“Confiança” na dívida da periferia é “positiva”

[Viana]

Posted on Mon, Jan. 27, 2003

Who, really, are the rich?

Maybe we can agree with Sen. Tom Daschle that the fiscal adrenaline being prepared by the White House is "a stimulus plan for the rich." Since the wealthy pay most of the taxes, you could say almost any tax-cut scheme helps the rich.

What we can't agree on is who are these despised, elite rich people? And how can we join them?

You, of course, are not rich. The rich are always two or three neighborhoods away. Their children are better looking and their roof gutters stay clean.

Few Americans think of themselves as wealthy. In a Gallup Poll a few years ago, the typical respondent believed 21 percent of Americans were rich. But less than a half-percent saw themselves as rich.

Most Americans describe themselves as "middle class," perhaps because of this country's proud rejection of royalty and the Old World caste system.

Warren Buffett, of course, is upper-middle class. A single mother of two earning $13,000 is poor according to the Census Bureau, but she sees herself as working class.

The secret of human aspiration is that people are rarely happy with what they have, no matter how adequate or munificent their station. By much of the world's standards, even minimum-wage U.S. workers are wealthy beyond hope, yet they do not feel rich.

"Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men," wrote John Stuart Mill.

Numerous human-resource pros have shown that employees are much more concerned about keeping up with or surpassing the salaries of their co-workers than earning any particular amount of money.

Numerous sociologists have shown that happiness in most countries often is tied to relative, not absolute, material success. The rise of satellite TV and the beaming of "Beverly Hills 90210" across the planet has not improved the world's self-esteem or its kind intentions toward the United States.

If we take the above-mentioned Gallup Poll respondents at their word, one-fifth of Americans are rich. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top one-fifth of U.S. households had average incomes in 1997 of $167,500, a nice sum but hardly Bill-Gatesian in size.

How about the top 5 percent of American income-earners? They had average household incomes of $356,000 in 1997. And, the CBO says, they paid more than half of all federal individual income-tax revenue.