《資本在21世紀》系列之八
Emmanuelle MarchadourThomas Piketty in his office at theParis School of Economics, 2013Thomas Piketty, professor at the Paris School of Economics, isn"t a household name, although that may change with the English-language publication of his magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Yet his influence runs deep. It has become a commonplace to say that we are living in a second Gilded Age—or, as Piketty likes to put it, a second Belle époque—defined by the incredible rise of the 「one percent.」 But it has only become a commonplace thanks to Piketty"s work. In particular, he and a few colleagues (notably Anthony Atkinson at Oxford and Emmanuel Saez at Berkeley) have pioneered statistical techniques that make it possible to track the concentration of income and wealth deep into the past—back to the early twentieth century for America and Britain, and all the way to the late eighteenth century for France.身為巴黎政治經濟學院教授的托馬·皮克提不是一個家喻戶曉的名字，儘管這可能會隨著《21世紀資本論》英文版的出版而發生改變。《21世紀資本論》是一部傑出的著作，皮克提在書中對不平等問題進行了廣泛的思考。然而，他的影響還不止這些。如今，有關我們正生活在一個由「1%」所主宰的第二個「鍍金時代」，或者像皮克提所說那樣，生活在第二個「美好年代」的話題已經成為一個共識。但是，這個話題之所以能成為共識，很大程度上得益於皮克提的工作，尤其是他和他的數位同事（主要是牛津大學的安東尼·阿特金森和加州大學伯克利分校的伊曼紐爾·賽斯）在統計技術方面的開創性工作。正是因為這種開創性的工作，才使得我們得以深入到歷史中——20世紀早期的美國和英國，19世紀末期的法國——去追蹤收入和財富的集中。The result has been a revolution in our understanding of long-term trends in inequality. Before this revolution, most discussions of economic disparity more or less ignored the very rich. Some economists (not to mention politicians) tried to shout down any mention of inequality at all: 「Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution,」 declared Robert Lucas Jr. of the University of Chicago, the most influential macroeconomist of his generation, in 2004. But even those willing to discuss inequality generally focused on the gap between the poor or the working class and the merely well-off, not the truly rich—on college graduates whose wage gains outpaced those of less-educated workers, or on the comparative good fortune of the top fifth of the population compared with the bottom four fifths, not on the rapidly rising incomes of executives and bankers.這種開創性工作的結果就是為我們理解不平等的長期趨勢帶來了一場革命。在這場革命之前，大多數有關經濟差距的討論都或多或少地忽視了那些非常富有之人。有些經濟學家（更不要提政客了）曾試圖壓制任何有關不平等的討論。作為宏觀經濟學一代宗師的芝加哥大學的小羅伯特·盧卡斯曾在2004年說過這樣的話：「在那些有害於正統經濟學的傾向中，最具有迷惑性的，在我看來，也是最有害的傾向，就是把重點放在分配問題上。」但是，即便是願意討論不平等的經濟學家，他們也只是把重點放在窮人和工人與僅僅是較為富裕但還算不上是真正富人之間的差距上面，或者是收入超過受教育程度較低的工人的大學畢業生，或者是比較富有的頂層五分之一與底層五分之四之間的對比，而不會把注意力放在收入快速增長的高級管理人員和銀行家身上。It therefore came as a revelation when Piketty and his colleagues showed that incomes of the now famous 「one percent,」 and of even narrower groups, are actually the big story in rising inequality. And this discovery came with a second revelation: talk of a second Gilded Age, which might have seemed like hyperbole, was nothing of the kind. In America in particular the share of national income going to the top one percent has followed a great U-shaped arc. Before World War I the one percent received around a fifth of total income in both Britain and the United States. By 1950 that share had been cut by more than half. But since 1980 the one percent has seen its income share surge again—and in the United States it"s back to what it was a century ago.因此，當皮克提和他的團隊告訴我們，當今著名的「1%」以及人數比「1%」還要少的人的收入，才是日漸嚴重的不平等的真正大故事時，這才讓我們看到真相。同時，這一發現還讓我們知道，看似誇張的「第二個鍍金時代」的說法實則毫不誇張。這在美國表現的尤其如此。在那裡，流入頂層1%的國民收入份額的變化曲線是一個巨大的U型。在第一次世界大戰前，英美兩國的1%的收入占各自國家總收入的份額是五分之一；到1950年，這一份額被消減至不及原來的一半。但是自1980年起，1%的收入份額的又一次大幅上升。在美國，它已經回到了一個世紀之前的水平。Still, today"s economic elite is very different from that of the nineteenth century, isn"t it? Back then, great wealth tended to be inherited; aren"t today"s economic elite people who earned their position? Well, Piketty tells us that this isn"t as true as you think, and that in any case this state of affairs may prove no more durable than the middle-class society that flourished for a generation after World War II. The big idea of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is that we haven"t just gone back to nineteenth-century levels of income inequality, we"re also on a path back to 「patrimonial capitalism,」 in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled not by talented individuals but by family dynasties.然而，當今的經濟精英是完全不同於19世紀的經濟精英的。難道不是如此嗎？回到19世紀，巨額的財富往往都是通過繼承得來的。相比之下，當今的經濟精英難道不是靠著自己的努力才獲得了他們的地位嗎？皮克提告訴我們，不僅其真實性並非如你所想像的那樣，而且事實已經證明，當前這種狀態的持久性可能要比二戰後的中產社會還要長。《21世紀資本論》的偉大之處就在於，它告訴世人：我們不僅已經踏上了收入水平回歸19世紀的道路，而且還正在向「世襲資本主義」回歸。在「世襲資本主義」時代，經濟的制高點不是掌握在有才華的個人手中，而是被家族王朝所主宰。It"s a remarkable claim—and precisely because it"s so remarkable, it needs to be examined carefully and critically. Before I get into that, however, let me say right away that Piketty has written a truly superb book. It"s a work that melds grand historical sweep—when was the last time you heard an economist invoke Jane Austen and Balzac?