Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: I ricchi diventano piu' ricchi, i poveri piu' poveri e quelli in mezzo piu' preoccupati: Ecco il boom USA

From The Economist print edition
The rich are the big gainers in America's new prosperity
AMERICANS do not go in for envy. The gap between rich and poor is
bigger than in any other advanced country, but most people are
unconcerned. Whereas Europeans fret about the way the economic pie is
divided, Americans want to join the rich, not soak them. Eight out of
ten, more than anywhere else, believe that though you may start poor,
if you work hard, you can make pots of money. It is a central part of
the American Dream.
The political consensus, therefore, has sought to pursue economic
growth rather than the redistribution of income, in keeping with John
Kennedy's adage that "a rising tide lifts all boats." The tide has
been rising fast recently. Thanks to a jump in productivity growth
after 1995, America's economy has outpaced other rich countries' for a
decade. Its workers now produce over 30% more each hour they work than
ten years ago. In the late 1990s everybody shared in this boom. Though
incomes were rising fastest at the top, all workers' wages far outpaced
inflation.
But after 2000 something changed. The pace of productivity growth has
been rising again, but now it seems to be lifting fewer boats. After
you adjust for inflation, the wages of the typical American
worker-the one at the very middle of the income distribution-have
risen less than 1% since 2000. In the previous five years, they rose
over 6%. If you take into account the value of employee benefits, such
as health care, the contrast is a little less stark. But, whatever the
measure, it seems clear that only the most skilled workers have seen
their pay packets swell much in the current economic expansion. The
fruits of productivity gains have been skewed towards the highest
earners, and towards companies, whose profits have reached record
levels as a share of GDP.
Even in a country that tolerates inequality, political consequences
follow when the rising tide raises too few boats. The impact of
stagnant wages has been dulled by rising house prices, but still most
Americans are unhappy about the economy. According to the latest Gallup
survey, fewer than four out of ten think it is in "excellent" or
"good" shape, compared with almost seven out of ten when George
Bush took office.
The White House professes to be untroubled. Average after-tax income
per person, Mr Bush often points out, has risen by more than 8% on his
watch, once inflation is taken into account. He is right, but his claim
is misleading, since the median worker-the one in the middle of the
income range-has done less well than the average, whose gains are
pulled up by the big increases of those at the top.
Privately, some policymakers admit that the recent trends have them
worried, and not just because of the congressional elections in
November. The statistics suggest that the economic boom may fade.
Americans still head to the shops with gusto, but it is falling savings
rates and rising debts (made possible by high house prices), not real
income growth, that keep their wallets open. A bust of some kind could
lead to widespread political disaffection. Eventually, the country's
social fabric could stretch. "If things carry on like this for long
enough," muses one insider, "we are going to end up like
Brazil"-a country notorious for the concentration of its income and
wealth.
America is nowhere near Brazil yet (see chart 1). Despite a quarter
century during which incomes have drifted ever farther apart, the
distribution of wealth has remained remarkably stable. The richest
Americans now earn as big a share of overall income as they did a
century ago (see chart 2), but their share of overall wealth is much
lower. Indeed, it has barely budged in the few past decades.
The elites in the early years of the 20th century were living off the
income generated by their accumulated fortunes. Today's rich, by and
large, are earning their money. In 1916 the richest 1% got only a fifth
of their income from paid work, whereas the figure in 2004 was over
60%.
The rise of the working rich reinforces America's self-image as the
land of opportunity. But, by some measures, that image is an illusion.
Several new studies* show parental income to be a better predictor of
whether someone will be rich or poor in America than in Canada or much
of Europe. In America about half of the income disparities in one
generation are reflected in the next. In Canada and the Nordic
countries that proportion is about a fifth.
It is not clear whether this sclerosis is increasing: the evidence is
mixed. Many studies suggest that mobility between generations has
stayed roughly the same in recent decades, and some suggest it is
decreasing. Even so, ordinary Americans seem to believe that theirs is
still a land of opportunity. The proportion who think you can start
poor and end up rich has risen 20 percentage points since 1980.
That helps explain why voters who grumble about the economy have
nonetheless failed to respond to class politics. John Edwards, the
Democrats' vice-presidential candidate in 2004, made little headway
with his tale of "Two Americas", one for the rich and one for the
rest. Over 70% of Americans support the abolition of the estate tax
(inheritance tax), even though only one household in 100 pays it.
