【2016-09-08】 @海德沙龙: 《为何影视业拿了这么多税务补贴？ ​​​​》 好莱坞无论如何都算不上贫困户或弱势群体，但奇特的是，美国各州争相为影视制片商提供税务补贴，以说服他们在本州拍摄外景，相互攀比之下，补贴额越来越高，据说这可以提升当地旅游业，可实际上并没有任何经验证据支持这一点，那么这事情究竟为何会发生呢？ @whigzhou: 说明一个小道理：长了脚的资产／生意很难征到税 @海德沙龙: 嗯，我们一篇旧译文《农作物类型如何影响制度进化》中有个概念叫『可收夺性（appropriability）』，说的也是这个道理 @whigzhou: 嗯嗯，James Scott写了一整本书《逃避统治的艺术》讲的全是这个道理～  

好莱坞的误导历史 Hollywood’s misleading history 作者:Peter J. Wallison @ 2016-2-29 译者:Luis Rightcon(@Rightcon) 校对:Tankman 来源:American Enterprise Institute,http://www.aei.org/publication/hollywoods-misleading-history/ The film called The Big Short differs in a significant way from the book of the same name on which it is based, and this difference reveals how the film-makers made it more politically charged in order to blame Wall Street for the financial crisis. 《大空头》这部电影与其同名报告文学在历史叙事上有着很明显的不同，而且这一差异揭示了电影制作者是如何使这部影片更充满政治意味，从而把金融危机归咎于华尔街。 In the book, the Wall Street experts who were approached to bet against the housing market almost all refused. 在那本书中，几乎所有被问及是否做空房产市场的华尔街专家们都给出了否定答案。 This showed something that was true, and for that reason interesting: that even people on Wall Street, always on the lookout for a money-making opportunity, could not believe the housing market was in any danger of collapse. In the film, this was demonstrated by the skepticism of the FrontPoint group that was initially approached as investors, as well as the eagerness of the financial firms such as Goldman Sachs and others to take the other side of the bet against the housing market. 这显示了一些有趣的事实，那就是，即使是成天盯着捞钱机会的华尔街精英也无法相信（当时的）房市会有任何崩溃的风险。而在电影中，这被演绎成投资者FrontPoint集团的怀疑立场，以及像高盛集团那样的金融机构们对于做多房地产市场的渴望。 In the book, the tension in the narrative was created when the book’s protagonists — the first people to bet against the housing market — had persuaded their investors to place bets against the housing market many months before the coming failures actually became evident. As a result, in the book their financial backers became impatient. The predictions of a collapse did not happen fast enough, and they sought to withdraw their funds. Some of this impatience was present in the film, but the context was changed. 在书中，整个故事的紧张之处体现在主人公——作为第一个开始做空房地产市场的人——在金融海啸变成现实之前很多个月，就说服了他们的投资者来做空房市。结果，他们的财务支持者们变得不耐烦了，预言中的崩塌没有足够快的发生，于是他们计划撤资。电影中部分展现了这一不耐烦的情节，然而其情境却被改写了。 In the film, the collapse actually occurred, but the there was no movement in the market prices of the privately-issued mortgage-backed securities or the credit default swaps that were used to bet against them. This was attributed in the film to a conspiracy among the big banks on Wall Street: they somehow kept the market from moving against them while they sold off their holdings to less informed buyers. 在影片中，房产市场的崩溃如期发生了，但是私下发行的MBS（住房抵押贷款证券）和用来做空他们的CDS（信用违约掉期）的市场价格并没有变化。这在影片中被归结于华尔街上大银行的共谋：他们以某种方式稳定住了市场，直到把自己持有的资产卖给那些知情较少的买家。 It should be obvious that a conspiracy like this is impossible. There are too many buyers and sellers in the financial markets for something like the price of mortgage-backed securities or credit defaults swaps to be rigged. In reality, as soon as an index of housing defaults began to signal danger, investors fled the market. 显然像这样的阴谋是不可能成功的。在金融市场像CDS和MBS这类金融工具所涉及到的买家和卖家实在是太多了，以至于其价格很难被操纵。事实上，一旦房贷违约的指数开始发出危险信号，投资者马上就逃离了这个市场。 If the film had simply followed the book, it would have been a tale about how some very smart and gutsy traders outwitted Wall Street and faced down investors who had lost faith in them to win big in the end. It could have been an uplifting story that would have shone an unflattering light on the supposedly smart guys on Wall Street. 如果该影片只是简单地遵循同名报告文学的叙事，那将只会是一个某些既聪明绝顶又胆大包天的交易员以其聪明才智胜过华尔街，以及让那些对他们失去信心的投资者羞愧万分，从而在最后赢得巨额回报的故事。这或许会成为一个真实报道华尔街上的聪明伙计的励志故事。 But that was not enough for Hollywood. In Hollywood’s telling, the bad guys had to be villains, not just dumb. So the film-makers concocted a plot in which Wall Street successfully kept the market from moving against them in order to save themselves. 但这对好莱坞来说可远远不够。在好莱坞的通常叙事中，坏家伙们必须是十足的恶棍，而不是随便冒出来的草包。所以电影制作人们编造了一个情节：为了拯救自身，华尔街成功阻止了不利于自身的市场运动。 In reality, of course, Wall Street was not saved. Many of the major firms got into serious trouble when the housing bubble collapsed. Several failed and others suffered major losses. 当然，实际上华尔街并没有被拯救。房产泡沫崩溃时很多主要金融机构陷入了严重的困境。有一些破产了，剩下的也遭受到了极其严重的损失。 The lesson here is to approach Hollywood’s versions of real life events with caution. They can be good entertainment, but badly misleading history. 这里的教训是要对好莱坞版本的现实事件保持警惕。他们可以是很好的娱乐，但同时可能会严重的误导历史。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

No Matter Who Wins at the Oscars, Taxpayers Lose on Film Subsidies 不管奥斯卡花落谁家，纳税人在电影补贴上都是输 作者:Jared Meyer @ 2016-02-26 译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 校对:辉格(@whigzhou) 来源:Reason ,http://reason.com/archives/2016/02/26/no-matter-who-wins-at-the-oscars-taxpaye Big screen and small get big benefits at taxpayer expense. 纳税人埋单，荧屏业大获其利 Sunday night brings the 89th Academy Awards, and many are wondering what film will take home the Oscar for Best Picture. No matter what film wins, one group of people should be thanked during the acceptance speech—taxpayers. 本周日将举办第89届奥斯卡金像奖，许多人都在猜测最佳影片将会花落谁家。但不管哪部影片得奖，获奖感言里都应该感谢一个群体：纳税人。 Film is a heavily subsidized industry, and the majority of states have tax incentive programs that lower the cost of production. These tax credits are determined by production costs, not profits, and many credits are transferrable or refundable. When a film’s tax liabilities are below its allotted refundable credits, taxpayers end up directly paying film companies the difference. 电影行业得到的补贴极大，大部分州都设置有税收激励计划，以降低制片成本。这类税收抵免额度由制片成本而非影片收益决定，而且其中许多都可以转移或补差【译注：指如果抵免额高于应税额，纳税人不但不用纳税，还能倒拿差额】。如果一部影片的应税额低于它所得的可补差抵免额，那就相当于纳税人直接向电影公司支付差额。 The Big Short, one of this year’s nominees, cost $28 million to produce and was filmed in California, Nevada, and Louisiana. All three states have film tax credit programs, but Louisiana’s 40 percent partially-transferable credit is the largest. The film's producers made a movie about Wall Street greed, but they clearly had no problem making taxpayers pay for their production costs. 今年获提名的影片《大空头》制作成本为2800万，在加利福尼亚、内华达和路易斯安那三地拍摄。三个州都有电影业税收抵免计划，不过，路易斯安那的40%部分可转移税收抵免仍属其中翘楚。制片人拍摄了一部讲述华尔街之贪婪的电影，但在让纳税人为其制片成本埋单的时候，他们显然心安理得。 New York’s fully-refundable 30 percent film tax credit is the most generous in the nation, with an annual limit of $420 million. Brooklyn and Bridge of Spies, two of this year’s nominees, were filmed in New York, and their budgets were $12 million and $40 million, respectively. 要论慷慨，全国之最当数纽约的30%全额可补差电影业税收抵免，每年最高限额是4.2亿。本年度有两部提名电影在纽约拍摄，《布鲁克林》和《间谍之桥》，费用分别达到1200万和4000万。 States are starting to realize that the economic benefits of film tax credits are pure fantasy, like some movie plots. In 2012, 40 states offered tax incentives, at a total cost of $1.4 billion, but since then some states have decided that maintaining roads, funding schools, staffing police departments, and letting residents keep more income are better uses of funds. Since last year’s Oscars, Alaska, Michigan, and Illinois all ended their film tax credit programs. (See my testimony for the Alaska Senate on the false promise of film tax credits here). 