资本主义到底公平不公平

    上述盖勒普（Gallup）调查显示，美国人对于经济的悲观情绪清楚地显示为上升趋势。

    争论的一方认为资本主义导致不平等加剧，正如皮凯蒂在书中声称的那样。而另一方则认为，资本主义导致不平等减弱，正如经济学家们一度认为的那样。这样的争论自有其意义。但大多数美国人考虑的是，他们能否感觉到自己变得更富裕，是否有公平的机会获得财富和保障。数据清楚地显示，当前经济增长的好处被最富有的人占尽，其他美国人还在为支付教育、医疗和养老费用发愁。

    在这样的背景下，决策者们需要决定如何制定未来可持续的财富分配制度，富人必须决定将多少钱交给慈善，企业领导人必须决定给工人付多少工资。关于财富集中趋势的小小分歧，很难影响到这些决定。（财富中文网）

    译者：早稻米

    The above Gallup poll shows a clear trend of growing pessimism among Americans about the economy.

    Debates over whether or not capitalism leads to increasing inequality, as Piketty asserts in his book, or leads to decreasing inequality, as economists had once thought, are worthwhile. But most Americans are simply concerned with whether they can feel themselves getting richer and if they have a fair shot at prosperity and security. The data clearly show that economic growth right now is being captured by the very rich, while the rest of the country is struggling to figure out how to pay for education, healthcare, and retirement.

    It's against this backdrop that policy makers need to decide how to make entitlement programs sustainable going forward, that the wealthy must decide how much of their money to give to charity, and that business leaders must decide how much to pay their workers. It's difficult to see how small disagreements over trends in wealth concentration could affect these decisions.