In South Africa, one of the most unequal countries in the world, the richest one-tenth of 1%, owns almost 30% of all the country’s wealth, more than double what the bottom 90% owns.
南非,世界上贫富不均 最严重的国家之一, 最富有的 0.1% 的人 拥有整个国家约 30% 的财富, 比末位 90% 的人 拥有的多不止一倍。
Income and wealth inequality are not new. In fact, economists and historians who’ve charted economic inequality throughout history haven’t found a single society without it. Which raises a bleak question: is inequality inevitable?
收入和财富不均 不是什么新鲜话题。 长久以来记录经济不均衡 问题的经济学家和历史学家 从未发现过 不存在这个现象的社会。 这就让人想到一个悲观的问题: 不平等是不可避免的吗?
One way to estimate inequality is with a number called the Gini index, which is calculated by comparing the income or wealth distribution of a perfectly equal society to the actual income or wealth distribution. The area of this shape multiplied by 2 is the Gini index.
衡量不平等程度的一种方式是 基尼系数(Gini index), 通过比较绝对平等社会的 收入或财富分布 与实际收入或财富分布计算得出。 这块面积乘以二就可得出基尼系数。
A Gini of 1 indicates perfect inequality— one person has everything and everyone else has nothing. You’d never see this in real life because everyone except that one person would starve.
基尼系数为 1 即为绝对不平等, 一个人应有尽有, 其他人一无所有。 现实生活中是不会 出现这样的情形的, 因为这就代表除了一个人, 所有人都得挨饿。
A Gini index of 0 indicates perfect equality— everyone has exactly the same income or wealth. But you also never see this in real life, not even in communist countries, because for one thing, that would mean paying everyone— no matter how young, old, what job they’re in or where they work— the exact same wage.
基尼系数为 0 即为完全平等, 人人都拥有相同的收入或财富。 但是现实生活中也不会出现这样的 情况,连共产主义国家都不可能, 因为首先,这就意味着 为每个人—— 无论年龄、工作岗位、 工作地点, 支付同样的薪水。
Typical after-tax Ginis in developed countries today are around 0.3, though there’s a wide range from pretty equal to pretty unequal.
发达国家的税后基尼系数 通常为 0.3 左右, 虽然相对平等和相对不平等 之间有一定的范围。
Before we go any further, you should know what the Gini index— or any other measure of economic inequality— doesn’t tell us: it gives no information about how income and wealth are distributed across genders, races, educational backgrounds or other demographics; it doesn’t tell us how easy or difficult it is to escape poverty. And it also gives no insight as to how a particular society arrived at its present level of inequality. Economic inequality is deeply entangled with other types of inequality: for example, generations of discrimination, imperialism, and colonialism created deeply rooted power and class inequalities that persist to this day.
在我们更深入讨论之前, 你得知道基尼系数, 和其他经济不平等的衡量标准 没有告诉我们什么: 它不会显示我们的收入和财富 根据性别、人种、教育背景及其他 人口统计数据的分布, 不会显示我们 脱离贫困的难易程度。 也不能体现这个社会 达到现在这个不平等情况的历程。 经济不平等与其他形式的 不平等息息相关, 如世世代代的歧视、帝国主义、 殖民主义, 造成了深入骨髓的 权力和阶级不平等, 直至今日。
But we still need at least a rough measure of who gets how much in a country. That’s what the Gini index gives us.
但是我们还是得有一个 对国民所得的粗略估计。 这就是基尼系数的功能。
Some countries are, economically, much more unequal than others. And that’s because a significant portion of economic inequality is the result of choices that governments make.
有的国家在经济上 要比别的国家不平等得多。 这是由于经济不平等的 大部分原因来自于 政府决策。
Let's talk about some of these choices. First: what kind of economy to use.
我们来谈谈几个决策的例子。 第一:采用何种经济体制。
In the 20th century, some countries switched to socialism or communism for a variety of reasons, including reducing economic inequality. These changes did dramatically reduce economic inequality in the two largest non-capitalist economies, China and the Soviet Union— especially in the Soviet Union.
20 世纪,一些国家由于各种原因 采用了社会主义或共产主义, 比如减少贫富不均。 这些改革确实急剧减少了 贫富不均现象, 这发生在了两个最大的 非资本主义经济体—— 中国和苏联, 尤其是在苏联中。
But neither country prospered as much as the world's leading economies. So yes, people earned about as much as their neighbors did, but that wasn’t very much.
但是这两个国家都没有 像世界领先经济体那样发达起来。 所以没错,人人都和邻居 赚得一样多, 但是赚了没多少。
This— and many other issues— contributed to the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. And China, to grow more quickly, shifted its economy towards capitalism starting in the late 1970s.
