So here's the most important economic fact of our time. We are living in an age of surging income inequality, particularly between those at the very top and everyone else. This shift is the most striking in the U.S. and in the U.K., but it's a global phenomenon. It's happening in communist China, in formerly communist Russia, it's happening in India, in my own native Canada. We're even seeing it in cozy social democracies like Sweden, Finland and Germany.
Evo najvažnije ekonomske činjenice našeg vremena. Živimo u dobu rastućih razlika u dohotku, posebno između onih na samom vrhu i svih ostalih. Ova promjena je najupečatljivija u SAD i Ujedinjenom kraljevstvu ali to je globalni fenomen. To se događa u komunističkoj Kini, u bivšoj komunističkoj Rusiji, To se događa u Indiji i u mojoj rodnoj Kanadi. To vidimo čak i u udobnim socijalnim demokracijama kao što su Švedska, Finska i Njemačka.
Let me give you a few numbers to place what's happening. In the 1970s, the One Percent accounted for about 10 percent of the national income in the United States. Today, their share has more than doubled to above 20 percent. But what's even more striking is what's happening at the very tippy top of the income distribution. The 0.1 percent in the U.S. today account for more than eight percent of the national income. They are where the One Percent was 30 years ago. Let me give you another number to put that in perspective, and this is a figure that was calculated in 2005 by Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Reich took the wealth of two admittedly very rich men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and he found that it was equivalent to the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population, 120 million people. Now, as it happens, Warren Buffett is not only himself a plutocrat, he is one of the most astute observers of that phenomenon, and he has his own favorite number. Buffett likes to point out that in 1992, the combined wealth of the people on the Forbes 400 list -- and this is the list of the 400 richest Americans -- was 300 billion dollars. Just think about it. You didn't even need to be a billionaire to get on that list in 1992. Well, today, that figure has more than quintupled to 1.7 trillion, and I probably don't need to tell you that we haven't seen anything similar happen to the middle class, whose wealth has stagnated if not actually decreased.
Dajte da vam sa nekoliko brojeva predočim što se događa. U 1970-ima je udio "Jednog postotka" iznosio oko 10% nacionalnog dohotka u SAD. Danas je njihov udio više nego udvostručen, do iznad 20%. Još upečatljivije je šta se događaa na samom vrhu raspodjele prihoda. 0,1% u SAD danas ima udio viši od 8% nacionalnog dohotka. Oni su tamo gde je "Jedan posto" bio prije 30 godina. Dajte da dodam još jedan broj u tu sliku, broj koji je izračunao 2005. Robert Reich, ministar za rad u Clintonovoj administraciji. Reich je uzeo bogatstvo dvije vrlo bogate osobe, Billa Gatesa i Warrena Buffetta, te je otkrio kako je bilo ekvivalentno bogatstvu donjih 40% populacije SAD, 120 milijuna ljudi. Sad, kako to biva, Warren Buffett nije samo plutokrat, već je i jedan od najoštroumnijih promatrača tog fenomena, i ima svoj omiljen broj. Buffett voli istaknuti kako je u 1992. kombinirano bogatstvo ljudi na listi Forbesovih 400, a to je popis 400 najbogatijih Amerikanaca, bilo 300 milijardi dolara. Samo porazmislite o tome. Nisi čak morao biti ni milijarder da bi se našao na tom popisu 1992. Danas se ta brojka više nego upeterostručila do 1,7 bilijuna, i vjerojvatno vam ne moram reći da nismo vidjeli ništa slično kako se događa srednjoj klasi čije bogatstvo je stagniralo ako se zapravo nije čak i smanjilo.
So we're living in the age of the global plutocracy, but we've been slow to notice it. One of the reasons, I think, is a sort of boiled frog phenomenon. Changes which are slow and gradual can be hard to notice even if their ultimate impact is quite dramatic. Think about what happened, after all, to the poor frog. But I think there's something else going on. Talking about income inequality, even if you're not on the Forbes 400 list, can make us feel uncomfortable. It feels less positive, less optimistic, to talk about how the pie is sliced than to think about how to make the pie bigger. And if you do happen to be on the Forbes 400 list, talking about income distribution, and inevitably its cousin, income redistribution, can be downright threatening.
