En el Norte empiezan a entender que la distribución del ingreso es un debate sobre el poder

Un interesante artículo, en inglés (no tengo tiempo de traducírselos, sepan disculpar; hay muchos traductores online), que a partir de un reciente libro de Thomas Pikkety, analiza los desafíos que plantea la desigualdad para ser superada. Copio y, al final, un muy breve comentario:

«Six years after the Wall Street Crash, a book was published that revolutionised economic thinking and set the tone for policy for decades to come.  That book was, of course, The General Theory written by John Maynard Keynes.  Has history just repeated itself?

Thomas Pikkety’s book Capital in the Twenty-first Century* has beaten Keynes’s record appearing five years and six months after the 2008 Crash. Nevertheless, it does look set to create just as much debate.  Whether it will recast policy in the same way is less certain but, if there is any justice, it should although maybe not in the way Pikkety himself suggests.

Pikkety’s central claim is that material inequality persists because the wealthy earn their income in a different way to everyone else. The rich get rich because of the return they make on their investments in capital which for Pikkety encompasses land, housing, shares, machinery, intellectual property amongst other elements.  The rest of us poor schlubs have to rely on income from selling our labour.

Nothing that original there but Pikkety’s key contention, based on a vast study of historical data, is that the return on capital always outstrips economic growth which is what determines any rise in income from labour.  So the rich will keep getting richer while everyone else increasingly lags behind. The only exception to this is an anomolous period in the middle of the twentieth century when, due to a strange coincidence of factors, growth outstripped the return on capital meaning inequality consequently fell.

This insight has the power to influence public debate about the economy hugely. Instead of the current obsession with relative levels of pay, tax and benefits, it could force a much more profound discourse about ownership.  Pikkety points out that the source of inequality is not ownership as such but a complex interplay of legal, historical, political, social and cultural factors which allow ownership to be incredibly concentrated meaning that the financial benefits of that ownership flow to the few.  Fiddling about with fiscal, regulatory and labour market policy (a not too inaccurate characterisation of current political debate) will never make a significant difference to such profound forces.

This plays in to the divide I outlined in my last post. Those in the Conservative and Labour parties who believe we need a broader distribution of power away from the unholy alliance of big state and big business are closer to offering a solution to Pikkety’s contradiction than those who think growth driven by corporations or by government is the answer. In fact, Pikkety’s analysis has the potential to give major empirical weight and provide an economic focus for the ‘Littleendians’ that is currently lacking.

But that raises the more disappointing aspect of Pikkety’s analysis.  His one hit solution is the introduction of a punitive global tax on wealth. Leaving aside the fact that the idea is, in many ways, a total non-starter it surely repeats the mistake socialists and social democrats have made for decades namely that the solution to the concentration of economic power is a countervailing concentration of political power.

As a recent detailed empirical study of public spending across the world showed, it is an approach that becomes less effective – both in terms of improving social outcomes and generating economic growth – the more it is relied upon. It also, of course, generates all sorts of constraints on freedom of choice which extend well beyond the immediate impact on the yacht-buying classes to affect the whole of society.

Far better surely to explore how capital ownership could be spread much more evenly without the need for the intervention of an over-bearing state. Could we not, for example, imagine a world where intellectual property is far more widely shared as a result of the unfolding empowerment through new technologies, a much stronger focus in school on creativity and a liberalisation of patent and copyright law?...».

El artículo continúa (completo aquí) pero allí está lo central. Seamos buenos entre nosotros —en honor al payaso mediático— y traduzcamos un par de ideas:

1. La desigualdad persiste porque los ricos ganan sus ingresos de manera distinta al resto de los mortales: sus retornos por inversiones siempre le ganan al crecimiento económico, que es lo que determina el incremento de lo que perciben los asalariados por su trabajo. Entonces los ricos se hacen más ricos mientras el resto se retrasa cada vez más.

2. Esta perspectiva tiene el poder de influenciar el debate público, obsesionado respecto a salarios, impuestos y beneficios y forzar una discusión sobre propiedad.

Todo muy comunista, podemos ver.

3. La propiedad está concentrada por motivos históricos, legales, políticos, sociales y culturales. Y el debate actual por mejorar la distribución del ingreso no toma en cuenta este factor.

4. Los que creen que necesitamos una mayor distribución del poder, lejos de la diabólica alianza entre grandes propietarios y grandes negocios, están más cerca de ofrecer una solución a la contradicción de Pikkety que aquellos que piensan en el crecimiento liderado por corporaciones o los gobiernos.

Mi breve impresión, ahora sí: el diagnóstico es acertado. El debate por la distribución del ingreso, por una mayor equidad, es una discusión acerca del poder y no sobre cómo se direcciona el dinero únicamente. No es algo que acá desconozcamos, por supuesto, pero que las proclamas en EE.UU. contra el 1% más rico sea encauzada ahora también en el plano teórico es algo, levemente, esperanzador. Imposible de pensar sin la crisis de las sub prime. Cuestionar el american way of life es sintomático, no puede negarse. Pikkety propone un impuesto a la riqueza que sea global. El autor de la nota —Adam Lent—, desde una visión demasiado liberal como para permitir una verdadera redistribución, propone flexibilizar los derechos de autor, las patentes, para estimular la creatividad. Ufff, muy Benjamin Franklin todo.

Un diagnóstico acertado y dos propuestas que no modifican en lo más mínimo el problema planteado: la concentración del poder (y por ende del dinero, o al revés, que si el resultado es el mismo, se'igual). Así no se puede, malditos comunistas new age (!). Sigan ocupando Wall Street, chicos.