这和很多其他因素共同 导致了 1991 年的苏联解体。 而中国,为了加速发展, 从上世纪 70 年代后期 开始逐渐向资本主义转型。
What about capitalist countries? Can they choose to reduce economic inequality? It’s tempting to think “no, because the whole point of capitalism is to hoard enough gold coins to be able to dive into them like Scrooge McDuck.” China seems to provide the textbook example of this: after it became more capitalist, its Gini index shot up from under 0.4 to over 0.55. Meanwhile, its per capita yearly income jumped from the rough equivalent of $1,500 to over $13,000.
资本主义国家又是什么情况? 它们想解决经济不平等问题吗? 我们可能会这么想: “不可能,因为资本主义的目的就是 囤一大堆金币,像麦克老鸭那样 在金币海里游泳。” 中国似乎证实了这个想法: 逐步转型资本主义后, 中国的基尼系数从 低于 0.4 飙升至高于 0.55。 与此同时,人均年收入 从折合约 1500 美元 升至超 13000 美元。
But there are many counter-examples: capitalist countries in which inequality is actually holding steady or decreasing. France has kept its Gini index below 0.32 since 1979. Ireland's Gini has been trending mostly downward since 1995. The Netherlands and Denmark have kept theirs below 0.28 since the 1980s.
但是也有很多反例: 有资本主义国家的不平等系数 持平或降低。 法国从 1979 年起基尼系数 一直保持在 0.32 以下, 爱尔兰的基尼系数从 1995 年 持续走低。 荷兰和丹麦从上世纪 80 年代起 就一直保持在 0.28 以下。
How do they do it?
它们是如何做到的?
One way is with taxes. Personal income taxes in most countries are progressive: the more money you make, the higher your tax rate. And the more progressive your tax system, the more it reduces inequality. So, for example, while pre-tax income inequality in France is roughly the same as it is in the US, post-tax inequality in France is roughly 20% lower.
一个方法是征税。 大部分国家的个人所得税 制度是梯度式的: 赚得越多,税率越高。 税制梯度越大就 越能减少不平等现象。 所以,以法国为例, 虽然法国的税前收入不均情况 和美国大致相同, 法国的税后不均情况 要比美国低 20%。
Meanwhile, inheritance taxes can reduce the amount of wealth that a single family can amass over generations. Germany and many other European countries have inheritance or estate taxes that kick in at a few thousand to a few hundred thousand Euros, depending on who's inheriting. The US, on the other hand, lets you inherit $12 million without paying any federal tax.
遗产税也可以减少 一个家庭代代相传的财富。 德国和一些欧洲国家 设立了遗产税或继承税制度, 税款大约在几千至几万欧元, 取决于继承人身份。 而美国 允许在不缴联邦税的情况下 继承 1200 万美元的遗产。
Another way is with transfers— when the government takes tax revenues from one group of people and gives it to another. For example, Social Security programs tax people who work and use the revenue to support retirees. In Italy, about a quarter of Italians’ disposable household income comes from government transfers. That’s a lot, especially relative to the US, where the figure is just over 5%.
还有一种方式是转移支付, 意思是政府将 来自一部分人的税收 补贴给另一部分人。 比如,社会保障计划 向就业人员征税, 将这笔税收补贴给退休人员。 在意大利,四分之一的 意大利家庭可支配收入 来自政府发放。 数目不小, 尤其是与美国相比, 美国的比例只是略高于 5%。
A third way is to ensure that everyone has access to things like education and healthcare. A highly educated, healthy workforce can command a higher salary on the market, thus reducing inequality. The fourth way is addressing the digital divide: the gap between those who have access to the Internet and those who do not.
第三个方式是对每个公民的保障, 如教育和医疗保障。 一个高知健康劳力可以 在就业市场要求更高的工资, 由此减少不平等现象。 第四个方式是弥合数字鸿沟, 即有无条件上网的 人群之间的差距。
A fifth way is dealing with extreme wealth. Multibillionaires can buy social media platforms, news outlets, policy think-tanks, perhaps even politicians, and bend them to their will, threatening the very fabric of democracy.
第五个方式是处理极端富裕情况。 亿万富翁可以买下社交平台、 新闻媒体、政策智囊团, 甚至是政客, 按照他们的意愿行事, 威胁着民主的基本结构。
We are just barely scratching the surface of inequality here. We haven’t touched on the drastic divides in who has wealth and who doesn’t; the power structures that prevent social and economic mobility; and the drastic inequality between countries— the fact that, for example, just three Americans have 90 billion more dollars than Egypt, a country of 100 million people.
我们其实还只是在“隔靴搔痒”。 我们都没触及 贫富群体之间的鸿沟、 阻碍社会和经济流动的权力结构 和国与国之间的不平等差距, 就这点而言,举个例子, 有三个美国人的财产比埃及—— 人口一亿的国家 还多 900 亿美元财产。
And here’s one final thing to think about: power and wealth are self-reinforcing, which means that equality is not. Left to their own devices, societies tend toward inequality— unless we weaken the feedback loops of wealth and power concentration.
最后有一点值得我们思考: 权力和财富会自我增强, 代表平等并不会。 如果就这么自主运行下去, 社会会日趋不平等, 除非我们可以削弱 财富和权力集中的闭环。