几周前，我与美国精英消夏胜地——玛莎文雅岛(Martha's Vineyard)上的一些家庭闲聊，话题突然转到“私人飞机”上。一位母亲显露出一丝异样的表情。与这个圈子——光鲜的千万富翁，继承财富也创造财富——里的大多数人一样，她的大家庭常常乘私人飞机出行，在美国广袤的山河上空一划而过。但她现在正逐渐改变想法。
究其原因，要追溯到今年早些时候。她无意中听到自己孩子的一位朋友傲慢地说，他“讨厌乘坐民航客机，因为不想和陌生人共坐一架飞机”。这让她不禁想知道，如果自己的子女也发表这样的言论，是否会引起他人的反感。所以，她现在劝家人乘坐“民航”出行，至少在假期如此，以便“教导我的孩子如何融入社会”。
这家人在美国精英阶层里也许算是个特例。但我不这么认为。现在，有关财富特别是炫耀性消费的话题，正在社会上引发不同寻常的焦虑情绪。从理论上讲，美国历史上向来崇尚对财富的追求。毕竟，美国梦最核心的信条就是：只要聪明、勤奋，任何人都会成功。因此，财富向来被视为一种值得称赞的、代表成功的标志，而不是招人忌恨的理由。
但随着美国即将迎来中期选举，“贪婪”重新引发了激烈的争论。一个短期原因是，关于是否将布什政府减税政策的覆盖面扩大到富裕家庭的政治纷争。第二个原因是金融危机。但还有一个更长期的问题：证据显示，美国正变得越来越不平等。
战后40年间，美国最富裕1%人口的年收入仅占国民年收入的10%出头。但自上世纪80年代起，这一占比大幅提升，到2007年已接近25%。金融危机略微扭转了这一趋势。根据加州经济学家伊曼纽尔•赛斯(Emmanuel Saez)的估算，2008年，美国最富裕1%人口的收入下降了19.7%，而剩下99%的美国人的收入则下降了6.9%。但皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Centre)的一项调查显示，三分之二的美国人认为，政府过去两年的政策，是以牺牲穷人和中产阶级的利益为代价来帮助富人。
近几十年，美国领导人一般回避讨论美国是如何分割其“经济蛋糕”的，因为他们乐观地相信，蛋糕会一直做大下去。人们对资源紧张同样没什么感觉：这是一个由拓荒者建立的国度——这些拓荒者相信，假如东部的土地用光了，只消“到西部去”就可以了。
但现在人们逐渐认识到，资源并不总是取之不尽的。此外，考虑到美国的结构性问题，人们对这块蛋糕还能否继续做大的怀疑也与日俱增。
那么，美国会如何应对？如果蛋糕停止增大，分蛋糕时能避免引发社会割裂吗？政治气候正变得越来越险恶。一个迹象就是，信奉民粹主义的“茶叶党”运动(Tea Party movement)正逐渐兴起。另一个迹象是，税收辩论竟会招来如此尖刻的批评——正如经济学家保罗•克鲁格曼(Paul Krugman)所言，这场辩论不仅点燃了左翼分子的怒火，还让“愤怒的富人大为动怒”。
一些富人站出来指责奥巴马政府是“社会主义者”，但大多数富人却选择保持低调。有趣的是，鲜有迹象表明，过去两年的奢侈品消费有所下降；相反，包括私人飞机使用在内的许多消费，似乎都在不断增长。但现在富人们在举办奢华宴会时，往往会关起门来进行。大肆摆阔的活动已经过时了，除非那是慈善活动。现在崇尚低调地贪婪。
在我看来，事实最终会证明，这些教导子女乘坐民航的精英家庭是智高一筹。除非发生经济奇迹，否则如何划分美国蛋糕的问题，会越来越容易引起争论；尤其是当这一代富人家（和穷人家）的孩子长大后。
译者/陈云飞
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035079
A few weeks ago, I was chatting with some families at Martha’s Vineyard – the summer playground for America’s elite – when the issue of private jets cropped up. One mother winced. Like most of her ilk (glamorous multi-millionaires, who both inherited and created their wealth), her extended family has often used private jets to hop across America’s vast landscape. But now she is having second thoughts.
The reason? Earlier this year, she overheard one of her child’s friends pompously state that he “hated flying commercial, because he didn’t like sharing a plane with strangers”. That prompted her to wonder if her children might face a backlash if they uttered such sentiments too. So these days she urges her family to fly “commercial”, at least on holiday, “to teach my kids to blend in”.
Maybe this family is the exception among America’s elite. But I suspect not. These days, the issue of wealth and conspicuous consumption in particular is generating an unusual level of angst. In theory, America is a country that has long admired the pursuit of riches. After all, it is a core tenet of the American dream that anybody who is smart and hard-working will thrive. Thus, wealth has been seen as a badge of success to be admired, not a reason for rage.
But as America prepares to vote in the midterm elections, “greed” has become newly emotive. One, short-term, reason is the political row over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts to rich families. Another is the financial crisis. But there is a third, longer-term issue: evidence that America is becoming more unequal.
In the four decades after the second world war, the richest 1 per cent of Americans received just over 10 per cent of national income each year. However, from the 1980s that ratio rose sharply, until by 2007 it hit almost 25 per cent. The financial crisis has reversed this trend a little. Emmanuel Saez, a California-based economist, reckons the wealthiest incomes fell by 19.7 per cent in 2008, while the other 99 per cent of Americans saw earnings drop by 6.9 per cent. But a survey by the Pew Research Centre shows two-thirds of Americans think government policies have aided the wealthy in the past two years – at the expense of the poor and middle class.
In recent decades, American leaders have generally avoided discussing how the country divides up its economic pie, because of optimism that the pie would always grow. There was also little sense of resource constraint: this is a country founded by pioneers who believed that when land ran out in the East, you simply had to “Go West!”
But these days there is a growing recognition that resources are not always bottomless. There is also rising doubt about whether the economic pie will keep growing, given America’s structural woes.
So how will America respond? If the pie stops growing, can it be divided up without social fracture? The political mood is getting angrier. One sign can be seen in the rise of the populist Tea Party movement. Another is the sheer level of vitriol sparked by the tax debate, which has not just triggered fury on the left, but also “a kind of rage” from the “angry rich”, too, as Paul Krugman, the economist, says.
Some of the rich are accusing the Obama administration of being “socialist”. Most, however, are keeping their heads down. Interestingly, there is little evidence that spending on luxury goods has fallen in the past two years; on the contrary, many aspects – including private jet usage – appear to be rising. But when the rich hold lavish parties these days, they tend to do so behind closed doors. Wildly ostentatious events are out of fashion, unless they are philanthropic. Greed is discreet.
For my part, I suspect that those elite families that are teaching their children to “fly commercial” will end up looking smart. Barring an economic miracle, the question of how to divide up America’s pie is likely to get more – not less – contentious; particularly when the current generation of rich (and poor) kids grows up.
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