来源：《卫报》
刊登日期：2021年5月21日
The richest have got even richer when many people have endured a Covid year of hardship, loss and boredom. A preview released on Friday reveals that there are now 24 more billionaires than 12 months earlier in Britain, a greater increase than in any year since 1990. To have created such a concentration of wealth during a pandemic is an indictment of an economic system that has gone badly wrong.
当许多人经历了艰难、失落和无聊的新冠之年后，最富有的人变得更加富有。上周五发布的一份预告显示，英国现在的亿万富翁人数比12个月前增加了24人，是1990年以来增长最多的一年。在大流行期间创造如此集中的财富，是一个严重错误的经济体系的衰败迹象。
Earlier this year, the Resolution Foundation revealed the shocking size of the wealth gap in Britain. In 2016-18, some 40% of the population had zero accumulated net wealth. The foundation calculated that if the median household saved all disposable income, it would take at least 400 years for it to reach the average wealth of the richest 1%. Yet this was not the whole picture. The thinktank worked out whether the wealthiest people had given national statisticians a full account when itemising their affluence. It turns out that they had not. That meant the top 1% share of wealth in 2018 was not, as officially claimed, 18% but at least 23%. The wealth gap has only yawned wider since.
今年早些时候，决议基金会披露了英国令人震惊的贫富差距。2016-18年，约40%的人口积累的净财富为零。该基金会计算出，如果中等家庭把所有可支配收入都存起来，至少需要400年才能达到最富有的1%的平均财富水平。然而，这还不是全部。该智库研究了最富有的人在统计他们的财富时是否给了统计学家一个完整的账目。事实证明没有。这意味着2018年最富有的1%的人并不像官方宣称的占18%，而是至少占23%。此后，贫富差距进一步扩大。
Much of the gains in household wealth are down to rising financial asset prices rather than business brains. Thanks to the government’s actions, owners of assets have had a very good pandemic. Shares in London are 17% higher than a year ago, driven up by the search for yields in a low-inflation world. House prices rose by 10.2% in the past 12 months, the highest annual growth rate for 14 years, helped by the chancellor’s stamp duty holiday. There’s no need to do much to increase the value of one’s wealth if one is lucky enough to be well-off.
家庭财富的增长很大程度上归功于金融资产价格的上涨，而不是商业头脑。由于政府的行动，资产所有者在大流行期间过得非常好。伦敦股市比一年前上涨了17%，这是受在低通胀环境下寻求收益的推动。在过去12个月里，房价上涨了10.2%，是14年来的最高年增长率，这得益于财政大臣的印花税免税期。如果一个人有幸过上富裕的生活，就不需要做太多的事情来增加财富的价值。
Adam Smith, paraphrasing Hobbes, wrote that “wealth is power”. The rich in a liberal democracy can buy “friends and servants”. Such a person did not have to play an active economic role; they only needed the power that money could buy. This is a bad place for Britain to be headed. Little wonder that half of UK voters believe the economic system needs either major changes or to be completely reformed.
亚当·斯密解释霍布斯的话说，“财富就是力量”。自由民主国家的富人可以买到“朋友和仆人”。这样的人不必积极参与经济活动；他们只需要金钱可以买到的权力。这对英国来说是一个糟糕的发展方向。难怪有一半的英国选民认为，英国的经济制度要么需要重大变革，要么需要彻底改革。
Thomas Piketty, the French economist, has the answer to the question posed by today’s economic model. In the decades after the end of the second world war, the spoils of a growing economy were more evenly shared out. Such a desirable outcome was down to policy choices. Helping to spread out the fruits of growth were high levels of unionisation and strong worker bargaining rights; progressive income tax schemes; and the nationalisation of key industries.
法国经济学家托马斯•皮凯蒂对当今经济模式带来的问题给出了答案。在二战结束后的几十年里，经济增长的成果得到了更平均的分配。这样一个令人满意的结果取决于政策选择。使经济发展成果惠及更多人的是：高水平的工会组织和强大的工人议价权；累进所得税方案；以及关键行业的国有化。
To tackle today’s problems, Mr Piketty suggests adding expanded welfare programmes, a job guarantee scheme and mechanisms to reduce the advantage in inherited wealth. These are ideas whose time has come. A growing wealth gap and increasing inequality has many causes, but one surely has been an economics discipline that undervalued the importance of government. It’s time to rethink that for the good of society.
为了解决当今的问题，皮凯蒂建议增加覆盖更广的福利计划、工作保障计划和减少继承财富优势的机制。这些想法的时代已经到来。不断扩大的贫富差距和日益加剧的不平等有许多原因，但其中一个原因无疑是经济学学科贬低了政府的重要性。为了社会的利益，是时候重新考虑一下了。