许多州已经开始意识到，电影业税收抵免的经济利好效应就跟某些电影情节一样纯属空想。2012年，有40个州提供此类税收激励，总共耗费14亿。但自此以后，一些州已经决定，维护公路、资助学校、充实警力以及让居民手中存留更多收入才是对资金的更好使用。上届奥斯卡以来，阿拉斯加、密歇根和伊利诺伊等州都已经终止了电影业税收抵免计划。（可参考我在阿拉斯加州议会上就电影业税收抵免之虚假承诺所做的证言） In contrast, California tripled its non-refundable film tax credit budget to $330 million in an effort to lure more film production back to Hollywood. 加利福尼亚则反其道行之，为吸引更多影片返回好莱坞制作，该州已经将其用于不可补差电影业税收抵免的预算增加了三倍，达到3.3亿。 It is not only Oscar-nominated movies that receive sweetheart tax deals. Television shows, including HBO’s VEEP and Netflix’s House of Cards, are two examples. 获得这种甜蜜的减税待遇的并不是只有奥斯卡提名影片。电视剧也是如此，HBO的《副总统》和Netflix的《纸牌屋》就是其中两个例子。 When Maryland did not increase its fully-refundable film tax incentive program in 2014, Netflix executives went all Frank Underwood on former governor Martin O’Malley and threatened to leave the state. Political pressure, including a Kevin Spacey visit to Annapolis, convinced Maryland to raid other funds in order to double its film tax credit budget to $15 million. This does not include the $4 million in annual lost revenue from sales tax exemptions for film production companies. 2014年，在马里兰州尚未在其全额可补差电影业税收激励计划上增加力度之际，Netflix的总监们就在前任州长Martin O’Malley面前扮演“弗兰克·安德伍德”（译注：《纸牌屋》主角，马基雅维利式政客），并且威胁要撤离该州。凯文·史派西（译注：安德伍德的扮演者）到访安纳波利斯，在诸如此类的政治压力之下，马里兰州将其电影业税收抵免预算增加一倍，达到1500万，为此砍掉了许多其他方面的资金。这还没把电影制片公司所享受的营业税免征额包含在内，每年因此少征的税收可是有400万。 Even though film tax credits are often sold as a way to help small producers, 98 percent of Maryland’s film tax credit budget over the last three years has been taken up by House of Cards and VEEP. The increased tourism argument that film tax credit proponents constantly use clearly does not apply for two shows that are set in Washington, D.C. Similarly, no one thinks of Louisiana while they are watching The Big Short. 尽管电影业税收抵免经常顶着帮助小制片公司的名头做游说，但在过去三年中，马里兰州98%的电影税收抵免款都进了《纸牌屋》和《副总统》的兜里。电影业税收抵免的鼓吹者们经常使用的抵免带动旅游业的论证，显然在这里也并不适用，因为两部剧的背景都设定在华盛顿特区。同样，在观看《大空头》时，根本没人会想起路易斯安那州。 Maryland’s handouts were still not enough to convince HBO executives to keep filming VEEP in Maryland. VEEP’s production moved to California after the state offered the show a $6.5 million tax credit. 即便如此，马里兰州的馈赠仍然不足以说服HBO的总监们继续在该州拍摄《副总统》。该片将搬到加利福利亚制作，因为加州将为该剧提供650万的税收抵免。 The Maryland Department of Legislative Services found that the state’s film tax incentive program only returns 6 cents for every dollar spent. While this return is particularly poor, the best return in any state is still less than 30 cents on the dollar. 马里兰州立法服务部发现，该州的电影业税收激励计划每花掉1美元，只能收回6美分。这么低的回报当然很极端，但各州回报表现最好的也仍然不到每美元30美分。 Jobs in the film industry are highly skilled and mobile, which means they do not create lasting economic benefits. If another state rolls out an even more generous tax credit, film production can simply pack up and leave for another soundstage. States that decide to shower the film industry with taxpayer funds are in a race to the bottom, as no credit is high enough to satisfy Hollywood executives. 电影行业所提供的工作都是技术岗位，且流动性很高，这就意味着该行业并不能创造持久的经济效益。如果另外一个州推出了更为慷慨的税收抵免计划，电影制片商只需要打个包，就能换个摄影棚。各州如果决心花纳税人的钱来馈赠电影行业，它们就是加入了一场竞相逐底的比赛，因为抵免额度无论多高都无法满足好莱坞的总监们。 Maryland’s experience of losing film productions and wasting taxpayer dollars on its program is not unique. Every independent study of film tax credits have found that the programs come nowhere close to paying for themselves. But this reality has not stopped proponents from making fanciful predictions. The Maryland Film Industry Coalition—a group dedicated to promoting the film industry—claims that each dollar in tax credits leads to $1.03 in tax revenue. 马里兰州遭制片公司抛弃、在补贴计划上浪费纳税人税金的上述经历并不罕见。所有关于电影业税收减免的独立研究都已发现，各种补贴计划均远远无法实现收支平衡。但这一事实并没能阻止其鼓吹者提出各种白日梦般的预测。“马里兰州电影行业联盟”——一个旨在促进电影行业发展的组织——宣称，税收抵免每花1美元都能带来1.03美元的税收。 The Tax Foundation’s Joseph Henchman points out that if these fanciful projections were taken seriously, the United States could pay off its national debt by simply giving the film industry $1 trillion. “税务基金会”的Joseph Henchman指出，如果我们拿这种白日梦似的测算当真，那么美国只需要给电影行业派送1万亿，就能偿清它的全部国债了。 One study that was funded by the Motion Picture Association of American assumes that every dollar in tax credits creates $17.75 in economic activity, which leads to $1.88 in new tax revenue for the state. These claims are less realistic than the science-fiction films the credits support. 由“美国电影协会”赞助实施的一项研究提出，税收抵免每花掉1美元，就能创造出17.75美元的经济活动，而这又会为所在州形成1.88美元的新税收收入。这类说法比那些获得税收抵免补贴的科幻电影还要不切实际一些。 Film tax credit programs do not pay for themselves. They do not create long-term jobs, nor do they have tourism benefits. All film tax incentives do is provide opportunities for politicians to rub elbows with movie stars. 电影业税收抵免计划无法实现收支平衡。他们无法创造长期岗位，也不会带来旅游收益。电影业税收激励所能做的，无非是给政客们提供了和电影明星亲密往来的机会。 With the hundreds of millions of dollars that taxpayers gift the film industry each year, perhaps it is time for the Academy Awards to create an Oscar for Best Tax Break. If nothing else, taxpayers at least deserve a shout-out during Sunday’s award ceremony. 纳税人每年都向电影行业派送数亿美元的礼包，也许金像奖是时候设立一个“奥斯卡最佳减税奖”了。如果啥都没有，那么纳税人至少也应出现在周日颁奖典礼的致谢词中。 Jared Meyer is a fellow at Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. You can follow him on Twitter here. Jared Meyer是曼哈顿政策研究所Economics21分部的研究员。你可以到这里关注他的Twitter账号。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

The War on Sex Trafficking Is the New War on Drugs 反性贩运战争就是新的禁毒战争 作者:Elizabeth Nolan Brown @ 2015-11 译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy) 校对:辉格(@whigzhou) 来源:Reason,https://reason.com/archives/2015/09/30/the-war-on-sex-trafficking-is And the results will be just as disastrous, for "perpetrators" and "victims" alike. 它将走向同样悲惨的结局，对“犯罪者”和“受害者”均是如此。 "Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door." "Sex-trafficking sweep nets arrests near Phoenix truck stops." "Man becomes 1st jailed under new human trafficking law." “性贩运美国人：邻家女孩。” “凤凰城卡车停靠站附近扫网式逮捕性贩运。” “性贩运新法实施后首人收监。” Conduct a Google news search for the word trafficking in 2015 and you'll find pages of stories about the commercial sex trade, in which hundreds of thousands of U.S. women and children are supposedly trapped by coercion or force. 2015年，在Google上用trafficking一词做新闻搜索，你将找到大量关于商业化性交易故事的页面，据称，成千上万的美国妇女儿童正陷于强制或暴力之困。 A few decades prior, a survey of "trafficking" headlines would have yielded much different results. Back then, newspapers recounted tales of "contemporary Al Capones trafficking illegal drugs to the smallest villages and towns in our heartland," and of organized "motorcycle gangs" trafficking LSD and hashish. 几十年前，如果对包含“trafficking”一词的头条新闻做一番考察，结果会大不相同。那时候，报纸上详细讲述的是“当代的阿尔·卡彭【译注：Al Capone，上世纪二、三十年代芝加哥黑手党头目】们已将非法毒品贩卖至我们心脏地带的小村小镇”，以及有组织的“摩托党”贩卖LSD和印度大麻。 "Many young black men in the ghetto see the drug trade as the Gold Rush of the 1980s," the Philadelphia Inquirer told readers in 1988. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) warned of a "nationwide phenomenon" of drug lords abducting young people to force them into the drug trade. Crack kingpins were rumored to target runaways, beating them if they didn't make drug sales quotas. 1988年，《费城问询报》对读者说：“众多贫民区黑人青年将毒品交易视为1980年代的淘金热。”全国失踪与受剥削儿童中心（NCMEC）曾发出警告称，毒枭们绑架年轻人并强迫他们加入毒品交易是一种“全国性现象”。当时还有传言称，可卡因头目会瞄准离家出走者，如果他们没能售出足额毒品就会殴打他们。 Such articles offered a breathless sense that the drug trade was booming, irresistible to criminals, and in desperate need of child foot soldiers. Lawmakers touted harsher penalties for drug offenses. The war on drugs raged. New task forces were created. Civilians were trained how to "spot" drug traffickers in the wild, and students instructed how to rat out drug-using parents. Politicians spoke of a drug "epidemic" overtaking America, its urgency obviously grounds for anything we could throw its way. 此类文章令人窒息，让人觉得毒品交易兴旺繁荣，能令犯罪分子利欲熏心，且对儿童兵的需求极为迫切。立法者们兜售各种针对毒品犯罪的更严厉惩罚。禁毒战争风起云涌。新的特遣部队成立了。平民受到训练，学习如何在野外“认出”毒品贩子；学生得到指导，学习如何告发吸毒的父母。政客们都在谈论一场正在袭击美国的毒品“传染”，其严峻性使得我们能够采纳的任何阻止措施均有不言而喻的理由。 We know now how that all worked out. 我们如今已知道这些事情的结局如何。 The tactics employed to "get tough" on drugs ended up entangling millions in the criminal justice system, sanctioning increasingly intrusive and violent policing practices, worsening tensions between law enforcement and marginalized communities, and degrading the constitutional rights of all Americans. 为“严打”毒品而采取的种种策略，结果使得数百万人受困于刑事司法系统，鼓励了日益扰民而有害的政策措施，恶化了执法机构与边缘社群之间的紧张关系，并且损害了全体美国人的宪法权利。 Yet even as the drug war's failures and costs become more apparent, the Land of the Free is enthusiastically repeating the same mistakes when it comes to sex trafficking. This new "epidemic" inspires the same panicked rhetoric and punitive policies the war on drugs did—often for activity that's every bit as victimless. 但尽管是禁毒战争的失败和代价日益昭然，当遇到性贩运问题时，美国这片自由之地仍旧在满腔热情地重复同样的错误。如同禁毒战争中曾经发生的那样，新的“传染病”鼓动了同样的恐慌修辞，激发了同样的惩罚政策——通常针对的都是从头到尾找不到受害者的行为。 Forcing others into sex or any sort of labor is abhorrent, and it deserves to be treated like the serious violation it is. But the activity now targeted under anti-trafficking efforts includes everything from offering or soliciting paid sex, to living with a sex worker, to running a classified advertising website. 强迫他人进行性交易或任何种类的劳动都很令人痛恨，理应和其他严重侵害一样得到处理。但目前的反贩运行动的目标所指，则包括了从提供或招揽有偿性行为，到与性工作者同居，再到运营一家分类广告网站等所有一切活动。 What's more, these new laws aren't organic responses by legislators in the face of an uptick in human trafficking activity or inadequate current statutes. They are in large part the result of a decades-long anti-prostitution crusade from Christian "abolitionists" and anti-sex feminists, pushed along by officials who know a good political opportunity when they see it and by media that never met a moral panic they didn't like. 此外，这些新法规并不是立法者在遭遇人口贩运行为增加或现行法律不足问题之后的自然回应。它们大部分都是基督教“废奴主义者”和反性女权主义者数十年来的反卖淫斗争的结果，其推手包括从中看到了良好政治机遇的官员，以及只要有道德恐慌就会来劲的媒体。 The fire is fueled by federal money, which sends police departments and activist groups into a grant-grubbing frenzy. The anti-trafficking movement is "just one big federal grant program," Michael Hudson, a scholar with the conservative Hudson Institute, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "Everybody is more worried about where they're going to get their next grant" than helping victims, Hudson said. 联邦资金则是火上添油，它将各个警局和行动组织都卷入了一场争取拨款的狂潮。保守派智库哈德逊研究所的学者Michael Hudson对《拉斯维加斯评论杂志》说，反贩运行动“只是一个大型联邦拨款项目”。他说：“大家更关心的是到哪里去找下一份拨款”，而不是帮助受害者。 Because of the visceral feelings that the issue of paid sex has always provoked, it's easy for overstatements and false statistics to go unchallenged, winning repetition in congressional hearings and the press. Yet despite all the dire proclamations, there's little evidence of anything approaching an "epidemic" of sexual slavery. 由于有偿性交易通常总能唤起一些本能的道德感，因此，过分夸大和错误统计总是容易避开质疑，得以反复出现在国会听证会和新闻媒体上。然而，尽管存在各种可怕的宣告，并没有什么证据表明性奴役这一“传染病”正在发生。 THE NUMBERS DON'T ADD UP 经不起推敲的数字 From 2000 to 2002, the State Department claimed that 50,000 people were trafficked into the U.S. each year for forced sex or labor. By 2003, the agency reduced this estimate to 18,000–20,000, further reducing it to 14,500–17,500 in subsequent reports. That's a 71 percent decrease in just five years, though officials offered no explanation as to how they arrived at these numbers or what accounted for the drastic change. These days, federal agencies tend to stick to the vague "thousands" when discussing numbers of incoming victims. 自2000年至2002年，国务院宣称，每年有5万人被贩运到美国从事强迫性行为或强迫劳动。到2003年，该机构将这一估计缩小到18000到20000人，在后续的报告中又进一步缩小为14500到17500人。五年间降低了71%，尽管官方没有给出解释说明他们是如何得出这些数字以及为何变化如此之大。现在，在讨论入境受害者数量时，联邦机构更愿意坚持使用模糊的“数千”一词。 Globally, some 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates. But the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2006 described this figure as "questionable" due to "methodological weaknesses, gaps in data, and numerical discrepancies," including the rather astonishing fact that "the U.S. government's estimate was developed by one person who did not document all his work." And even if he had, there would still be good reasons to doubt the quality of the data, which were compiled from a range of nonprofits, governments, and international organizations, all of which use different definitions of "trafficking." 全球来看，据国土安全部（DHS）估计，每年约有60至80万人遭到跨国界贩运。但政府问责办公室（GAO）2006年曾说，这一数字是“有问题的”，原因在于“方法论缺陷、数据缺失以及数值矛盾”，其中还包括一个令人乍舌的事实——“美国政府的这项估计是由一个人完成的，而且他并没有对其所有工作存档”。即便他存档了，我们也有很好的理由怀疑数据的质量，因为它们收集自各种各样的非营利组织、政府机构和国际组织，运用的“贩运”定义各不相同。 Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" columnist, began digging into government-promulgated sex-slavery numbers last spring and discovered just how dubious many of them are. "Because sex trafficking is considered horrific, politicians appear willing to cite the flimsiest and most poorly researched statistics—and the media is content to treat the claims as solid facts," Kessler concluded in June. 《华盛顿邮报》的“事实核查者”专栏作家Glenn Kessler去年春开始钻研政府发布的性奴役数字，发现大量数字无比可疑。六月份，Kessler总结到：“由于性贩运被认为是骇人听闻的，所以政治家们似乎都愿意引用一些最经不起推敲、研究质量最糟糕的统计数字——而媒体则很乐意将这些断言当做确凿事实。” For instance, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D–Ohio) declared in a May statement that "in the U.S., some 300,000 children are at risk each year for commercial sexual exploitation." Rep. Ann Wagner (R–Mo.) made a similar statement that month at a congressional hearing, claiming the statistic came from the Department of Justice (DOJ). The New York Times has also attributed this number to the DOJ, while Fox News raised the number to 400,000 and sourced it to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 比如，众议员Joyce Beatty（民主党—俄亥俄）在五月份的一份声明中宣称，“在美国，每年约有30万儿童遭遇商业化性剥削的威胁。”同月，众议员Ann Wagner（民主党—密苏里）在一场国会听证会上做出了类似声明，宣称统计数据来自司法部（DOJ）。《纽约时报》也将这一数字溯源于司法部，而《福克斯新闻》则将数字提升到40万，并将来源定为卫生部（HHS）。 