现代大学英语精读第二版（第六册）学习笔记（原文及全文翻译）——7 - How to Get the Poor off Our Conscience（怎样不为穷人的存在感到内疚）

Unit 7 - How to Get the Poor off Our Conscience

How to Get the Poor off Our Conscience

John Kenneth Galbraith

I would like to reflect on one of the oldest of human exercises, the process by which over the years, and indeed over the centuries, we have undertaken to get the poor off our Conscience.

Rich and poor have lived together, always uncomfortably and sometimes perilously, since the beginning of time. Plutarch was led to say: "An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of republics." And the problems that arise from the continuing co-existence of affluence and poverty-and particularly the process by which good fortune is justified in the presence of the ill fortune of others-have been an intellectual preoccupation for centuries. They continue to be so in our own time.

One begins with the solution proposed in the Bible: the poor suffer in this world but are wonderfully rewarded in the next. The poverty is a temporary misfortune; If they are poor and also meek, they eventually will inherit the earth. This is, in some ways, an admirable solution. It allows the rich to enjoy their wealth while envying the poor their future fortune.

Much, much later, in the twenty or thirty years following the publication in 1776 of The Wealth of Nations-the late dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Britain-the problem and its solution began to take on their modern form. Jeremy Bentham, a near contemporary of Adam Smith, came up with the formula that for perhaps fifty years was extraordinarily influential in British and, to some degree, American thought. This was utilitarianism.

"By the principle of utility" Bentham said in 1789, "is meant the principal which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question." Virtue is, indeed must be, self-centered. While there were people with great good fortune and many more with great ill fortune, the social problem was solved as long as, again in Bentham's words, there was "the greatest good for the greatest number." Society did its best for the largest possible number of people; one accepted that the result might be sadly unpleasant for the many whose happiness was not served

In the 1830's a new formula, influential in no slight degree to this day, became available for getting the poor off the public conscience. This is associated with the names of David Ricardo, a stockbroker, and Thomas Robert Malthus, a divine. The essentials are familiar: the poverty of the poor was the fault of the poor. And it was so because it was a product of their excessive fecundity: their grievously uncontrolled lust caused them to breed up to the full limits of the available subsistence.

This was Malthusianism. Poverty being caused in the bed meant that the rich were not responsible for either its creation or its amelioration. However, Malthus was himself not without a certain feeling of responsibility: he urged that the marriage ceremony contain warning against undue and irresponsible sexual intercourse-a warning, it is fair to say, that has not been accepted as a fully effective method of birth control. In more recent times, Ronald Reagan has said that the best form of population control emerges from the market. (Couples in love should repair to R. H. Macy's, not their bedrooms.) Malthus, it must be said, was at least as relevant.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, a new form of denial achieved great influence, especially in the United States. The new doctrine, associated with the name of Herbert Spencer, was Social Darwinism. In economic life, as in biological development, the overriding rule was survival of the fittest. That phrase-"survival of the fittest"-came, in fact, not from Charles Darwin but from Spencer, and expressed his view of economic life. The elimination of the poor is nature's way of improving the race. The weak and unfortunate being extruded, the quality of the human family is thus strengthened.

One of the most notable American spokespersons of Social Darwinism was John D. Rockefeller-the first Rockefeller-who said in famous speech: "The American Beauty rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. And so it is in economic life. It is merely the working out of a law of nature and a law of God."

In the course of the present century, however, Social Darwinism to be considered a bit too cruel. It declined in popularity, and references to it acquired a condemnatory tone. We passed on to the more amorphous denial of poverty associated with Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. They held that public assistance to the poor interfered with the effective operation of the economic system-that such assistance was inconsistent with the economic design that had come to serve most people very well. The notion that there is something economically damaging about helping the poor remains with us to this day as one of the ways by which we get them off our conscience.

With the Roosevelt revolution, a specific responsibility was assumed by the government for the least fortunate people in the republic. Roosevelt and the presidents who followed him accepted a substantial measure of responsibility for the old through Social Security, for the unemployed through unemployment insurance, for the unemployable and the handicapped through direct relief, and for the sick through Medicare and Medicaid. This was truly great change, and for a time, the age-old tendency to avoid thinking about the poor gave way to the feeling that we didn't need to try-that we were, indeed, doing something about them.

