经济学人:安东尼.阿特金森 为了穷人,为了富人

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　　财经：安东尼·阿特金森：为了穷人，为了富人

　　Anthony Atkinson, a great British economist¹ died on January 1st, age 72.

　　安东尼·阿特金森，英国伟大的经济学家，1月1日与世长辞，享年72岁。

　　“Time is of the essence,” wrote Sir Anthony Atkinson, a British economist, in a report on measuring global poverty, published in July 2016.

　　“时间是最重要的，”英国经济学家安东尼·阿特金森先生在2016七月发表的全球贫困评估报告中写道。

　　His sense of urgency may have been influenced by another constraint².

　　他的紧迫感可能受到另一种约束的影响。

　　安东尼阿特金森经济学家.png

　　In 2014 Sir Anthony had been diagnosed with incurable³ cancer.

　　2014年，安东尼先生被诊断为不治之症。

　　Some might have paused; he sped up.

　　有些人可能已经停了下来，他却加快了脚步。

　　He chaired the World Bank commission that produced the poverty report, and wrote a book, “Inequality: What Can Be Done?”, in just three months.

　　他主持了提出贫困报告的世界银行委员会议，并在短短的三个月内写了一本书《不平等：可以做什么？》。

　　On January 1st, his time ran out.

　　2017年1月1日，他与世长辞。

　　In his lifetime, he was tipped for a Nobel prize.

　　在他一生中，他获得过诺贝尔奖。

　　On his death, fellow economists⁴ rushed to describe him as “one of the all-time greats” and emphasized his extraordinary “decency, humanity and integrity”.

　　在他去世后，经济学家们纷纷称他为“最伟大的人之一”，并强调了他与众不同的“得体、人性和诚信”。

　　The two were linked.

　　这两者被联系在一起。

　　For him, economics was about improving people’s lives.

　　对他来说，经济学就是要改善人们的生活。

　　A six-month stint⁵ volunteering as a nurse in a hospital in deprived inner-city Hamburg was an early influence.

　　在贫困的汉堡市中心内一家医院，为期六个月的护理志愿者经历对他产生了早期影响。

　　He saw poverty, and went on to spend his life combating it.

　　他了解了贫穷，并坚持用一生去战胜它。

　　He fought his battles gently—shying away from the adversarial style he experienced as a student at Cambridge—but with rigorous precision and an unfailing sense of social justice.

　　他的斗争很温和，避开了在剑桥当学生时针锋相对的方式，但是这种温和有着严格的精度和经久不衰的社会正义感。

　　As economists fell in love with markets in the 1980s and 1990s, he wrote the best textbook on their failures, with Joseph Stiglitz, another economist.

　　当经济学家们痴迷20世纪80年代和90年代的市场时，他和另一位经济学家约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨写了关于失败最好的教科书。

　　(Mr Stiglitz’s scrawl⁶ was some comfort to Sir Anthony, as evidence of handwriting even worse than his own. )

　　（作为比他自己的笔迹更糟糕的证据，斯蒂格利茨先生潦草的笔迹对他来说算是些安慰。）

　　Faced with an imperfect world, he showed how to achieve a second-best compromise.

　　面对一个不完美的世界，他展示了如何实现最好的妥协。

　　The theoretical pontificating of 18th- and 19th-century political economists on welfare and inequality had rather fallen out of fashion.

　　18世纪和19世纪的政治经济学家提出的关于财富和不平等的理论已经落伍。

　　Sir Anthony quickly identified a big obstacle to getting the message across: a lack of good data.

　　安东尼先生很快发现了信息传递的一个大阻碍，即缺乏可靠数据。

　　He pored through historical sources to unearth⁷ past trends in income inequality.

　　他通过仔细研究历史资料，揭示出过去收入不平等的趋势。

　　He created data sets on the highest incomes, findings from which would support the slogans on protesters’ placards.

　　他还创立了最高收入的数据集，由这些数据可以支持抗议者的布告标语。

　　Sir Anthony was a mentor⁸ and collaborator⁹ of Thomas Piketty, famous for his book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”.

　　托马斯·皮凯蒂因“21世纪的资本 ”这本书闻名于世，安东尼先生正是他的导师和合作者。

　　Mr Piketty says that all work on trends in income and wealth inequality stems from Sir Anthony’s.

　　皮凯蒂先生说，作品中所有关于收入趋势和财富不平等方面的内容都来自安东尼先生。

　　In the course of his career, Sir Anthony contributed to an average of nearly a book a year and sat on numerous government commissions.

　　在他的职业生涯中，安东尼平均每年出一本书，并且出现在许多政府的委员会上。

　　The legacy¹⁰ of his most cited paper, published in 1970, is an inequality index that bears his name.

　　他被引用次数最多的论文发表于1970，是一个以他的名字命名的不平等指数。

　　Existing measures, he showed, might seem like neutral indicators¹¹ of the spread of incomes in a country.

　　他表示，现有措施似乎是一个国家收入分配的中性指标。

　　In fact they contained implicit¹² value judgments¹³.

　　事实上，它们包含隐性价值判断。

　　Some were more sensitive to sagging¹⁴ incomes for the poorest; others would respond more to soaring incomes at the top.

　　有些人对最贫穷的人的收入下降更敏感；另一些则会对收入的飙升反应更强烈。

　　Always constructive¹⁵, he then created a new class of inequality measures, making explicit¹⁶ what had been implicit.

　　他总是建设性地开创一类新的解决不平等的措施，明确什么是隐性的。

　　Today they are used by the US Census¹⁷ Bureau.

　　今天美国人口普查局采用了他的观点。

　　He went beyond analysing the world to trying to fix it—in ways that many rejected.

　　他超出对世界的分析试图解决世界问题，这种方法被大部分人反对。

　　His faith in the power of government to right the world’s ills led to radical¹⁸ proposals.

　　他关于通过政府力量来纠正世界性问题这方面的想法带来了激进的提案。

　　His final book on inequality argued for a participation¹⁹ income (a payment for all who contribute to society) and a tax on wealth to finance an inheritance for everyone on reaching the age of 18.

　　安东尼先生最后一本关于不平等问题的书中赞成参与性收入（支付给对社会有贡献的人），和对18岁及以上的富人征收融资遗产的赋税。

　　He pushed back against pressure to cut taxes and prioritize containing inflation over reducing unemployment.

　　他顶住压力，削减税收和优先遏制通货膨胀来降低失业率。

　　To the end, he was battling lifelong challenges: inadequate²⁰ data; how to harness government for good; and closed minds.

　　到最后，他毕生都在与挑战作斗争：数据不足，如何更好地治理政府，还有封闭的思想。

　　1.speed up 加速

　　例句:You notice that your breathing has speeded up a bit.

　　你注意到自己的呼吸加快了一些。

　　2.ran out 用完

　　例句:They ran out of fuel.

　　他们的燃料用完了。

　　3.social justice 社会正义

　　例句:He firmly believes liberty is inseparable from social justice.

　　他坚信自由与社会正义是不可分的。

　　4.a lack of 缺乏

　　例句:I was hampered²¹ by a lack of information.

　　我受到了信息不足的牵累。

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