Snow Defends President's Handling of Economy
WASHINGTON -- Confronting criticism of the Bush administration's economic record, Treasury Secretary John Snow said the widening gap between high-paid and low-paid Americans reflects a labor market efficiently rewarding more-productive people. But he insisted Americans are still broadly sharing in the economic expansion.
"What's been happening in the United States for about 20 years is [a] long-term trend to differentiate compensation," Mr. Snow said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week. "Look at the Harvard economics faculty, look at doctors over here at George Washington University...look at baseball players, look at football players. We've moved into a star system for some reason which is not fully understood. Across virtually all professions, there have been growing gaps."
Mr. Snow said the same phenomenon explains why compensation for corporate chief executive officers has climbed so sharply. "In an aggregate sense, it reflects the marginal productivity of CEOs. Do I trust the market for CEOs to work efficiently? Yes. Until we can find a better way to compensate CEOs, I'm going to trust the marketplace."
Since the 1970s, CEO compensation has gone from 40 times to more than 300 times the average worker's salary, according to a study by Carola Frydman of Harvard University and Raven Saks of the Federal Reserve.
Mr. Snow, a former CEO of CSX Corp. who holds a doctorate in economics, said the administration intends to publicly challenge perceptions that typical workers and families haven't benefited much from the economic expansion. The extent to which the expansion has been broadly shared is "the new sort of battle line in the political arena," he said.
Economic output has increased at an annualized pace of almost 4% since mid-2003, and the unemployment rate has fallen to 4.8% from 6.3%. Despite that, polls show more Americans think the economy is worsening than think it is improving.
Mr. Snow distributed a fact sheet that showed after-tax income per person, adjusted for inflation, rose 8.2% from January 2001, when George W. Bush took office as president, through January 2006. The sheet also showed that per-person net worth -- total assets minus debt -- rose 24%, unadjusted for inflation, from early 2001 to the end of 2005. "People have more money in their pocket" and in their bank accounts, he said.
Mr. Snow's case relies on averages, which can be skewed by big gains among the wealthiest. Other data suggest the typical family has seen little advance in income or net worth since Mr. Bush took office. Census Bureau data show median family income -- half of families have income greater than the median, half have less -- fell 3.6% from 2000 through 2004. Incomes for the poorest families fell even further. The only group to gain was the family at the 95th percentile -- that is, richer than 95% of all families. Data for 2005 are unavailable.
Alan Krueger, a labor economist at Princeton University who served in the Clinton administration, cited Labor Department data that showed the real median wage rose 3% from 2000 to 2005. Gains were smallest for the lowest-paid workers and largest for the best-paid. "From the standpoint of the work force, it's been a very weak recovery," he said. Wage data don't incorporate the effects of taxes, investment income or government payments.
As for net worth, a triennial Federal Reserve survey found that the net worth of the median family rose 1.5%, after inflation, from 2001 through 2004. That is far less than the 17% increase from 1995 to 1998 and the 10% increase from 1998 to 2001. The survey wasn't conducted in 2000 or 2005.
Robert Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University, says the past few years represent the continuation of a 35-year trend in which a growing share of all labor income goes to a small group of "superstars: professional athletes, CEOs and top corporate officers." On top of this trend, income on capital -- such as interest, dividends, rent and capital gains -- has taken a growing share of national income from labor, and it "goes mainly to a small slice of the population at the very top."
Mr. Snow said inequality at "one philosophical level...is troubling. It's really a serious, far-reaching question about how to organize the economic affairs of a great country. We as a society have made two determinations. We're going to let more productive people have higher incomes and we're going to tax them more" through a progressive-tax system.
Mr. Snow argued the administration's tax cuts have made the tax code more progressive, because the rich now pay a larger share of total individual taxes. Some scholars counter that the tax cuts still widened the gap between the after-tax incomes of rich and poor Americans. The Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute think tanks, estimates that after-tax incomes of the richest 1% of taxpayers were 4.6% higher in 2005 than they would have been without the tax cuts. Incomes of the middle 20% were 2.6% higher, and incomes of the bottom 20% were 0.3% higher.