In recent years, however, it has become clear that the search for a way of getting the poor off our conscience was not at an end; it was only suspended. And so we are now again engaged in this search in a highly energetic way. It has again become a major philosophical, literary, and rhetorical preoccupation, and an economically not unrewarding enterprise.

Of the four, maybe five, current designs we have to get the poor off our conscience, the first proceeds from the inescapable fact that most of the things that must be done on behalf of the poor must be done in one way or another by the government. It is then argued that the government is inherently incompetent, except as regards weapons design and procurement and the overall management of the Pentagon. Being incompetent and ineffective, it must not be asked to succor the poor; it will only louse things up or make things worse.

The allegation of government incompetence is associated in our time with the general condemnation of the bureaucrat-again excluding those associated with national defense. The only form of discrimination that is still permissible-that is, still officially encouraged in the United States today-is discrimination against people who work for the federal government, especially on social welfare activities.

We have great corporate bureaucracies replete with corporate bureaucrats, but they are good; only public bureaucracy and government servants are bad. In fact we have in the United States an extraordinarily good public service-one made up of talented and dedicated people who are overwhelmingly honest and only rarely given to overpaying for monkey wrenches, flashlights, coffee makers, and toilet seats. (When these aberrations have occurred they have, oddly enough, all been in the Pentagon.) We have nearly abolished poverty among the old, greatly democratized health care assured minorities of their civil rights, and vastly enhanced educational opportunity. All this would seem a considerable achievement for in competent and otherwise ineffective people. We must recognize that the present condemnation of government and government administration is really part of the continuing design for avoiding responsibility for the poor.

The second design in this great centuries-old tradition is to argue that any form of public help to the poor only hurts the poor. It destroys morale. It seduces people away from gainful employment. It breaks up marriages, since women can seek welfare for themselves and their children once they are without husbands.

There is no proof of this-none, certainly, that compares that damage with the damage that would be inflicted by the loss of public assistance. Still, the case is made-and believed-that there is something gravely damaging about aid to the unfortunate. This is perhaps our most highly influential piece of fiction.

The third, and closely related, design for relieving ourselves of responsibility for the poor is the argument that public-assistance measures have an adverse effect on incentive. They transfer income from the diligent to the idle and feckless, thus reducing the effort of the diligent and encouraging the idleness of the idle.

The modern manifestation of this is supply-side economics. Supply-side economics holds that the rich in the United States have not been working because they have too little income. So, by taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich, we increase effort and stimulate the economy. Can we really believe that any considerable number of the poor prefer welfare to a good job? Or that business people-corporate executives, the key figures in our time-are idling away their hours because of the insufficiency of their pay? This is a scandalous charge against the American businessperson, notably a hard worker. Belief can be the servant of truth-but even more of convenience.

The fourth design for getting the poor off our conscience is to point to the presumed adverse effect on freedom of taking responsibility for them. Freedom consists of the right to spend a maximum of one's money by one's own choice, and to see a minimum taken and spent by the government. (Again, expenditure on national defense is excepted.) In the enduring words of Professor Milton Friedman, people must be "free to choose."

This is possibly the most transparent of all of the designs; no mention is ordinarily made of the relation of income to the freedom of the poor. (Professor Friedman is here an exception; through the negative income tax, he would assure everyone a basic income.) There is, we can surely agree, no form of oppression that is quite so great, no construction on thought and effort quite so comprehensive, as that which comes from having no money at all. Though we hear much about the limitation on the freedom of the affluent when their income is reduced through taxes, we hear nothing of the extraordinary enhancement of the freedom of the poor from having some money of their own to spend. Yet the loss of freedom from taxation to the rich is a small thing as compared with the gain in freedom from providing some income to the impoverished. Freedom we rightly cherish. Cherishing it, we should not use it as a cover for denying freedom to those in need.

Finally, when all else fails, we resort to simple psychological denial. This is a psychic tendency that in various manifestations is common to us all. It causes us to avoid thinking about death. It causes a great many people to avoid thought of the arms race and the consequent rush toward a highly probable extinction. By the same process of psychological denial, we decline to think of the poor. Whether they be in Ethiopia, the South Bronx, or even in such an Elysium as Los Angeles, we resolve to keep them off our minds. Think, we are often ad vised, of something pleasant.

