Blackburn add?