—with painstaking data analysis. And even though Piketty mocks the economics profession for its 「childish passion for mathematics,」 underlying his discussion is a tour de force of economic modeling, an approach that integrates the analysis of economic growth with that of the distribution of income and wealth. This is a book that will change both the way we think about society and the way we do economics.這是一個引人注目的主張，而且正是因為它引人注目，才需要接受仔細地和批判性地研讀。不過，在我切入正題之前，請允許我先對這本書做一個評價。這是一本真正的巨著，它將宏大的歷史視角——你上次聽說一位經濟學家引用簡·奧斯汀和巴爾扎克是在什麼時候？——和精心的數據分析融合在一起。儘管皮克提嘲笑經濟學研究「對數學有著兒童般的激情」，但是支撐其論述的正是一種有力的經濟學模型，它將對經濟增長的分析同收入和財富分配的分析有機地結合在一起。這本書不僅將改變我們思考社會的方式，同時還會改變我們進行經濟學研究的方式。1.What do we know about economic inequality, and about when do we know it? Until the Piketty revolution swept through the field, most of what we knew about income and wealth inequality came from surveys, in which randomly chosen households are asked to fill in a questionnaire, and their answers are tallied up to produce a statistical portrait of the whole. The international gold standard for such surveys is the annual survey conducted once a year by the Census Bureau. The Federal Reserve also conducts a triennial survey of the distribution of wealth.對於經濟的不平等，我們了解多少？又是何時才知道這個問題的呢？在皮克提革命橫掃這一領域之前，我們對收入和財富的不平等的了解大多是來自民意調查。在這些調查中，被隨機選中的家庭會被要求填寫一份調查表，隨後他們的回答會被歸納總結，產生一個統計學意義上的整體數據畫像。此類調查的國際通用標準是由美國人口普查局進行的一年一次的調查。美聯儲也會每三年對財富分配做一次調查。These two surveys are an essential guide to the changing shape of American society. Among other things, they have long pointed to a dramatic shift in the process of US economic growth, one that started around 1980. Before then, families at all levels saw their incomes grow more or less in tandem with the growth of the economy as a whole. After 1980, however, the lion"s share of gains went to the top end of the income distribution, with families in the bottom half lagging far behind.這兩個調查是對時時都在變化的美國社會輪廓的基本指南。在它們所提供的長期數據中，最令人感到意外的是美國經濟增長過程中出現的一個轉變。這個轉變始於1980年前後。在那之前，美國社會各階層的家庭收入都或多或少地同步於經濟的整體增長。然而，自那之後，所得的絕大部分份額都流入了收入分配的頂層，而半數底層家庭的所得則被遠遠地拋在了後面。Historically, other countries haven"t been equally good at keeping track of who gets what; but this situation has improved over time, in large part thanks to the efforts of the Luxembourg Income Study (with which I will soon be affiliated). And the growing availability of survey data that can be compared across nations has led to further important insights. In particular, we now know both that the United States has a much more unequal distribution of income than other advanced countries and that much of this difference in outcomes can be attributed directly to government action. European nations in general have highly unequal incomes from market activity, just like the United States, although possibly not to the same extent. But they do far more redistribution through taxes and transfers than America does, leading to much less inequality in disposable incomes.從歷史上來看，其他國家也同樣不善於記錄公民的收入情況；但是，有賴於「盧森堡收入研究項目」（我不久也會加入這個項目）的努力，這種情況在近年來已經有所改善。同時，隨著可被用來在國家之間進行對比的調查數據的增多，這又帶來了一些更重要的真知灼見，其中尤為重要的是，我們現在已經知道：在所有的發達國家中，美國收入分配的不平等是最嚴重的；其結果之不同，大部分都可直接歸因於政府的行為。歐洲國家也像美國一樣，因為市場行為而存在著普遍嚴重的收入不平等，儘管其程度可能不如到美國。但是，由於歐洲國家在通過稅收和現金轉移來實現再分配方面的作為遠遠超過了美國，因此其可支配收入的不平等就遠沒有美國那麼嚴重。Yet for all their usefulness, survey data have important limitations. They tend to undercount or miss entirely the income that accrues to the handful of individuals at the very top of the income scale. They also have limited historical depth. Even US survey data only take us to 1947.然而，儘管這些調查數據非常有用，但是，它們還是存在著重大的局限性。它們往往會少算或者完全漏算應被歸入最頂層收入範圍的那部分收入。另外，這些數據還在歷史深度方面有局限性。即便是美國的調查數據也只能把我們帶回到1947年。Enter Piketty and his colleagues, who have turned to an entirely different source of information: tax records. This isn"t a new idea. Indeed, early analyses of income distribution relied on tax data because they had little else to go on. Piketty et al. have, however, found ways to merge tax data with other sources to produce information that crucially complements survey evidence. In particular, tax data tell us a great deal about the elite. And tax-based estimates can reach much further into the past: the United States has had an income tax since 1913, Britain since 1909. France, thanks to elaborate estate tax collection and record-keeping, has wealth data reaching back to the late eighteenth century.讓我們來看看皮克提和他的團隊。他們已經轉向了一種完全不同的信息來源：納稅記錄。使用納稅記錄不是一個新的想法。事實上，早期的收入分配分析，由於很少有其他的數據可以依賴，就是根據納稅數據進行的。然而，皮克提等人已經找到了可以將納稅數據與其他來源的數據結合在一起的方法，而使用這種方法所得到的信息，相對於通過調查而獲得證據來說，是一種的關鍵補充。稅收數據不同於其他數據的關鍵之處就在於，它可以告訴我們很多有關精英階層的信息。同時，基於納稅記錄的測算還可以讓我們更深一步地走入歷史之中：美國自1913年就開始對收入徵稅，英國是1909年。得益於對地產稅數據的精心收集保存，法國的財富數據可以追溯到18世紀晚期。Exploiting these data isn"t simple. But by using all the tricks of the trade, plus some educated guesswork, Piketty is able to produce a summary of the fall and rise of extreme inequality over the course of the past century. It looks like Table 1 on this page.開發並利用這些數據不是一件簡單的事情。但是，皮克提做到了。他利用所有的這些數據中所記載的所有交易技巧，再加上某些受教育之人的猜測，為我們總結出了極端不平等在過去數個世紀中的興與衰（如圖表1所示）。As I said, describing our current era as a new Gilded Age or Belle époque isn"t hyperbole; it"s the simple truth. But how did this happen?我已經說過，把當前這個時代稱為「新鍍金時代」或「新美好時代」不是一種誇張的說法，而是事實就是如此。但是，這麼一個簡單的事實是如何發生的呢？