These are the modern designs by which we escape concern for the poor. All, save perhaps the last, are in great inventive descent from Bentham, Malthus, and Spencer. Ronald Reagan and his colleagues are clearly in a notable tradition-at the end of a long history of effort to escape responsibility for one's fellow beings. So are the philosophers now celebrated in Washington: George Gilder, a greatly favored figure of the recent past, who tells to much applause that the poor must have the cruel spur of their own suffering to ensure effort; Charles Murray, who to greater cheers, contemplates "scrapping the entire federal welfare and income-support structure for working and aged persons including A.F.D.C., Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment insurance, Workers Compensation, subsidized housing, disability insurance, and, "he adds, "the rest. Cut the knot, for there is no way to untie it." By triage, the worthy would be selected to survive: the loss of the rest is the penalty we should pay. Murray is the voice of Spencer in our time; he is enjoying, as indicated, unparalleled popularity in high Washington circles.

Compassion, along with the associated public effort, is the least comfortable, the least convenient, course of behavior and action in our time. But it remains the only one that it compatible with a totally civilized life. Also it is, in the end, the most truly conservative course. There is no paradox here. Civil discontent and its consequences do not come from contented people-an obvious point to the extent to which we can make contentment as nearly universal as possible, we will preserve and enlarge the social and political tranquility for which conservatives, above all, should yearn.

参考译文——怎样不为穷人的存在感到内疚

怎样不为穷人的存在感到内疚

约翰·肯尼思·高伯瑞

我想认真地思考人类最古老的一种活动。多年来，实际上几个世纪以来我们一直在从事这一活动，即尝试怎样使我们不为穷人的存在而内疚。

自古以来，穷人与富人即相随相伴，彼此总是很不愉快，有时矛盾激化还充满危险。普鲁塔克曾说：“贫富不均乃共和政体最致命的宿疾。”贫穷和富有持续共存产生的问题，特别是证明在他人遭受贫穷的厄运时我们享有财富有其合理性这一活动，一直是有思想有学问的人几百年来孜孜不倦地思考探索的问题。

《圣经》提出了最初的解决办法：在现世受苦受难的人来世会得到更好的回报。他们的贫困只是一种暂时的不幸：如果他们穷困但却温顺，他们最终将成为这个世界的主人。在某种程度上这是个绝妙的解决办法，这可以让富人在享受荣华富贵的同时，羡慕穷人将来的好运。

很长时间以后，即在1776年《国富论》发表二三十年之后——在英国工业革命开始初期贫富不均的问题及其解决办法开始具有现代的形式。杰里米·边沁，这位与亚当·斯密几乎同时代的人，提出了一种方案，这就是功利主义学说。在以后大约半个世纪里，这个学说对英国的思想，在一定程度上亦对美国的思想有着相当的影响力。

“按照功利的原则，”边沁在1789年指出，“衡量某一行动可行与否，要依据它的趋势是会增加还是减少利害相关的人的幸福。”正确的行动是，确实也必须是以自我为中心的。尽管社会上有人拥有大量财富，同时有更多的人没有财富，用边沁的话来说，只要“最大的利益给最多的人”就能够解决社会问题。社会尽力满足尽可能多的人的利益，然而，对于那些利益没有被满足的人来说，人们承认这个结果是悲哀的。

在19世纪30年代，出现了一种新的不为穷人的存在而内疚的方案。直至今日它的影响丝毫没有减弱。这个方案与股票经纪人大卫·李嘉图和汤姆斯·罗伯特·马尔萨斯神父两个人的名字联系在一起。它的基本观点为人熟知：穷人的贫穷是他们咎由自取，贫穷是他们过度生育的结果。很遗憾，他们不能控制性欲，过度生育，把地球具有的养活人口的能力推向极限。

这就是马尔萨斯人口论。贫穷源于过度生育意味着富人不应该为产生贫穷和解决贫穷承担责任。然而，马尔萨斯本人并非缺乏责任心之人：他极力主张结婚仪式应该包括对过度或不负责任的性生活的警告——公正地说，作为一种完全有效的控制生育的方法，它并没有被人们所接受。在最近，罗纳德·里根曾经说过控制人口的最佳形式来自市场。（一对对热恋的新婚夫妇应该到梅西百货公司采购，而不是到他们的卧室去生孩子。）应该说，马尔萨斯的建议至少还沾点儿边。

