IT正在加剧财富和收入不平等

Sep 22, 2017 Mordecai Kurz

斯坦福—三十多年来，发达经济体，尤其是美国，财富和收入不平等有所增加，真实（经通胀调整的）工资上升缓慢，退休者面临储蓄利率下降。与此同时，公司利润和股价大涨。如今，我所进行的研究表明，这些变化主要来自现代信息技术（IT）。

IT对经济的影响是多方位的：计算机、互联网和移动技术改变了媒体、在线零售、制药业以及数不清的消费者相关服务。IT显著地改善了人们的生活。

但IT的成长也导致了垄断力和进入壁垒，从而带来了巨大的经济、社会和政治消极副作用，包括“假新闻”的泛滥。

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 12 Comments on this article

ferdinand van Dieten Sep 28, 2017

@Jose Araujo, you are completely right. it is not the IT technologies and innovations that brought us monopolist, but the patent protection of immaterialities ad absurdum. But there 2de problem. Uber should be treated by the administrations as a Taxi-business, Google and Facebook as Media-enterprises, Amazon as a retailer etc, to level the "playing-field" in the markets.
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Jose araujo Sep 28, 2017

More and more value is dependent on intellectual property and copyrights. Our laws were useful for industrialization where the value sources were linked to production and efficiency, but not anymore.

We have to reacess our positions on intellectual property, and the "natural" rights you have to them. Makes no sense to me, and will hinder not only the development of our societies but the equity in them.
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Bob Aceti Sep 24, 2017

The tax code was not designed to accommodate modern information technology monopolies. The complex global economy is distinguished by a post-industrial merger with the Information Age. This merger was solely based on software applications and those who create, market and sell these solutions across the economic demographic of the global economy. Software or "application" tools dominate modern economic activity across most industries. Competitive advantage now requires applications to expedite sales cycles or innovate to reduce labor costs. Even pizzerias are in on the action: they leverage communications and information technologi (CIT) to allow customers to use their smart phones to reorder their registered pizza favorites or vary their orders. The pizza orders are distributed to the nearest affiliated pizzeria that makes, bakes and delivers the pizza to the requested location.

The ubiquity of leveraging applications has materially changed how business is done. Although I would agree that taxation reform is challenging, it is the only practical method, other than anti-trust reform, to raise taxes from the IT application developers that are achieving uncommon returns to scale through replication of applications - much like the music and film industry had done with CDs and now Internet distribution.

Some readers would scoff at any attempt to raise taxes from the technology leaders. Why tax success? The simple answer is because sucess for the few doesn't translate into broader success for many. We need not diverge into a discussion of the Laffer curve and Reaganomics to conclude that the current low tax system for these bemoth IT global enterprises has enriched a demographic of well-placed and technology connected class - whether they are technology analysists, top tier tech insiders or v.c. firms that hunt Unicorns.

Carried interests, share buy-backs, see-through offshoring of profitable subsidiaries
are the tax reforms that are needed to reduce the trend toward income inequality. It has been well-known for over a decade that these three tax 'loop holes' or "tax expenditures" offer a select group of individuals with financial accumen or global corporate enterprises or aspirations to earn significant incomes that are NOT taxed until the beneficiaries choses to have their untaxed holdings characterized as income after taxable events: selling carried interests and stock-buy-backs to third parties and repatriating untaxed foreign profits to the U.S. to pay taxes.

The solution is to reform the tax code. However, in an open global market that G8 members participate, aggressive tax avoidance schemes are permitted. And therein lies the greatest challenge of tax reform.

The OECD has proposed a global tax solution to avois base erosion and profit shifting to low or no tax jurisdictions. The challenge would be to get most of the top - ranked OECD members, in GDP terms, to sign a multilateral tax accord based on the OECD BEPS standard agreement.

The challenge with BEPS is that it doesn't consider domestic tax laws that offer excessive "tax deductions" that distort "taxable income" for which tax rates are applied. In the case of the U.S. taxcode, we see 26 U.S. Code § 167 - Depreciation, as a complex series of exceptions and allowances that would challenge most economists who rarely go deep into the weeds of modern tax regimes to understand that taxation is a significant determinant of income inequality.

The Information Age offers applications to refomr the global tax systems into one enforceable and universal core global taxation system. International Financial Reporting Standards, IFRS, is a good start for public companies and reporting issuers. A subset of IFRS can form the basis for all other private entities determination of taxable income. Tax rates can vary within a tighter range across OECD members - to disallow tax havens to propogate NIL tax regimes that are the common methods used to engage in global enterprise aggressive tax avoidance schemes.