But not only are these not DOJ or HHS figures, they're based on 1990s data published in a non-peer-reviewed paper that the primary researcher, Richard Estes, no longer endorses. The authors of that study came up with their number by speculating that certain situations—i.e., living in public housing, being a runaway, having foreign parents—place minors at risk of potential exploitation by sex traffickers. They then simply counted up the number of kids in those situations. To make a bad measure worse, anyone who fell into more than one category was counted multiple times. 然而，它们不仅不是司法部或卫生部提供的数字，而是基于一个1990年代发表于一篇未经同行评议的论文中的数据，而且其主要研究者Richard Estes现在都不再支持这一数据。完成该研究的几位作者如此推测：某些特定情形——如居住于廉租房、离家出走或父母为外国人等——会使未成年人面临被性贩子剥削的潜在风险，并由此来得出他们的数字。然后，他们就简单地把所有遭遇这类情形的孩子数量进行了一下加总。使这一糟糕估算变得更加糟糕的是，每个同时属于多种情形类别的人都被多次计算了。 "PLEASE DO NOT CITE THESE NUMBERS," wrote Michelle Stransky and David Finkelhor of the respected Crimes Against Children Research Center in 2008. "The reality is that we do not currently know how many juveniles are involved in prostitution. Scientifically credible estimates do not exist." Michelle Stransky和David Finkelhor在2008年曾写道：“请不要引用这些数字”，两人均是广受尊敬的“针对儿童犯罪研究中心”成员。“现实情况是，我们目前并不知道有多少青少年卷入了卖淫业。科学上可信的估算尚不存在。” A lengthy 2013 report on child sex trafficking from the Justice Department concluded that "no reliable national estimate exists of the incidence or prevalence of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of minors in the United States." 司法部2013年的一份关于儿童性贩运的长篇报告得出结论：“关于美国境内涉及未成年人的商业化性剥削和性贩运的发生频率或普遍程度，尚没有可靠的全国性估算。” Common sense should preclude believing the 300,000 number in the first place. If even a third of those "at risk" youth were peddled for sex in a given year, we'd be looking at nearly 110,000 victims. And since advocates often claim that victims are forced to have sex with 10, 20, or 30 clients a day, that would be—using the lowest number—1.1 million commercial child rapes in America each day. Even if we assume that child rapists are typically repeat customers, averaging one assault per week, that would still mean nearly 8 million Americans have a robust and ongoing child rape habit, in addition to the alleged millions who pay for sex with adults. 本来，从一开始，常识就应该能够阻止人们相信30万这个数字。即便这些“有风险”的少年人某年只有三分之一遭遇性贩运，我们看到的就会是11万受害者。又由于鼓吹者们通常宣称受害者被迫每天接客10、20、30人，那就是说，美国每天发生——用最小值计算——110万起商业性的强奸儿童案。即便我们假定儿童强奸犯都是典型的回头客，平均每周犯案一次，那也将意味着有近800万美国人拥有强烈且持久的儿童强奸嗜好，此外据称还有数百万美国人与成人发生过有偿性行为。 Common sense should also immediately cast doubt on another frequently cited statistic: that the average age at which females become victims of sex trafficking is 13. "If you think about it for half a minute, this statistic makes little sense," wrote Kessler. "After all, if it is the 'average,' then for all those who entered trafficking at age 16 or 17, there have to be nearly equivalent numbers who entered at age 9 or 10. But no one seriously believes that." 本来，常识还应该能够迅速令人对另一个经常被引用的统计数据起疑：女性成为性贩运受害者的平均年龄是13岁。“只要你花半分钟时间想想，这个数据就完全说不通”，Kessler写到，“要知道，如果它确实是‘平均数’，那么对应于所有那些16或17岁时遭遇贩运的人，必须得有几乎同等数量的人在9或10岁时就有此遭遇。没人会真诚的相信这一点。” Still, the obvious implausibility of the statistic—and its routine debunking—hasn't stopped it from reaching the upper echelons of public discourse. Kessler's own Washington Post ran it uncritically in 2014. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) made the claim on the Senate floor this year, citing the FBI. 这种数据明显不可信，且反复遭到驳斥，然而，这仍然无法阻止它们进入公共讨论的顶层。Kessler所在的《华盛顿邮报》本身就在2014年不加鉴别地登载过这一数据。今年，参议员Amy Klobuchar（民主党—明尼苏达）在参议院也做出同样的断言，引用的是FBI。 The DHS also asserts that "the average age a child is trafficked into the commercial sex trade is between 11 and 14 years old," sourcing it to the DOJ and the government's NCMEC. Yet none of these federal agencies take responsibility for this stat. 同样，卫生部也声称“儿童被贩运进入商业化性交易的平均年龄在11至14岁之间”，并称其来源为司法部和政府的全国失踪与受剥削儿童中心。然而，上述联邦机构中没有一个表示为这一数据负责。 When Kessler followed the facts down the rabbit hole, the original source in all cases was...the self-disowned Estes paper, in which interviews with 107 teens doing street-based prostitution in the 1990s determined that their average age of entry into the business was 13. 当Kessler追问事实，一直钻进“兔子洞”【译注：《爱丽丝漫游奇境记》典故】之后，才发现所有这些证词的最初来源都是……Estes那篇已被作者本人否定的论文；在该文中，针对1990年代107位从事站街卖淫活动的青少年的访谈就确定了他们的平均入行年龄为13岁。 "So one government agency appears to cite two other government entities—but in the end the source of the data is the same discredited and out-of-date academic paper," wrote Kessler. "It would be amusing if it were not so sad." “所以，看似是一个政府机构引用另外两个政府部门——但最终的数据来源则是同一篇已遭否定的过时学术论文，”Kessler写到，“真是令人啼笑皆非。” Author and former sex worker Maggie McNeill has traced other uses of the age-13 figure back to a similarly narrow and unrepresentative study, this one looking at underage streetwalkers in 1982 San Francisco ("Victimization of Street Prostitutes" by M.H. Silbert and A.M. Pines). Among these interview subjects from three decades ago, the average age of their first noncommercial sexual experience was 13. The average age of entry into prostitution was 16, and the report made no mention of sex trafficking at all. 从前曾为性工作者的作家Maggie McNeill也追踪考察了其它对于13岁这个数据的用法，发现它源自一个同样狭隘且不具代表性的研究。该项研究考察的是旧金山1982年的未成年街头妓女（M. H. Silbert和A. M. Pines的《街头卖淫的牺牲》）。在这些三十年前的受访者中，第一次非商业的性经历平均发生于13岁时。进入卖淫业的平均年龄是16岁，并且这篇报告压根没有提及性贩运。 Surveys of adults working in the U.S. sex trade have yielded much higher average starting ages. A 2014 Urban Institute study involving 38 sex workers found that only four began before age 15, 10 started between the ages of 15 and 17, another four started in their 30s, and the remaining 20 began sex work between the ages of 18 and 29. A 2011 study, this one from Arizona State University, found that of more than 400 women arrested for prostitution in Phoenix, the average age of entry was about 25. 针对美国成年性交易从业者的研究得出的首次从业年龄要高得多。城市研究所2014年一项涉及38位性工作者的研究发现，只有4个入行年龄小于15岁，有10个开始于15至17岁，另有4个是30岁后才开始的，剩下的20个是在18至29岁之间开始从事性工作。另一项亚利桑拿州立大学2011年所做的研究发现，在凤凰城因卖淫被捕的400多名妇女中，平均入行年龄约为25岁。 "Regardless of whether the number is 300,000 or 30,000, something must be done to protect these children at risk of exploitation and trafficking," said Moira Bagley Smith, a spokeswoman for Rep. Wagner, when Kessler challenged the figure. But it's exactly this kind of thinking that inflicts real-world policy damage. 当Kessler对前述数据提出质疑时，众议员Wagner的发言人Moria Bagley Smith说：“不管数字是30万还是3万，我们必须采取适当措施来保护这些处于被剥削和被贩运风险中的儿童。”但正是这种思维方式导致了真实世界的政策代价。 Whether there are 30,000 or 300,000 crime victims makes a great deal of difference in terms of fashioning an appropriate response, as does the context of the victims' circumstances. Separating the mythology of sex trafficking from the facts is crucial for addressing problems as they exist, not problems as we might want, fear, or imagine them to be. 在设计恰当的应对办法时，犯罪受害者是3万还是30万，区别很大，正如受害人的环境背景影响很大一样。将有关性贩运的神话和事实加以区分，对于处理现实存在的问题——而非我们想要、惧怕或者想象中的问题——至关重要。 WILLFUL HYPERBOLE 恣意夸张 A 2010 study from Rutgers University professors James Finckenauer and Ko-lin Chin took an in-depth look at Chinese women working in America's illicit massage parlors, which are routinely denounced by politicians as hotbeds of sexual slavery. 罗格斯大学James Finckenauer和Ko-lin Chin教授2010年的一项研究深入考察了在美国非法按摩院中工作的中国妇女；此类按摩院经常被政客们指斥为性奴役的温床。 