2.Piketty throws down the intellectual gauntlet right away, with his book"s very title: Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Are economists still allowed to talk like that?皮克提是在利用他的著作的書名——《21世紀資本論》——向知識界發起直接的挑戰。經濟學家還被允許如此地發表意見嗎？It"s not just the obvious allusion to Marx that makes this title so startling. By invoking capital right from the beginning, Piketty breaks ranks with most modern discussions of inequality, and hearkens back to an older tradition.書名之如此令人震驚，不僅僅在於它是對馬克思巨著的明顯引用，更在於皮克提從該書的一開始，就通過讓人們想起《資本論》的方法，把自己的分析同當代大多數有關不平等的討論劃清了界限，以表明他是在回歸一個更古老的傳統。The general presumption of most inequality researchers has been that earned income, usually salaries, is where all the action is, and that income from capital is neither important nor interesting. Piketty shows, however, that even today income from capital, not earnings, predominates at the top of the income distribution. He also shows that in the past—during Europe"s Belle époque and, to a lesser extent, America"s Gilded Age—unequal ownership of assets, not unequal pay, was the prime driver of income disparities. And he argues that we"re on our way back to that kind of society. Nor is this casual speculation on his part. For all that Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a work of principled empiricism, it is very much driven by a theoretical frame that attempts to unify discussion of economic growth and the distribution of both income and wealth. Basically, Piketty sees economic history as the story of a race between capital accumulation and other factors driving growth, mainly population growth and technological progress.大多數不平等研究者一般都秉持這樣一個假設：通常被稱為薪水的所得，是所有勞動行為的目的所在。因此，對他們來說，來自資本的收入要麼是不重要的，要麼是不會令他們感興趣的。然而，皮克提卻告訴我們：縱然是在今天，仍然是來自資本的收入而不是勞動所得，佔了收入分配的絕大部分。他還告訴我們：在以前的「美好時代」以及不平等程度稍遜於「美好時代」的「鍍金時代」，造成收入差距的主要原因不是工資的不平等，而是資產所有權的不平等。在他看來，我們正走在回歸這種社會的道路上。同時，他還表示說，他的這一觀點並不是隨意的猜測。儘管《21世紀資本論》是一部按照經驗主義原則寫就的著作，但是真正支撐它的卻是一種試圖將經濟增長同收入和財富的分配結合在一起進行討論的理論框架。在皮克提看來，經濟史，從根本上來說，就是資本累積與推動增長的其他要素之間進行競爭的故事。在這裡，所謂推動增長的其他要素主要指的是人口增長和技術進步。To be sure, this is a race that can have no permanent victor: over the very long run, the stock of capital and total income must grow at roughly the same rate. But one side or the other can pull ahead for decades at a time. On the eve of World War I, Europe had accumulated capital worth six or seven times national income. Over the next four decades, however, a combination of physical destruction and the diversion of savings into war efforts cut that ratio in half. Capital accumulation resumed after World War II, but this was a period of spectacular economic growth—the Trente Glorieuses, or 「Glorious Thirty」 years; so the ratio of capital to income remained low. Since the 1970s, however, slowing growth has meant a rising capital ratio, so capital and wealth have been trending steadily back toward Belle époque levels. And this accumulation of capital, says Piketty, will eventually recreate Belle époque–style inequality unless opposed by progressive taxation.說到這場競爭，一個可以肯定的事實是：它不可能有永遠的贏家。也就說，從非常長的時間段來看，資本的存量和收入的總量必須以大致相同的速率成長。但是，如果只看其中的一段時間，兩者中總有一方能在數十年中領先於另一方。在第一次世界大戰前夕，歐洲的累積資本的價值曾達到國民收入的6至7倍；然而，在隨後的40年中，由於財富受到物理性的毀滅，加之一部分儲蓄因為戰爭而被分流，這使得累積資本的價值一度下降至只有國民收入的3倍左右；第二次世界大戰後，資本的累積又死灰復燃。但是，由於這是一段以法國的「光輝三十年」為代表的壯觀的經濟增長期，因此，資本與收入之比仍然處在低位；然而，自上世紀70年代後，由於增長放慢導致資本比例日漸上升，於是，資本和財富一直在以穩定的速度向「美好時代」的水平回歸，而且這一次的資本累積，在皮克提看來，最終會再度製造出「美好時代」的那種不平等，除非這一進程遭到累進稅的阻擊。Why? It"s all about r versus g—the rate of return on capital versus the rate of economic growth.為什麼要這樣說？箇中原因，皆在於r與g的比例。其中，r代表的是資本回報率（the rate of return on capital），g是經濟增長率（the rate of economic growth）。Just about all economic models tell us that if g falls—which it has since 1970, a decline that is likely to continue due to slower growth in the working-age population and slower technological progress—r will fall too. But Piketty asserts that r will fall less than g. This doesn"t have to be true. However, if it"s sufficiently easy to replace workers with machines—if, to use the technical jargon, the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is greater than one—slow growth, and the resulting rise in the ratio of capital to income, will indeed widen the gap between r and g. And Piketty argues that this is what the historical record shows will happen.