大概2000字左右,关于贫富差距的英文文献或英文文章,无中文翻译也可~

大概2000字左右,关于贫富差距的英文文献或英文文章,无中文翻译也可~
大概2000字左右,关于贫富差距的英文文献或英文文章,无中文翻译也可~

大概2000字左右,关于贫富差距的英文文献或英文文章,无中文翻译也可~
第一篇
Published on Tuesday, August 17, 2004 by the Associated Press
Gap Between Rich and Poor Widening in Troubled Economy
by Leigh Strope

WASHINGTON — Over two decades, the income gap has steadily increased between the richest Americans, who own homes and stocks and got big tax breaks, and those at the middle and bottom of the pay scale, whose paychecks buy less.
The growing disparity is even more pronounced in this recovering economy. Wages are stagnant, and the middle class is shouldering a larger tax burden. Prices for health care, housing, tuition, gas and food have soared.
The wealthiest 20 percent of households in 1973 accounted for 44 percent of total U.S. income, according to the Census Bureau. Their share jumped to 50 percent in 2002, while everyone else's fell. For the bottom fifth, the share dropped from 4.2 percent to 3.5 percent.
Jobs and the economy top the list of voter concerns this election year. President Bush touts a strong economy that is growing, but polls find that Americans have doubts and think jobs are scarce. His Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, is trusted more on the economy.
Democrats talk regularly of "two Americas," divided between the rich and everyone else. That argument has merit, some private economists say.
"For those working in the bottom half of the pay scale, they're under an enormous amount of pressure," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com.
New government data also show that Bush's tax cuts have shifted the overall tax burden to the middle class from the wealthiest Americans.
"We're just trying to get ahead," said Debbie Reames, 49, of Raytown, Mo., whose bank job of 24 years was outsourced in February. "But it seems like we climb a few rungs and then we fall back again."
Reames has a new secretarial job, which pays $7,000 a year less than her bank job, and she works catering jobs for extra money. Her husband, Russ, can no longer work after an injury.
One son is finishing college and another will start in the fall.
So the family budget tightened. That meant fewer cable channels, more meals at home, postponed doctor appointments, missed vacations, delayed credit-card payments, all to "keep the wolf away from the door," she said.
The U.S. jobs market is soft, sending wages down. Hiring came to a near standstill last month, with companies adding just 32,000 jobs overall, stunning economists who had expected seven times as many.
More than a million jobs have been added back to the 2.6 million lost since Bush took office, but many pay less and offer fewer benefits, such as health insurance. The new jobs are concentrated in health care, food services and temporary employment firms, all lower-paying sectors. Temp agencies alone account for about a fifth of all new jobs.
Three in five pay below the national median hourly wage of $13.53, said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist for Wells Fargo.
On a weekly basis, the average wage of $525.84 is at the lowest level since October 2001.
The income gap is showing up in booming sales of luxury items. Porsche Cars North America says sales are up 17 percent for the year. Strong sales at Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue overshadow lackluster sales at stores such as Wal-Mart, Sears and Payless Shoes.
Real-estate agent Lance Anderson, 38, of Overland Park, Kan., expects a record sales year, as homeowners upgrade to more expensive homes and commercial clients expand. He recently took his family to Florida for a two-week vacation.
"My clientele, it seems as a whole, has seen positive growth," he said. So his family, including three children, now eat out more often and spend more on clothes. The Andersons recently bought two new cars and expect to buy a larger house in the next few years.
Economists say wages should rise as companies boost hiring. But the growing gap between the haves and have-nots will remain.
Technology has eliminated many U.S. jobs, as has global competition, particularly from low-wage countries such as China. Highly skilled, educated workers in America will thrive as demand rises, Sohn said, while low-skilled jobs remain vulnerable to outsourcing.
"This really has nothing to do with Bush or Kerry, but more to do with the longer-term shift in the structure of the economy," Sohn said.
第二篇
http://www.mindfully.org/WTO/China-Wealth-Gap11may02.htm
China sounds alarm over fast-growing gap between rich and poor
AP 11may02
BEIJING -- In an unusually frank assessment, a top Chinese planning official warned that the gap between rich and poor in China is rapidly widening and could threaten national stability.
In just 20 years, China has gone from having virtually no income gap to having one of the world's biggest, Lu Zhiqiang, deputy director of the government's Development Research Center, said in a speech Thursday at the Asian Development Bank's annual meeting in Shanghai.
"The problem of income distribution has become the most noticeable issue among current social problems in China," Lu said, according to an account of his speech posted on the official People's Daily Website on Saturday.
About 70 percent of Chinese think the wealth gap has harmed social stability, he was quoted saying. No details were given about the origins of that figure.
