极端不平等毒害着美国社会

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极端不平等毒害着美国社会更新时间:2013-9-16 10:58:45 来源:本站原创 作者:佚名  


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Rich Man’s Recovery
极端不平等毒害着美国社会
A few days ago, The Times published a report on a society that is being undermined by extreme inequality. This society claims to reward the best and brightest regardless of family background. In practice, however, the children of the wealthy benefit from opportunities and connections unavailable to children of the middle and working classes. And it was clear from the article that the gap between the society’s meritocratic ideology and its increasingly oligarchic reality is having a deeply demoralizing effect.
几天前，《纽约时报》的一篇报道谈论了一个遭到极端不平等侵蚀的社会。这个社会宣称要让最优秀、最聪明的人得到回报，不论他们有着怎样的家庭背景。但实际情况却是，令富家子弟受益的机会和关系，总是与来自中产及工人阶层的孩子无缘。从文章中可以清晰地看到，在这个社会里，横亘在任人唯贤的理想与日趋寡头垄断的现实之间的鸿沟，正让人产生深深的挫败感。
The report illustrated in a nutshell why extreme inequality is destructive, why claims ring hollow that inequality of outcomes doesn’t matter as long as there is equality of opportunity. If the rich are so much richer than the rest that they live in a different social and material universe, that fact in itself makes nonsense of any notion of equal opportunity.
为什么极端不平等是极具破坏力的？为什么“只要机会均等，结果是否公平并不重要”之类的说辞听起来如此空洞？这篇报道对此做了简要的说明。假如富人在富裕程度上超出其他人太多，以致于生活在了另外一种社会和物质体系之中，那么这一事实本身就足以让任何机会均等的概念变得一文不值。
By the way, which society are we talking about? The answer is: the Harvard Business School — an elite institution, but one that is now characterized by a sharp internal division between ordinary students and a sub-elite of students from wealthy families.
对了，我们到底在说哪个社会？答案是：哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)——它是一家精英机构，但其内部目前却呈现出两极分化的特征，普通学员和来自富有家庭的准精英学员之间泾渭分明。
The point, of course, is that as the business school goes, so goes America, only even more so — a point driven home by the latest data on taxpayer incomes.
当然，核心问题在于，像这家商学院一样，美国也出现了两极分化，而且其程度只会更为严重——最新发布的纳税人收入数据表明了这一点。
The data in question have been compiled for the past decade by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, who use I.R.S. numbers to estimate the concentration of income in America’s upper strata. According to their estimates, top income shares took a hit during the Great Recession, as things like capital gains and Wall Street bonuses temporarily dried up. But the rich have come roaring back, to such an extent that 95 percent of the gains from economic recovery since 2009 have gone to the famous 1 percent. In fact, more than 60 percent of the gains went to the top 0.1 percent, people with annual incomes of more than $1.9 million.
我们所谈及的数据，是由经济学家托马斯·皮凯蒂(Thomas Piketty)和伊曼纽尔·赛斯(Emmanuel Saez)在过去数十年间收集整理的，他们利用美国国税局的数据来估算收入集中在美国社会顶层的程度。据其估算，“大萧条”(Great Recession)期间，由于资本利得、华尔街奖金之类大幅缩水，高收入阶层的收入份额受到了冲击。但自从2009年经济复苏之后，有钱人卷土重来，收入集中程度更上层楼，95%的收入流向了占总人口1%的最富有的人。事实上，超过60%的收入都流向了在总人口中占比0.1%、年入190万美元以上的人。
Basically, while the great majority of Americans are still living in a depressed economy, the rich have recovered just about all their losses and are powering ahead.
基本上，当大多数美国人仍然生活在经济低迷的环境之中时，富豪们不但捞回了所有损失，而且还冲劲十足地继续向前。
An aside: These numbers should (but probably won’t) finally kill claims that rising inequality is all about the highly educated doing better than those with less training. Only a small fraction of college graduates make it into the charmed circle of the 1 percent. Meanwhile, many, even most, highly educated young people are having a very rough time. They have their degrees, often acquired at the cost of heavy debts, but many remain unemployed or underemployed, while many more find that they are employed in jobs that make no use of their expensive educations. The college graduate serving lattes at Starbucks is a cliché, but he reflects a very real situation.
