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 sve većih razlika u prihodima, posebno između onih na vrhu i svih ostalih. Ova promena je naupečatljivija u SAD i Velikoj Britaniji, ali to je globalni fenomen. To se dešava u komunističkoj Kini, u bivšoj komunističkoj Rusiji, u Indiji i u mojoj rodnoj Kanadi. To viđamo čak i u udobnim socijalnim demokratijama kao što su Švedska, Finska i Nemačka.
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.
Dozvolite da vam sa nekoliko brojeva predočim šta se dešava. U 1970-im je udeo "Jednog procenta" populacije iznosio oko 10% nacionalnog dohotka u SAD. Danas je njihov udeo više nego udvostručen, do iznad 20%. Još upečatljivije je šta se dešava na samom vrhu raspodele prihoda. 0,1% u SAD danas ima udeo viši od 8% nacionalnog prihoda. Oni su tamo gde je "jedan procenat" bio pre 30 godina. Dozvolite da dodam još jedan broj u tu sliku, broj koji je izračunao 2005. Robert Rajh, ministar za rad u Klintonovoj administraciji. Rajh je uzeo bogatstvo dve veoma bogate osobe, Bila Gejtsa i Vorena Bafeta i otkrio je da je bilo ekvivalentno bogatstvu 120 miliona ljudi, 40% donjeg dela populacije SAD. Kao što se i dešava Voren Bafet nije samo plutokrata već je i jedan od najpronicljivijih posmatrača tog fenomena, i ima svoj omiljen broj. Bafet voli da istakne da je u 1992. kombinovano bogatstvo naroda na listi Forbsovih 400, a to je lista 400 najbogatijih Amerikanaca, bilo 300 milijardi dolara. Razmislite o tome. Nisi čak morao biti ni milijarder da bi se našao na toj listi 1992. Danas se ta cifra više nego upetostručila do 1,7 biliona dolara i verovatno nije potrebno reći da ništa slično nismo videli da se dešava srednjoj klasi čije bogatstvo je stagniralo ili se čak 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 dobu globalne plutokratije ali smo bili prespori da to primetimo. Mislim da je jedan od razloga takozvani "fenomen kuvane žabe". Spore i postepene promene je teško primetiti čak i kada im je krajnji uticaj dramatičan. Razmislite samo šta se na kraju desilo sirotoj žabi. Ipak mislim da se nešto drugo događa. Razgovor o nejednakosti prihoda, čak i ako niste na listi Forbsovih 400, može da nam izazove nelagodan osećaj. Razgovor kako se pita rasparčava deluje manje pozitivno, manje optimistično od razmišljanja kako pitu povećati. Još ako ste slučajno na listi Forbsovih 400, razgovor o raspodeli prihoda i njegovoj neminovnoj preraspodeli može biti zaista opasan.
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 prihoda posebno na vrhu. Šta do toga dovodi i šta možemo uraditi u vezi s tim?
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 niz uzroka je politički: niži porezi, deregulacija, posebno finansijskih usluga, privatizacija, slabija sindikalna pravna zaštita, sve to je doprinelo da sve više prihoda odlazi u sam vrh.
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 uglavnom može svesti pod kategoriju "ortačkog kapitalizma," političkih promena u korist grupe dobro povezanih insajdera, koje nama ostalima u stvari ne donosi mnogo dobrog. U praksi je neverovatno teško otarasiti se ortačkog kapitalizma. Setite se svih godina različitih reformatora koji su pokušali da zaustave korupciju u Rusiji, na primer ili koliko je teško reregulisati banke čak i posle najdubljih finansijskih kriza posle Velike ekonomske krize ili kako je teško naterati velike multinacionalne kompanije uključujući i one čiji je moto "ne radi zlobno," da plate porez po stopi koja se samo približava onoj koju plaća srednja klasa. Ali dok je u praksi zaista jako teško otarasiti se ortačkog kapitalizma, barem je teoretski to lako. Na kraju krajeva, niko nije za ortački kapitalizam. U stvari, to je jedna od retkih tema koja ujedinjuje levicu i desnicu. Kritika ortačkog kapitalizma je centralna tema kako na "Čajankama" tako i na "Okupirajmo Volstrit".