Dakle, živimo u doba globalne plutokracije ali smo bili prespori da to primijetimo. Mislim kako je jedan od razloga neki oblik fenomena kuhane žabe. Promjene koje su spore i postupne mogu biti teško uočljive čak i kad im je krajnji utjecaj skroz dramatičan. Razmislite što se, na kraju, dogodilo jadnoj žabi. Ali mislim kako se događa nešto drugo. Razgovor o nejednakosti dohotka, čak i ako niste na popisu Forbesovih 400, može nam izazvati neugodan osjećaj. Deluje manje pozitivno, manje optimistično, pričati kako se kolač dijeli od razmišljanja kako učiniti kolač većim. A ako se slučajno nalazite na listi Forbesovih 400, razgovor o raspodjeli dohotka i neizbježno o njezinoj rođakinji, preraspodjeli dohotka može biti jednostavno prijeteći.
So we're living in the age of surging income inequality, especially at the top. What's driving it, and what can we do about it?
Dakle, živimo u doba sve većih nejednakosti dohotka, posebno na vrhu. Što pokreće ovo i što možemo napraviti oko toga?
One set of causes is political: lower taxes, deregulation, particularly of financial services, privatization, weaker legal protections for trade unions, all of these have contributed to more and more income going to the very, very top.
Jedan skup uzroka je politički: niži porezi, deregulacija, posebno financijskih usluga, privatizacija, slabija sindikalna pravna zaštita, sve to je doprinijelo da sve više i više dohotka odlazi u sam vrh vrha.
A lot of these political factors can be broadly lumped under the category of "crony capitalism," political changes that benefit a group of well-connected insiders but don't actually do much good for the rest of us. In practice, getting rid of crony capitalism is incredibly difficult. Think of all the years reformers of various stripes have tried to get rid of corruption in Russia, for instance, or how hard it is to re-regulate the banks even after the most profound financial crisis since the Great Depression, or even how difficult it is to get the big multinational companies, including those whose motto might be "don't do evil," to pay taxes at a rate even approaching that paid by the middle class. But while getting rid of crony capitalism in practice is really, really hard, at least intellectually, it's an easy problem. After all, no one is actually in favor of crony capitalism. Indeed, this is one of those rare issues that unites the left and the right. A critique of crony capitalism is as central to the Tea Party as it is to Occupy Wall Street.
Velik broj tih političkih faktora se ugrubo može svrstati pod kategoriju "rodijačkog kapitalizma," političkih promjena koje koriste grupi dobro povezanih unutarnjih igrača, ali nama ostalima zapravo ne donosi neko dobro. U praksi je riješiti se rodijačkog kapitalizma nevjerojatno teško. Sjetite se svih godina u kojima su reformatori različitih fela pokušavali zaustaviti korupciju u Rusiji, primjerice, ili koliko je teško re-regulirati banke čak i poslije najdubljih financijskih kriza od Velike gospodarske krize ili kako je teško dobiti velike multinacionalne kompanije uključujući i one čiji bi moto mogao biti "ne čini zlo," da plate porez po stopi čak i približnoj onoj koju plaća srednja klasa. Ali dok je u praksi zbilja vrlo teško riješiti se rodijačkog kapitalizma, barem intelektualno, to je lagan problem. U krajnjoj liniji, nitko zapravo i nije za rodijački kapitalizam. Zapravo, to je jedna od rijetkih tema koje ujedinjuju ljevicu i desnicu. Kritika rodijačkog kapitalizma je jednako centralna kako pokretu Tea Party tako i pokretu Okupirajmo Wall Street.
But if crony capitalism is, intellectually at least, the easy part of the problem, things get trickier when you look at the economic drivers of surging income inequality. In and of themselves, these aren't too mysterious. Globalization and the technology revolution, the twin economic transformations which are changing our lives and transforming the global economy, are also powering the rise of the super-rich. Just think about it. For the first time in history, if you are an energetic entrepreneur with a brilliant new idea or a fantastic new product, you have almost instant, almost frictionless access to a global market of more than a billion people. As a result, if you are very, very smart and very, very lucky, you can get very, very rich very, very quickly. The latest poster boy for this phenomenon is David Karp. The 26-year-old founder of Tumblr recently sold his company to Yahoo for 1.1 billion dollars. Think about that for a minute: 1.1 billion dollars, 26 years old. It's easiest to see how the technology revolution and globalization are creating this sort of superstar effect in highly visible fields, like sports and entertainment. We can all watch how a fantastic athlete or a fantastic performer can today leverage his or her skills across the global economy as never before. But today, that superstar effect is happening across the entire economy. We have superstar technologists. We have superstar bankers. We have superstar lawyers and superstar architects. There are superstar cooks and superstar farmers. There are even, and this is my personal favorite example, superstar dentists, the most dazzling exemplar of whom is Bernard Touati, the Frenchman who ministers to the smiles of fellow superstars like Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich or European-born American fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.
