不是人人都仇富

    1987年的股灾之后，《纽约时报》(The New York Times) 在其头版为“放肆的镀金时代”祭上了一篇讣告，文章援引大思想家的话，预言肆无忌惮的自利行为行将在美国消亡。短短三年后，当一场衰退标志着80年代正式结束时，许多评论家（包括这本杂志）又预测称，“一场针对富人的起义正在酝酿之中”，“后富裕社会”即将来临。

    到了2012年，描述美国阶级关系的论述层出不穷，其间有充斥着“火药桶”和“炸药”这类字眼。这时候，重温这些昔日的预言无疑颇有启发性。事实证明，美国并没有爆发针对80年代，也就是所谓“贪婪的10年”的阶级反抗。20世纪90年代，巨型豪宅犹如雨后春笋一般在全美各地破土而出，富人变得更加财大气粗，所有理应出现的民粹主义愤怒情绪最终消失在了一波由抵押贷款融资引发的消费狂潮中，富人和中产阶级概莫能外。

    也许这次情况不一样了。我们不妨拿欧洲街头蔓延的怒火作为比较对象。当然，如今的失业率让20世纪90年代的失业率相形见绌，长期失业水平正处于历史高位。人们对自身经济前景的焦虑程度亦是如此。美国经济似乎正陷于瘫痪，这是一个非常可怕的时代；而20世纪90年代并非如此。但对即将到来的阶级斗争的预言未能抓住美国精神的根本性质。喜欢侃侃而谈的人士有一种倾向，他们夸大了美国民众对富裕的不屑，同时却又低估了人们追逐自身财富的热情。

    去年秋天上演的占领华尔街抗议活动被许多人比作阿拉伯之春（一场最终推翻政府的运动）和欧洲反紧缩政策抗议活动（实际上，占领华尔街运动即使是在最鼎盛的时期也无法跟这些抗议活动相提并论）。5月中旬，占领华尔街抗议人士发动的“金融犯罪的步行之旅”和针对各大银行的时代广场集会使这场运动再一次成为媒体关注的焦点。

    占领华尔街运动把与经济不平等相关的话题注入这个国家的政治血液之中，这一点值得褒扬（应该指出的是，这是一个不小的壮举）。占领华尔街运动呼吁一场“革命”，反抗一个“让99%的人陷于贫困”的体系，但这种呼声最终并没有完全转化为一场群众运动，而且现在依然不可能。

    从历史来看，美国人对阶级冲突并没有表现出浓厚的兴致。正如本杰明•佩奇教授和劳伦斯•雅各布斯教授在其2009年发布的著作《阶级战争？》（Class War?）一书中所指出的，“虽然美国人对经济不平等保持着警觉态度，并支持致力于减少不平等的措施，但他们的直觉依然是保守的。提高个人经济地位和生活状况主要是人们自己的责任。”那么，为什么会出现这么多呼吁革命的言论呢？人们的注意力很短暂，对于渴望抓住受众眼球的媒体来说，“我们对抗他们”是一个特别诱人的主题。因此，皮尤研究中心（Pew Research）最近一项旨在表明贫富之间冲突急剧上升的调查就显得特别耐人寻味。

    After the 1987 stock market crash, the New York Times offered up a page-one obituary for a "gilded, impudent age," quoting great minds who predicted the demise of unbridled self-interest in America. Three short years later, when a recession marked the official end of the '80s, commentators (including in this magazine) predicted a "brewing revolt against the rich" and the coming of a "post-affluent society."

    It's instructive in 2012 -- when words like "tinderbox" and "explosive" dot so many descriptions of class relations in the U.S. -- to revisit those cloudy crystal balls of yore. As it turned out, there was no class revolt against the '80s, the "decade of greed." In the 1990s, McMansions sprouted like kudzu across the land, the rich got filthy rich, and all that supposed nascent populist anger was lost in a swirl of mortgage-financed consumer gluttony (behavior shared by the affluent and middle class alike).

    Maybe this time is different. Maybe comparisons to the outpourings in the streets of Europe are apt. Certainly today's unemployment rate dwarfs that of the 1990s, and long-term joblessness is stuck at historic highs. So is anxiety about personal economic futures. With an economy that seems paralyzed, these are scary times; the '90s weren't. But predictions of impending class warfare miss the fundamental nature of the American psyche. There is a tendency within the chattering classes to overstate the American public's disdain for affluence -- and to understate people's passion for pursuing their own wealth.

    The Occupy Wall Street protests that played out last fall drew comparisons to the Arab Spring (a movement that actually toppled governments) and Europe's anti-austerity eruptions (protests that actually overshadowed OWS's biggest days here). In mid-May, OWS jumped back on the media radar screen with a "financial crimes walking tour" and Times Square rally against the big banks.

    While OWS deserves credit for injecting discussion of economic inequality into the country's political bloodstream -- no small feat, it should be noted -- its calls for a "revolution" against a system that "impoverishes the 99%" hasn't exactly translated into a mass movement. And it remains unlikely to.

    Historically Americans haven't shown much appetite for class strife. As professors Benjamin Page and Lawrence Jacobs noted in their 2009 book Class War?: "While Americans are alert to inequality and support measures to reduce it ... they remain conservative by instinct ... Responsibility for an individual's economic position and life conditions rests chiefly with him- or herself." So why all the talk of revolution? "Us-vs.-them-ism" is an especially tempting theme for a media desperately looking for ways to grab our short attention spans. Therefore, much was made of a recent Pew Research poll purporting to show a sharp rise in conflicts between rich and poor.