时代周刊:美国如何落到今天这步田地?(2)（在线收听）

For too many, the present is hard enough.

对很多人来说，当下都已经够艰难了。

Income inequality has soared:

收入不平等已经加剧：

inflation-adjusted middle-class wages have been nearly frozen for the last four decades, while earnings of the top 1% have nearly tripled.

通胀调整后的中产阶级工资冻结了将近40年，收入最高的那1%的人群的收入却增长了近两倍之多。

The recovery from the crash of 2008— which saw banks and bankers bailed out while millions lost their homes, savings and jobs—

2008年金融危机后——在那场危机中，银行和银行家得到了纾困，却有数百万人失去他们的住房、存款和工作——

was reserved almost exclusively for the wealthiest.

复苏几乎成了最富有的那群人才有的机会。

Their incomes in the three years following the crash went up by nearly a third, while the bottom 99% saw an uptick of less than half of 1%.

金融危机后的前三年，他们的收入就增长了近1/3，而底层99%的人的收入都只增长了不到0.5%。

Only a democracy and an economy that has discarded its basic mission of holding the community together, or failed at it, would produce those results.

只有放弃了将各个阶层团结在一起这一基本使命，或没能完成这一使命的民主体制和经济体才会出现这样的结果。

Meanwhile, the celebrated American economic-mobility engine is sputtering.

与此同时，美国著名的经济流动引擎正在熄火。

For adults in their 30s, the chance of earning more than their parents dropped to 50% from 90% just two generations earlier.

对于30多岁的成年人来说，收入超过父母的几率从两代人之前的90%下降到了50%。

The American middle class, once an aspirational model for the world, is no longer the world's richest.

曾引领了全世界的梦想的美国中产阶级如今已不再是世界上最富有的阶层。

Most Americans with average incomes have been left to fend for themselves,

大多数收入在平均水平线的美国人都不得不自谋生路，

often at jobs where automation, outsourcing, the decline of union protection

而他们从事的往往又是被自动化、外包、工会保护的减少

and the boss's obsession with squeezing out every penny of short-term profit have eroded any sense of security.

以及老板对榨取每一分钱短期利润的痴迷榨干了他们的安全感的工作。

In 2017, household debt had grown higher than the peak reached in 2008 before the crash,

随着学生贷款和汽车贷款对家庭收入的要求越来越高，

with student and automobile loans staking growing claims on family paychecks.

2017年，家庭债务的水平就已经超过了2008年危机前的峰值。

Although the U.S. remains the world's richest country,

尽管美国当前依旧是世界上最富有的国家，

it has the third-highest poverty rate among the 35 nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), behind only Turkey and Israel.

但美国的贫困率也高居经济合作与发展组织的35个成员国中的前三，仅次于土耳其和以色列。

Nearly 1 in 5 American children lives in a household that the government classifies as "food insecure,"

近五分之一的美国儿童都生活在政府划定的“三餐不继”的家庭中，

meaning they are without "access to enough food for active, healthy living."

意思就是他们连“过上积极健康的生活所需的食物”都不够。

Beyond that, too few basic services seem to work as they should.

除此之外，国家的基础服务也极少能正常运行。

America's airports are an embarrassment, and a modern air-traffic control system is more than 25 years behind its original schedule.

美国的机场建设简直令人尴尬，现代空中交通管制系统也比原计划落后了25年。

The power grid, roads and rails are crumbling, pushing the U.S. far down international rankings for infrastructure quality.

美国的电网、公路和铁路正在崩溃，以致美国在基础设施质量方面的国际排名大幅下滑。

Despite spending more on health care and K-12 education per capita than most other developed countries,

此外，尽管美国在医疗保健和K-12阶段的教育方面的人均投入比大多数发达国家都多，

health care outcomes and student achievement also rank in the middle or worse globally.

但医疗保健方面的成果和学生的成绩在全球也还是处于中等甚至更差的水平。

Among the 35 OECD countries, American children rank 30th in math proficiency and 19th in science.

在35个经合组织国家中，美国儿童的数学水平排到了第30名，科学水平也排到了第19名。

American politicians talk about "American exceptionalism" so habitually that it should have its own key on their speechwriters' laptops.

美国政客们总是习惯性地谈论“美国例外论”，已经到了应该给他们的演讲稿撰写人的笔记本电脑专门配个“美国例外论”键的地步。

Is this the exceptionalism they have in mind?

这就是他们心目中的例外主义吗？

Perhaps they should look at their own performance, which is best described as pathetic.

也许那些政客们应该看看他们自己的表现，用“可悲”来形容最恰当不过了。

Congress has not passed a comprehensive budget on time without omnibus bills since 1994.

自1994年以来，国会没有哪次是在不借助综合条例草案的情况下及时通过了全面预算的。

There are more than 20 registered lobbyists for every member of Congress.

每名国会议员都有20多名注册说客。

Most are deployed to block anything that would tax, regulate or otherwise threaten a deep-pocketed client.

其中大多数说客的工作都是阻止任何可能对财力雄厚的客户进行征税、监管或对他们构成威胁的行为。

Indeed, money has come to dominate everything so completely

的确，金钱已经完全主宰了世间万物，

that the people we send to D.C. to represent us have been reduced to begging on the phone for campaign cash up to five hours a day

以致于我们派到华盛顿特区去代表我们的人，都已经沦落到每天花长达五个小时的时间打电话向我们讨竞选资金，

and spending their evenings taking checks at fundraisers organized by those swarming lobbyists.

晚上到那些成群结队的游说者组织的筹款活动上收支票的地步。

A gerrymandering process has rigged easy wins for most of them, as long as they fend off primary challengers—

选区划分过程的不公操纵了他们中的大多数人轻松获胜的过程，只要他们能抵挡住主要的挑战者——

which ensures that they will gravitate toward the special-interest positions of their donors and their party's base,

这就确保了他们会被捐赠人和党内基层的特殊利益所吸引，逐渐向他们靠拢，

while racking up mounting deficits to pay for goods and services that cost more than budgeted,

尽管他们用于支付超出预算的商品和服务带来的赤字不断攀升，

rarely work as promised and are seldom delivered on time.

又很少像他们承诺的那样努力工作，也很少按时交出工作成绩。