Indeed, Finckenauer noted that 93 percent of the women he interviewed would be considered sex trafficking victims under common legal definitions, which include any person who arrives in a foreign country for sex work regardless of whether force or coercion is involved. 事实上，Finckenauer指出，在他所访谈的妇女中，有93%会被通行的法律定义界定为性贩运受害者，因为这一定义包括了进入异国从事性工作的任何人，不管其中有没有涉及暴力或强制。 Yet not one of the 149 Chinese women interviewed said she was sold into prostitution, and only one reported being forced or coerced into it. "There is more diversity among the parties involved in prostitution than is commonly supposed, and to portray them all in the same way as victims is an oversimplification," the researchers concluded. 但受访的149位中国妇女中，没有一位说自己是被卖为妓女的，且只有一位报告说自己是被殴打或强制沦为妓女的。两位研究者的结论是：“卖淫业涉及的各方参与者比通常所认为的具有更多的差异性，以同一种方式将他们作为受害者来描绘，这是一种过分简化。” Under federal law and most state laws, anyone under 18 who is engaged in prostitution is considered a sex trafficking victim. But study after study has found most youths in the sex trade do not have "pimps." And if they are forced or coerced into the work, it's often at the hands of a family member or romantic partner, not some child-snatching stranger. 在联邦法律和绝大多数州法之下，18岁以下从事卖淫业的任何人都被视为性贩运受害者。但一项又一项研究都发现，性行业中的绝大多数少年人都没有“皮条”。如果他们是被强制或胁迫进入这一行的，那么施暴者通常是某个家庭成员或情人，而非绑架儿童的陌生人。 Pimps themselves claim to steer clear of underage sex workers. In interviews with 73 people who had been incarcerated for crimes such as promoting, profiting from, or compelling prostitution, the Urban Institute found that most tried to avoid business relationships with teens (though these respondents, along with the police officers Urban interviewed, also claimed it was common for teenagers to lie about their ages). 皮条客自己也宣称，他们会避开未成年性工作者。城市研究所曾对73个因助推卖淫、获利于卖淫或强迫卖淫等类罪行而入狱的罪犯进行访谈，发现其中绝大多数都避免和青少年建立业务关系（当然这些受访者和城市研究所访问的警官们也都提到，青少年谎报年龄的情况很常见）。 "I was determined to stay away from the younger bitches; 16 gets you 20," said one respondent. "Bitch better have a felony charge and stretch marks to mess with me," said another. "I know she is grown and been to jail." 某受访者说：“远离低龄婊子，这一点我很坚决；16岁能给你带来20年牢。”另一个则说：“要跟我搞，那些婊子最好能身背重罪、长妊娠纹”，“这样我就知道她是成人，坐过牢”。 "This particular business ain't about pimps going to high school and recruiting a girl," said a third. "Government don't understand how this game original come about. Girl run away from home, look older than what she is. They think pimps are going out and enticing them." 另有一个则说：“这个特殊行当，不是说皮条客去高中招募少女”，“政府没搞明白这个游戏是怎么来的。这帮女孩自己跑出家门，打扮得比实际成熟。政府觉得是皮条客们四处出动、诱拐少女。” By any estimation, teen runaways make up a major proportion of underage individuals in prostitution, forced or otherwise. Runaways are especially likely to engage in what sociologists call "survival sex"—exchanging sex not for a set fee, but for food and a place to crash. 无论采取何种方式估计，离家出走的青少年都是从事卖淫的未成年人（无论被迫与否）的主要部分。离家出走者特别容易加入社会学家所称的“生存卖淫”——并不是为了固定的价格而出卖肉体，而是为了食物或过夜之处。 Sixty-eight percent of minors engaged in street-based prostitution in New York City say they've sought help from youth services organizations, according to Kate D'Adamo of the Sex Workers Project. "New York City funds roughly 200 beds for a population of 4,000 unaccompanied, homeless youth," D'Adamo told TechCrunch. "When all the beds are full, it is street economies like the sex trade which they turn to in order to provide basic needs. If we want to identify the most vulnerable, all we have to do is provide support when someone stands up and says 'I need a place to sleep tonight.'" 据“性工作者计划”的Kate D'Adamo所说，在纽约市从事站街卖淫的未成年人中，有68%自称曾向青年服务组织寻求帮助。D'Adamo向科技博客TechCrunch说：“纽约市向4000名孤独无家的年轻人资助提供了约200个床位”，“如果床位满了，为了满足基本需求，这些人就会求助于街头经济如性交易。如果我们想要找出最容易受害的人，我们只要做到一条：有人站起来说‘我今晚需要找个地方睡’的时候，我们能提供些帮助。” Instead, we fund police task forces to monitor Internet ads for weeks in search of suspect code words or tattoos. We pass laws mandating more prison time for pimps. We set up elaborate sting operations for both sex workers and their customers. 然而，我们却在资助警察特遣队持续数周对网络广告进行监视，搜寻可疑的暗号或纹身。我们立法要求延长皮条客坐牢年限。我们精心设计种种针对性工作者及其顾客的诱捕行动。 We hang "Are you being trafficked?" signs at strip clubs and highway rest stops, and train airport staff on how they can spot the signs of sex trafficking. We act as if sex traffickers are organized, jet-setting, diabolical, and legion. We are chasing our own mythology, to the detriment of actual results. 我们在脱衣舞酒吧和高速公路停车区悬挂“你是否遭到贩运？”的标牌，向机场工作人员提供如何发现性贩运迹象的培训。我们采取种种行为，好像性贩子们组织严密、生活奢华、暴虐残忍且数量众多一样。我们所追捕的，只是我们自己编的神话，真正的结果则是有害的。 A look at human trafficking investigations in the U.S. makes this clear. In July 2015, for instance, Homeland Security, the Arizona Department of Public Safety, and other Arizona state agencies conducted a joint "human trafficking enforcement operation" that involved randomly stopping commercial trucks as well as running the license plates of passersby. 看看美国的人口贩运调查就清楚了。比如，国土安全部、亚利桑那州公共安全部及其它州政府机构于2015年7月共同实施了一项“人口贩运执法行动”，措施是随机拦截商用货车并检查过路者的牌照。 The 30-agent, nine-hour stunt resulted in 28 stops, the checking of 5,576 license plates...and zero arrests for human trafficking. Police did arrest one woman for prostitution, however, and are continuing to investigate another who said she worked in "adult entertainment." 这场由30名执法官持续9小时的噱头行动拦截车辆28次，检查牌照5576次……而因贩运人口被捕的人数为零。不过，确实有一名女性因卖淫而被警察逮捕，另一名自称从事“成人娱乐”的妇女也将继续接受调查。 Last April, the FBI released its first crime data on state-based trafficking investigations. In the 13 states reporting for last year, law enforcement looked into a total of 14 human trafficking incidents, ultimately making a grand total of four arrests. 去年四月，FBI首次发布了各州贩运调查的犯罪数据。在去年提交报告的13个州中，执法者总共调查了14起人口贩运案件，最终共计拘捕4人。 Between 2008 and 2010, federally funded task forces investigated 2,515 suspected incidents of human trafficking, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. An "investigation" was defined as "any effort in which the task force spent at least one hour investigating" the incident. Of these cases, only 6 percent led to arrests. 根据司法统计局数据，在2008至2010年间，得到联邦资金资助的特遣部队共调查了2515起涉嫌人口贩运的案件。其中“调查”的定义是，“特遣部队至少花了一个小时来努力调查”某案件。在这些案子中，只有6%以拘捕结束。 From 2007 to fall 2008, federal dollars funded 38 sex-trafficking task forces, of which 15 found no confirmed victims or suspects, 14 reported between one and four cases, and nine reported more than five. Of the total 1,229 suspected incidents that year, sex cops found just 14 underage victims. 自2007年至2008年秋，联邦为38个性贩运特遣部队提供了资金，其中的15个没有发现任何经确认的受害者或嫌疑人，有14个报告了1至4起案子，9个所报案件在5个以上。在当年共计1229件涉嫌案件中，性警察们只找出了14名未成年受害人。 "Given the obstacles to locating victims in black markets" some disparity between estimated numbers and confirmed cases should be expected, wrote the sociologist Ronald Weitzer in a 2011 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology paper. But "a huge disparity between the two should at least raise questions about the alleged scale of victimization." 2011年，社会学家Ronald Weitzer在《刑法与犯罪学杂志》上的一篇论文中写道：“考虑到在黑市中找受害者要面临种种障碍”，估算数字和确证案件之前存在一定差别，这是可以预料的。