演讲题目：The rise of the new global super-rich

演讲简介：

高端的技术正在日新月异地发展，经济失衡也越演越烈，作家克里斯蒂娅•弗里兰称。在这激动人心的演讲中，她描述了正在崛起的一代新富豪(极端的财富赋予他们极端的势力)，同时阐述了全球化和技术革新不但没有缩小贫富差距，反而加剧了贫富悬殊。

以下视频来源于



中英文字幕

So here's the most important economic fact of our time.

当今最重要的经济现状是

We are living in an age of surging income inequality, particularly between those at the very top and everyone else.

我们生活在一个收入差异加巨的年代，特别是处于顶层的人士收入远高于其它阶层。

This shift is the most striking in the U.S. and in the U.K.,

这种现象在英美最为显著

but it's a global phenomenon.

但全球皆然。

It's happening in communist China, in formerly communist Russia, it's happening in India, in my own native Canada.

包括社会主义制度的中国，前共产主义苏联，印度和我的祖国加拿大。

We're even seeing it in cozy social democracies like Sweden, Finland and Germany.

甚至在最适宜居住的社会民主国家，像瑞典，芬兰和德国都是如此。

Let me give you a few numbers to place what's happening.

我以几个数字为例，大家就会明白。

In the 1970s, the One Percent accounted for about 10 percent of the national income in the United States.

在70年代的美国，(最富有的)1%的人的所得占据了10%的国民收入。

Today, their share has more than doubled to above 20 percent.

如今，这部分人的收入占有率增加了一倍多，超过20%。

But what's even more striking is what's happening at the very tippy top of the income distribution.

更让人震惊的是，顶层中的顶层们的收入分配。

The 0.1 percent in the U.S. today account for more than eight percent of the national income.

那0.1%尖端人士拥有全美8%以上的国民收入。

They are where the One Percent was 30 years ago.

这是30年前顶端1%的占有率。

Let me give you another number to put that in perspective, and this is a figure that was calculated in 2005 by Robert Reich,

让我再举一个数字来审视这个问题，这是2005年的统计数据，由Robert Reich 提供，

the Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration.

他是克林顿政府的劳工部长。

Reich took the wealth of two admittedly very rich men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett,

Reich以两个无可厚非的巨富比尔.盖茨和沃伦.巴菲特的财富为例，

and he found that it was equivalent to the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population,

发现这个总和相当于全美最底层的40%的全部财富

120 million people.

即1.2亿人的总和。

Now, as it happens, Warren Buffett is not only himself a plutocrat, he is one of the most astute observers of that phenomenon,

碰巧的是，沃伦 · 巴菲特不仅自己是个富豪，同时是此现象最敏锐的观察者之一，

and he has his own favorite number.

他有自己最偏好的数据。

Buffett likes to point out that in 1992,

巴菲特指出，在1992年，

the combined wealth of the people on the Forbes 400 list -- and this is the list of the 400 richest Americans -- was 300 billion dollars.

福布斯400强的财富总和，即最富有的400个美国人总价值3000 亿美金。

Just think about it.

试想一下。

You didn't even need to be a billionaire to get on that list in 1992.

不用十亿美金，你就可以在1992年跻身福布斯400强。

Well, today, that figure has more than quintupled to 1.7 trillion,

现如今这个数字翻了五倍多，达到1.7万亿美金，

and I probably don't need to tell you that we haven't seen anything similar happen to the middle class,

不用我说大家便知，类似的增长并没发生在中产阶级身上，

whose wealth has stagnated if not actually decreased.

他们的财富即使没有实际减少，也一直停滞不前。

So we're living in the age of the global plutocracy, but we've been slow to notice it.

我们生活在全球财阀统治的时代，但我们却迟迟没有注意到它。

One of the reasons, I think, is a sort of boiled frog phenomenon.

我认为其中一个原因，类似于"温水青蛙"现象。

Changes which are slow and gradual can be hard to notice even if their ultimate impact is quite dramatic.

缓慢和逐步的变化很难被注意到，即使最终的结果是致命的。

Think about what happened, after all, to the poor frog.

想想那只青蛙悲惨的结局吧。

But I think there's something else going on.

但我认为还有别的原因。

Talking about income inequality, even if you're not on the Forbes 400 list, can make us feel uncomfortable.

当谈到收入不平等时，即使不是福布斯400强之列的巨富，也会另人感到很不舒服。

It feels less positive, less optimistic, to talk about how the pie is sliced than to think about how to make the pie bigger.

好似用消极、悲观的态度来谈论如何切分蛋糕，而不是积极想办法使这块蛋糕变大。

And if you do happen to be on the Forbes 400 list, talking about income distribution, and inevitably its cousin, income redistribution,

如果你有幸跻身福布斯400强，当讨论收入分配，以及随之而来的收入再分配时，

can be downright threatening.

你可能会有彻底的威胁感。

So we're living in the age of surging income inequality, especially at the top.

我们生活在收入不平等加剧的年代，尤其是在顶端人群中。

What's driving it, and what can we do about it?

这背后的动因是什么？我们又能做些什么？

One set of causes is political: lower taxes, deregulation, particularly of financial services, privatization,

其中之一是政治原因，降低税收，放松管制，特别是对金融服务业私有化，

weaker legal protections for trade unions, all of these have contributed to more and more income going to the very, very top.

削弱法律对工会的保护，这一切都造成越来越多的收入集中到社会顶层。

A lot of these political factors can be broadly lumped under the category of "crony capitalism,"

很多这些政治因素可以大致归结为"裙带资本主义"，

political changes that benefit a group of well-connected insiders but don't actually do much good for the rest of us.

政治变革使得密切相关的圈内人士直接受益，但实际上对我们其他人没有多大好处。

In practice, getting rid of crony capitalism is incredibly difficult.

在实践中，铲除裙带资本主义是非常困难的。

Think of all the years reformers of various stripes have tried to get rid of corruption in Russia, for instance,

以俄罗斯为例，多年来有多少改革派想尽办法铲除腐败，

or how hard it is to re-regulate the banks even after the most profound financial crisis since the Great Depression,

力尽艰辛重整银行系统，即使是在大萧条以来最严重的金融危机之后，依然见效不大。

or even how difficult it is to get the big multinational companies, including those whose motto might be "don't do evil,"

再有，要求那些大型跨国公司，包括一些口口声声宣扬"为善"的公司，

to pay taxes at a rate even approaching that paid by the middle class.

根据中产阶级的税率来纳税是多么困难重重。

But while getting rid of crony capitalism in practice is really, really hard, at least intellectually, it's an easy problem.

但尽管在实践中根除裙带资本主义实属不易，但至少从理智上讲，那是个简单的问题。

After all, no one is actually in favor of crony capitalism.

毕竟，没有人是真正支持裙带资本主义的。

Indeed, this is one of those rare issues that unites the left and the right.

事实上这个问题罕见地统一了左派和右派。

A critique of crony capitalism is as central to the Tea Party as it is to Occupy Wall Street.

批判裙带资本主义对茶党和占领华尔街派而言同样重要。

Today, we are living through an era of economic transformation comparable in its scale and its scope to the Industrial Revolution.

今天，我们生活在一个经济转型的时代，其规模和范围可与工业革命相提并论。

To be sure that this new economy benefits us all and not just the plutocrats,

要确保这一新经济造福天下，而不仅仅是使富豪们受益，

we need to embark on an era of comparably ambitious social and political change.

我们需要开启一个雄心勃勃的社会和政治变革的时代。

We need a new New Deal.

我们需要一个新政。