不止中国 全世界的劫富济贫都帮不了穷人

Making men and women all equal. That I take to be the gist of our political theory.”

“让所有男女都平等。我将此视为我们政治理论的主旨。”

This rejoinder to rightwingers who delight in rank and privilege is spoken by Lady Glencora, the free-spirited Liberal heroine of Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Finn. It encapsulates the cardinal error of much of the left.

针对沉迷于等级和特权的右翼人士的这一反驳，来自19世纪英国小说家安东尼•特罗洛普(Anthony Trollope)所著的《Phineas Finn》一书中自由奔放的自由主义女主人公格伦科拉夫人(Lady Glencora)之口。它概括了很多左翼人士的根本错误。

Joshua Monk, one of the novel’s Radicals, sees through it. “Equality is an ugly word . . . and frightens,” he says. The aim of the true Liberal should not be equality but “lifting up those below him”. It is to be achieved not by redistribution but by free trade, compulsory education and women’s rights.

这部小说的激进分子之一约舒亚•蒙克(Joshua Monk)看穿了这点。他说：“平等是一个丑陋的词汇……它让人害怕。”真正的自由主义者的目标不应该是平等，而是“提升那些地位比他低的人”。实现这一目标不是通过再分配，而是通过自由贸易、义务教育和妇女权利。

And so it came to pass. In the UK since 1800, or Italy since 1900, or Hong Kong since 1950, real income per head has increased by a factor of anywhere from 15 to 100, depending on how one allows for the improved quality of steel girders and plate glass, medicine and economics.

此后发生的情况正是这样，在英国自1800年开始，或者在意大利自1900年开始，或者在香港自1950年开始，实际人均收入增加了15倍至100倍之多，取决于人们在多大程度上计入钢梁和平板玻璃的质量提高，以及医药和经济学的进展。

In relative terms, the poorest people have been the biggest beneficiaries. The rich became richer, true. But millions more have gas heating, cars, smallpox vaccinations, indoor plumbing, cheap travel, rights for women, lower child mortality, adequate nutrition, taller bodies, doubled life expectancy, schooling for their kids, newspapers, a vote, a shot at university and respect.

相对而言，最穷人群一直是最大受益者。富人变得更为富有了，这没错。但还有数百万人拥有了暖气、汽车、天花疫苗、室内给排水系统、廉价旅行、妇女权益、儿童死亡率下降、充足的营养、更高的身材、寿命延长一倍、子女上学、报纸、投票权、有机会上大学并得到尊重。

Never had anything similar happened, not in the glory of Greece or the grandeur of Rome, not in ancient Egypt or medieval China. What I call The Great Enrichment is the main fact and finding of economic history.

人类历史上以往从未发生过类似的事情，古希腊或古罗马的鼎盛时期没有出现过，古埃及和中世纪时期的中国也没有出现过。我所称的大富裕(Great Enrichment)是经济历史的主要事实和发现。

Yet you will have heard that our biggest problem is inequality, and that we must make men and women equal. No, we should not – at least, not if we want to lift up the poor.

然而，你听到的观点却是，我们最大的问题是不平等，我们必须让所有男女平等。不，我们不应如此——至少，如果我们想提高穷人的生活水平的话，就不应从这个角度出发。

Ethically speaking, the true liberal should care only about whether the poorest among us are moving closer to having enough to live with dignity and to participate in a democracy. They are. Even in already rich countries, such as the UK and the US, the real income of the poor has recently risen, not stagnated – if, that is, income is correctly measured to include better healthcare, better working conditions, more years of education, longer retirements and, above all, the rising quality of goods. Admittedly, it is rising at a slower pace than in the 1950s; but that era of rising prosperity followed the wretched setbacks of the Great Depression and the second world war.

从道德上讲，真正的自由主义者只应关心这样一个问题：我们当中的最穷人群是否在趋向于拥有足够多的资源，可以有尊严的生活并参与民主？答案是肯定的。即便在已经富有的国家，例如英国和美国，穷人的实际收入近年也在增加，而没有停滞——如果正确衡量收入，计入更佳的医疗、更好的工作条件、更长的受教育时间，更长的退休生活以及（最重要的一点）商品质量的不断提高。没错，收入增加的速度慢于上世纪50年代；但那个快速变富的时期是在大萧条(Great Depression)和二战的悲惨挫折之后出现的。

It matters ethically, of course, how the rich obtained their wealth – whether from stealing or from choosing the right womb (as the billionaire investor Warren Buffett puts it); or from voluntary exchanges for the cheap cement or the cheap air travel the now-rich had the good sense to provide the once-poor. We should prosecute theft and reintroduce heavy inheritance taxes. But we should not kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.

当然，富人如何获得财富的问题在道德上很重要——是通过偷盗还是通过投对了胎（借用亿万富翁投资者沃伦•巴菲特(Warren Buffett)的话）？或者来自自愿换取廉价水泥或廉价航空旅行，现在富有的人们知道把这些提供给那些曾经贫穷的人们。我们应当对盗窃行为提起公诉，并重新引入高额遗产税。但我们不应杀鸡取卵。

What does not matter ethically are the routine historical ups and downs of the Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, or the excesses of the 1 per cent of the 1 per cent, of a sort one could have seen three centuries ago in Versailles. There are not enough really rich people. If we seized the assets of the 85 wealthiest people in the world to make a fund to give annually to the poorest half, it would raise their spending power by less than 4p a day.

在道德上并不重要的是，衡量平等程度的基尼系数(Gini coefficient)不断轮回的历史起落，或者1%的富人中1%的豪富的过分行为，300年前我们或许能在凡尔赛宫看到类似的行为。世界上真正富有的人还不够多。如果我们收缴全球最为富有的85个人的财产，用其成立一个基金，每年分给最贫穷的一半人，那么他们的每日购买力仅会增加不到4便士。

All the foreign aid to Africa or South and Central America, for example, is dwarfed by the amount that nations in these areas would gain if the rich world abandoned tariffs and other protections for their agriculture industries. There are ways to help the poor – let the Great Enrichment proceed, as it has in China and India – but charity or expropriation are not the ways.

例如，国际社会对非洲或中南美的全部外援，抵不过富国取消农业关税和其他保护主义措施给这些地区的国家所带来的好处。帮助穷人是有办法的——让“大富裕”继续推进吧，就像在中国和印度那样——但慈善或征收财产并非解决之道。

The Great Enrichment came from innovation, not from accumulating capital or exploiting the working classes or lording it over the colonies. Capital had little to do with it, despite the unhappy fact that we call the system “capitalism”. Capital is necessary. But so are water, labour, oxygen and pencils. The path to prosperity involves betterment, not piling brick on brick.

“大富裕”来自创新，而非积累资本，剥削工人阶级，或者逞殖民主义威风。资本与此几乎毫无关系，尽管一个令人不快的事实是我们称这个体系为“资本主义”。资本是必要的。但水资源、劳动力、氧气和铅笔也是如此。通向繁荣之路的关键在于改善，而不是一块块地堆砖。

Taxing the rich, or capital, does not help the poor. It can throw a spanner into the mightiest engine for lifting up those below us, arising from a new equality, not of material worth but of liberty and dignity. Gini coefficients are not what matter; the Great Enrichment is.

向富人或资本征税都不会帮助穷人。要改善地位在我们之下的人们的人生，最强大的发动机来自于一种新的平等，并非物质财富的平等，而是自由和尊严上的平等；而向富人或资本征税可能阻碍这台发动机的运转。重要的不是基尼系数；而是“大富裕”。