Ali ako je rodijački kapitalizam, barem intelektualno, lagan dio problema, stvari postaju varljivije kad pogledate ekonomske pokretače sve većih razlika u dohotku. Sami po sebi oni nisu previše tajnoviti. Globalizacija i tehnološka revolucija, sparene gospodarske transformacije koje mijenjaju naše živote i transformiraju globalno gospodarstvo, također pokreću i uspon superbogatih. Samo razmislite o tome. Prvi put u povijesti, ako ste energičan poduzetnik s briljantnom novom idejom ili fantastičnim novim proizvodom, imate skoro trenutni, neometani pristup do svjetskog tržišta sa više od milijardu ljudi. Kao rezultat, ako ste jako jako pametni i jako jako sretni, možete postati jako jako bogat. jako jako brzo. Najnoviji primjer za ovaj fenomen je David Karp. 26-godišnji osnivač Tumblr-a nedavno je prodao svoju kompaniju Yahoo-u za 1,1 milijardi dolara. Razmislite o tome na trenutak: 1,1 milijardi dolara, 26 godina. Najbolje se vidi kako tehnološka revolucija i globalizacija stvaraju taj neki učinak superzvijezde u jako vidljivim područjima, kao što su sport i zabava. Svi možemo vidjeti kako sjajan atleta ili sjajan izvođač može danas opružiti svoje vještine preko globalnog gospodarstva kao nikad ranije. Međutim, danas se učinak superzvijezde događa u cijelom gospodarstvu. Imamo superzvijezde tehnologe, imamo superzvijezde bankare, imamo superzvijezde odvjetnike i superzvijezde arhitekte. Postoje superzvijezde kuhari i superzvijezde seljaci. Postoje čak, a ovo je meni osobno najdržai primjer, superzvijezde zubari, od kojih je najblistaviji primjer Bernard Touati, Francuz koji se brine za osmijehe kolega superzvijezda poput ruskog oligarha Romana Abramoviča ili, u Europi rođenu, američku modnu dizajnericu Dianu von Furstenberg.
But while it's pretty easy to see how globalization and the technology revolution are creating this global plutocracy, what's a lot harder is figuring out what to think about it. And that's because, in contrast with crony capitalism, so much of what globalization and the technology revolution have done is highly positive. Let's start with technology. I love the Internet. I love my mobile devices. I love the fact that they mean that whoever chooses to will be able to watch this talk far beyond this auditorium. I'm even more of a fan of globalization. This is the transformation which has lifted hundreds of millions of the world's poorest people out of poverty and into the middle class, and if you happen to live in the rich part of the world, it's made many new products affordable -- who do you think built your iPhone? — and things that we've relied on for a long time much cheaper. Think of your dishwasher or your t-shirt.
Ali dok je lako vidjeti kako globalizacija i tehnološka revolucija stvaraju ove globalnu plutokraciju, puno je teže zauzeti svoj stav o tome. A to je zato što za razliku od rodijačkog kapitalizma, puno je toga što su globalizacija i tehnološka revolucija napravile vrlo pozitivno. Krenimo od tehnologije. Volim Internet. Volim svoje mobilne uređaje. Volim činjenicu što to znači da tko god želi može gledati ovaj govor, daleko izvan ove dvorane. Još sam veća obožavateljica globalizacije. Ovo je transformacija koja je podigla stotine milijuna najsiromašnijih ljudi na svijetu iz neimaštine u srednju klasu, a ako ste slučajno živjeli u bogatom dijelu svijeta brojni novi proizvodi su vam postali pristupačni -- što mislite tko je napravio ovaj iPhone? — i stvari na koje smo se dugo oslanjali su pojeftinile. Pomislite na vaš aparat za pranje suđa ili na vašu majicu.
So what's not to like? Well, a few things. One of the things that worries me is how easily what you might call meritocratic plutocracy can become crony plutocracy. Imagine you're a brilliant entrepreneur who has successfully sold that idea or that product to the global billions and become a billionaire in the process. It gets tempting at that point to use your economic nous to manipulate the rules of the global political economy in your own favor. And that's no mere hypothetical example. Think about Amazon, Apple, Google, Starbucks. These are among the world's most admired, most beloved, most innovative companies. They also happen to be particularly adept at working the international tax system so as to lower their tax bill very, very significantly. And why stop at just playing the global political and economic system as it exists to your own maximum advantage? Once you have the tremendous economic power that we're seeing at the very, very top of the income distribution and the political power that inevitably entails, it becomes tempting as well to start trying to change the rules of the game in your own favor. Again, this is no mere hypothetical. It's what the Russian oligarchs did in creating the sale-of-the-century privatization of Russia's natural resources. It's one way of describing what happened with deregulation of the financial services in the U.S. and the U.K.