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.
Iako je ortački kapitalizam barem teoretski lako rešiv, stvari se komplikuju kada posmatrate ekonomske pokretače sve većih razlika u prihodu. Sami po sebi oni nisu previše tajnoviti. Globalizacija i tehnološka revolucija, ekonomske bliznakinje transformacije, koje menjaju naše živote i globalnu ekonomiju, takođe pokreću uspon superbogatih. Samo promislite o tome. Po prvi put u istoriji ako ste energičan preduzetnik s brilijantnom novom idejom ili fantastičnim novim proizvodom, imate skoro trenutni, neometani pristup svetskom tržištu sa više od milijardu ljudi. Posledično, ako ste veoma pametni i veoma srećni možete se jako obogatiti vrlo brzo. Najnoviji primer za ovaj fenomen je Dejvid 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 efekat superzvezde ove vrste na najvidljivijim područjima kao što su sport i zabava. Svi vidimo kako danas, kao nikad ranije, fantastičan sportista ili izvođač može da iskoristi svoje veštine putem globalne ekonomije. Međutim, danas imamo efekat superzvezde u celoj privredi. Imamo superzvezde tehnologe, bankare, advokate i arhitekte. Postoje superzvezde kuvari i farmeri. Postoje čak, ovo je moj omiljen primer, superzvezde stomatolozi, za koji je najsjajni primer Bernard Tuati, Francuz koji popravlja osmehe superzvezda kao što je ruski oligarh Roman Abramovič ili rodom Evropljanin, američki modni kreator Dian 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.
Iako je lako uočiti kako globalizacija i tehnološka revolucija stvaraju ove globalne plutokratije, mnogo je teže doneti sud o tome. To je zato što za razliku od ortačkog kapitalizma, globalizacija i tehnološka revolucija imaju veoma pozitivne zasluge. Počnimo sa tehnologijom. Volim internet, mobilne aparate i činjenicu što to znači da ko god to želi može da gleda ovaj govor, daleko izvan ove dvorane. Još veća sam obožavateljka globalizacije. Ovo je transformacija koja je podigla stotine miliona najsiromašnijih ljudi na svetu iz bede u srednju klasu, a ako ste slučajno živeli u bogatom delu sveta mnogi novi proizvodi su vam postali dostupni - ko je napravio ovaj Ajfon, šta mislite? - i stvari na koje smo se dugo oslanjali su pojeftinile. Pomislite na vašu mašinu za pranje sudova 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, šta ne valja? Pa, nekoliko stvari. Jedna od stvari koja me brine je kako lako može tzv. meritokratska plutokratija da postane ortačka plutokratija. Zamislite da ste sjajan preduzetnik koji je uspešno prodao ideju ili proizvod globalnim milijardama i postao milijarder. U tom trenutku postaje primamljivo da koristite svoj ekonomski razum za manipulaciju pravila globalne političke ekonomije u sopstvenu korist. To nije samo hipotetički primer. Pomislite o Amazonu, Eplu, Guglu, Starbaksu. Ovo su neke od najuglednijih, omiljenih, najinovativnijih kompanija na svetu. Takođe su izuzetno vešte u manipulisanju međunarodnim poreskim sistemom kako bi značajno smanjili svoje poreze. I zašto se zaustaviti samo na manipulaciji globalnog političkog i ekonomskog sistema koji postoji u vašu maksimalnu korist? Jednom kada zadobijete ogromnu ekonomsku moć, koju vidimo na samom vrhu raspodele prihoda, i političku moć koja se nužno podrazumeva, postaje takođe primamljivo otpočeti s pokušajem menjanja pravila igre u vašu korist. I ponovo, ovo nije samo hipotetički. Tako su radili ruski oligarsi kreirajući prodaju stoleća u vidu privatizacije ruskih prirodnih resursa. To je takođe način da se opiše šta se desilo sa deregulacijom finansijskih 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 plutokratija može postati aristokratija. Jedan od načina koji opisuje plutokrate je da su glavni zaluđenici, da su to ljudi koji su izrazito svesni koliko su važne visoko sofisticirane analitičke i kvantitativne veštine u današnjoj ekonomiji. Zato oni troše rekordno vreme i resurse za obrazovanje svoje dece. Srednja klasa takođe troši više na školovanje, ali u globalnoj obrazovnoj trci za prevlast koja počinje u vrtiću i završava na Harvardu, Stanfordu ili MIT-u, 99 procenata je sve više razoružano od strane Jednog procenta. Ekonomisti Alen Kruger i Majls Korak rezultat toga nazivaju "Krivuljom Velikog Getsbija". Rast nejednakosti u prihodima povlači opadanje u mobilnosti društva. Plutokratija može biti meritokratija, ali sve više je potrebno biti rođen na gornjoj prečki merdevina da bi uopšte učestvovao u toj trci.