美国财长斯诺力挺布什经济措施
面对人们对布什执政期间经济状况提出的指责，美国财政部长约翰?斯诺(John Snow)表示，贫富收入差距扩大是劳动市场中能者多得规则的反映。不过他坚称大多数美国人都正从经济的扩张中获益。
斯诺在上周接受《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)采访时表示，“美国过去20年来的一个长期趋势就是收入差距拉大。看看哈佛大学经济系的教员、乔治-华盛顿大学(George Washington University)的博士生……看看棒球和橄榄球选手。一些我们还没能完全了解的原因促使我们进入了明星制。事实上，在所有行业中都存在著日益扩大的收入差距。”
斯诺说，这种现象也正是公司首席执行长们薪酬迅速上涨的原因所在。“总体看来，这反映了CEO的边际生产力。我是否相信市场能够反映出CEO真正的工作能力？是的，我相信。在找到一个更好的补偿方法前，我相信市场。”
哈佛大学的卡萝拉?弗里德曼(Carola Frydman)和美国联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve)的雷文?萨克斯(Raven Saks)研究发现，CEO薪资已从20世纪70年代相当于普通工人工资的40倍上涨到如今的300倍。
斯诺拥有经济学博士学位，曾任CSX Corp.的首席执行长。他称，有人认为，普通工作者和他们的家庭没能从经济扩张中获益。对于这种观点，政府将公开予以反驳。斯诺表示，经济扩张的影响范围问题是“政治舞台上新的战线。”
自2003年中期以来经济产出的增长折合成年率几乎高达4%，失业率也从6.3%降至4.8%。尽管如此，民意测验显示越来越多的美国人认为经济形势正在恶化而不是在改善。
斯诺发布的一份情况说明显示，截至今年1月，经通货膨胀因素调整后的人均税后收入水平比2001年1月布什当选总统时提高了8.2%。另外，未经通货膨胀因素调整的人均净资产──即总资产减去负债──在2005年底比2001年初提高了24%。斯诺说，“人们口袋里以及银行帐户里的钱更多了。”
斯诺所言依据的是平均值，因此可能因富人收入大幅增加而产生偏差。另有数据显示，自布什上台以来，普通家庭在收入和净资产上几乎停滞不前。人口普查局(Census Bureau)的数据显示，家庭收入的中值──半数家庭的收入在中值以上，半数在中值以下──在2000至2004年间下降了3.6%。最贫困家庭的收入下降更为明显。唯一出现收入增长的群体是处于第95个百分点之上的家庭──换句话说，这些家庭比95%的家庭都更富有。2005年的数据还没有公布。
普林斯顿大学劳动经济学家艾伦?克鲁格(Alan Krueger)曾任职于克林顿政府。他说美国劳工部(Labor Department)的数据显示，实际的工资中值在2000至2005年间增长了3%。收入最低者的工资增长幅度最小，而收入最高者的增幅最大。他说，“从劳动人口的总体情况来看，提高幅度非常有限。”工资数据并未考虑税收、投资收入和政府补贴的影响。
三年一度的联邦储备委员会调查显示，截至2004年，中值收入家庭的净资产经通货膨胀因素调整后比2001年增长了1.5%，远远低于1995至1998年17%及1998至2001年10%的增长幅度。2000年和2005年没有进行此项调查。
西北大学(Northwestern University)经济学家罗伯特?戈登(Robert Gordon)说，前几年是过去35年潮流的继续，那就是越来越多的劳动收入流入少数“超级巨星：职业运动员、首席执行长和公司高级管理人士”手中。另外，资本收入──比如利率、股息、租金和资本收益──占国内收入的比例越来越大，并“流入一小部分高收入者手中。”
斯诺表示，“哲学层面上的不平等……是非常晦涩的。而如何引导美国这个伟大国家的经济发展，这却实实在在地是个严肃而影响深远的问题。”我们作为决策者作出了两项决定：一是我们将继续允许能者多得，二是“通过累进税制”提高这些人的税收。
斯诺表示，布什政府的减税措施令税法的累进性更强，如今富人要负担更多的个人所得税。一些学者则反驳说，减税仍然未能阻止美国富人和穷人间税后收入差距的扩大。布鲁金斯研究所(Brookings Institution)和Urban Institute两家研究机构联合创立的Tax Policy Center预计，2005年美国1%最富有的纳税人税后收入比减税前提高了4.6%。中间20%的纳税人收入提高了2.6%，而20%最贫穷的纳税人收入仅提高了0.3%。