Americans tend to blame their woes not on rich compatriots but on poor
foreigners. More than six out of ten are sceptical of free trade. A new
poll in Foreign Affairs suggests that almost nine out of ten worry
about their jobs going offshore. Congressmen reflect their concerns.
Though the economy grows, many have become vociferous protectionists.
Other rich countries are watching America's experience closely. For
many Europeans, America's brand of capitalism is already far too
unequal. Such sceptics will be sure to make much of any sign that the
broad middle-class reaps scant benefit from the current productivity
boom, setting back the course of European reform even further.
The conventional tale is that the changes of the past few years are
simply more steps along paths that began to diverge for rich and poor
in the Reagan era. During the 1950s and 1960s, the halcyon days for
America's middle class, productivity boomed and its benefits were
broadly shared. The gap between the lowest and highest earners
narrowed. After the 1973 oil shocks, productivity growth suddenly
slowed. A few years later, at the start of the 1980s, the gap between
rich and poor began to widen.
The exact size of that gap depends on how you measure it. Look at
wages, the main source of income for most people, and you understate
the importance of health care and other benefits. Look at household
income and you need to take into account that the typical household has
fallen in size in recent decades, thanks to the growth in single-parent
families. Look at statistics on spending and you find that the gaps
between top and bottom have widened less than for income. But every
measure shows that, over the past quarter century, those at the top
have done better than those in the middle, who in turn have outpaced
those at the bottom. The gains of productivity growth have become
increasingly skewed.
If all Americans were set on a ladder with ten rungs, the gap between
the wages of those on the ninth rung and those on the first has risen
by a third since 1980. Put another way, the typical worker earns only
10% more in real terms than his counterpart 25 years ago, even though
overall productivity has risen much faster. Economists have long
debated why America's income disparities suddenly widened after 1980.
The consensus is that the main cause was technology, which increased
the demand for skilled workers relative to their supply, with freer
trade reinforcing the effect. Some evidence suggests that institutional
changes, particularly the weakening of unions, made the going harder
for people at the bottom.
Whether these shifts were good or bad depends on your political
persuasion. Those on the left lament the gaps, often forgetting that
the greater income disparities have created bigger incentives to get an
education, which has led to a better trained, more productive
workforce. The share of American workers with a college degree, 20% in
1980, is over 30% today.
The excluded middle
In their haste to applaud or lament this tale, both sides of the debate
tend to overlook some nuances. First, America's rising inequality has
not, in fact, been continuous. The gap between the bottom and the
middle-whether in terms of skills, age, job experience or
income-did widen sharply in the 1980s. High-school dropouts earned
12% less in an average week in 1990 than in 1980; those with only a
high-school education earned 6% less. But during the 1990s,
particularly towards the end of the decade, that gap stabilised and, by
some measures, even narrowed. Real wages rose faster for the bottom
quarter of workers than for those in the middle.
After 2000 most people lost ground, but, by many measures, those in the
middle of the skills and education ladder have been hit relatively
harder than those at the bottom. People who had some college
experience, but no degree, fared worse than high-school dropouts. Some
statistics suggest that the annual income of Americans with a college
degree has fallen relative to that of high-school graduates for the
first time in decades. So, whereas the 1980s were hardest on the lowest
skilled, the 1990s and this decade have squeezed people in the middle.
 The one truly continuous trend over the past 25 years has been towards
greater concentration of income at the very top. The scale of this
shift is not visible from most popular measures of income or wages, as
they do not break the distribution down finely enough. But several
recent studies have dissected tax records to investigate what goes on
at the very top.
The figures are startling. According to Emmanuel Saez of the University
of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Piketty of the Ecole Normale
Supérieure in Paris, the share of aggregate income going to the
highest-earning 1% of Americans has doubled from 8% in 1980 to over 16%
in 2004. That going to the top tenth of 1% has tripled from 2% in 1980
to 7% today. And that going to the top one-hundredth of 1%-the 14,000
taxpayers at the very top of the income ladder-has quadrupled from
0.65% in 1980 to 2.87% in 2004.
Put these pieces together and you do not have a picture of
ever-widening inequality but of what Lawrence Katz of Harvard
University, David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and Melissa Kearney of the Brookings Institution call a polarisation of
the labour market. The bottom is no longer falling behind, the top is
soaring ahead and the middle is under pressure.
Superstars and super-squeezed
Can changes in technology explain this revised picture? Up to a point.
