[lg policy] blog: The Language of Inequality

Tue Aug 3 15:07:04 UTC 2010

The Language of Inequality
Andrea Brandolini:

What I really find conspicuous in the comparison of top income shares
across rich nations is the similarity of the patterns observed in
English-speaking countries as opposed to those found in continental
European countries. It is striking that, after a prolonged period of
moderate decline, the income share of the richest 1 percent suddenly
began to rise in the mid-1980s in the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland,
Australia, and New Zealand as well as in the United States, while it
exhibited no upward trend in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain,
and Switzerland.

The difference between these two groups of countries confirms that
market and technological forces cannot be the whole story, but the
similarity of trajectories, including the time of the turning point,
in the English-speaking countries defies an explanation based only on
the national characteristics of the U.S. political process. Hacker and
Pierson recognize the potential problem, but play it down by positing
that the close interdependence of the markets for top executives can
largely account for the common trends in English-speaking economies.
Perhaps, but why should interdependence be so much stronger between
London and New York than between London and Frankfurt in today’s
highly integrated financial markets? Can common language be the only
critical factor, or are there more fundamental reasons?

Like Brad DeLong, I don’t really know why we’d be so casually
dismissive of the idea that master class labor mobility inside the
Anglosophere is in fact much greater than mobility across the
linguistic divide. Now it’s true that this lack of mobility seems
somewhat irrational. Firms interested in reducing labor costs could
realize substantial gains by importing low-paid Asian CEOs but in
practice corporate nationality makes a big difference when it comes to
staffing the board of directors and the executive suite.

At any rate, you could probably try to test this. In some European
countries they subtitle the American TV shows and in others they dub
them. The quality of the English spoken in the dubbed countries is
noticeably lower than that spoken in the subtitle countries. Are
people form subtitle countries more likely to relocate to Anglosphere
countries than people from dub countries? When Carl-Henrik Svanberg
was CEO of Ericsson in Sweden, he earned 15.75 million SEK. Wikipedia
says his compensation as BP’s chairman is much higher than that. And
like most Swedes, he speaks English very well. Nonetheless, he did
manage to create a PR fiasco by talking about “small people” instead
of “the little guy.”

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18 Responses to “The Language of Inequality”
1.Stefan says:
July 30th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
In some European countries they subtitle the American TV shows and in
others they dub them. The quality of the English spoken in the dubbed
countries is noticeably lower than that spoken in the subtitle
countries. Are people form subtitle countries more likely to relocate
to Anglosphere countries than people from dub countries?

There is a dubbing vs. non-dubbing effect, absolutely, but the effect
flattens out at the higher education/economic levels. A Dutch
investment banker (non-dubbing) will speak extremely good English
without much of an accent, but his German (dubbing) counterpart will
also speak very good English, though he will have a much more
noticeable accent and have less grasp of modern American
colloquialisms.

There also seems to a divide between northern and southern European
countries in terms of English proficiency — though Germany is, along
with the French, Italians and Spanish, in the non-dubbing camp the
Germans nevertheless speak much better English on average (and the
Italians are just hopeless).

2.urgs says:
July 30th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Something like that could never ever happen between countries with the
same language but different cultural background. Nonono, never.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/black-cats/

3.ron says:
July 30th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
1. Strong financial sectors in the UK and US.
2. Reagan and Thatcher
3. Clinton and Blair (Third Way/DLC types).
4. Synergy between Wall Street and the City.
5. The others tag along.

4.jakob says:
July 30th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
This “fiasco” concerning the phrase “small people” is really tiresome.
It’s such a non-story it’s not even funny. And it’s not really a
language issue anyway. Gifford Pinchot used to refer to “small people”
in the same way as Svanberg meant it. Sure, Pinchot live a couple of
decades earlier, but it was meant in the same exact way. Sure, you can
criticize Svanberg if you like, but the fact is that his statement was
a “fisco” created by the media, and as is often the case, the media
somehow manages to create more problems than they solve. The media is
truly a world onto itself.

5.iluvcapra says:
July 30th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
The quality of the English spoken in the dubbed countries is
noticeably lower than that spoken in the subtitle countries.

Subtitling happens in the national film markets of Denmark, Belgium
and Holland, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Iceland, Sweden, Norway,
Finland and the UK. It’s worth noting that many of these countries
have a legacy of multilingualism and regional dialects, where a
written language might be easier for an audience to follow than trying
to understand the accent of the voiceover artist, who might come from
Wallonia or Wales, when the listener is Flemish or Scottish. Many of
these countries, excluding the UK, have very little of a native film
industry and most of the product on their screens are imports, thus he
audience has an expectation that the film will be foreign and the
convention of subtitles doesn’t seem strange.

Some countries that dub in general are Germany, Spain, France, the
Czech Republic, Italy. Spain and France closely regulate their
national tongue and police the regionalisms. Italy has a protectionist
law that requires all voice acting in the country to be performed
locally by locals. Italy, France, Germany and Spain all have
significant local film industries that generate local product in the
home language and the audience thus might perceive subtitles as being
less conventional.