Dakle što ne valja? Pa, nekoliko stvari. Jedna od stvari koje me brinu je kako lako može tzv. meritokratska plutokracija postati rodijačka plutokracija. Zamislite da ste sjajan poduzetnik koji je uspješno prodao ideju ili proizvod globalnim milijardama i usput postao milijarder. U tom trenutku postaje primamljivo koristiti svoj ekonomski razum za manipulaciju pravila globalne političke ekonomije u vlastitu korist. To nije samo hipotetski primjer. Pomislite na Amazon, Apple, Google, Starbucks. To su neke od najuglednijih, omiljenih, najinovativnijih kompanija na svijtu. Takođe su izuzetno vješte u korištenju međunarodnog poreznog sustava kako bi vrlo vrlo značajno smanjili svoje poreze. A zašto stati samo na korištenju globalnog političkog i ekonomskog sustava kakav postoji u vašu vlastitu maksimalnu korist? Jednom kada imate ogromnu ekonomsku moć, koju vidimo na samom vrhu raspodjele dohotka, i političku moć koja s njom neizbježno dolazi, postaje također primamljivo početi pokušavati mijenjati pravila igre u vašu vlastitu korist. I ponovo, ovo nije samo hipotetski. Tako su radili ruski oligarsi stvarajući prodaju stoljeća u obliku privatizacije prirodnih dobara Rusije. To je također način za opisati što se dogodilo sa deregulacijom financijskih usluga u SAD i UK.
A second thing that worries me is how easily meritocratic plutocracy can become aristocracy. One way of describing the plutocrats is as alpha geeks, and they are people who are acutely aware of how important highly sophisticated analytical and quantitative skills are in today's economy. That's why they are spending unprecedented time and resources educating their own children. The middle class is spending more on schooling too, but in the global educational arms race that starts at nursery school and ends at Harvard, Stanford or MIT, the 99 percent is increasingly outgunned by the One Percent. The result is something that economists Alan Krueger and Miles Corak call the Great Gatsby Curve. As income inequality increases, social mobility decreases. The plutocracy may be a meritocracy, but increasingly you have to be born on the top rung of the ladder to even take part in that race.
Druga stvar koja me brine je kako lako meritokratska plutokracija može postati aristokracija. Jedan od načina kako opisati plutokrate je kao alfa geekove, a oni su ljudi koji su jako svjesni koliko su važne visoko razvijene analitičke i kvantitativne vještine u današnjoj ekonomiji. To je zašto troše neviđeno vrijeme i dobra obrazujući si djecu. Srednja klasa također troši više na školovanje, ali u globalnom obrazovnom nadmetanju koja počinje u vrtiću a završava na Harvardu, Stanfordu ili MIT-u, 99 posto je sve više nadjačano od strane 1 posto. Rezultat je nešto što ekonomisti Alen Krueger i Miles Corak nazivaju "Krivuljom Velikog Gatsbyja". Ako se nejednakost u dohotku povećava, društvena se pokretljivost smanjuje. Plutokracija može biti meritokracija, ali sve više morate biti rođeni na gornjoj prečki letvici ljestava da bi uopće sudjelovali u toj utrci.
The third thing, and this is what worries me the most, is the extent to which those same largely positive forces which are driving the rise of the global plutocracy also happen to be hollowing out the middle class in Western industrialized economies. Let's start with technology. Those same forces that are creating billionaires are also devouring many traditional middle-class jobs. When's the last time you used a travel agent? And in contrast with the industrial revolution, the titans of our new economy aren't creating that many new jobs. At its zenith, G.M. employed hundreds of thousands, Facebook fewer than 10,000. The same is true of globalization. For all that it is raising hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the emerging markets, it's also outsourcing a lot of jobs from the developed Western economies. The terrifying reality is that there is no economic rule which automatically translates increased economic growth into widely shared prosperity. That's shown in what I consider to be the most scary economic statistic of our time. Since the late 1990s, increases in productivity have been decoupled from increases in wages and employment. That means that our countries are getting richer, our companies are getting more efficient, but we're not creating more jobs and we're not paying people, as a whole, more.
