Opinion: Your mutual fund raises inequality

View in [Browser] | Add [nytdirect@nytimes.com] to your address book. Wednesday, December 7, 2016 [The New York Times] [NYTimes.com/Opinion »] [Opinion] Wednesday, December 7, 2016 Companies have more power than they used to, and workers have less. The best piece of evidence is probably the falling share of the nation's economic output that flows to workers — [down to 58 percent today], from about 63 percent in the 1950s and 1960s. On the flip side, corporate profits have surged. These trends contribute to rising economic inequality. Why do companies have more power? They are bigger than they used to be, for one thing. They can also more easily use technology to replace workers and can more easily relocate to a cheaper country or region. And government policy has helped companies — making it easier for them to swat away labor unions, for example. [An Op-Ed] today suggests another major reason for the rise of corporate power: institutional investors like Vanguard and BlackRock. “The great, but mostly unknown, antitrust story of our time is the astonishing rise of the institutional investor — a large company, like a mutual fund company, insurance company, pension fund or asset management firm, that buys stock in substantial quantities for the benefit of clients and customers — and the challenge that it poses to market competition,” write Eric Posner, Fiona Scott Morton and Glen Weyl. “In 1950, institutional investors [owned] about 7 percent of the United States stock market; today they own almost 70 percent.” In the piece, Posner, Morton and Weyl explain why this matters — and how to fix the problem. 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