6.Stefan says:
July 30th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Subtitling happens in the national film markets of Denmark, Belgium
and Holland, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Iceland, Sweden, Norway,
Finland and the UK. It’s worth noting that many of these countries
have a legacy of multilingualism and regional dialects, where a
written language might be easier for an audience to follow than trying
to understand the accent of the voiceover artist, who might come from
Wallonia or Wales, when the listener is Flemish or Scottish.

Yes, but countries that don’t subtitle but dub, such as Germany,
Italy, Spain, etc. also have a legacy of multilingualism and very
strong regional dialects, so that can’t be a sufficient explanation.
In fact, basically every single country in Europe fits that
description.

7.Charrua says:
July 30th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
An easier test of the idea would be to look at has happened in Quebec
regarding inequality, wouldn’t it?

8.tsg says:
July 30th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
I think the explanation for this phenomenon is quite simple: Jesus
loves English speakers most. Coincidence that there are very few
Japanese Christians and that Japanese CEOs aren’t paid relatively
much? I think not!

9.Anthony Damiani says:
July 30th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Wait… why are we assuming it’s because of language, rather than
regulatory environment and the policies of Reagan, Thatcher and their
heirs?

10.Stefan says:
July 30th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Wait… why are we assuming it’s because of language, rather than
regulatory environment and the policies of Reagan, Thatcher and their
heirs?

Because that would only account for the US and UK, not these other
Anglophone countries:

1 percent suddenly began to rise in the mid-1980s in the United
Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand as well as in the
United States,

11.Kenneth Thomas says:
July 30th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Stefan, all of the Anglophone countries adopted neoliberal policies in
the 1980s, not just the US and UK. But the EU and various Member
States have also adopted fairly neoliberal policies as well, so I’m
curious why their elites haven’t gained more.

I think “small people” is a non-story, too. Interestingly, when I was
in Sweden in 2006, I thought the Swedes spoke English much worse than
I expected them to. Native Dutch-speakers in the Netherlands and
Belgium are easily the best non-native English speakers I’ve met. Even
back in 1993, when I spent a semester doing research in Brussels, the
Dutch TV stations broadcast “Sesame Street” in English with no
subtitles and no dubbing.

12.Adam says:
July 30th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Yet another stupid comparison to Sweden. You just can’t resist can
you. Have you ever thought that maybe your readers aren’t as obsessed
with that country as you are?

13.Sebastian says:
July 30th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
someone over at crookedtimber mentioned this paper, which uses Quebec
as a test case – and indeed inequality at the top in Quebec has grown
less than in Canada.
I haven’t looked at it at length, but it’s by “Mr. Inequality”
Emmanuel Saez and published in the AER, which at least strongly
suggest it’s a thorough job
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-veallAER05canada.pdf
Here is the key part from the conclusion:

The surge in top wages in Canada is later
and more concentrated within very top groups than in the United
States, and is much less pronounced for francophones in Quebec. We
suggest that this is evidence in favor of a
brain drain explanation: the threat of migration to the United States
by highly skilled Canadian executives or professionals may have driven
the surge in top wage shares in
Canada.

14.Steve Sailer says:
July 30th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Check out the current Oliver Stone flap to see the difference between
the American media and Continental media. Stone is American on his
father’s side and French on his mother’s side, so he’s more in touch
with the Continental media’s conventional wisdom, which is quite
different from the American-dominated media’s conventional wisdom on
certain crucial issues.

For a good example of the American media’s conventional wisdom, see:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2010/07/oliver-stone-has-apologized-for-his-antisemitic-rant-but-is-the-damage-already-done.html

15.urgs says:
July 30th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
At least New Zealand and Australia had neoliberal reforms aswell.

English abilities are mainly a function of lingual distance and the
sice of ones native language economy. Germany is probably a bit of an
outliner due to the disproportional integration with foreign economies
and the occuption/lack of strong national identiy after WWII. The
reverse effect might push France a bit in the in the other direction.

16.rapier says:
July 30th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
It’s the taxes. All countries which significantly reduced taxes of all
kinds on the wealthy saw an increase in income and wealth inequality.
The relationship is directly causal. With 30+ years of results to
prove the point no other theory is so reviled. In fact we are on the
cusp of a violent semi revolution manned by the shrinking middle to
fight to install policies guaranteed to further inequality. Their
booby prize will be an expanding lower class to feel superior to.

17.Anthony says:
July 30th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
“It’s worth noting that many of these countries have a legacy of
multilingualism and regional dialects, where a written language might
be easier for an audience to follow than trying to understand the
accent of the voiceover artist, who might come from Wallonia or Wales,
when the listener is Flemish or Scottish.”

That problem is solved via the miracle of “received pronunciation”.

18.Swivel Barstools Can Get You Dates | Inlay Shell Furniture says:
August 2nd, 2010 at 5:53 am
[...] Matthew Yglesias » The Language of Inequality [...]

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/07/the-language-of-inequality/
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