"People are showing great discontent with the irrationally high income gained through the monopoly of industries, and with the legal gains derived from graft and corruption, and power-for-money transaction," he said.
China frequently touts the enormous progress its economy has made since the Communist Party introduced reforms in the late 1970s. Officials rarely mention growing social and economic inequalities.
Most Chinese have seen tremendous improvements in their quality of life over the past two decades, but China's coastal areas have absorbed the bulk of foreign investment and grown most rapidly while the interior has lagged.
Closures of decrepit state industries and stagnating rural incomes have sparked protests by laid-off workers and impoverished farmers. Meanwhile, resentment is growing over abuse of power and rampant corruption among high officials and well-connected businessmen.
Rising unrest has rattled the party, which came to power on a program of revolution but which now styles itself the guardian of stability. Leaders have been unwilling to institute political and legal reforms that could boost accountability and weaken the party's political monopoly.
The ineffectiveness of the legal system and economic levers make it hard to reverse the worsening trend in income disparities, Lu said.
第三篇
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1588900.htm
Gap between rich and poor widens in China
The World Today - Friday, 10 March , 2006 12:40:00
Reporter: John Taylor
ELEANOR HALL: To China now and the growing official concern about wealth inequality in the country.
The leader who began modern China's economic reform era, Deng Xiaoping, famously declared that "to get rich is glorious".
But the problem authorities are facing now is that some people have become extremely wealthy, while the great majority of Chinese people remain desperately poor.
In Beijing, Correspondent John Taylor reports.
JOHN TAYLOR: On Beijing's streets it's not unusual now to see a Ferrari cruise by.
In the time of Mao this would have been unimaginable. After all, this was Red China and a red sportscar would have been a joke, a symbol of hated class superiority. The driver would have been destined for a life of suffering.
And besides all that, everybody was poor except the few political leaders at the top.
Twenty-five years of reforms have transformed China. In Beijing alone last year, about 1,000 new cars merged onto the roads every day. Many of them were luxury vehicles.
But China is still a developing country, with more than half its people leading rural lives. But as a new class of super-rich emerge and the ranks of the middle class swell, the gap between the rich and the poor in China has become a yawning chasm.
Economist Li Zhining says it's getting greater as China gets richer.
"The income of farmers and low-income urban people is actually becoming lower and lower," he says.
The wealth gap isn't just between town and country.
A recent report from the National Development and Reform Commission, China's main economic planning agency, said inequality just in China's cities was now
"unreasonable".
A survey found the poorest fifth of urban residents received only 2.75 per cent of total income in urban areas, whereas the richest fifth commanded 20 times as much.
Communist China's new five-year plan, due to be approved by this year's session of the National People's Congress, stresses the importance of creating a more equal society.
The Government wants to improve medical care and social welfare for ordinary people.
Income tax thresholds have been changed, and a centuries-old farm tax has been scrapped.
Economist, Mao Yushi, is careful not to go too far in his statements lest he land in political trouble. But he says Chinese politics is part of the problem.
"The wealth in China is not only allocated by the market," he says, "but also by power."
"The people with power have money. The marriage between power and money allows people to make money by using illegal methods. It increases further the income gap between the rich and the poor beyond the market itself," he says.
But it's hard to check corruption and abuse of power when the public really has no way to hold leaders or institutions to account, because that's seen as threatening Communist rule.
Economist Li Zhining also believes the worsening gap between the rich and the poor in China won't be addressed until there's structural change.
Independent trade unions are an obvious start.
"Worker unions are actually economic organizations, not political ones," he says. "But I don't understand why the Government is so worried about them. They are worried about the workers being organised to make trouble."
"But what trouble will they make? What the workers want is just higher salaries, which is right.
"Otherwise, if the wealth is concentrated only in the hands of the capitalists, it will shrink consumption in society."
Independent trade unions don't exist in China because of history. Poland's Solidarity movement helped toppled authoritarian rule. China has carefully studied what happened in the former USSR.
The Party's commitment to a more equal society only extends as far as it can maintain control.
http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=Gap+between+the+Rich+and+the+Poor%EF%BC%8Cchina&hl=en
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908770.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/13/national/main635936.shtml