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“If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets.”
“如果穷人们知道了富人们有多么富有，街上多半会闹动乱了。”
Actor and comedian Chris Rock made this astute statement during a 2014 interview with New York magazine, referring to the yawning gap between rich and poor.
男演员同时也是喜剧明星的克里斯.罗克于2014年接受《纽约》杂志采访，谈到巨大的贫富差距时发表了这番机智的言论。
In so doing, he stumbled upon a key challenge in the study of inequality.
在实际操作中，他遇到了一个对不平等的研究的关键性挑战。
What’s the best way to measure it?
怎样才是最好的衡量方式呢？
Most inequality studies have focused on income – measures of which are widely available.
大部分对社会不平等的研究都在关注收入—对收入的衡量是广泛可行的。
However, being rich is not about a single year of earnings but rather about the accumulation of wealth over time.
不过，成为富人并不仅仅是指某一年的收入，而是历经多年的财富积累。
In the past, quantifying that has been tricky.
在过去的时间里，衡量积累了多少财富是不太容易的。
The wealthy would probably prefer we stay in the dark about how rich they are, presumably to avoid the aforementioned riots.
富人们可能更宁愿我们根本不了解他们到底多有钱，也许是为了避免前面提到的动乱。
There are several ways to measure inequality.
衡量社会不平等有几种方式。
One of the most popular is by income.
最流行的就是靠收入。
That’s largely because there’s more data, and it’s a lot easier to measure.
这很大程度上是因为数据更多，所以衡量起来更容易。
But this measure is a snapshot.
但这种衡量是很粗略的。
Wealth, on the other hand, is an aggregation, affected not only by current income but earnings accumulated in previous years and by previous generations.
财富，从另一方面说，是一种聚合体，不仅仅受当前的收入影响，同时还会受到过去几年甚至以前几代人的积累的影响。
Only by studying wealth inequality do scholars, policymakers and others get the deepest and broadest measure of the gap between the rich and everyone else.
只有通过研究财富的不平等，这样学者们，政策制定者等人才能够对贫富之间的差距更有深，更广的认识。
How much wealth someone has is also a better measure of their quality of life and opportunities.
一个人所拥有的财富也能够更好地衡量出他们的生活品质和机遇。
It determines the ability to invest in education, financial assets and the comfort and security of one’s retirement.
它决定了人们投资于教育和金融理财的能力以及退休后的舒适度和安全感。
Wealth also mitigates worries about paycheck variability or unexpected expenses.
财富还能够缓和关于工资变动和意外支出的焦虑。
If you have wealth, the sudden cost of replacing a broken water heater or paying a medical bill doesn’t cause nearly as much stress as if you’re poor.
如果你有钱的话，热水器坏了更换的费用或者看病的账单都不会像没有钱时那样引发那么多压力。
When we do look at the data on wealth inequality in the US, it’s stark and dwarfs that of the rest of the developed world.
如果我们看看美国财富不平等的数据，会发现它很直观，也让别的发达国家相形见绌。
The conservative Hudson Institute in 2017 reported that the wealthiest 5% of American households held 62.5% of all assets in the US in 2013, up from 54.1% 30 years earlier.
据哈德逊研究所2017年的保守估计，在2013年度美国最富有的前5%的人拥有美国62.5%的财富，从30年前的54.1%又上涨了。
As a consequence, the wealth of the other 95 percent declined from 45.9% to 37.5%.
相应地，剩余95%的人的财富就从45.9%下降到了37.5%。
As a result, the median wealth of upper-income families (earning US$639,400 on average) was nearly seven times that of middle-income households ($96,500) in 2013, the widest gap in at least 30 years.
因此，上等收入家庭的中位数（平均为639,400美元）达到了2013年的家庭财富（96,500美元）的七倍，也创下了三十年来的最大贫富差距。
More notably, inequality scholars Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found that the top 0.01% controlled 22% of all wealth in 2012, up from just 7% in 1979.
最值得注意的是，不平等研究学者伊曼纽尔.赛斯和加布里埃尔.扎克曼发现，在2012年度，最顶端的0.01%的人控制了所有财富的22%，从1979年的7%又上调了。
If you only looked at data on income inequality, however, you’d see a different picture.
但如果你只看收入不平等的数据，那么你会看到不一样的景象。
In 2013, for example, the top 5 percent of households earned just 30% of all US income (compared with possessing nearly 63% of all wealth).
在2013年，举个例子，最前面5%的家庭只赚到了美国收入总和的30%（与财富的63%形成了对比）。
While the U.S. is not the only developed country that has seen wealth inequality rise over the past three decades, it is an outlier.
尽管美国并不是在过去的三十年里贫富差距拉大的唯一国家，它的数据还是比较异常的。
The wealthiest 5% households in the US have almost 91 times more wealth than the median American household, the widest gap among 18 of the world’s most developed countries.
美国最富有的5%家庭有用比美国家庭平均值多91倍的财富，这在18个发达国家中是差距最大的。
The next highest is the Netherlands, which has a ratio less than half that.
第二个高的是荷兰，倍率值大概是其一半多。
The recently passed US Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will make this problem a whole lot worse.
最近通过的美国税改和劳动法案会让这一情况雪上加霜。
So is Chris Rock right that Americans just aren’t aware of the levels of disparity in their society?
那么克里斯.罗克在讲到美国人不清楚他们的社会不平等方面说对了吗？
Surveys suggest he is.
调查显示他是对的。
Respondents to a 2011 national survey, for example, “dramatically underestimated” levels of wealth inequality in the US.
2011的全国调查中，举个例子，参与者们“大大低估”了美国收入的不平等。
The survey, and other research, also partially affirmed the other half of his quote by showing that by and large Americans do care about wealth inequality and would prefer it to be lower.
这次调查，还有其他的研究，也部分证实了他的话的另一半，调查显示大部分美国人确实很关心财富不平等，希望差距缩小。
Whether existing wealth inequality in the US is socially or morally sustainable – or might lead to the riots envisioned by Chris Rock – is an open question.
美国现有的财富不平等从社会和道德上来说是否是持续性的—也可能会导致克里斯.罗克遇见的动乱—这是一个开放性的问题。
Whatever happens, first things first, we need to know and understand just how bad wealth inequality in the US has become.
不管怎样，一步一步来，我们首先需要知道并了解美国的财富不平等究竟到了什么样的程度。
What we then choose to do about it is up to all of us.
接下来我们会做出什么样的举动就取决于我们自己了。
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