The way to the common prosperity under the power paradigm

The creation of wealth requires the cooperation of human resources, material resources, technical resources, and organizational resources, so wealth creation must fully mobilize the enthusiasm of economic activities, especially those with productive contributions. Owning more returns is the intrinsic motivation for the subject to participate in economic activities. At this point, the motive of the participant to obtain more benefits will surpass the motive to create wealth. Therefore, some of the participants will obtain more wealth by relying on resource advantages, or even obtain more benefits by non-economic means. Obviously, creating more wealth to achieve wealth may not be able to achieve common prosperity. Social subjects with resource advantages will more actively strive for the channels to occupy wealth, or even open up new channels to occupy wealth, especially beyond economic means. For the non-economic means that affects the realization of common prosperity, we will discuss the following issues in the future research to find the fundamental way to common prosperity.

First, we will find out the impact of social organizations in wealth distribution. In the age of Internet, the number of social organizations and groups goes up exponentially, which are not only registered in the Civil Administration Department, but also set up by the people among neighbors, or in the wechat group on cell phones even they have never met each other before, or the alumni association of college, the vast majority of the establishment of a social organization is not for economic purposes, but they also play a role in the distribution of wealth. These organizations and groups link social subjects more closely together, and push the information transmission in a broad and high speed way. In organizations and groups, people share their successful experience of wealth creation, learn from each other’s behaviors of wealth obtaining, and increase the power of wealth accumulation. Compared to the traditional organizational resources, the wealth effect of a social organization is more significant in the information age, and the wealth distribution mechanism by social organization expands from the social capital effect to network connection effect. In the power paradigm, the resources and power structure will change because of the abundance of social organization, and affect the wealth distribution and the wealth gap.

Second, we will focus on the influence of the social system on the distribution of wealth. The integrated development of economic and social integration is the general trend of future development, so it may lead to the results bias that researches ignore the influence of political system and social system in economic analysis. The distribution of wealth is the result of solving the conflict of interest by the power relationship among the social subjects, and the formulation and implementation of the political system and social system is the way for the social subjects to consolidate their interests. For example, under the multi-party competitive system, the ruling party is the social elite represent alternate for political resources advantage of the political system. And the ruling party will engage and reward his supporters for their political interests and economic interests, and the voter also will choose for their personal interests in the electoral system; so we can see that the political system has widely affected the wealth distribution. The market economy is the economic system highly fit with the rule of law society, for the core of the rule of law is highlight the equality in social governance, the market economy promote equality of competition in the market. The society with market economy and under the rules of law is more likely to form toward equality consistent social power structure, and avoid excessive wealth gathered in the distribution of wealth, and improve the effect of the regulation of wealth redistribution.

Third, we will look at the function orientation of the government and the influence of the exercise of power on the distribution of wealth. The economic system presents increasing complexity, which makes it impossible to achieve common prosperity by relying on the internal power of the economic system. Therefore, the government must play a leading role in the process of achieving common prosperity. From the perspective of government functions, the government should, however, take the economic function of mobilizing economic activity and play the neutral role of redistributing wealth. The redistribution bias by the government is necessary and does exist, seemingly contradictory with neutral redistribution responsibility. Actually we emphasize that neutral redistribution is about the government’s own interests, should be under the supervision of the social forces and constraints, and must cut the interest relations with local groups. While redistribution bias is to balance the public interest, and the government need to improve the structure defects by effective redistribution. In general, it is necessary to achieve the equality of pow'er among various subjects, including the government, and the symmetry of power and responsibility among the subjects of the same society; otherwise, the goal of common prosperity cannot be achieved.

Notes

• 1 First-tier Cities refer to the metropolises that play an important role in the national political, economic, and other social activities and have the leading role and the ability to radiate and drive. The first-tier cities in mainland China generally refer to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.
• 2 Second-tier Cities are generally provincial capitals, strong economic cities in the eastern region, or regional central cities in the economically developed regions in China.
• 3 Third-tier Cities are generally the economically developed cities in the eastern region, the provincial sub-central cities, regional central cities, or economically strong cities in the central region, and the provincial capital cities in the western region.
• 4 Four-tier Cities are mostly medium-sized cities with relatively common urban scale, economic and social development level, and traffic construction.