Читать книгу Wealth - Yuval Elmelech - Страница 8

Personal wealth, generally defined as the net worth of all the financial and tangible assets someone owns, has captivated people’s attention for centuries. Narratives pertaining to individuals’ ascent to great wealth, or to their fall down the economic ladder, can be found in a plethora of religious texts, literary works, news reports, and documentary films, as well as in recent popular movies such as The Social Network and The Wolf of Wall Street. The societal, moral, and political consequences of the accumulation and concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a few have been, and continue to be, extensively explored and debated.

Despite this long-standing fascination with wealth and inequality, there is a growing sense among the public, scholars, and policy makers that the role of wealth in society has drastically changed over the past 50 years. News articles cite statistics on the staggering amount of wealth held by the “super-rich,” reporting, for example, that the “[w]orld’s 8 richest have as much wealth as [its] bottom half” (Mullany 2017). Other reports describe the mounting economic hardship faced by millions of households on account of home foreclosures, record-high levels of student-loan debt among young adults, and a decline in savings among baby boomers on the verge of retirement. Blogs promoting the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement share the secrets to retiring rich by 40, while self-help books offer readers aphoristic advice on wealth accumulation: “The object is to want money, and to be so determined to have it that you convince yourself that you will have it” (Think and Grow Rich); “The key to financial freedom and great wealth is a person’s ability or skill to convert earned income into passive income and/or portfolio income” (Rich Dad, Poor Dad). “Show me the young twenty-something who got rich clipping coupons. Where are these people? They don’t exist” (The Millionaire Fast Lane) (all cited in James 2013).

Opinion polls confirm that the public recognizes the importance of wealth holding for a family’s financial security but is generally apprehensive about rising wealth and income inequality. A recent survey on inequality, for instance, revealed that the majority of the population in 44 sampled countries viewed inequality as a “big problem,” since young people generally express greater concern about the economic gulf (Pew Research Center 2014).

The results of various national surveys reveal that, when asked about the sources of mobility and inequality, many participants still view individual attributes (e.g. talent, education, hard work) as the key determinants of social mobility and of one’s relative position on the socioeconomic ladder. This assumed link between individual merit and economic status has critical policy implications. People who tend to embrace individualistic attributions for inequality and poverty—a pattern that is more pronounced in the US than in other economically developed countries—are more likely to blame the poor for their economic conditions and less likely to express support for redistributive policies (Svallfors 1997; McCall and Kenworthy 2009).

Conversely, the wealthy are, generally though not uniformly, more favorably portrayed in the media. Media frames of the wealthy depict them alternatively as generous and caring, as personifying the “American dream,” and, less flatteringly, as unhappy, dysfunctional, or morally flawed (Kendall 2011). There is, however, evidence to suggest that these perceptions are contingent on the visibility and perceived utility of wealth: while wealth as a means of financial security and autonomy is generally viewed positively, conspicuous consumption and displays of excessive wealth are often regarded as immoral (Sachweh 2012).

Beyond the dominant individualistic attributions for poverty and inequality, a considerable number of participants in public opinion polls support explanations for wealth and inequality that are external to individual merit and talent. The factors that these accounts resort to range from social capital (“knowing the right people”) through parental economic resources (“being born to a wealthy family”) to fatalistic explanations (unfortunate circumstances, bad or good luck, and so on). Most scholars studying patterns of social mobility and stratification would ascribe a small role to luck in wealth accumulation. However, the truth of the matter is that, in relation to other measures of socioeconomic status, the processes surrounding wealth mobility are multifaceted, difficult to study, and poorly understood.