Inequality is back in the news, largely thanks to Occupy Wall Street, but with an assist from the Congressional Budget Office. And you know what that means: It’s time to roll out the obfuscators!
社會不平等又重回新聞版面上，大半要感謝占領華爾街的行動，還有美國國會預算處的協助。這表示是時候碾平那些混淆事實的人了！
Anyone who has tracked this issue over time knows what I mean. Whenever growing income disparities threaten to come into focus, a reliable set of defenders tries to bring back the blur. Think tanks put out reports claiming that inequality isn’t really rising, or that it doesn’t matter. Pundits try to put a more benign face on the phenomenon, claiming that it’s not really the wealthy few versus the rest, it’s the educated versus the less educated.
長期關注此議題的人會明白我的意思。每當收入增長不均的威脅浮上檯面，總是會有一群忠誠的捍衛者試著模糊焦點。智庫會提出報告，不是聲稱不平等並沒有攀升，就是說這一點也不重要。而專家則會擺出比較親切的面孔，宣稱其實不是少數富貴對抗普羅大眾，而是有受教育對抗比較沒受教育的人。
So what you need to know is that all of these claims are basically attempts to obscure the stark reality: We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only.
要知道基本上，所有這些論點都是試圖遮掩赤裸裸的事實，我們的社會中增加的財富都是集中在少數人手上，而收入與財產的集中足以威脅民主，讓民主名存實亡。
The budget office laid out some of that stark reality in a recent report, which documented a sharp decline in the share of total income going to lower- and middle-income Americans. We still like to think of ourselves as a middle-class country. But with the bottom 80 percent of households now receiving less than half of total income, that’s a vision increasingly at odds with reality.
預算處最近的報告展現了這顯而易見的真相，美國中產階級與低收入戶的收入分配急劇下滑。我們還是喜歡自認為中產階級國家，可是當80%的家庭得不到總收入的一半時，印象與現實顯得越來越不一致。
In response, the usual suspects have rolled out some familiar arguments: the data are flawed (they aren’t); the rich are an ever-changing group (not so); and so on. The most popular argument right now seems, however, to be the claim that we may not be a middle-class society, but we’re still an upper-middle-class society, in which a broad class of highly educated workers, who have the skills to compete in the modern world, is doing very well.
為了回應，那些飽受嫌疑的人又開始提出再熟悉也不過的主張，如數據有瑕疵(並沒有)，富人階層是不斷替換的(並不是)之類。然而目前最為流行的說法，是聲稱我們或許不是中產階級社會，可是仍可稱為中上階級的社會。大量受過良好教育的勞工表現傑出，有本錢在現代世界中競爭。
It’s a nice story, and a lot less disturbing than the picture of a nation in which a much smaller group of rich people is becoming increasingly dominant. But it’s not true.
比起國內少數有錢人越來越占優勢的情況，這的確是個美好的故事，也比較沒那麼讓人心煩，但終究不是事實。
Workers with college degrees have indeed, on average, done better than workers without, and the gap has generally widened over time. But highly educated Americans have by no means been immune to income stagnation and growing economic insecurity. Wage gains for most college-educated workers have been unimpressive (and nonexistent since 2000), while even the well-educated can no longer count on getting jobs with good benefits. In particular, these days workers with a college degree but no further degrees are less likely to get workplace health coverage than workers with only a high school degree were in 1979.
平均來看，受過大學教育的勞工確實表現的比較出色，而這鴻溝正隨著時間逐漸拉開，可是受過高等教育的勞工也沒因此免於收入停滯及持續增長的經濟不安全感。大多大學畢業的勞工薪資實在不怎麼樣，而且從2000年後就已經沒有增加，甚至良好教育也不代表可以找到良好福利的工作。尤其現在大學學歷的勞工很少有工作場所保險，比1979年只有高中學歷的勞工還少。
So who is getting the big gains? A very small, wealthy minority.
那麼是誰大大的賺了一筆呢？非常稀少的有錢人。
The budget office report tells us that essentially all of the upward redistribution of income away from the bottom 80 percent has gone to the highest-income 1 percent of Americans. That is, the protesters who portray themselves as representing the interests of the 99 percent have it basically right, and the pundits solemnly assuring them that it’s really about education, not the gains of a small elite, have it completely wrong.
預算處的報告表明收入向上重新分配，遠離80%的民眾，流到了最高收入1%的美國人手中。所以那些示威者描述自己代表99%民眾利益基本上是對的，至於鄭重擔保問題出在教育，而不是少數菁英得益的專家錯得離譜。
If anything, the protesters are setting the cutoff too low. The recent budget office report doesn’t look inside the top 1 percent, but an earlier report, which only went up to 2005, found that almost two-thirds of the rising share of the top percentile in income actually went to the top 0.1 percent — the richest thousandth of Americans, who saw their real incomes rise more than 400 percent over the period from 1979 to 2005.
真要說有什麼不對，就是示威者把數字降太低了。雖然近年來預算處並沒有調查最高的1%，不過之前僅在2005年出版的報告發現，其實最高1%區間裡，收入有將近三分之二都屬於0.1%的人。從1979到2005年以來，千分之一的美國人實質所得增加了超過400%。
Who’s in that top 0.1 percent? Are they heroic entrepreneurs creating jobs? No, for the most part, they’re corporate executives. Recent research shows that around 60 percent of the top 0.1 percent either are executives in nonfinancial companies or make their money in finance, i.e., Wall Street broadly defined. Add in lawyers and people in real estate, and we’re talking about more than 70 percent of the lucky one-thousandth.
誰是那0.1%呢？是那些創造就業的偉大企業家嗎？不，他們大多是公司的高階主管。最近的研究顯示這群0.1%的人約有六成不是非金融公司的主管，就是在金融業賺錢。換句話說，就是在華爾街。再加上律師和不動產業，就是千分之一幸運兒裡的70%啦。
But why does this growing concentration of income and wealth in a few hands matter? Part of the answer is that rising inequality has meant a nation in which most families don’t share fully in economic growth. Another part of the answer is that once you realize just how much richer the rich have become, the argument that higher taxes on high incomes should be part of any long-run budget deal becomes a lot more compelling.
但收入集中在少數人有關係嗎？答案之一是持續升高的不均，意味著大部分家庭並沒有分享到經濟成長的果實。答案之二是一但了解這些富人有多富有，主張長期預算方案裡要對高收入階層增稅的說法就更有說服力。
The larger answer, however, is that extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy. Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of big money, and that the warping is getting worse as the wealth of a few grows ever larger?
然而最重要的答案是收入極端的集中與現實的民主難以共存。有人可以鄭重否認我們的政治體系沒受到大把鈔票影響扭曲嗎？若這批人更加富有，情況不會更為惡化嗎？
Some pundits are still trying to dismiss concerns about rising inequality as somehow foolish. But the truth is that the whole nature of our society is at stake.
有些專家還是把不平等加劇當成愚蠢議題，事實是我們的社會已經來到危急關頭。
創作內容
[克魯曼專欄] 寡頭政治，美國風格 (原文載於2012/11/04)
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