German savings research found workers lacked the inner prerequisites to accumulate capital

Evidence

In the 1950s and 1960s, Schmölders’s institute conducted surveys on consumption and savings behavior of workers as well as lowerand middle-class clerks in order to assess the viability of state programs to encourage private savings. He did not generally oppose these programs but established significant differences in their effects on the accumulation of personal wealth among workers and employees. While both low-income and white-collar workers behaved similarly, spending wage increases for immediate consumption, above a certain level of income they differed. Whereas workers still consumed more, employees started to save money and build up personal savings. Thus, Schmölders concluded that global wage increases would not lead to a buildup of wealth among workers. Accordingly, state policies to encourage the accumulation of private property and savings could only address the middle-income employees because “the masses of the workers and lower employees today do not have the necessary inner prerequisites that would empower them to build up capital; they naturally spend income increases on consumption.” — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 335

Categorization

• QUESTION: Were these findings contested at the time? The generalization from survey data to ‘inner prerequisites’ sounds ideologically loaded — worth chasing the empirical record.
• XREF: Ties to the book’s neoliberalism thesis: this is an economic argument smuggled under the cover of ‘human nature,’ which connects to the anti-constructivism strand in Hayek and Ordoliberalism. — connects to: Most people lack the resources to become saver-investors, invalidating the merit narrative — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 34; German financial psychology rejected the assumption that citizens are malleable material for state designs — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 334; The saver-investor ideal is structurally unavailable to most people — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 34

Broader Connections

• German financial psychology rejected the assumption that citizens are malleable material for state designs #expands (0.78) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 334
• The saver-investor ideal is structurally unavailable to most people #corroborates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 34