In the absence of a concerted effort to formulate a core global tax system that follows international standards of income determination (IFRS) and eliminates low or NIL tax havens as safe tax habors for the world's wealthiest corporations and families, the income inequality challenge, that leads to greater variance and distribution of wealth, will not be resolved.
- Jose araujo Sep 28, 2017
  
  Its not the tax code, its the intellectual property rights. Stop criminalizing "piracy" the way we do, and you will see that the value captured by the IT companies will take a major hit.
  
  Why should has a society pay to enforce a law that is armful for us and promotes monopolies?
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- Steve Hurst Sep 24, 2017
  
  Bob. This is reasonable argument but it is difficult to tax a product which is given away free in return for personal data which at the point of transaction with the individual has no inherent value. It is also extremely difficult to tax digital products that can be piped over the internet. That is before you look at digital payments such as bitcoin which could easily be adopted and which are difficult to trace
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Robert Goldschmidt Sep 23, 2017

IT is undermining our economy as well as our democracy. Addressing this through the tax system has many disadvantages — one size fits all and the lack of employee motivation due to increased benefits.

Here are a couple of non-tax ideas to consider:

Government ownership and operation of all distribution, collection and communications systems that utilize easements, but not the services that utilize these systems. For example municipal power distribution but not generation. However we should ensure that power generation is competitive.

Federal caps on a corporation’s earnings to payroll ratio based on their history. Federal government has option to lower all caps by as much as 1% per year. In a similar vein, there would be tarrifs on any increased imports by a company in lieu of lost wages.

Such a program would protect us going forward against the job-killing ravages of automation while motivating employees who would share in any additional gross profit they generate.

We need to think out of the box before our system and way of life are destroyed.
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Marc Laventurier Sep 23, 2017

Fear not. Technologies and techniques currently deployed to sell advertising can be turned on their masters with stunning efficiency. Invest now in bare land in Money Heaven.
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Procyon Mukherjee Sep 23, 2017

The proof is all round, but the pace of change in innovation in IT could actually slow down, which has been the case with all other non-IT areas; the shift from concentrated to the less concentrated will be sparked by tectonic shifts which are in the making, silently, as change in immigration laws could be the starting point. The core model of innovation could change as well, where start ups could play less dominant role.
- P. Kamath Jan 2, 2018
  
  P. Mukherjee: You must be joking when you say," The proof is all round, but the pace of change in innovation in IT could actually slow down, which has been the case with all other non-IT areas.." Galloping growth in applications in IT technology is mind boggling which is causing so much heart-ache and grief n industrialized N. Hemisphere. BTW, do you know a very realistic , measurable method in assessing ' rate of change in innovation' ?
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Steve Hurst Sep 22, 2017

The product cost model is based on the cost of replication and with all products maturity price convergence is with material cost. Since there is effectively no replication cost with IT and no material content the effects are obvious. There are two direct effects - firstly a successful IT product provides very significant immediate profit; secondly to offset the convergence of price with material cost the move by the producer has to be to switch to access pricing for the consumer so the convergence with material content is sidelined. Anybody investing in IT is well aware of these features which is why the high attrition rate with unicorns is accepted. It is also why so much product is given away effectively free to obtain data harvesting for subsequent process and resale or as an onward hook into access charging, the product has no inherent value but the data has value as does any future access charging. Remember that the product cost - is based on effectively costing nothing to replicate the product - hence a give-away is also effectively a zero cost or free. Consumers are happy or ignorant and trade in the models. Because of the cost of replication of the product is near zero the wealth generated by the product is limited in its distribution hence wealth concentration occurs. It is most unlikely anything will change due to the cost of replication being near zero into the future and consumers trading stuff (personal data) they do not value for access (marbles for long island comes to mind) or being prepared to pay routine repeat access charges. Hence the switch to cloud based applications for example. The question then becomes do consumers want to be educated, and the answer probably no, because it means no product give-away or notionally free products. The other trick is forced obsolescence, an effective device used by a number of majors, which is a twist on the access charging model. The only long term solution is open systems which comes back to the initial funding mechanism. The obvious solution is taxation of all IT systems free or otherwise as a funding feed to open system development, a measure which has to deal with cross-national software transfer which is currently beyond government capability. A measure which would also be opposed by commercial lobbying and arguments about freedom etc etc coupled with government apprehension about weakening a strong sector yeilding tax revenues. Due to the wealth concentration and the inherent profit in success the profit in the system is speculatively invested hence a bubble is in process and a FANG stock question arises. Everybody cannot be a winner. These companies are primarily US based and there may be a currency impact. In the next decade if this imbalance develops, which is not a certainty, the effect could be more profound than anything to date
- Jose araujo Sep 28, 2017
  
  We don't need a taxation change, but less regulation on intellectual property and copyrights...
  
  IT is drawing huge amount of value because we think its "fair" for someone who discovered something to have this right, hence creating a monopolistic position.
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