由經濟學模型可知，如果g變小，r也會變小。其具體表現就是，自1970年以來，經濟增長率一直在下降，而作為造成這種結果的原因，處於工作年齡的人口的減少和技術進步的放慢可能會讓這种放慢延續下去。但是，皮克提肯定的指出，r變小的速度慢於g變小的速度。雖說他的這一觀點不一定正確，但是，在用機器取代人力足夠容易的前提條件下——用專業術語來說就是，在資本和勞動力之間的替代彈性大於1時——增長肯定會放慢，而作為增長放慢的結果，資本與收入之比的拉大，實際上就等於r與g之比的拉大。皮克提指出，這就是歷史紀錄所展示的今後將要發生的事情。If he"s right, one immediate consequence will be a redistribution of income away from labor and toward holders of capital. The conventional wisdom has long been that we needn"t worry about that happening, that the shares of capital and labor respectively in total income are highly stable over time. Over the very long run, however, this hasn"t been true. In Britain, for example, capital"s share of income—whether in the form of corporate profits, dividends, rents, or sales of property, for example—fell from around 40 percent before World War I to barely 20 percent circa 1970, and has since bounced roughly halfway back. The historical arc is less clear-cut in the United States, but here, too, there is a redistribution in favor of capital underway. Notably, corporate profits have soared since the financial crisis began, while wages—including the wages of the highly educated—have stagnated.如果他的這種觀點是正確的話，其直接後果之一就是收入的再分配會遠離勞動者，朝向資本所有者。傳統的觀點認為，我們是不必為此而擔心的；從長期來看，資本和勞動在總收入中各自所佔的份額是高度穩定的。但是，如果把這個時間段再拉長一些，傳統的觀點就不正確了。例如，在英國，資本在收入中所佔的份額——不管其形式是企業利潤、紅利、租金還是出售所有權的所得——曾經從一戰前的40%左右，降至1970年前後的不到20%，並且從那以後一直在反彈，目前已經大致收復了一半的失地。在美國，歷史弧線的走勢雖然沒有英國那麼清晰，但是也存在著再分配傾向於資本的現象。值得注意的是，自金融危機開始以來，企業的利潤一直在大幅增加，而工資——這其中也包括受過良好教育之人的工資——卻始終停滯不前。A rising share of capital, in turn, directly increases inequality, because ownership of capital is always much more unequally distributed than labor income. But the effects don"t stop there, because when the rate of return on capital greatly exceeds the rate of economic growth, 「the past tends to devour the future」: society inexorably tends toward dominance by inherited wealth.資本的日漸增加，反過來會直接導致不平等的日趨嚴重，因為資本的所有權總會令勞動收入在分配中處於非常不平等的地位。但是，其影響並沒有就此止步。因為，當資本回報率大大超過經濟增長率時，「過去往往會吞噬未來」，而社會也會冷酷無情地向著由世襲財富來主導的方向發展。Consider how this worked in Belle époque Europe. At the time, owners of capital could expect to earn 4–5 percent on their investments, with minimal taxation; meanwhile economic growth was only around one percent. So wealthy individuals could easily reinvest enough of their income to ensure that their wealth and hence their incomes were growing faster than the economy, reinforcing their economic dominance, even while skimming enough off to live lives of great luxury.下面就讓我們來了解一下這種趨勢是如何在歐洲的「美好時代」發生作用的。當時，資本的所有者能期望他們的投資能給他們帶來4%-5%的回報，而且這部分回報的稅率還是最低的；於此同時，當時的經濟增長率只有1%左右。因此，富有的個人能夠輕易地把他們的收入進行再投資，以確保他們的財富和收入的增長快於經濟的增長，從而強化他們在經濟上的主導地位，有時甚至為此不惜不去過極度奢侈的生活。And what happened when these wealthy individuals died? They passed their wealth on—again, with minimal taxation—to their heirs. Money passed on to the next generation accounted for 20 to 25 percent of annual income; the great bulk of wealth, around 90 percent, was inherited rather than saved out of earned income. And this inherited wealth was concentrated in the hands of a very small minority: in 1910 the richest one percent controlled 60 percent of the wealth in France; in Britain, 70 percent.當這些富有的個人去世時，發生了什麼事情呢？他們把自己的財富，再次以最低的稅率，傳給了後代。傳給下一代的金錢約佔這些人每年收入的20%-25%；絕大部分的財富，約為90%左右，是通過繼承所得，而不是通過辛辛苦苦的勞動所掙來的。這些繼承而來的財富被集中到很少的人手中。在1910年的時候，最富有的1%控制了法國60%的財富，在英國，這一比例為70%。No wonder, then, that nineteenth-century novelists were obsessed with inheritance. Piketty discusses at length the lecture that the scoundrel Vautrin gives to Rastignac in Balzac"s Père Goriot, whose gist is that a most successful career could not possibly deliver more than a fraction of the wealth Rastignac could acquire at a stroke by marrying a rich man"s daughter. And it turns out that Vautrin was right: being in the top one percent of nineteenth-century heirs and simply living off your inherited wealth gave you around two and a half times the standard of living you could achieve by clawing your way into the top one percent of paid workers.因此，19世紀的小說家喜歡在他們的作品中描述繼承之類的題材也就不足為奇了。皮克提在書中針對巴爾扎克在《高老頭》中，卑鄙的伏脫冷對拉斯蒂涅所做的一番長篇大論進行了討論。伏脫冷一席話的主要意思是：對於拉斯蒂涅來說，最成功的人生就是通過與富人家小姐結婚的方式，獲得一筆財富。事實證明，伏脫冷是對的：成為19世紀頂層1%的後代，並且只依靠繼承而來的財富，能讓你過上比那些通過辛苦勞動爬到收入頂層的人好上兩倍半左右的生活。You might be tempted to say that modern society is nothing like that. In fact, however, both capital income and inherited wealth, though less important than they were in the Belle époque, are still powerful drivers of inequality—and their importance is growing. In France, Piketty shows, the inherited share of total wealth dropped sharply during the era of wars and postwar fast growth; circa 1970 it was less than 50 percent. But it"s now back up to 70 percent, and rising. Correspondingly, there has been a fall and then a rise in the importance of inheritance in conferring elite status: the living standard of the top one percent of heirs fell below that of the top one percent of earners between 1910 and 1950, but began rising again after 1970. It"s not all the way back to Rasti-gnac levels, but once again it"s generally more valuable to have the right parents (or to marry into having the right in-laws) than to have the right job.