Computers and the internet have reduced the demand for routine jobs
that demand only moderate skills, such as the work of bank clerks,
while increasing the productivity of the highest-skilled. Studies in
Britain and Germany as well as America show that the pace of job growth
since the early 1990s has been slower in occupations that are easy to
computerise.
For the most talented and skilled, technology has increased the
potential market and thus their productivity. Top entertainers or
sportsmen, for instance, now perform for a global audience. Some
economists believe that technology also explains the soaring pay of
chief executives. One argument is that information technology has made
top managers more mobile, since it no longer takes years to master the
intricacies of any one industry. As a result, the market for chief
executives is bigger and their pay is bid up. Global firms plainly do
compete globally for talent: Alcoa's boss is a Brazilian, Sony's chief
executive is American (and Welsh).
But the scale of America's income concentration at the top, and the
fact that no other country has seen such extreme shifts, has sent
people searching for other causes. The typical American chief executive
now earns 300 times the average wage, up tenfold from the 1970s.
Continental Europe's bosses have seen nothing similar. This discrepancy
has fostered the "fat cat" theory of inequality: greedy businessmen
sanction huge salaries for each other at the expense of shareholders.
Whichever explanation you choose for the signs of growing inequality,
none of the changes seems transitory. The middle rungs of America's
labour market are likely to become ever more squeezed. And that squeeze
feels worse thanks to another change that has hit the middle class
most: greater fluctuations in people's incomes.
The overall economy has become more stable over the past quarter
century. America has had only two recessions in the past 20 years, in
1990-91 and 2001, both of which were mild by historical standards. But
life has become more turbulent for firms and people's income now
fluctuates much more from one year to the next than it did a generation
ago. Some evidence suggests that the trends in short-term income
volatility mirror the underlying wage shifts and may now be hitting the
middle class most.
What of the future? It is possible that the benign pattern of the late
1990s will return. The disappointing performance of the Bush era may
simply reflect a job market that is weaker than it appears. Although
unemployment is low, at 4.6%, other signals, such as the proportion of
people working, seem inconsistent with a booming economy.
More likely, the structural changes in America's job market that began
in the 1990s are now being reinforced by big changes in the global
economy. The integration of China's low-skilled millions and the
increased offshoring of services to India and other countries has
expanded the global supply of workers. This has reduced the relative
price of labour and raised the returns to capital. That reinforces the
income concentration at the top, since most stocks and shares are held
by richer people. More important, globalisation may further fracture
the traditional link between skills and wages.
As Frank Levy of MIT points out, offshoring and technology work in
tandem, since both dampen the demand for jobs that can be reduced to a
set of rules or scripts, whether those jobs are for book-keepers or
call-centre workers. Alan Blinder of Princeton, by contrast, says that
the demand for skills depends on whether they must be used in person:
X-rays taken in Boston may be read by Indians in Bangalore, but offices
cannot be cleaned at long distance. So who will be squeezed and who
will not is hard to predict.
The number of American service jobs that have shifted offshore is
small, some 1m at the most. And most of those demand few skills, such
as operating telephones. Mr Levy points out that only 15 radiologists
in India are now reading American X-rays. But nine out of ten Americans
worry about offshoring. That fear may be enough to hold down the wages
of college graduates in service industries.
All in all, America's income distribution is likely to continue the
trends of the recent past. While those at the top will go on drawing
huge salaries, those in the broad middle of the middle class will see
their incomes churned. The political consequences will depend on the
pace of change and the economy's general health. With luck, the
offshoring of services will happen gradually, allowing time for workers
to adapt their skills while strong growth will keep employment high.
But if the economy slows, Americans' scepticism of globalisation is
sure to rise. And even their famous tolerance of inequality may reach a
limit. 
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Commenti?
Si' vestito da Robin Hood staresti uno schifo..meglio Frate Ta,
ascoltami.
MMAX
-- 
E' in discussione su it.news.gruppi la RFD 
di it.politica.internazionale moderato

 ascoltami.
e tu farai lo sceriffo, lady Marian o lady cocca? (nella parte di tonto e
crucco ci vedo bene amalric e tb) <g>
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visitate 
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il 25/26 giugno al referendum voto NO allo stravolgimento della
Costituzione
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 Commenti?
Non solo diventano piu ricchi, diventano anche piu numerosi (chiaramente 
in Italia diminuiscono)...
http://www.repubblica.it/2006/06/sezioni/economia/cnn-milionari/cnn-milionari/cnn-milionari.html
K

guarda all'italia che fai prima..