来源：《卫报》
原文刊登日期：2021年3月29日
本文作者是美国著名参议员伯尼桑德斯，有删减。
The United States cannot prosper and remain a vigorous democracy when so few have so much and so many have so little. While many of my congressional colleagues choose to ignore it, the issue of income and wealth inequality is one of the great moral, economic and political crises that we face – and it must be dealt with.
当如此之少的人拥有如此之多，如此之多的人拥有如此之少的时候，美国就不可能繁荣并保持一个充满活力的民主政体。虽然我的许多国会同事选择忽视这一点，但收入和财富不平等问题是我们面临的重大道德、经济和政治危机之一，必须加以解决。
The unfortunate reality is that we are moving rapidly toward an oligarchic form of society, where a handful of billionaires have enormous wealth and power while working families have been struggling in a way we have not seen since the Great Depression. This situation has been exacerbated by the pandemic.
不幸的现实是，我们正迅速走向寡头社会，少数亿万富翁拥有巨大的财富和权力，而工薪家庭却以大萧条以来从未见过的方式苦苦挣扎。这种情况因新冠大流行而恶化。
Today, half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, 500,000 of the very poorest among us are homeless, millions are worried about evictions, 92 million are uninsured or underinsured, and families all across the country are worried about how they are going to feed their kids. Today, an entire generation of young people carry an outrageous level of student debt and face the reality that their standard of living will be lower than their parents’. And, most outrageously, low-income Americans now have a life expectancy that is about 15 years lower than the wealthy. Poverty in America has become a death sentence.
今天，我们有一半的人过着薪水微薄的生活，50万最贫穷的人无家可归，数百万人担心被房东驱逐，9200万人没有保险或保额不足，全美各地的家庭都在担心如何养活自己的孩子。今天，整整一代的年轻人背负着高得离谱的学生债务，并面临着生活水平将低于他们父母的现实。更令人震惊的是，低收入美国人的预期寿命比富人低15年左右。在美国，贫穷已经成了死刑判决。
Meanwhile, the people on top have never had it so good. The top 1% now own more wealth than the bottom 92%, and the 50 wealthiest Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 165 million people. While millions of Americans have lost their jobs and incomes during the pandemic, over the past year 650 billionaires have seen their wealth increase by $1.3tn.
与此同时，在顶端的人们从来没有过这么好的生活。现在，最富有的1%的人拥有的财富超过了最贫穷的92%的人，最富有的50个美国人拥有的财富也超过了美国社会最贫穷的一半人——1.65亿人。尽管数百万美国人在疫情期间失去了工作和收入，但过去一年里，650位亿万富翁的财富增加了1.3万亿美元。
The growing gap between the very rich and everyone else is nothing new. Over the past 40 years there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class and working families to the very wealthiest people in America. In 1978, the top 0.1% owned about 7% of the nation’s wealth. In 2019, the latest year of data available, they own nearly 20%. Unbelievably, the two richest people in America, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, now own more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans combined.
富人和普通人之间的差距越来越大并不是什么新鲜事。在过去的40年里，美国的财富从中产阶级和工薪家庭大量转移到最富有的人手中。1978年，最富有的0.1%的人拥有全美7%的财富。在2019年，也就是可获得的最新数据中，他们拥有近20%的股份。令人难以置信的是，美国最富有的两个人，杰夫·贝佐斯和埃隆·马斯克，现在拥有的财富超过了美国最底层40%人口的财富总和。
If income inequality had not skyrocketed over the past four decades and had simply stayed static, the average worker in America would be earning $42,000 more in income each year. Instead, as corporate chief executives now make over 300 times more than their average employees, the average American worker now earns $32 a week less than he or she did 48 years ago – after adjusting for inflation. In other words, despite huge increases in technology and productivity, ordinary workers are actually losing ground.
如果收入不平等在过去四十年中没有急剧上升，只是保持不变，那么美国普通工人每年的收入将增加42000美元。实际情况是，企业高管的收入是普通员工的300多倍，而美国工人的平均周收入比48年前低了32美元——这是在考虑通胀因素后得出的结论。换句话说，尽管技术和生产率大幅提高，普通工人实际上正在失去阵地。
Addressing income and wealth and inequality will not be easy, because we will be taking on some of the most powerful and well-financed entities in the country, including Wall Street, the health insurance industry, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry and the military-industrial-complex. But it must be done.
解决收入、财富和不平等问题并非易事，因为我们将与美国一些最强大、资金最充足的实体展开较量，包括华尔街、医疗保险行业、制药公司、化石燃料行业和军工联合体。但这是必须做的。