你可能不禁會說，當代社會並不是這個樣子的。然而，事實上，資本收入和繼承而來的財富，雖然已經不如「美好時代」那麼重要，但仍然是不平等的有力推動力，並且其重要性還在日漸增加。皮克提指出，在法國，繼承而來的財富總份額，曾在兩次世界大戰期間和戰後的快速增長期期間出現大幅下降；到1970年前後，它們的份額已經不足50%。但是，如今其份額已經回升至70%，並且還在不斷地增加。相應地，在決定精英的社會地位方面，繼承而來的財富的重要性，也呈現出一種先降後升的趨勢：頂層1%的後代的生活水平，在1910年至1950年間，低於靠勞動成為頂層1%的人的生活水平，但是從1970年之後，他們的生活水平又開始上升。雖說目前還沒有恢復拉斯蒂涅時代的水平，但已經又一次回到了「有好工作不如有好爹媽（或者是通過婚姻而擁有好爹媽）」的水平。And this may only be the beginning. Figure 1 on this page shows Piketty"s estimates of global r and g over the long haul, suggesting that the era of equalization now lies behind us, and that the conditions are now ripe for the reestablishment of patrimonial capitalism.而且這可能僅僅才是開始。如圖1所示，皮克提有關全球r和g在一個長時期關係的預測告訴我們，平等時代已經過去了，再現世襲資本主義的條件已經成熟。
Given this picture, why does inherited wealth play as small a part in today"s public discourse as it does? Piketty suggests that the very size of inherited fortunes in a way makes them invisible: 「Wealth is so concentrated that a large segment of society is virtually unaware of its existence, so that some people imagine that it belongs to surreal or mysterious entities.」 This is a very good point. But it"s surely not the whole explanation. For the fact is that the most conspicuous example of soaring inequality in today"s world—the rise of the very rich one percent in the Anglo-Saxon world, especially the United States—doesn"t have all that much to do with capital accumulation, at least so far. It has more to do with remarkably high compensation and incomes.既然這張圖已經說得很清楚了，那麼為什麼繼承而來的財富會在當今的公共話語中只是扮演了一個小腳色呢？皮克提認為，這是因為繼承而來的財富的規模決定它們必然要處於一種不被人看見的狀態，也就是說「財富如此集中，已經讓這個社會中的大部分人，實際上已經意識不到它的存在了。因此才會讓某些人賦予這些財富一種超現實的，或者神秘的屬性。」這是一個非常高明的論斷，但是肯定不是一個完整的解釋。事實告訴我們，作為當今世界中最顯而易見的不平等激增的例子——在講英語的國家中，尤其是美國，非常富有的1%的出現——至少從目前來說，是同資本積累是沒有任何關係的，它們更多地同非常高的補償與收入有關。3. Capital in the Twenty-First Century is, as I hope I"ve made clear, an awesome work. At a time when the concentration of wealth and income in the hands of a few has resurfaced as a central political issue, Piketty doesn"t just offer invaluable documentation of what is happening, with unmatched historical depth. He also offers what amounts to a unified field theory of inequality, one that integrates economic growth, the distribution of income between capital and labor, and the distribution of wealth and income among individuals into a single frame.正如我希望我已經講清楚的那樣，《21世紀資本論》是一部非常棒的著作。在財富和收入集中在少數人手中再度成為政治的中心議題之時，皮克提不僅以無人可比的歷史深度，提供了對當前之事的價值無法衡量的文獻，而且還給不平等研究領域提供了一個統一的理論，一個將經濟增長、資本和勞動力之間的收入分配，以及個人之間的財富和收入分配融合進一個統一框架的理論。And yet there is one thing that slightly detracts from the achievement—a sort of intellectual sleight of hand, albeit one that doesn"t actually involve any deception or malfeasance on Piketty"s part. Still, here it is: the main reason there has been a hankering for a book like this is the rise, not just of the one percent, but specifically of the American one percent. Yet that rise, it turns out, has happened for reasons that lie beyond the scope of Piketty"s grand thesis.不過，這一成就仍然因為一件事而略顯失色——這件事類似於知識分子的小聰明，儘管它與皮克提是否在利用這件事誤導讀者沒有任何牽連。不過，我認為還是有必要在此一提。那就是：人們之所以一直在渴望著這樣一本書，其主要原因不僅是「1%」的崛起，更重要的是美國的「1%」的崛起。然而，事實已經證明，這種崛起所出現的原因是無法用皮克提的宏大理論來解釋的。Piketty is, of course, too good and too honest an economist to try to gloss over inconvenient facts. 「US inequality in 2010,」 he declares, 「is quantitatively as extreme as in old Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century, but the structure of that inequality is rather clearly different.」 Indeed, what we have seen in America and are starting to see elsewhere is something 「radically new」—the rise of 「supersalaries.」作為一位經濟學家，皮克提顯然是太過善良，也太過誠實，以致他沒有試圖去掩蓋那些不便之事。「美國在2010年所表現出來的不平等，」他宣稱，「從量的方面來看，同20世紀第一個十年的老歐洲一樣極端；但是，在結構上卻是完全不一樣的。」實際上，我們在美國所見到的也正在其他地方開始出現，這是一種「絕對新鮮」的事物，即「超級薪水」的出現。Capital still matters; at the very highest reaches of society, income from capital still exceeds income from wages, salaries, and bonuses. Piketty estimates that the increased inequality of capital income accounts for about a third of the overall rise in US inequality. But wage income at the top has also surged. Real wages for most US workers have increased little if at all since the early 1970s, but wages for the top one percent of earners have risen 165 percent, and wages for the top 0.1 percent have risen 362 percent. If Rastignac were alive today, Vautrin might concede that he could in fact do as well by becoming a hedge fund manager as he could by marrying wealth.