补充一点，这些数字应该可以（但未必能）彻底绞杀如下观点：收入不平等之所以日益加剧，完全是因为与受教育程度较低的人群相比，受教育程度较高的人群干得更出色。只有一小部分大学毕业生可以打入那无往不利的1%。与此同时，很多——甚至是大多数受过高等教育的年轻人过得都很艰难。他们拥有高学历——通常是以负债累累为代价得来的，但还是有许多人处于失业或者未充分就业状态，而更多找到工作的人则发现，他们所受的昂贵教育在工作中全无用武之地。那个在星巴克给顾客端拿铁的大学毕业生已经谈论太多了，但他的事迹的确反映了一种非常现实的情况。
What’s driving these huge income gains at the top? There’s intense debate on that point, with some economists still claiming that incredibly high incomes reflect comparably incredible contributions to the economy. I guess I’d note that a large proportion of those superhigh incomes come from the financial industry, which is, as you may remember, the industry that taxpayers had to bail out after its looming collapse threatened to take down the whole economy.
是什么力量让庞大的收入所得流向了社会顶层？围绕这一点有着很激烈的争论，一些经济学家至今仍声称，令人难以置信的高收入体现出了同样令人难以置信的经济贡献。我想我应该指出，超高收入中的很大一部分都来自金融产业，你或许还记得，就是这个产业当初濒临崩溃，差一点拖垮整个经济，它是靠了纳税人的帮助才度过难关的。
In any case, however, whatever is causing the growing concentration of income at the top, the effect of that concentration is to undermine all the values that define America. Year by year, we’re diverging from our ideals. Inherited privilege is crowding out equality of opportunity; the power of money is crowding out effective democracy.
然而，不管是什么原因导致收入日益向社会顶层集中，这种效应都会伤害一切作为美国立国之本的价值观。这些年来，我们与自己的理想渐行渐远。世代承袭的特权把机会均等挤到了一边；金钱的威力把有效的民主挤到了一边。
So what can be done? For the moment, the kind of transformation that took place under the New Deal — a transformation that created a middle-class society, not just through government programs, but by greatly increasing workers’ bargaining power — seems politically out of reach. But that doesn’t mean we should give up on smaller steps, initiatives that do at least a bit to level the playing field.
我们能做些什么呢？此时此刻，罗斯福新政(New Deal)下产生的那种社会转型——不仅依靠政府实施的种种规划，还要通过大幅度提高工人议价能力，创造出一个“中产阶级社会”——在政治上是遥不可及的。不过，这并不意味着我们连小一点的进步都不去争取，至少做些什么来创造更公平的竞争环境。
Take, for example, the proposal by Bill de Blasio, who finished in first place in Tuesday’s Democratic primary and is the probable next mayor of New York, to provide universal prekindergarten education, paid for with a small tax surcharge on those with incomes over $500,000. The usual suspects are, of course, screaming and talking about their hurt feelings; they’ve been doing a lot of that these past few years, even while making out like bandits. But surely this is exactly the sort of thing we should be doing: Taxing the ever-richer rich, at least a bit, to expand opportunity for the children of the less fortunate.
以比尔·德布拉西奥(Bill de Blasio)的提案为例。德布拉西奥在周二的民主党内初选中获得的票数最多，有可能成为下一任纽约市长，他提议普及早教，并对年收入超过50万美元的人征收少量附加税，用以支付所需费用。那帮人当然还是跑出来惊声尖叫了，念叨着他们那被伤害的情感；过去几年里他们经常这样，哪怕另一头已经赚了个盆丰钵满。但毫无疑问，这正是我们该干的事情：至少向愈发富有的富人再多征收一点税款，好给不那么富有的孩子们带来更多的机会。
Some pundits are already suggesting that Mr. de Blasio’s unexpected rise is the leading edge of a new economic populism that will shake up our whole political system. That seems premature, but I hope they’re right. For extreme inequality is still on the rise — and it’s poisoning our society.
一些权威人士已经暗示，德布拉西奥的意外上位，意味着一种新的经济民粹主义正在崭露头角，而这种经济民粹主义将会撼动整个政治体系。这话似乎说得太早了；但我希望他们没有说错。因为极端不平等仍在日益加剧——而这种不平等正在毒害我们的社会。

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