Inequality has emerged as a major issue in the US and beyond. A generation ago it could reasonably have been asserted that the overall growth rate of the economy was the main influence on the growth in middle-class incomes and progress in reducing poverty. This is no longer a plausible claim.		在美国乃至全世界，不平等已成为一个大问题。二三十年前，说整体经济增长率是中产阶层收入增长和消除贫困运动取得进展的主要驱动力，还算得上是个合理的论断。但这个说法如今已不再可信。
The share of income going to the top 1 per cent of earners has increased sharply. A rising share of output is going to profits. Real wages are stagnant. Family incomes have not risen as fast as productivity. The cumulative effect of all these developments is that the US may well be on the way to becoming a Downton Abbey economy. It is very likely that these issues will be with us long after the cyclical conditions have normalised and budget deficits have at last been addressed.		收入最高的1%人群所获收入占所有人群总收入的比例已大幅上升。越来越大比例的产出转化为了利润。实际工资停滞不前。家庭收入增速不及生产率增速。这些趋势的累积效应导致，美国很可能正在迈向“唐顿庄园式经济体”(Downton Abbey economy)。这些问题很可能在周期性状况正常化、预算赤字问题最终得到解决之后，仍长期困扰我们。
President Barack Obama is right to be concerned. Those who condemn him for “tearing down the wealthy” and engaging in un-American populism are, to put it politely, lacking in historical perspective. Presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Harry Truman railed against the excesses of a privileged few in finance and business. Some have gone beyond rhetoric. Confronted with rising steel prices, John Kennedy sent the FBI storming into corporate offices and is widely thought to have ordered the authorities to audit executives’ personal tax returns. Richard Nixon used the same weapon in 1973, announcing tax investigations “of the books of companies which raised their prices more than 1.5 per cent above the January ceiling”. All were reacting in their own way to a phenomenon that Bill Clinton has described best: “Although America’s rich got richer?.?.?.?the country did not?.?.?.?the stock market tripled but wages went down.”		巴拉克?奥巴马(Barack Obama)总统感到担忧是有理由的。那些谴责奥巴马“弄垮富人”、推行非美式民粹主义的人——说得客气点——缺乏历史眼光。从富兰克林?罗斯福(Franklin Roosevelt)到哈里?杜鲁门(Harry Truman)，多位美国总统都曾抨击金融界和商界少数特权人士的出格之举。有些还曾将这种抨击付诸行动。面对钢价的不断攀升，约翰?肯尼迪(John F Kennedy)曾派美国联邦调查局(FBI)人员突击检查企业的办公室，人们还普遍认为，他曾命令相关部门审计企业高管的个人报税表。理查德?尼克松(Richard Nixon)在1973年采取了同样的办法，宣布要对“提价幅度相对1月最高限价超过1.5%的企业的账簿”进行税务调查。这些总统都曾以各自的方式应对不平等现象。关于这种现象，比尔?克林顿(Bill Clinton)的描述是最到位的：“尽管美国的富人变得更富……美国并没有变得更富……股市上涨了两倍，但工资却下跌了。”
Given the widespread frustration with stagnant incomes, and an increasing body of evidence suggesting that the worst-off have few opportunities to improve their lot, demands for action are hardly unreasonable. The challenge is knowing what to do.		人们普遍对收入的停滞感到沮丧，并且越来越多的证据显示，收入最低的人群改善境况的机会渺茫，有鉴于此，要求政府采取行动的呼声有其道理。难点在于，该怎么做？
If income could be redistributed without damping economic growth, there would be a compelling case for reducing incomes at the top and transferring the proceeds to those in the middle and at the bottom. Unfortunately this is not the case. It is easy to think of policies that would have reduced the earning power of Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg by making it more difficult to start and profit from a business. But it is much harder to see how such policies would raise the incomes of the rest of the population. Such polices would surely hurt them as consumers by depriving them of the fruits of technological progress.		如果能够在不损害经济增长的情况下实现收入再分配，那么我们就有非常充分的理由去减少顶层人群的收入、并将其转移支付给中下层人群。可惜的是，情况并非如此。设计一种政策，通过加大创业和企业家实现盈利的难度，来削弱比尔?盖茨(Bill Gates)和马克?扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)之类富人的赚钱能力，这倒挺容易。但要说明白这种政策如何能够提升其他人群的收入，就困难得多了。此类政策肯定会对其他人群造成伤害，因为此类政策剥夺了他们作为消费者分享技术进步果实的权利。
