Reforming capital markets to build broad-based prosperity and reduce economic inequality

Concerns about corporate concentration and political risk aren't new. In this piece, Tom Powdrill traces a striking 1947 passage from Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), shaped by the trauma of Nazism, warning that monopolistic companies can "jeopardize freedom in the state" and calling for antitrust action, ownership caps, and worker codetermination. Nearly 80 years later, as ownership and control concentrate again, the CDU's postwar diagnosis reads as remarkably prescient. A short, sharp reminder that predistributive thinking has deep roots across the political spectrum.

In this Q&A with the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, PDI Co-Founder and Executive Director Delilah Rothenberg discusses where predistribution stands today, what it looks like when investors apply a predistribution lens, and how the concept applies to AI-driven labor disruption. Delilah unpacks the macro-financial case for treating inequality as a material risk, explains why Universal Basic Capital may be a stronger response to AI-driven productivity gains than Universal Basic Income, and shares where PDI sees the greatest resistance and opportunities for investors to act.

In this paper, the Predistribution Initiative (PDI) explores how economic inequality is a macro-financial risk to markets and diversified portfolios. It explains how inequality manifests across people, firms, regions, and capital value chains and traces structural drivers—including financialization, deregulation, monetary policy, market concentration, and traditional corporate governance structures.  Proposals are made for predistributive solutions such as living wages, freedom of association and collective bargaining, grievance mechanisms, employee and community ownership models, and corporate governance reform that better aligns the incentives of investors, investees, and their stakeholders.