时代周刊:美国如何落到今天这步田地?(5)（在线收听）

I WAS ONE OF THOSE ELITE WINNERS.

我就是精英赢家之一。

IN 1964, I was a bookworm growing up in Far Rockaway, a working-class section of Queens.

1964年时，我还是一个在皇后区工人阶层聚居的法洛克威长大的书虫。

One day, I read in a biography of John F. Kennedy that he had gone to something called a prep school.

一天，我在约翰·肯尼迪的传记中读到，他上过一所预科学校。

None of my teachers at Junior High School 198 had a clue what that meant,

我198中学的老师都不知道预科是什么意思，

but I soon figured out that prep school was like college.

但我很快就弄明白了，预科和大学差不多。

You got to go to classes and live on a campus, only you got to go four years earlier, which seemed like a fine idea.

你要上课，还要住校，只是你得在上大学之前提前四年上这种预科学校，我感觉这个想法还不错。

It seemed even better when I discovered that some prep schools offered financial aid.

当我发现一些预科学校还提供补助时，感觉就更好了。

I ended up at Deerield Academy, in Western Massachusetts,

最后我去了马萨诸塞州西部的迪尔菲尔德学院，

where the headmaster, Frank Boyden, told my worried parents, who ran a perpetually struggling liquor store,

校长弗兰克·博伊登对我忧心忡忡，经营着一家生意一直很惨淡的酒水店的父母说，

that his financial aid policy was that they should send him a check every year for whatever they could afford.

他的学校的补助政策是，我父母无论能负担多少钱，都要每年给他寄一张支票。

Three years later, in 1967, I found myself sitting in the headmaster's office one day

三年后，也就是1967年，我大四那年秋天，我坐在了校长办公室里，

in the fall of my senior year with a man named R. Inslee Clark Jr., the dean of admissions at Yale.

办公室里还有一个叫小R.英思利·克拉克的人，他是耶鲁大学的招生主任。

Clark looked over my record and asked me a bunch of questions,

克拉克看了我的记录，问了我一堆问题，

most of which were about where I had grown up and how I had ended up at Deerield.

大部分都是关于我是在哪里长大的，以及我是怎么到迪尔菲尔德学院的。

Then he paused, looked me in the eye and asked if I really wanted to go to Yale—if it was my first choice.

接着，他停了下来，看着我的眼睛，问我是否真的想去耶鲁——耶鲁是否是我的第一志愿。

When I said yes, Clark's reply was instant:

我回答说是，克拉克立即说道：

Then I can promise you that you are in.

“那么，我可以向你保证，你被录取了。

I will tell Mr. Boyden that you don't have to apply anywhere else.

我会通知博伊登先生，你不需要申请其他学校了。

Just kind of keep it to yourself."

请暂时保密。”

What I didn't know then was that I was part of a revolution being led by Clark, whose nickname was Inky.

当时我不知道的是，我已经加入了克拉克，外号“印基”，领导的一场革命。

I was about to become one of what would come to be known as Inky's boys and, later, girls.

我即将成为后来被称为“印基的男孩”，后面也有女孩加入进来，中的一员。

We were part of a meritocracy infusion that flourished at Yale

我们成了60年代中期至70年代耶鲁和其他精英教育机构，

and other elite education institutions, law firms and investment banks in the mid-1960s and '70s.

精英律所以及精英投行圈里盛行的精英教育的一员。

It produced great progress in equalizing opportunity.

这种教育模式促使美国在机会均等方面取得了巨大的进展。

But it had the unintended consequence of entrenching a new aristocracy of rich knowledge workers

但它也在无意之间巩固了一个由富有知识劳动者组成的新贵阶层的地位，

who were much smarter and more driven than the old-boy network of heirs born on third base—

而这些人比那些靠人脉吃饭，明明是含着金钥匙出生却以为自己是自力更生发达起来的继承者们聪明地多，也有动力得多——

and much more able to enrich and protect the clients who could afford them.

也更能发展并保护那些负担得起雇佣他们的客户。

After college, I went on to Yale Law School and graduated in 1975,

大学毕业后，我去了耶鲁法学院，1975年毕的业，

at a time when demand for lawyers in the flourishing knowledge-worker economy was exploding.

当时，蓬勃发展的知识型人才经济对律师的需求呈爆炸式增长。

By the mid-1980s, in terms of dollars generated,

到20世纪80年代中期，以创造的美元为单位计算，

the legal industry was bigger than steel or textiles, and about the same size as the auto industry.

法律行业比钢铁或纺织行业还要打，几乎赶上了汽车行业的规模。

The new lawyers were increasingly concentrated in fast-growing firms that served large corporations

新律师越来越多地集中在快速增长，并以大公司为服务对象的公司里，

and were prepared to pay skyrocketing salaries to attract the best talent.

而这些公司已经做好了为吸引最优秀的人才支付飞涨的薪水的准备。

Soon, the gap between pay in the private and public sectors

很快，私营部门和公共部门的薪酬差距就已经大到

was too large to attract enough talented young lawyers to government or public-interest law—

政府和公益法领域无法吸引足够多有才华的年轻律师的地步——

a change described by Stanford law professor Robert Gordon in 1988 as "one of the most antisocial acts of the bar in recent history."

1988年，斯坦福大学法学教授罗伯特·戈登将这一变化描述为“近年来律师行业最反社会的现象之一”。