資本仍然非常重要；在社會的最頂層，來自資本的收入仍然多於來自工資、獎金和紅利的收入。據皮克提測算，在美國，在不平等的總的增加量中，約有三分之一是因為資本收入的不平等而造成的。但是，頂層的工資收入也在大幅增長。大多數美國工人的實際工資，自上世紀70年代早期以來幾乎沒有增長，而收入頂層1%的人的工資卻增長了165%，頂層0.1%的人增長了362%。如果拉斯蒂涅能夠活到今天，伏脫冷可能會讓他退而求其次，成為一名對沖基金經理，而不是與富人結婚。What explains this dramatic rise in earnings inequality, with the lion"s share of the gains going to people at the very top? Some US economists suggest that it"s driven by changes in technology. In a famous 1981 paper titled 「The Economics of Superstars,」 the Chicago economist Sherwin Rosen argued that modern communications technology, by extending the reach of talented individuals, was creating winner-take-all markets in which a handful of exceptional individuals reap huge rewards, even if they"re only modestly better at what they do than far less well paid rivals.那麼，該怎樣解釋這種以所得的絕大部分都流入最頂層為特點的勞動所得不平等的戲劇性崛起呢？有些美國經濟學家認為，這是受技術變化推動的結果。芝加哥大學經濟學家舍溫·羅森在1981年的一篇著名論文《超級明星經濟學》中指出，當代的交流技術，正在利用擴展有才華之人的影響力的方式，創造一種「贏者通吃」的市場。在這樣的市場中，極少數傑出的個人，即便是他們在自己行業中表現僅比報酬低很多差的對手稍微好那麼一點，也能夠讓他們獲得巨大的回報。Piketty is unconvinced. As he notes, conservative economists love to talk about the high pay of performers of one kind or another, such as movie and sports stars, as a way of suggesting that high incomes really are deserved. But such people actually make up only a tiny fraction of the earnings elite. What one finds instead is mainly executives of one sort or another—people whose performance is, in fact, quite hard to assess or give a monetary value to.皮克提沒有被這種理論說服。正如他在書中所寫的那樣，保守的經濟學家喜歡把談論明星的高報酬當做是一種方式，用來提醒人們，這些體育明星和電影明星的高收入實際上物有所值的。但是，實際上，這些人只是收入精英中的極小一部分。相反，人們發現那高報酬的人主要是這樣或那樣的高級管理人員——這種人的表現，實際上，是很難給其估價的，也就是說，他們的報酬是很難用貨幣來衡量的。Who determines what a corporate CEO is worth? Well, there"s normally a compensation committee, appointed by the CEO himself. In effect, Piketty argues, high-level executives set their own pay, constrained by social norms rather than any sort of market discipline. And he attributes skyrocketing pay at the top to an erosion of these norms. In effect, he attributes soaring wage incomes at the top to social and political rather than strictly economic forces.那麼，又是誰在決定著企業的CEO該拿多少報酬呢？這通常是都由CEO自己任命的補償委員會來決定的。皮克提指出，高層管理人員收入，實際上是由他們自己來決定的，而能夠對他們起到限制作用的不是市場規律，而是社會規範。皮克提把頂層收入的火箭式增長歸因於社會規範的被腐蝕。實際上，在他看來，造成頂層工資收入大幅提高主要推動力是社會的和政治的力量，而不僅僅是經濟的力量。Now, to be fair, he then advances a possible economic analysis of changing norms, arguing that falling tax rates for the rich have in effect emboldened the earnings elite. When a top manager could expect to keep only a small fraction of the income he might get by flouting social norms and extracting a very large salary, he might have decided that the opprobrium wasn"t worth it. Cut his marginal tax rate drastically, and he may behave differently. And as more and more of the supersalaried flout the norms, the norms themselves will change.公平地說，他隨後又對處於變動之中的社會規範提出了一個可能的經濟分析，認為富人稅率的降低實際上是在讓這些收入精英變得更加肆無忌憚。當頂層管理者期望通過藐視社會規範和攫取很大一筆獎金的方法所獲得的收入只在其可能獲得的收入中占很小一部分時， 他就有可能做出為此而挨罵是不值得的決定。而大幅消減這些人的邊際稅率，就有可能讓他們表現得截然不同。同時，隨著越來越多的拿超級薪水的人做出藐視社會規範的行為，社會規範身也會發生改變。There"s a lot to be said for this diagnosis, but it clearly lacks the rigor and universality of Piketty"s analysis of the distribution of and returns to wealth. Also, I don"t think Capital in the Twenty-First Century adequately answers the most telling criticism of the executive power hypothesis: the concentration of very high incomes in finance, where performance actually can, after a fashion, be evaluated. I didn"t mention hedge fund managers idly: such people are paid based on their ability to attract clients and achieve investment returns. You can question the social value of modern finance, but the Gordon Gekkos out there are clearly good at something, and their rise can"t be attributed solely to power relations, although I guess you could argue that willingness to engage in morally dubious wheeling and dealing, like willingness to flout pay norms, is encouraged by low marginal tax rates.雖然這一診斷還有許多值得一提的地方，但它明顯缺乏皮克提對於財富分配和財富回報的分析的那種精確性和普遍性。同時，我也不認為《21世紀資本論》對有關高層管理人員權力假設的最引人注目的批評做出了適當的回應：非常之高的收入之所以會集中出現的金融領域，這是因為那裡的表現，用當下流行的話來說，就是可以被評估的。我也沒有毫無意義地提及對沖基金經理，是因為這些人是靠著他們吸引客戶並給客戶帶來回報的能力來掙錢吃飯的。你可以質疑當代金融的社會價值，但是戈登·戈科斯（奧利弗·斯通的系列電影《華爾街》中的男主角——譯者注）就是明擺著擅長於此道，不能把他們的出現單純地歸咎於權力關係。儘管我猜想你可能會認為，這種可以同藐視收入規範劃等號的不道德的意願是受到了低邊際稅率的鼓勵。Overall, I"m more or less persuaded by Piketty"s explanation of the surge in wage inequality, though his failure to include deregulation is a significant disappointment. But as I said, his analysis here lacks the rigor of his capital analysis, not to mention its sheer, exhilarating intellectual elegance.總之，我幾乎是被皮克提有關工資不平等的解釋給說服了，儘管他沒能把去監管包括在內是一個明顯的令人失望之處。但是，正如我所說的那樣，他對這個問題的分析缺乏他對資本的分析的那種精確性，更不用提那種純粹的令人愉悅的學術修養了。