Rentier Capitalism

Description

Brett Christophers:

"The UK economy is a quintessential case of rentier capitalism. It is an exemplar of what the Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman called a “rentier regime”.

To understand rentier capitalism, one first needs to understand rent. Rent is income generated by virtue of exclusive ownership or control of a scarce asset of some kind. A rentier is the recipient of this income: the individual or, more commonly, corporation that controls the asset. Rentier capitalism is an economic order organised around income-generating assets, in which overall incomes are dominated by rents and economic life is dominated by rentiers. Fundamentally orientated to “having” rather than “doing”, it is based on a proprietorial rather than entrepreneurial ethos. That, in short, is the UK since the 1970s." (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/12/ppe-britain-rentier-capitalism-assets-uk-economy?)