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发帖数: 4825 | 1 http://www.economist.com/node/21543178
MITT ROMNEY is not the first multi-millionaire to seek the presidency, nor
the richest. Ross Perot, the record-holder, spent some of his billions
earned from computer data on losing bids in 1992 and 1996. Since then men
who owe their or their family’s fortunes to oil, sport, publishing, trial
law, ketchup, beer and bestselling autobiographies have followed.
But Mr Romney, who earned his $200m or so as a private-equity executive
buying and selling companies, is the first candidate from the world of high-
octane finance. As such, he illustrates the changing complexion of America’
s rich. The wealthiest 1% of Americans not only get more of the pie (see
chart); they are increasingly creatures of finance.
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United States
The average household income of the 1% was $1.2m in 2008, according to
federal tax data. The ultra-rich skew that average upwards: admission to the
1% began at $380,000 in 2008. The Congressional Budget Office puts the cut-
off lower, at $347,000 in 2007, or $252,000 after subtracting federal taxes
and adding back transfers. Measured by net worth, rather than income, the
top 1% started at $6.9m in 2009, according to the Federal Reserve, down 23%
from 2007.
The richest 1% earn roughly half their income from wages and salaries, a
quarter from self-employment and business income, and the remainder from
interest, dividends, capital gains and rent. According to an analysis of tax
returns by Jon Bakija of Williams College and two others, 16% of the top 1%
were in medical professions and 8% were lawyers: shares that have changed
little between 1979 and 2005, the latest year the authors examined (see
chart). The most striking shift has been the growth of financial occupations
, from just under 8% of the wealthy in 1979 to 13.9% in 2005. Their
representation within the top 0.1% is even more pronounced: 18%, up from 11%
in 1979.
Steve Kaplan of the University of Chicago thinks finance explains much of
the rise in inequality. Updating a series developed by Thomas Piketty and
Emmanuel Saez, Mr Kaplan notes that the share of income going to the 1%
reached an 80-year high of 23.5% in 2007, only to sink to 17.6% in 2009 as
the financial markets deflated (see chart). The trend is even more
pronounced for the top 0.1%, whose share of total income rose to 12.3% in
2007 but sank to a still disproportionate 8.1% in 2009.
Mr Kaplan and Joshua Rauh of Northwestern University note that investment
bankers, corporate lawyers, hedge-fund and private-equity managers have
displaced corporate executives at the top of the income ladder. In 2009 the
richest 25 hedge-fund investors earned more than $25 billion, roughly six
times as much as all the chief executives of companies in the S&P 500 stock
index combined.
Although the 1% have been gaining share in most countries, a recent OECD
report shows that the trend began sooner, and has gone further, in America.
Some scholars, noting that inequality has risen more in English-speaking
countries, think social and political values may play a role: in mainland
Europe and Japan, corporate governance, tax laws and unionisation have
tended to lessen income disparities. But the relatively large role of the
financial sector in English-speaking countries could also be a factor: even
more of the top 1% work in finance in Britain than in America.
Membership in America’s 1% is relatively stable; three-quarters of the
households in the percentile one year will still be there the next. Although
the proportion shrinks over time, one study found that the vast majority of
the top 1% were still in the richest 10% a decade later. Kinship plays a
big part: rich parents tend to produce rich kids. High levels of educational
attainment and stable families help in this. According to Gallup, 72% of
the 1% have a college degree, and half have a postgraduate degree; those are
two to three times the proportion of the other 99%. The 1% are more likely
to be married and to have children.
The rich also increasingly marry people like themselves. Mr Bakija and his
co-authors found that between 1979 and 2005, the share of spouses of the 1%
who had blue-collar or “miscellaneous” service-sector backgrounds declined
slightly, from 7.9% to 6.4%. The share of spouses who worked in finance,
property and law rose from 3.5% to 8.8%.
Politically, Gallup polls find that the 1% are more likely than the 99% to
identify themselves as Republicans (33% to 28%) and less likely to be
Democrats (26% to 33%). A survey of 104 wealthy families in the Chicago area
, led by Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, found the budget deficit
was their leading worry, followed by unemployment; for the broader
population, the reverse is true. Still the rich, like most voters, have
eclectic views, often supporting liberal and conservative positions
simultaneously. For example, Keith Whitaker, who advises wealthy families on
behalf of Wells Fargo, says many of them sympathise with the Occupy Wall
Street movement. A lot of them became rich by building businesses and
consider Wall Street “the place where businesses are taken apart and run by
someone else”.
Bob Perkowitz embodies these contradictions. A rich entrepreneur, he now
devotes much of his time to a non-profit environmental outfit. He is a
lifelong Republican who objects to George Bush junior’s tax cuts for the
wealthy, and backed Barack Obama in 2008. Having restructured companies
himself, he has no trouble with Mr Romney’s private-equity work but agrees
with Occupy Wall Street that corporations have too much power.
Until recently he split his time between conservative Charlotte, North
Carolina, and liberal Washington, DC. His wife, Lisa Renstrom, used to
manage hotels inherited from her father, a prosperous Republican businessman
. Now she campaigns on climate change and backs Wealth for the Common Good,
a group of rich people who back Occupy Wall Street. Her father used to give
his occupation as “capitalist”. “I grew up believing that [capitalists]
were making the world a better place,” she says. “The capitalism we have
has left us with degraded infrastructure, threats to our health, and global
warming.”
Most of the 1% prefer not to talk about their good fortune. As the New York
Times recently observed in an article on the 1%, “Some envisioned waking up
to protesters on the lawn; others feared audits by the IRS or other
punitive government action.”
But Mr Perkowitz and Ms Renstrom are utterly typical of the 1% in that they
are far more politically engaged than the average 99-percenters. Nearly all
the rich people surveyed by Northwestern vote, 68% make campaign
contributions, nearly half had contacted a member of Congress and a fifth
had solicited contributions on behalf of a candidate. A good chunk of those
calls were meant to help their businesses. But many were motivated by the
common good, defined in as many different ways as the sources of their
wealth. | L*****G
发帖数: 12375 | 2 反正1%的人当中，绝大多数都是属于投票认为国会不错的
【在 u***r 的大作中提到】
: http://www.economist.com/node/21543178
: MITT ROMNEY is not the first multi-millionaire to seek the presidency, nor
: the richest. Ross Perot, the record-holder, spent some of his billions
: earned from computer data on losing bids in 1992 and 1996. Since then men
: who owe their or their family’s fortunes to oil, sport, publishing, trial
: law, ketchup, beer and bestselling autobiographies have followed.
: But Mr Romney, who earned his $200m or so as a private-equity executive
: buying and selling companies, is the first candidate from the world of high-
: octane finance. As such, he illustrates the changing complexion of America’
: s rich. The wealthiest 1% of Americans not only get more of the pie (see
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