但是，“两者之间的巨大悬殊至少应该引发人们的疑惑，反思此前宣称的受害者规模。” UNNECESSARY LEGISLATION 毫无必要的立法 Of all the myths and misinformation about sex trafficking in America, the most pernicious may be that our current laws are insufficient. Pushing his new Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which passed last May, Sen. John Cornyn (R–Texas) declared that it would "provide law enforcement with the tools" to hold human traffickers accountable. 在关于美国性贩运的种种迷思和误报中，最有害的可能是，宣称现行法律不完善。参议员John Cornyn（共和党—德州）在推动其《贩运受害者正义法案》这一新法（已于今年五月通过）时曾宣称，该法案将“为执法机构提供了工具”，使他们能将人贩子绳之以法。 Another co-sponsor, Sen. Mark Kirk (R–Ill.), said the bill "gives police and prosecutors the tools they need to go after sex traffickers." Such statements—and there are plenty more—imply that we currently lack tough anti-trafficking laws. Yet for at least 15 years, federal policy makers and agencies have been continually strengthening these laws and increasing funding for their enforcement. 另一名联署人，参议员Mark Kirk（共和党—伊利诺伊），则称该法案“向警察和检察官们提供了追捕性贩子所必须的工具”。这些说法——还有很多——暗示，我们原先缺乏严厉的反贩运法规。然后，至少在过去15年间，联邦政策制定者和联邦机构一直在持续强化此类法律，并不断增加其执法资金。 Things really got going with the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000, though before this federal agents could bring human trafficking charges under various statutes, including the Mann Act (passed in 1910 to prohibit transporting a minor across state lines for the purposes of engaging in prostitution), the Tariff Act (passed in 1930 to ban importing goods made with forced or indentured labor), and various laws related to peonage, indentured servitude, and slavery. 这事在2000年就已经真正启动，当年通过了《贩运受害者保护法案》（TVPA）；即便在此之前，联邦机构也能通过各种不同法令对人口贩运提起控告，包括《曼恩法案》（1910年通过，禁止州际之间运送未成年人为娼）、《关税法案》（1930年通过，禁止进口由强迫劳工或契约奴工制造的产品）及其它各种与劳动偿债制、契约奴工制和奴隶制有关的法律。 But the TVPA, signed by President Bill Clinton in the waning days of his presidency, specifically established as federal crimes "forced labor," "sex trafficking," and "unlawful conduct with respect to documents in furtherance of trafficking." It also created a national Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, and gave the feds authority to seize traffickers' assets. 但是，由比尔·克林顿总统在其任期的没落时期所签署的《贩运受害者保护法案》，明确将“强迫劳动”、“性贩运”和“事涉各类文件的助推贩运的非法行为”确定为联邦犯罪。它还创设了一个全国性的“监测和打击人口贩运办公室”，并授权联邦政府官员可没收人贩子的财产。 The TVPA's 2003 reauthorization gave law enforcement the ability to use wiretapping to investigate sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation, increased the minimum and maximum sentencing requirements for a variety of sex offenses, and instituted a "two strikes, you're out" rule requiring mandatory life imprisonment upon a second sex offense involving a minor, "unless the sentence of death is imposed." 《贩运受害者保护法案》的2003年再授权法案赋予执法机构以监听调查性贩运和儿童性剥削的能力，提高了一系列性侵犯的最低和最高刑罚要求，并建立了一条“两次就出局”的规则，要求对涉及未成年人的性侵犯再犯实施刚性的终身监禁，“除非已经处以死刑”。 The 2005 reauthorization added human trafficking to crimes that can trigger the federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, expanded asset forfeiture possibilities, and directed the CIA to study "the interrelationship between trafficking in persons and terrorism." It also increased funding for the prosecution of "persons who engage in the purchase of commercial sex acts." 2005年的再授权法案将人口贩运添加到了可以触发联邦《反欺诈与腐败组织》（RICO）法的罪行之列，扩大了财产没收的可能性，并命令CIA研究“人口贩运与恐怖主义之间的相互关系”。它还为起诉“参与购买商业化性行为的人”增加了资金。 In 2008, legislators enhanced criminal penalties for human trafficking and expanded what qualifies to include several new areas, including anyone who "obstructs, attempts to obstruct, or in any way interferes with or prevents the enforcement of" anti-trafficking laws. It specified that in minor sex trafficking cases, "The Government need not prove that the defendant knew that the person had not attained the age of 18 years." And it significantly increased federal funding—doubling some appropriations and more than tripling others—for anti-trafficking efforts at home and abroad. The 2013 reauthorization increased federal involvement with state and local anti-trafficking efforts. 2008年，立法者提高了人口贩运的刑事惩罚，并扩大了限定条件，使之包含了几个新的领域，包括任何“阻扰、试图阻扰或以任何方式干扰或阻止”反贩运法规“实施”的人。它明确，在未成年性贩运案件中，“政府无需证明被告人知道该人未满18岁。”并且显著增加了国内外反贩运斗争的联邦资金——部分拨款是此前的两倍、其它则是此前的三倍以上。2013年的再授权法案增加了联邦在各州和各地方反贩运斗争中的参与度。 This year's Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act made soliciting paid sex from a minor a form of federal sex trafficking; established a Domestic Trafficking Victims' Fund into which anyone convicted of trafficking must pay $5,000; and lowered the evidentiary standard for proving trafficking charges. 今年的《贩运受害者正义法案》把引诱未成年人从事有偿性交易确定为联邦性贩运的一种形式；建立了一个“国内贩运受害者基金”，每个被定罪的人贩子都必须向其缴纳5000美元；并降低了证明贩运指控的证据标准。 The act also established that websites and publishers—from classified ad sites such as Craigslist to social media services such as Twitter and Reddit—may be charged with sex trafficking if any victim is found to have advertised there. And it created a "HERO corps" of military veterans who will work with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents to fight cybercrime, including "digital intellectual property theft" and "hidden marketplaces." 这一法案还明确，网站和出版商——从分类广告网站如Craigslist到社交媒体服务如Twitter和Reddit——一旦被发现有曾登过任何受害者的广告，则有可能面临性贩运指控。它还组建了一队由退伍老兵组成的“英雄警察”，与移民和海关执法局官员合作打击网络犯罪，包括“数字知识产权盗窃”和“隐蔽市场”。 Sen. Cornyn called it a "first step." 参议员Cornyn把这称为“第一步”。 The State Department's 2014 Trafficking in Persons report states explicitly that our current penalties for human trafficking "are sufficiently stringent and commensurate with penalties prescribed for other serious offenses." Penalties for forced labor, involuntary servitude, or peonage range from five to 20 years without aggravating factors; possible life imprisonment with them. Sex traffickers can receive up to life imprisonment, and are required to serve at least 10 years in prison if the victim is under 17 and 15 years if the victim is under 14. Victims may also independently file a civil cause of action; something 117 have done since 2003, with a 75 percent success rate. 国务院2014年《人口贩运》报告明确说明，我们对于人口贩运的现行惩罚“足够严厉，与为其它严重罪行规定的惩罚相当。”在没有加刑因素的情况下，对于强迫劳动、非自愿劳役或劳役偿债的惩罚是5到20年；如果有加刑因素，可判终身监禁。性贩子最高可获终身监禁；如果受害者小于17岁，要求至少狱中服刑10年；如果受害者小于14岁，则是15年。受害者还可以独立提起民事诉讼；自2003年以来已有大概117起，其中75%成功。 In addition to federal anti-trafficking laws, states have been adopting a flurry of their own measures. In 2014 alone, 31 states passed new laws concerning human trafficking. Since the start of 2015, at least 22 states have done so. 在联邦反贩运法律之外，各州本身也一直在采用大量措施。仅2014年就有31个州通过了涉及人口贩运的新法律。2015年开年以来，已有至少22个州这么做了。 Echoing the policy choices of the drug war, one common trend in these laws has been harsher sentences for trafficking offenses, including new mandatory minimums. In Florida, helping a minor engage in prostitution in any way now comes with mandatory life imprisonment. In Louisiana, labor trafficking of a minor comes with a five-year mandatory minimum, and sex trafficking of a minor 15 years. In New Jersey, soliciting a minor for paid sex comes with a minimum $15,000 fine. Some states have also started adding "aggravating" factors that trigger higher penalties, such as the offense taking place within a certain distance of a school or group home. 