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 koja me najviše brine je u kojoj meri te iste, većinom pozitivne snage koje dovode do rasta globalne plutokratije, istovremeno osiromašuju srednju klasu u zapadnim industrijalizovanim ekonomijama. Počnimo sa tehnologijom. Iste snage koje stvaraju milijardere uništavaju mnoge tradicionalne poslove srednje klase. Kada ste poslednji put koristili turističkog agenta? Za razliku od industrijske revolucije velikani naše nove ekonomije ne stvaraju baš mnogo novih poslova. Na svom vrhuncu G.M. je zapošljavao stotine hiljada, Fejsbuk zapošljava manje od 10.000. Isto važi i za globalizaciju. Sve to što je izvuklo stotine miliona ljudi iz siromaštva na novim tržištima, takođe je eksternalizovalo mnoge poslove iz razvijenih zapadnih ekonomija. Zastrašujuća realnost je da ne postoji ekonomsko pravilo koje bi automatski prevelo povećanje ekonomskog rasta u ravnomerno razdeljen prosperitet. To se vidi u onome što smatram da je najstrašnija ekonomska statistika našeg vremena. Od kasnih 1990-ih, povećanje produktivnosti je bilo odvojeno od povećanja u platama i zaposlenosti. To znači da su naše zemlje sve bogatije, naša preduzeća su sve efikasnija, ali mi ne stvaramo više poslova i uopšteno 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 strašan zaključak koji biste mogli iz ovoga izvući je zabrinutost o strukturnoj nezaposlenosti. Još više me brine drugačiji košmarni scenario. Na kraju krajeva na sasvim slobodnom tržištu rada možemo naći posao za skoro svakoga. Distopija koja me brine je univerzum u kome nekoliko genija izumeju Gugl i tome slično, a 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 utešim se razmišljajući o industrijskoj revoluciji. Na kraju je i pored svih loših slutnji ispalo prilično dobro, zar ne? Na kraju krajeva, svi smo bogatiji, zdraviji, viši - dobro, ima nekoliko izuzetaka - i živimo duže od naših predaka u ranom 19. veku. Međutim, važno je zapamtiti da smo, pre nego što smo naučili kako da delimo plodove industrijske revolucije društveno šire, morali da prođemo kroz dve velike krize, veliku krizu iz 1930-ih, dugu krizu iz 1870-ih, dva svetska rata, komunističke revolucije u Rusiji i Kini i doba ogromnih društvenih i političkih previranja na zapadu. Prošli smo takođe, ne slučajno, kroz doba ogromnih društvenih i političkih pronalazaka. Stvorili smo modernu državu blagostanja, javno obrazovanje, javno zdravstvo. Stvorili smo državne penzije i 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 transformacije uporedive u stepenu i obimu sa industrijskom revolucijom. Da bismo bili sigurni da ova nova ekonomija koristi svima, a ne samo plutokratama, morali bismo kročiti u eru podjednako ambicioznih društvenih i političkih promena. Potreban nam je novi Nju Dil.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)