双语时事系列56:富人收入波动幅度更为剧烈

2009-10-22 00:00:00来源：网络

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双语时事：富人收入波动幅度更为剧烈

Michael Moore and others on the far left correctly point out that the wealthy captured the bulk of the economic benefits during the boom times.

What they largely ignore is the extent to which rich incomes and wealth in general have fallen in the past two years. (Which doesn't mean that income inequality is going away: in fact, new evidence today form the Census suggests income inequality may have widened last year).

According to research by Jonathan Parker and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen (both of Northwestern), the incomes of the wealthy have become far more variable than incomes for the rest of Americans.

They find that both growth and declines for the top 1% from 1982 to 2006 were more than twice as volatile as the comparable numbers for all taxpayers. The wealthiest of the wealthy had even more volatile incomes, with the top one-10th of 1% experiencing volatility of more than four times the average.

The changes aren't due to stock swings. The researchers found that wages accounted for about half of all noncapital-gains income for the wealthy, discounting the widely held notion that the wealthy are a rentier class living entirely off dividends and rental income.

'One might expect that the labor income of higher-end households is more insulated from aggregate fluctuations than that of low-income households, but it in fact is more exposed,' the study says.

Haven't the rich always been more boom and bust? Not really. The study says the larger swings for those at the top is a recent phenomenon, starting in the early 1980s. Before then, incomes for the wealthy were relatively stable. The study doesn't make any hypothesis about what is behind the change.

'Prior to the last 25 years, high-income households were not more exposed to fluctuations,' the study says.

Why do you think incomes of the wealthy have become so much more volatile than the rest of the population's?

迈克尔.摩尔(Michael Moore)和其他极端左派正确地指出，富人攫取了经济热潮时期创造出来的大部分经济收益。（译者注：迈克尔?摩尔是美国左派纪录片导演，他在新片《资本主义：一个爱情故事》中阐述了这一观点。）

他们大体忽略了过去两年富人收入和财富普遍的下滑程度。（这并不意味着收入不平等的问题正在好转：实际上，美国人口普查局(Census Bureau)公布的新数据表明去年美国收入差距或有所扩大。）

据美国西北大学的帕克(Jonathan Parker)和约根森(Annette Vissing-Jorgensen)两位学者进行的研究，美国富人的收入波动幅度要远远超过社会其他阶层。

他们发现，1982年至2006年期间，美国收入最高的1%阶层的收入增长和下滑波动幅度是所有纳税人的两倍以上。最富有阶层的收入波动更加剧烈，在这1%的阶层中，收入排在前十分之一的人收入波动幅度达到平均水平的四倍以上。

这些剧烈波动并不是因为股价起伏。研究人员发现，富人的非资本利得收入中，薪酬占据了大约一半，这证明了认为富人都是食利阶层，完全靠股息和租金收入生活的普遍观点并不完全可信。

研究说，我们或许认为高收入家庭的劳动收入会比低收入家庭更不容易遭受剧烈波动，但实际上情况正好相反。

难道富人们一直都面临更多的起伏波动？不全是这样。研究显示，富人阶层收入波动较为剧烈是从上世纪八十年代初开始的近期现象。在此之前，富人阶层的收入相对稳定。研究并没有对这一变化背后的原因提出任何假设。

研究说，在25年前，高收入家庭的收入状况并不是更容易遭受波动。

读者们，你们认为为什么富人收入波动幅度会变得比其他阶层更加剧烈呢？

本文选自上海新东方学校惠瑾的博客，博客链接地址：http://blog.hjenglish.com/huijin