Treća stvar, a ta me brine najviše, je u kojoj mjeri te iste, većinom pozitivne snage koje dovode do rasta globalne plutokracije, istovremeno osiromašuju srednju klasu u zapadnim industrijaliziranim gospodarstvima. Počnimo sa tehnologijom. Iste snage koje stvaraju milijardere uništavaju brojne tradicionalne poslove srednje klase. Kada ste zadnji put koristili turističkog agenta? Za razliku od industrijske revolucije velikani naše nove ekonomije ne stvaraju baš puno novih poslova. Na svom vrhuncu G.M. je zapošljavao stotine tisuća, Facebook zapošljava manje od 10.000. Isto vrijedi i za globalizaciju. Sve to što je izvuklo stotine milijuna ljudi iz siromaštva na novim tržištima, takođe je izmjestilo brojne poslove iz razvijenih zapadnih gospodarstava. Zastrašujuća stvarnost je kako ne postoji ekonomsko pravilo koje bi automatski prevelo povećanje gospodarskog rasta u opće blagostanje. To se vidi u onome za što smatram kako je najstrašnija ekonomska statistika našeg vremena. Od kasnih 1990-ih, povećanje produktivnosti je bilo odvojeno od povećanja u plaćama i zaposlenosti. To znači da su naše zemlje sve bogatije, naša poduzeća su sve učinkovitija, ali ne stvaramo više poslova i općenito ne plaćamo ljudima više.
One scary conclusion you could draw from all of this is to worry about structural unemployment. What worries me more is a different nightmare scenario. After all, in a totally free labor market, we could find jobs for pretty much everyone. The dystopia that worries me is a universe in which a few geniuses invent Google and its ilk and the rest of us are employed giving them massages.
Jedan od strašnih zaključaka koji biste mogli iz ovoga izvući je zabrinutost o strukturnoj nezaposlenosti. Još više me brine drugačiji scenarij iz noćne more. Na kraju, na posve slobodnom tržištu rada možemo naći posao za gotovo svakoga. Distopija koja me brine je svemir u kojem nekoliko genija izume Google i slične stvari a mi ostali smo zaposleni tako što ih masiramo.
So when I get really depressed about all of this, I comfort myself in thinking about the Industrial Revolution. After all, for all its grim, satanic mills, it worked out pretty well, didn't it? After all, all of us here are richer, healthier, taller -- well, there are a few exceptions — and live longer than our ancestors in the early 19th century. But it's important to remember that before we learned how to share the fruits of the Industrial Revolution with the broad swathes of society, we had to go through two depressions, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Long Depression of the 1870s, two world wars, communist revolutions in Russia and in China, and an era of tremendous social and political upheaval in the West. We also, not coincidentally, went through an era of tremendous social and political inventions. We created the modern welfare state. We created public education. We created public health care. We created public pensions. We created unions.
Kada sam zbog svega toga depresivna tješim se razmišljajući o industrijskoj revoluciji. Na kraju, i uz sve svoje mračne, sotonske žrvnje ispalo je prilično dobro, nije li? Na kraju, svi smo bogatiji, zdraviji, viši -- dobro, ima nekoliko izuzetaka -- i živimo duže nego naši preci u iz ranog 19. stoljeća. Ali je važno upamtiti kako smo, prije nego smo naučili kako dijeliti plodove industrijske revolucije kroz širi obuhvat društva, morali proći kroz dvije velike gospodarske krize, veliku krizu iz 1930-ih, dugu krizu iz 1870-ih, dva svjetska rata, komunističke revolucije u Rusiji i Kini te eru ogromnih društvenih i političkih previranja na Zapadu. Prošli smo također, ne slučajno, kroz doba ogromnih društvenih i političkih pronalazaka. Stvorili smo modernu skrbnu državu, Stvorili smo javno obrazovanje, Stvorili smo javno zdravstvo. Stvorili smo mirovinski sustav. Stvorili smo sindikate.
Today, we are living through an era of economic transformation comparable in its scale and its scope to the Industrial Revolution. To be sure that this new economy benefits us all and not just the plutocrats, we need to embark on an era of comparably ambitious social and political change. We need a new New Deal.
Danas živimo u eri ekonomske preobrazbe usporedive u mjerilu i obujmu sa industrijskom revolucijom. Da bismo bili sigurni kako nam ova nova ekonomija svima donosi korist a ne samo plutokratima, morali bismo se otisnuti u eru podjednako ambicioznih društvenih i političkih promjena. Potreban nam je novi New Deal.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)