Ignore super now and pay the price later

They are helped by the disappearance of society's traditional revulsion against gambling and usury, and a lost belief in a difference between making money and earning it. This translates into a growing proportion of the nation's talent engaged in devising complex financial schemes, many of which have been called "socially useless" by the British regulator.

One of the most authoritative critics of high finance, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, writes in The New York Times: "Much of the financial industry has become a racket - a game in which a handful of people are lavishly paid to mislead and exploit consumers and investors.''

He is referring mainly to America. But while it may be better regulated, Australia's financial services industry is not worlds apart, and has escaped closer scrutiny by not requiring a post-crisis bailout.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's policy focus is shadowing US President Barack Obama's, in which a steely determination to sort out healthcare is preceding a foray into financial services, in Rudd's case the superannuation industry.

The junction of the financial markets with the dry topic of our retirement savings is becoming a 21st-century flashpoint in the timeless clash of capital and labour. Those of us who remain apathetic, discouraged by its complexity and abstraction, may help perpetuate the legalised looting.