如同禁毒战争中的政策选择一样，上述法律中的一个普遍趋势是，对贩运罪行采取更为严厉的刑罚，包括制定新的刚性最低刑期。在弗罗里达州，以任何方式协助未成年人进入卖淫业如今都将面临刚性终身监禁。在路易斯安那州，贩运未成年劳动力将面临最少5年的刚性刑期，而性贩运未成年人则是15年。在新泽西州，引诱未成年人进行有偿性交易将面临最低15000美元的罚款。有些州还开始增加能够触发更高刑罚的“加刑”因素，包括侵害发生于离学校或集体宿舍一定距离以内。 Another trend is adding trafficking-related offenses to those that get perps on sex-offender registries. Last January, Arkansas passed a bill requiring anyone convicted of trafficking in persons or "patronizing a victim of human trafficking" to register as a sex offender. Increasing criminal penalties on patrons, or "johns," has been hot in state legislatures, too. 另一个趋势是，将与贩运有关的犯罪行为归为需要对罪犯进行性犯罪者登记之列。去年一月，阿肯色州通过一项法案，要求一旦被定罪为贩运人口或“光顾人口贩运受害者”，就必须登记为性犯罪者。对顾客即“嫖客”加重刑事惩罚也一直是各州立法的热点。 In 21 states, "sex trafficking laws have been amended or originally enacted with the intent to decisively reach the action of buyers of sex," according to the anti-trafficking nonprofit Shared Hope International. In 2014, Michigan changed soliciting someone under 18 for sex from a misdemeanor to a felony sex offense. Florida recently stipulated that people found guilty of soliciting prostitution (from someone of any age) must do 100 hours of community service and attend "john school," where they will be educated on "the negative effects of prostitution and human trafficking." 据反贩运非营利组织“国际共同希望”称，在21个州中，“对性贩运法律的修订或全新颁布，意在决定性地打击性服务买家的行为。”2014年，密歇根州将引诱未满18岁者发生性关系由轻罪改为性侵犯重罪。弗罗里达州最近规定，犯有招妓罪（无论对象是何年龄）的人都必须做满100小时社区服务，并参加“嫖客学校”，在里面接受有关“卖淫和人口贩运的负面影响”的教育。 Expanding police/prosecutorial power to fight and profit from trafficking is also common. At least 21 states now allow police to use wiretapping in trafficking investigations. And many states allow asset forfeiture for those convicted of sex trafficking or prostitution. For instance, in Colorado, "every building or part of a building including the ground upon which it is situated and all fixtures and contents thereof, every vehicle, and any real property" are up for grabs if they've been used in conjunction with prostitution of any kind. 扩大警察和检察官打击贩运并从中获利的权力，这种做法也很常见。至少有21个州现已允许警察在贩运调查中使用监听手段。此外，许多州允许对获得性贩运或卖淫定罪的人实施财产没收。比如，在科罗拉多州，“每栋建筑或建筑的任一部分，包括建筑所在的土地，以及此建筑内的所有固定装置和内容物品，每辆车和所有不动产”都可以被拿走，只要它们曾被用于任何形式的卖淫活动。 The final category of popular new state laws seems predominantly concerned with "raising awareness," be it via classes for hotel employees, programs in school curricula, or signs posted in strip clubs. Dozens of states now require certain entities—from adult-entertainment businesses and job-placement firms to hospitals, rest stops, and airports—to post the National Human Trafficking Hotline number, or face penalties. In Georgia, failure to do so can result in fines of between $500 and $5,000. 各州流行的最后一类新法似乎主要注重“提高觉悟”，可能是通过为宾馆雇员开培训班，在学校课程中设置有关课程，或在脱衣舞夜总会悬挂标牌等。如今已有几十个州要求某些机构——从成人娱乐行业和职业介绍所到医院、停车场和机场——张贴“全国人口贩运热线”电话，否则就会被罚款。在佐治亚州，没做到这一点可能面临500至5000美元的罚款。 Federal agencies are also in the trafficking publicity game. In July 2015, the DHS announced the expansion of "awareness efforts to major airports, truck stops, and motorist gas stations across the country," where it will fund messages describing "the signs of human trafficking" on signs, video monitors, and shopping bags. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission conducted more than 250 human trafficking "outreach events" in 2013 alone. 联邦机构也参加了这一对人口贩运进行曝光的游戏。2015年7月，卫生部宣布要“在全国的主要机场、货车停车区和机动车加油站扩大提高觉悟的工作”，它将提供资金，在这些地方的标牌、显示器和购物袋上发布信息，内容则是“关于人口贩运的标志”。就业机会平等委员会仅2013年就举办了250多场人口贩运“宣讲活动”。 REFRAMING PROSTITUTION 重新界定卖淫 If there's no empirical evidence that domestic human trafficking is increasing, and the State Department says we already have adequate laws to go after traffickers, then what's driving this current legislative frenzy? 如果没有经验证据表明国内人口贩运在增加，且国务院说过我们已有足够法律来追捕人贩子，那么究竟是什么东西在驱动当下的这场立法狂潮？ One factor is opposition to prostitution, even between consenting adults. Since the 1990s, a coalition of Christian and radical feminist activists has been working to redefine all prostitution as sex trafficking. While the Clinton administration was unsympathetic to their efforts, they found a friend in President George W. Bush. 其中一个因素是对卖淫（即便是成人之间的自愿卖淫）的反对。自1990年代以来，由基督徒和激进女权主义者结成的联盟一直在努力，试图将所有卖淫都重新界定为性贩运。克林顿政府对这一活动并不热心，但他们在小布什总统那里找到了知音。 In a 2002 National Security Presidential Directive, the White House stated that prostitution was "inherently harmful and dehumanizing." Hence the administration's new rule: Non-governmental organizations receiving federal funds to fight human trafficking (or AIDS) must explicitly oppose prostitution. 在2002年的一份国土安全总统指令中，白宫宣布卖淫“本质上有害且令人丧失人性”。于是有了该届政府的新规则：接受联邦资金从事反人口贩运（或反艾滋病）事业的非政府组织必须明确反对卖淫。 "Prostitution is not the oldest profession, but the oldest form of oppression," a State Department publication from 2004 reads. The agency stated that "the vast majority of women in prostitution don't want to be there," that "few activities are as brutal and damaging to people as prostitution," and that "prostitution leaves women and children physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually devastated," with damage that "can never be undone." “卖淫并非最古老的职业，而是最古老的压迫形式”，国务院2004年的一份出版物如是说。该机构称，“从事卖淫的绝大部分女性都不愿意如此”，且“没有什么行为比卖淫更残忍、对人更具损害性”，以及“卖淫让妇女和儿童在生理上、心理上、情感上以及精神上受到摧残”，其伤害“永不可能恢复”。 "Since the early 2000s, anti-prostitution policies at the federal level have translated into increasingly aggressive state and local-level policing of sex workers and their customers," wrote Kari Lerum, Kiesha McCurtis, Penelope Saunders, and Stephanie Wahab in a 2012 article for Anti-Trafficking Review. Kari Lerum、Kiesha McCurtis、Penelope Saunders和Stephanie Wahab 2012年发表于《反贩运评论》上的一篇文章写道：“自21世纪初以来，联邦层面的反卖淫政策已经转变为州层面和地方层面针对性工作者及其顾客的日益严厉的整顿。” This conflation of trafficking and prostitution "has allowed for federal dollars to be used locally for anti-prostitution purposes," the authors noted. "Anti-trafficking raids, such as Operation Cross Country held annually since 2006, have resulted in the arrest of many sex workers nationwide using federal anti-trafficking dollars." 上述几位作者提到，这种对人口贩运和卖淫的归并处理，“已使得各地方将联邦资金用在了反卖淫这一目的上”，“反贩运搜查，比如自2006年以来每年进行的‘横越美国行动’，花费了联邦反贩运资金，结果只是全国范围内众多性工作者被捕。” The goal of Operation Cross Country, according to the FBI's website, is "to recover victims of child sex trafficking." In 2014, more than a dozen cities took part. Knoxville, Tennessee, to cite one participant, uncovered zero underage victims of sex trafficking, but it did arrest eight women for prostitution, four women for promoting prostitution, two women for human trafficking, and four men for solicitation. 根据FBI网站，“横越美国行动”的目标，是“找回儿童性贩运的受害者”。2014年有十几个城市参加了这一行动。只举一个参与城市为例，田纳西州的Knoxville，没有找到一个未成年的性贩运受害者，但确实因卖淫逮捕了8名妇女，因协助卖淫逮捕了2名妇女，因贩卖人口逮捕了2名妇女，因引诱卖淫逮捕了4名男子。 In Newark, New Jersey, one 14-year-old victim was identified and 45 people were arrested for prostitution or pimping. Richmond, Virginia, found no child victims but charged 26 people with prostitution and two with pimping. In Atlanta, dozens were arrested for prostitution, loitering, soliciting, and drug possession. 