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САЩ, които са "наводнени" с лек петрол от местните шистови скални формации, увеличиха вноса на по-тежки сортове от Канада, измествайки доставките от страни като Мексико и Венецуела. Те пък бяха пренасочени към Азия дори след като Саудитска Арабия намали за пореден път цените на мартенските си продажби за региона до най-ниските равнища за последните поне 14 години.
Шистовият бум трансформира и потока от черно злато към Азиатския континент. Южна Корея получи първите си за последните осем години доставки суров петрол от Аляска след като добитият нефт в Тексас и Северна Дакота измести горивото, захранвало щатските рафинерии от години.
Бразилия също се възползва от промените. "Петролео Бразилейро" и оператори партньори са закарали до Азия девет танкера през март след като латиноамериканският отбив в петролните цени спрямо базовите за Близкия изток котировки на Дубай стана почти двойно по-голям в сравнения със средната му стойност за последната година.
Експерти от бранша прогнозират, че рафинериите в Азиатско-Тихоокеанския район ще увеличат капацитета си с 5.4 млн. барела на ден през следващите пет години. Голяма част от новите заводи са построени за преработка на по-евтини горива, за да се увеличат печалбите, което качва търсенето на по-тежки сортове от Латинска Америка, коментират консултанти от сектора.
Саудитската държавна петролна компания "Сауди Арамко" е превозила до Азия 53.8% от изнесеното през 2013-а гориво, по данни от последния годишен фирмен отчет.
The rise of the working poor and the non-working rich
By Robert Reich
Published 2:00 pm, Thursday, April 2, 2015
Many believe that poor people deserve to be poor because they’re lazy. As House Speaker John Boehner has said, the poor have a notion that “I really don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this. I think I’d rather just sit around.”
In reality, a large and growing share of the nation’s poor work full time — sometimes 60 or more hours a week — yet still don’t earn enough to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
It’s also commonly believed, especially among Republicans, that the rich deserve their wealth because they work harder than others.
In reality, a large and growing portion of the superrich have never broken a sweat. Their wealth has been handed to them.
The rise of these two groups — the working poor and non-working rich — is relatively new. Both are challenging the core American assumptions that people are paid what they’re worth, and work is justly rewarded.
Why are these two groups growing?
The ranks of the working poor are growing because wages at the bottom have dropped, adjusted for inflation. With increasing numbers of Americans taking low-paying jobs in retail sales, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, child care, elder care and other personal services, the pay of the bottom fifth is falling closer to the minimum wage.
At the same time, the real value of the federal minimum wage is lower today than it was a quarter century ago.
In addition, most recipients of public assistance must now work in order to qualify.
Bill Clinton’s welfare reform of 1996 pushed the poor off welfare and into work. Meanwhile, the Earned Income Tax Credit, a wage subsidy, has emerged as the nation’s largest antipoverty program. Here, too, having a job is a prerequisite.
The new work requirements haven’t reduced the number or percentage of Americans in poverty. They’ve just moved poor people from being unemployed and impoverished to being employed and impoverished.
While poverty declined in the early years of welfare reform when the economy boomed and jobs were plentiful, it began growing in 2000. By 2012, it exceeded its level in 1996, when welfare ended.
At the same time, the ranks of the non-working rich have been swelling. America’s legendary “self-made” men and women are fast being replaced by wealthy heirs.
Six of today’s 10 wealthiest Americans are heirs to prominent fortunes. The Walmart heirs alone have more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans combined.
Americans who became enormously wealthy over the last three decades are now busily transferring that wealth to their children and grandchildren.
The nation is on the cusp of the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history. A study by the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy projects a total of $59 trillion passed down to heirs between 2007 and 2061.
As the French economist Thomas Piketty reminds us, this is the kind of dynastic wealth that’s kept Europe’s aristocracy going for centuries. It’s about to become the major source of income for a new American aristocracy.
The tax code encourages all this by favoring unearned income over earned income.
The top tax rate paid by America’s wealthy on their capital gains — the major source of income for the non-working rich — has dropped from 33 percent in the late 1980s to 20 percent today, putting it substantially below the top tax rate on ordinary income (36.9 percent).
If the owners of capital assets whose worth increases over their lifetime hold them until death, their heirs pay zero capital gains taxes on them. Such “unrealized” gains now account for more than half the value of assets held by estates worth more than $100 million.
At the same time, the estate tax has been slashed. Before George W. Bush was president, it applied to assets in excess of $2 million per couple at a rate of 55 percent. Now it kicks in at $10,680,000 per couple, at a 40 percent rate. Last year, only 1.4 out of every 1,000 estates owed any estate tax, and the effective rate they paid was only 17 percent.
Republicans now in control of Congress want to go even further. Last month, the Senate voted 54-46 in favor of a nonbinding resolution to repeal the estate tax altogether. The House Ways and Means Committee also voted for a repeal. The House is expected to vote in coming weeks.
Yet, the specter of an entire generation doing nothing for their money other than speed-dialing their wealth-management advisers is not particularly attractive. It puts more and more responsibility for investing a substantial portion of the nation’s assets into the hands of people who have never worked. It also endangers our democracy, as dynastic wealth inevitably and invariably accumulates political influence and power.
Consider the rise of both the working poor and the non-working rich, and the meritocratic ideal on which America’s growing inequality is often justified doesn’t hold up.
That widening inequality — combined with the increasing numbers of people who work full time but are still impoverished and of others who have never worked and are fabulously wealthy — is undermining the moral foundations of American capitalism.
Robert Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at www.sfgate.com/submissions
Гражданите на САЩ печелят по-малко отколкото през 2013…с едно забележително изключение – на богаташите. Средните индивидуални доходи преди облагането с данъци са намалели с 0.9% към края на юли 2014-а в сравнение със същия период на 2013-а, което се случва за втора поредна година. Докато, същевременно, разходите им са се увеличили средно с 1%, сочат данни на бюрото за трудова статистика, публикувани на 2 април.
Само 20-те процента от американците с най-високи доходи са повишили благосъстоянието си за цитирания по-горе период с 0.9%, като средният им годишен приход преди облагането с данъци е нараснал до 166 048 щ. долара. А всички останали групи
Only the top 20 percent of American earners experienced income growth in that time period, swelling 0.9 percent. Their annual pre-tax income increased to $166,048. Meanwhile, every other income group shed 2 percent or more. The lowest quintile, which earned $9,818 on average, lost the most ground.
The lowest-earners also increased their spending by the most, boosting their expenditures by 2.9 percent, to $22,981 on average. The bulk of those outlays (41 percent) went to housing.
The data offer the latest signs of the growing chasm between America's rich and poor. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has used her first year as Fed chief to advocate for those hurt most by the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
As central bank policy makers prepare to possibly raise interest rates for the first time since June 2006, Yellen told a Boston Fed conference on inequality in October that she’s “greatly” concerned by a sustained rise in U.S. income and wealth inequality.