19世纪中叶，一种新的解决方案产生了很大影响，尤其是在美国。这一学说与赫伯特·斯宾塞的名字联系在一起，这就是社会达尔文主义。在经济生活中，如同在生物进化过程中一样，主导的规律是适者生存。“适者生存”这个短语实际上并不出自查尔斯·达尔文，而是出自斯宾塞。斯宾塞表达了对经济生活的看法：穷人被淘汰是大自然人类进化的方式。由于弱者和不幸者被消除了，人类大家庭的素质因此得以提高。

美国最著名的社会达尔文进化论的代表人之一是约翰·D·洛克菲勒——第一个洛克菲勒。他在一次著名的演讲中说：“美国这朵玫瑰花以其华贵与芳香让观众倾倒赞不绝口。而她之所以能被培植出来，就是因为在早期其周围的花蕾被掐掉了。在经济生活中，情况亦是如此。这是自然规律和上帝的意志在起作用。”

然而在20世纪，人们认为社会学中的达尔文进化论有点过于残酷。它遭到了普遍的质疑，提及它时都带有谴责的口吻。接着我们步入解决方案比较杂乱的时代，它与卡尔文·柯立芝和赫伯特·胡佛有关。他们认为公众对穷人的帮助会干扰经济制度的有效运作，这种帮助与很好地服务于大多数人的经济体制不相符。直到今天，人们仍然持有这种观点，认为帮助穷人会对经济造成损失。借此理由，我们可以不为穷人的存在而内疚。

随着罗斯福的改革在共和政体里政府承担起对最不幸的人给予救助的具体责任。罗斯福及随后的几任总统都在很大程度上肩负起责任，采取了一些措施，比如老年医疗保健制度、为失业者提供失业保险、给无法就业者和残疾人直接救济，并给病人提供政府医保健制度等。这的确是一项重大的变革。在这段时间里，人们可以不必再苦苦寻求不为穷人的存在而感到内疚的方案，取而代之的感受是我们确实在为帮助穷人做着一些事。

然而，最近几年，很显然我们又在试图寻求不为穷人的存在而内疚的办法，这种尝试并没有结束，而只是曾经中断过一段时间。于是现在我们又一次以高昂的热情投入寻找新的方案的尝试中。这种探求再一次成为哲学家、文学家、演说家们收入不菲的一个重要行业。

在目前的四、五种解决方案中，第一种方案源于一个无法逃避的事实，即大多数为帮助穷人而必须采取的措施都必须由政府以某种方式来完成。它接着指出，除了武器的设计和采购以及五角大楼的整体管理之外，政府天生就是无能的。既然政府无能又缺乏有效措施，就无法指望它来帮助穷人，否则它只会无事生非或使事情变得更糟。

在我们这个时代，对政府无能的指责与对官僚的普遍谴责联系在一起—同样与国防有关的人士又不在此列。目前唯一一种被允许的歧视形式——如今美国仍受到官方鼓励的歧视形式是对为联邦政府工作的人，特别是致力于社会福利事业的人的歧视。

我们有庞大的企业官僚机构，充斥着企业官僚，但他们是好的；只有政府官僚和政府官员不好。实际上，美国有非常优秀的公共服务队伍一支由富有才干和敬业精神的人组成的队伍，他们非常诚实，以致像出高价购买活动扳手、手电筒、咖啡壶以及马桶座圈以获取回扣的情况极为罕见。（奇怪的是，这些过失如果出现，全都发生在五角大楼）我们几乎消除了老人的贫穷状况，使医疗照顾更为民主，使少数人种的民权得到保障，并极大地增加了受教育的机会，这一切对那些无能因而低效的人们来说似乎是相当大的成就。我们必须承认眼下对政府和政府管理部门的指责实际上也是逃避对穷人负责的方案的一部分。

为解决困扰我们长达几个世纪的问题而提出的第二种方案认为，任何形式的社会援助只会伤害穷人本身。它摧毁人的斗志，诱惑人们不再自食其力。它坏婚姻，因为妇女离开自己的丈夫也能为自己和孩子求得保障。

这是无稽之谈—当然根本没有两者的比较，即得到救助受到的伤害与失去救助受到的伤害进行的比较。尽管如此，人们还是提出并坚信这一观点，即帮助穷人会造成严重的伤害。这种说法也许是我们最有影响的一个虚构故事。

与第二种方案密切相关的推卸责任的第三种方案认为，社会援助措施对激励机制有不利影响。这些措施是把勤奋工作的人的收入转给那些懒惰和无能的人，这会打击勤劳者的工作积极性，却会鼓励懒散的人继续懒惰下去。