Yet we shouldn"t overreact to this. Even if the surge in US inequality to date has been driven mainly by wage income, capital has nonetheless been significant too. And in any case, the story looking forward is likely to be quite different. The current generation of the very rich in America may consist largely of executives rather than rentiers, people who live off accumulated capital, but these executives have heirs. And America two decades from now could be a rentier-dominated society even more unequal than Belle époque Europe.然而，我們不應當對此反應過度。就算是美國的不平等的日趨嚴重主要是由工資收入推動的，但是資本的作用也是很顯著的。而且，無論這一故事在未來如何演變，它都有可能與現在完全不同。當今美國最富有的一代可能主要是由高級管理人員，而不是靠累積的財富來生活的食利者組成的。但是，這些高級管理人員也有後代。這樣，20十年後，美國就有可能變成一個由食利者主導的社會，其不平等只會更甚於歐洲的「美好時代」。But this doesn"t have to happen.但是，這種情況不一定非得發生。4.At times, Piketty almost seems to offer a deterministic view of history, in which everything flows from the rates of population growth and technological progress. In reality, however, Capital in the Twenty-First Century makes it clear that public policy can make an enormous difference, that even if the underlying economic conditions point toward extreme inequality, what Piketty calls 「a drift toward oligarchy」 can be halted and even reversed if the body politic so chooses.有時，皮克提似乎是在提供一種歷史決定論。在他看來，所有的一切都在偏離人口增長率和技術進步。然而，實際上《21世紀資本論》已經明確的表明，公共政策是能夠帶來巨大的不同的，這種不同之巨大即便是潛在的經濟條件指向極端不平等時，被皮克提稱之為「滑向寡頭政治」的過程也能夠叫停，甚至於被逆轉。但是，其前提條件是，政府必須做出這樣的選擇。The key point is that when we make the crucial comparison between the rate of return on wealth and the rate of economic growth, what matters is the after-tax return on wealth. So progressive taxation—in particular taxation of wealth and inheritance—can be a powerful force limiting inequality. Indeed, Piketty concludes his masterwork with a plea for just such a form of taxation. Unfortunately, the history covered in his own book does not encourage optimism.其中的關鍵是，當我們在資本回報率和經濟增長率之間做關鍵比較時，重要的是稅後資本回報。因此，累進稅——特別是針對財富和遺產而徵收的稅——可以成為限制不平等的一種強有力的力量。實際上，皮克提在其傑作的結尾部分，呼籲的正是此類稅收。不幸的是，他自己書中所記載的歷史並沒有讓他感到樂觀。It"s true that during much of the twentieth century strongly progressive taxation did indeed help reduce the concentration of income and wealth, and you might imagine that high taxation at the top is the natural political outcome when democracy confronts high inequality. Piketty, however, rejects this conclusion; the triumph of progressive taxation during the twentieth century, he contends, was 「an ephemeral product of chaos.」 Absent the wars and upheavals of Europe"s modern Thirty Years" War, he suggests, nothing of the kind would have happened.在20世紀的大部分時間內，強有力的累進稅確實為降低財富和收入集中提供了幫助，以至於人們可能會認為，當民主國家在面臨高度的不平等時，提高對頂層之人的稅率是一種自然的政治結果。然而，皮克提拒絕接受這種結論。在他看來，累進稅在20世紀的勝利是「短暫的，是混亂的產品」。如果沒有現代版的歐洲三十年戰爭所帶來的戰爭和巨變，這種事情是不可能發生的。As evidence, he offers the example of France"s Third Republic. The Republic"s official ideology was highly egalitarian. Yet wealth and income were nearly as concentrated, economic privilege almost as dominated by inheritance, as they were in the aristocratic constitutional monarchy across the English Channel. And public policy did almost nothing to oppose the economic domination by rentiers: estate taxes, in particular, were almost laughably low.他以「法蘭西第三共和國」為例，解釋了他的觀點。他說，第三共和國的官方意識形態高度重視平等主義。然而，當時法國的財富之集中，經濟特權之幾乎皆為遺產所主宰，同英吉利海峽對面的君主立憲政體沒有兩樣，而且公共政策也幾乎未做任何事情，以反對實利者對於經濟的主宰。這尤以房產稅為甚，其稅率之低早已到了令人可笑的地步。Why didn"t the universally enfranchised citizens of France vote in politicians who would take on the rentier class? Well, then as now great wealth purchased great influence—not just over policies, but over public discourse. Upton Sinclair famously declared that 「it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.」 Piketty, looking at his own nation"s history, arrives at a similar observation: 「The experience of France in the Belle époque proves, if proof were needed, that no hypocrisy is too great when economic and financial elites are obliged to defend their interest.」那麼，為什麼已經獲得普選權的法國公民沒有投票支持會拿實利者開刀的政客呢？那是因為，當時的情況同現在一樣，都是「誰錢多，誰就能買來影響力」，而且不僅是對政策的影響力，還有公共話語權的影響力。厄普頓·辛克萊曾說過這樣一句著名的話：「當一個人的薪水取決於他不理解的事情是，你是很難讓他去理解這件事的」。皮克提在研究本國歷史後，也得出了同樣的結論：「法國在美好年代中的經歷已經清清楚楚地證明，當經濟和金融精英認為有義務去維護他們的利益時，其偽善是無以復加的。」The same phenomenon is visible today. In fact, a curious aspect of the American scene is that the politics of inequality seem if anything to be running ahead of the reality. As we"ve seen, at this point the US economic elite owes its status mainly to wages rather than capital income. Nonetheless, conservative economic rhetoric already emphasizes and celebrates capital rather than labor—「job creators,」 not workers.如今也存在著同樣的現象。事實上，美式場景之詭異就在於政治的不平等好像正奔跑在現實的前面。正如我們做目睹的那樣，在這一點上，美國經濟精英的地位，主要是有賴於薪酬，而不是資本收入。儘管如此，保守經濟學的言論還在強調資本，為資本而鼓噪，而不是為勞動工人，即工作的創造者而歡呼。In 2012 Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, chose to mark Labor Day—Labor Day!—with a tweet honoring business owners:眾議院多數黨二號人物埃里克·坎托曾在2012年勞動節，選擇用發推特的方式向商業的所有者表示致敬。沒錯，就是勞動節這一天！：
Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.今天，讓我們向那些勇擔風險，辛勤工作，事業有成和依靠自己成功的人們表示慶祝。
Perhaps chastened by the reaction, he reportedly felt the need to remind his colleagues at a subsequent GOP retreat that most people don"t own their own businesses—but this in itself shows how thoroughly the party identifies itself with capital to the virtual exclusion of labor.也許是推文的回應讓他感到後悔，據說，他認為自己有必要在隨後的一場只有共和黨人參加的小會上提醒他的同僚說，大多數人是不擁有自己的企業的——但是，這件事本身已表明，共和黨是如何徹底地把自己等同於資本，以至於他們實際上已經不再把自己看作是勞動者了。Nor is this orientation toward capital just rhetorical. Tax burdens on high-income Americans have fallen across the board since the 1970s, but the biggest reductions have come on capital income—including a sharp fall in corporate taxes, which indirectly benefits stockholders—and inheritance. Sometimes it seems as if a substantial part of our political class is actively working to restore Piketty"s patrimonial capitalism. And if you look at the sources of political donations, many of which come from wealthy families, this possibility is a lot less outlandish than it might seem.這種轉向資本的傾向不只是嘴上說說而已。自上世紀70年代以來，美國高收入人群的稅負一直都在減少，而其中減少的最多是針對資本收入和遺產的徵稅，而其中企業稅的大幅降低，有間接地讓大股東從中受益。有時，好像是我們政治階層中的很大一批人都在為恢復皮克提筆下的世襲資本主義而賣力地工作。如果你留意一下政治捐款的來源，就會發現其中許多都是來自富有的家族。這一點也不令人奇怪。Piketty ends Capital in the Twenty-First Century with a call to arms—a call, in particular, for wealth taxes, global if possible, to restrain the growing power of inherited wealth. It"s easy to be cynical about the prospects for anything of the kind. But surely Piketty"s masterly diagnosis of where we are and where we"re heading makes such a thing considerably more likely. So Capital in the Twenty-First Century is an extremely important book on all fronts. Piketty has transformed our economic discourse; we"ll never talk about wealth and inequality the same way we used to.皮克提在《21世紀資本論》的結尾，呼籲拿起武器，特別是財富稅這個武器，並且如果有可能的話，在全球範圍內對財富徵稅，去抑制其勢力正在日漸增長的繼承而來的財富。對任何類似於財富稅的東西表示出憤世嫉俗是容易的。但是，皮克提有關我們正身處何處以及我們將向何處去的傑出診斷，肯定會讓這樣的事情更有可能發生。因此，《21世紀資本論》是一本從各個方面來說，都非常重要的著作。皮克提已經改變了我們有關經濟問題的討論；我們從此再也不會像以前那樣，來談論財富和不平等了。
作者: wendao365 時間: 2014-5-10 23:41贊
作者: wharton323 時間: 2014-5-14 11:09 本帖最後由 wharton323 於 2014-5-15 21:18 編輯 樓主真是辛苦了，非常謝謝！樓主花了這麼大功夫，讀者我也回報一下。對照了一下最後一段的翻譯，發現裡面有一個明顯錯誤，用紅色標出。第二、三個只是中文表達問題。Piketty ends Capital in the Twenty-First Century with a call to arms—a call, in particular, for wealth taxes, global if possible, to restrain the growing power of inherited wealth. It"s easy to be cynical about the prospects for anything of the kind. But surely Piketty"s masterly diagnosis of where we are and where we"re heading makes such a thing considerably more likely. So Capital in the Twenty-First Century is an extremely important book on all fronts. Piketty has transformed our economic discourse; we"ll never talk about wealth and inequality the same way we used to.原譯：皮克提在《21世紀資本論》的結尾，呼籲拿起武器——特別是財富稅這個武器，並且如果有可能的話，在全球範圍內對財富徵稅——去抑制其勢力正在日漸增長的繼承而來的財富。對繼承而來的財富表示出憤世嫉俗的態度是容易的。但是，皮克提有關我們正身處何處以及我們將向何處去的傑出診斷，肯定會讓這樣的事情更有可能發生。因此，《21世紀資本論》是一本從各個方面來說，都非常重要的著作。皮克提已經改變了我們的經濟話語；我們從此再也不會用以前的方式來談論財富和不平等了。評：1）the kind指的是wealth taxes2）economic discourse ＝ 經濟（問題）對話3）the same way we used to = （我們）像以前那樣＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊第一段里也有兩個明顯的錯誤，用紅色和黃色分別標出。It has become a commonplace to say that we are living in a second Gilded Age—or, as Piketty likes to put it, a second Belle époque—defined by the incredible rise of the 「one percent.」 But it has only become a commonplace thanks to Piketty"s work. In particular, he and a few colleagues (notably Anthony Atkinson at Oxford and Emmanuel Saez at Berkeley) have pioneered statistical techniques that make it possible to track the concentration of income and wealth deep into the past—back to the early twentieth century for America and Britain, and all the way to the late eighteenth century for France.如今，有關我們正生活在一個由「1%」所主宰的第二個「鍍金時代」——或者像皮克提所說那樣，生活在第二個「美好年代」的話題已經成為一個共識。但是，這個話題之所以能成為共識，很大程度上得益於皮克提的工作，尤其是他和他的數位同事（主要是牛津大學的安東尼·阿特金森和加州大學伯克利分校的伊曼紐爾·賽斯）在統計技術方面的開創性工作。正是因為這種開創性的工作，才使得我們得以深入到歷史中——20世紀早期的美國和英國，19世紀末期的法國——去追蹤收入和財富的集中。評：1）紅色錯：標點符號用錯了，所以意思也就錯了。中文的破折號是對前面的解釋。原文的兩個「－」可以用「，「來替代。2）黃色部分指的是數據。也許樓主疏忽了。*************************************樓主問：關於「數據」那裡不知該如何表達。答：一個back to, 一個all the way to 指的是英美數據追蹤至20世紀初，法國數據追蹤至18世紀後期，意思弄明白了，文字怎麼組織都行。＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊The result has been a revolution in our understanding of long-term trends in inequality. 原譯：這種開創性工作的結果就是為我們理解不平等的長期趨勢帶來了一場革命。評：譯得馬虎了。直譯試試其結果便是徹底改變了我們對長期不平等趨勢的認識。*******************************樓主問：直譯的話，revolution 到哪裡去了。答：「徹底改變」便是直譯。
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