財富集中效應惡化

The Economist

The Extreme Concentration of Wealth

Arguments professing a widening gap between the rich and poor tend to be quickly met with opposing theories which draw on different sources of data. But new research by Mr Saez and Babriel Zucman from the London School of Economics contends that if the top one percent doesn't seem to be getting noticeably richer, maybe it's because the distribution of wealth is even more lopsided than previously thought. The study uses a greater variety of data, including income tax and property tax, to discover that America's richest 0.1% now holds a whopping 22% of total national wealth. The percentage is equal to the assets held by the bottom 90% of American families. This ­finding should give people new reasons to worry about the adverse effects of overt wealth concentration.

每當有人發出貧富兩極化的警訊，總有學者立刻採取不同的資料來源，提出相反的論述。不過倫敦經濟學院的兩名學者最近所做的研究發現，金字塔尖端1%的財富總和沒有太大變化，或許是因為財富失衡的程度比想像的還更要嚴重。這份報告採用更多樣的資料來源，包括所得稅和房地稅，分析之後發現美國頂端0.1%家庭，竟然囊括了全國總財富的22%，相當於底層90%家戶的所有財富總和。這項發現應該會讓外界重新檢討過度財富集中可能導致的不良後果。█

本文收錄於英語島English Island 2014年12月號
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