这一观点的现代表现形式是供应经济学。供应经济学认为美国的富人不再坚持工作是因为他们的收入太少。所以，把援助穷人的钱给富人可以增加工作积极性、刺激经济。难道我们真的认为大多数穷人宁愿要福利而不愿要一份好工作？或者认为那些商人—企业经理人员，那些当今时代的关键人物——真的因为工资低而游手好闲，虚度时光？这简直是对美国商人特别勤奋的人的无耻的诽谤。信念可以是真理的仆人，但更多的情况下，只是一时之需。

第四种使我们不为穷人的存在而内疚的方案指出，如果政府替穷人承担责任，可能会对自由产生不利的影响。自由包括人们有权利最大限度地自由支配自己的钱，让政府最低限度地拿走并支配他们的钱。（强调一下，花在国防上的钱除外。）正如弥尔顿·弗里德曼教授那句久为流传的名言，人们应该“自由选择”。

这也许是所有方案中最清楚不过的了：通常没有人提及收入和穷人的自由之间的关系。（弗里德曼教授在这里是个例外，他认为通过缴纳所得税可以保障每个人的最低收入）我们完全可以同意，没有哪种压迫形式比身无分文更厉害，也没有哪种对思想和行动的束缚比一无所有更全面彻底。尽管我们听到很多关于税收造成的收入减少给富人的自由权利带来种种限制，却没听说穷人有可支配的钱而使他们的自由大幅度地增加。实际上富人税收失去的自由与穷人获得一些收入所得到的自由不可同日而语。我们珍惜自由是对的。正因为我们珍惜自由，我们就不能以此为借口，不给最需要自由的人自由。

最后，当一切办法都无济于事时，我们就干脆装聋作哑。这是我们普遍存在的心理倾向，它有不同的表现形式。它使我们回避考虑死亡；它使我们回避考虑军备竞赛以及由此极有可能带来的人类的灭绝。由于同样的心理倾向，我们也拒绝去考虑穷人的存在，不管他们是生活在埃塞俄比亚，还是在纽约市的南布朗克斯区，甚至是在洛杉矶这样的天堂，我们都决心不去为这些人操心。我们总是被建议去想愉快的事情。

这就是我们目前躲避关心穷人的几种方案。除了最后一种，其他的方案都是来自边沁、马尔萨斯和斯宾塞的极富创意的现代翻版。罗纳德·里根以及他的同僚们很显然是古老传统的沿袭者——处在探求如何逃避援助自己同胞的历史长河的一端。这些人还包括在华盛顿深受欢迎的哲学家乔治·吉尔德和查尔斯·莫瑞。最近深受欢迎的乔治·吉尔德在众人的支持声中宣称穷人应该承受一定的痛苦才能受到激励而努力改变现状；而更受欢迎的查尔斯·莫瑞则考虑：“废除一切联邦政府对在职人员和老年人的福利和收入保障措施，包括对有未成年子女家庭的补助医疗照顾、食品券、失业保险、工人失业补助金、住房补贴、伤残保险和所有其他的援助。这是一堆解不开的疙瘩，只能快刀斩乱麻，统统取消。”按照救治的先后原则，生存者应该是经过挑选的有价值的人，其他人的灭亡是我们必须付出的代价。莫瑞是斯宾塞在我们这个时代的代言人，如上所说，他在华盛顿高层中享有无比的威望。

同情心，加上与之相关的社会努力是我们这个时代最麻烦、最令人不快的行为和行动方针。但是它却是唯一一个与我们整个文明生活相符的方针，而且最终这无疑是最保守的路线。这并非自相矛盾。民众的不满及其所带来的后果并不是来自那些满足的人——这点很明显。为了让尽可能多的人达到满足的程度，我们将保持并扩大社会的稳定和政治的稳定，而这也是保守者最渴望的。

Key Words:

meek [mi:k]

adj. 温顺的，谦恭的

amorphous [ə'mɔ:fəs]

adj. 无定形的，无组织的，非结晶的

elimination [i.limi'neiʃən]

n. 除去，消除

feckless ['feklis]

adj. 没精神的，软弱的，无用的，不负责任的

manifestation [.mænifes'teiʃən]

n. 显示，证明，示威运动

contentment [kən'tentmənt]

n. 满足，使人满足的事

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