It is certainly true that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of highly paid people in finance over the last generation. Recent studies reveal that most of the increase has resulted from an increase in the value of assets under management. (The percentage of assets that financiers take in fees has remained roughly constant.) Perhaps some policy could be found that would reduce these fees but the beneficiaries would be the owners of financial assets – a group that consists mainly of very wealthy people.		的确，过去二三十年间，金融界高收入人群的数量剧增。近期一些研究显示，这很大程度上源于金融家所管理资产价值的增加。（金融家收取的管理费用占所管理资产的比例基本上保持了稳定。）或许我们可以设计出某种政策，把管理费降下来，但这样做只会为金融资产的所有者带来好处，而金融资产的所有者主要是一群顶级富豪。
It is not enough to identify policies that reduce inequality. To be effective they must also raise the incomes of the middle class and the poor. Tax reform has a major role to play. The current tax code is so badly designed that it is very likely to be having the effect of reducing economic growth. It also allows the rich to shield a far greater proportion of their income from taxation than the poor. For example, last year’s increase in the stock market represented an increase in wealth of about $6tn, of which the lion’s share went to the very wealthy.		光是找出能够减轻不平等状况的政策是不够的。要真正具有效果，这些政策还必须能够提高中产阶层和穷人的收入。税改在其中可发挥关键作用。现行税制设计得如此糟糕，甚至很有可能起到了拉低经济增长的作用。在现行税制下，富人还可以实现远高于穷人的收入避税比例。比如，去年股市市值的增长意味着新增了约6万亿美元的财富，其中大部分都流进了顶级富豪的腰包。
It is unlikely that the government will collect as much as 10 per cent of this figure. That is because of a host of policies that favour the rich, such as the capital gains exemption, the ability to defer tax on unrealised capital gains, and the fact that gains on assets passed on at death are not taxed at all. Similarly, the corporate tax system allows value to flow through it like a sieve. The ratio of corporate tax collections to the market value of US corporations is near a record low. The estate tax can be more or less avoided with sophisticated planning.		政府对这部分财富的征税比例可能还不到10%。这是因为，有一系列偏袒富人的政策，比如资本利得免税，未实现资本利得递延缴税，遗赠资产的利得根本无需纳税。类似的，公司税制度也未能严密“过滤”价值。企业税征收额占美国企业市值的比例已接近历史低位。房地产遗产税很大程度上可通过复杂的税务设计规避掉。
Closing loopholes that only the wealthy can enjoy would enable taxes to be cut elsewhere. Measures such as the earned income tax credit can raise the incomes of the poor and middle class by more than they cost the Treasury, because they give people incentives to work and save.		填补只有富人能钻的漏洞，能够为其他领域的减税提供空间。“劳动所得税扣抵制”(EITC)等举措对中低收入阶层收入的提振作用，超过财政部为实施这些举措支付的成本，因为这些举措能够激励人们去工作和储蓄。
It is ironic that those who profess the most enthusiasm for market forces are least enthusiastic about curbing tax benefits for the wealthy. Sooner or later inequality will have to be addressed. Much better that it be done by letting free markets operate and then working to improve the result. Policies that aim instead to thwart market forces rarely work, and usually fall victim to the law of unintended consequences.		颇具讽刺意味的是，自称最热烈拥护市场力量的那些人，对限制富人享受的税收优惠最不热心。不平等问题迟早必须得到解决。如果能通过自由市场运转来解决这个问题，然后再努力改善其结果，那么效果会好得多。那些希望阻挠市场发挥作用的政策很少会奏效，并且通常会成为“意外后果法则”(law of unintended consequences)的牺牲品。