在新泽西州的Newark，确认了一名14岁的受害者，有45人因卖淫或拉皮条而被逮捕。在弗吉尼亚州的Richmond，没有找到一个受害儿童，不过有26人因卖淫、2人因拉皮条遭到控告。在亚特兰大，数十人因卖淫、街头游荡、招嫖及持有毒品而被捕。 Phoenix officials announced the most victims recovered: five minors and 42 adults. But dig beyond the press release and you'll see the adult "victims" included women willingly working in prostitution. Officers posing as clients answered these women's online ads and then apprehended them. 凤凰城的警官所宣布的受害者解救数目最大：5个未成年、42个成人。但往新闻发布之外再挖一挖，你会发现所谓成人“受害者”中包括了自愿卖淫的妇女。警官们假装顾客，回应这些妇女的线上广告，然后再逮捕她们。 One 20-year-old "victim" had her arm broken by the cops when she tried to flee. A 16-year-old victim was booked on prostitution charges when she refused to let officers contact her parents. After failing to secure emergency shelter for two adult victims who had no money and no identification, police returned them to the motel where they'd been apprehended "so they could try and arrange funds to get back" home. 某位20岁的“受害者”在试图逃跑时还被警察把手臂给扭断了。当一位16岁的受害者拒绝让警官联系其父母时，她被登记为受到卖淫指控。在为两名成年受害人寻找临时住所失败之后，由于两人既无钱财也无身份证明，警察又把她们送回了逮捕她们的同一家汽车旅馆，“这样她们能试着筹集回家的钱”。 INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF A MORAL CRUSADE 道德圣战的制度化 In a 2012 paper published in Politics & Society, Ronald Weitzer suggested that the 1990s anti-prostitution crusade has become fully "institutionalized" in the 21st century. "Institutionalization by the state may be limited or extensive—ranging from consultation with activists, inclusion of leaders in the policy process, material support for crusade organizations, official endorsement of crusade ideology, resource mobilization, and the creation of legislation and new agencies to address the problem," Weitzer wrote. Sound familiar? 在一篇2012年发表于《政治与社会》杂志的论文中，Ronald Weitzer认为，1990年代的反卖淫斗争在21世纪已经完全“制度化”了。他写道：“州层面的制度化既可能是有限性质的，也可能是全面彻底的——其内容包括征求活跃分子意见、将其领导人纳入政策过程、向斗争组织提供物质支持、为其斗争意识形态提供官方背书、资源动员、为处理这个问题而创设法律和新的机构等。”听着是不是很熟悉？ "Some moral crusades are so successful that they see their ideology fully incorporated in government policy and vigorous efforts by state agencies to combat the problem on their own," he noted. In other words, "the movement's central goals become a project of the government." 他还提到，“某些道德圣战如此成功，以至于它们的结果是，州立机构已经将这一斗争的意识形态完全纳入了政府政策和强力措施，自己扛起了与此问题作战的任务。”换句话说，“这一任务的核心目标已经变成了一项政府规划。” It's hard to think of a better representative of this institutionalization than the Polaris Project, one of America's biggest anti-trafficking groups. Founded by a man who now runs the website Everyday Feminism and a woman who now works for the federal government, Polaris has drafted multi-pronged model legislation for the taking. Compare Polaris' recommendations with state trafficking laws, and you'll find near verbatim language in some, and shared assumptions and goals in almost all. 很难想到还有什么例子能比“北极星项目”更好代表这种制度化了。它是美国最大的反贩运团体之一，其创立者为一男一女，前者目前运营着一家叫做“每日女权主义”的网站，后者现为联邦政府工作。“北极星”已经起草了多管齐下的示范法案，供人参考。拿“北极星”的建议与州反贩运法做个比较，你就能发现部分句子几乎一字不差，而且绝大部分辞句有着共同的预设前提和目标。 How did Polaris gain such influence? One way is through state "report cards." Advertised as a measure of states' commitment to fighting human trafficking, it's basically a measure of how closely their laws hew to the Polaris policy wishlist. Among the must-haves: a law requiring the display of the national human trafficking hotline number, which Polaris runs with funding from Health and Human Services. States that fail to enact all of the Polaris-endorsed policies wind up with bad grades, which the organization then publicizes extensively. “北极星”这么大的影响力是怎么来的？其中一个途径是通过发布各州“成绩单”。据宣传，这是对各州投身反人口贩运斗争努力程度的一种测量，但基本上测量的是各州法律在多大程度上遵守“北极星”的政策意愿清单。必要部分中有一条：立法要求张贴全国人口贩运热线电话，而这个热线是由“北极星”用来自卫生部的资金运营的。有些州没能将“北极星”支持的政策全部立为法律，最终得分就很差劲，并被该组织广为宣传。 Another driver of state trafficking policies is the Uniform Law Commission (ULC), a nonpartisan organization that drafts model state legislation in a variety of areas. In 2010, ULC was asked by the American Bar Association to prepare a plan for tackling human trafficking. The result was drafted in collaboration with Polaris, Shared Hope International, the National Association of Attorneys General, and the U.S. State Department, then approved by the bar association in 2013. 各州制定此类贩运政策的另一个推动力来自“统一法律委员会”（ULC），这是一个致力于在诸多领域起草示范性州法的无党派组织。2010年，美国律师协会请统一法律委员起草一个规划，以应对人口贩运问题。最终成果是由统一法律委员会与“北极星”、“国际共同希望”、“全国首席检察官联合会”以及美国国务院共同起草的，并于2013年获得律师协会认可。 In the first half of 2015, two states enacted laws based on ULC's model legislation and four others introduced them. Four states enacted ULC-based trafficking laws in 2014 with 10 more attempting to. 2015年上半年，已有2个州根据统一法律委员会的示范法案制定法律，另有4个州已发起提议。2014年有4个州颁布了以统一法律委员会为参考基础的贩运法规，另有10个州还在为此努力。 Among the model legislation's main tenets are court-ordered forfeiture of real and personal property for traffickers, providing "immunity to minors who are human trafficking victims and commit prostitution or nonviolent offenses," and imposing "felony-level punishment when the defendant offers anything of value to engage in commercial sexual activity." 该示范立法的核心原则之一是由法院下令对人贩子的不动产和个人财产实施没收，并“为本身为人口贩运受害者，同时犯有卖淫罪或非暴力罪行的未成年人”提供“豁免”，以及“当被告提供了任何有价值物品以进行商业化性行为时”，对其加以“重罪水平的惩罚”。 That last bit is part of what's known as the "end-demand" strategy, or the "Nordic model," which focuses heavier penalties on sex buyers than sex sellers. Popularized by Nordic feminists, it's since become the law of the land in Canada and is rapidly influencing American policy, with many religious-based anti-trafficking groups also adopting its rallying cry. As a result, cities and states around the country have begun increasing penalties for prostitution clients and rebranding them as sexual predators. In Seattle, for instance, the crime of "patronizing a prostitute" was recently rechristened "sexual exploitation." 这最后一点是所谓“终结需求”策略的体现之一，该策略又称“北欧模式”，注重对性服务买家而非卖家施加重罚。最早由北欧女权主义者普及，该策略在加拿大成为当地法律，并正在加速影响美国政策，许多从宗教角度反贩运的团体也在采用这一战斗口号。结果是，全国境内的诸多城市和州政府都已开始加大对嫖客的惩罚力度，并将他们改称为色情魔。比如，在西雅图，“光顾妓女”罪最近已被改名为“性剥削”。 The theory behind "end demand" is that if only we arrest enough patrons or make the punishments for them severe enough, people will stop trying to purchase sex. Voila! No more prostitution, no more sex trafficking. If that sounds familiar, perhaps you're old enough to remember the '80s, when a similar approach was supposed to bring down the drug trade. “终结需求”策略背后的理论是，只有逮捕足够多的顾客或对他们施加足够严厉的惩罚，人们才会停止去买春。瞧！卖淫不再有，性贩运也不再有。如果你对此听着耳熟，可能是因为你足够年长，还记得80年代的事，当时曾用过类似的办法，认为它能打倒毒品交易。 "Ending the demand for drugs is how, in the end, we will win," President Ronald Reagan declared in 1988. Indeed, it was how we were already winning: "The tide of the battle has turned, and we're beginning to win the crusade for a drug-free America," Reagan claimed. 罗纳德·里根总统1988年宣布：“终结毒品需求将是我们最终取得胜利的办法。”不，它是当时正取得的节节胜利的缘由所在，里根声称：“战争的风向已经变了，我们已经开始赢得这场斗争，走向一个无毒美国。” In reality, the number of illicit drug users in America has only risen since then, despite the billions of dollars spent and hundreds of thousands of people locked away. In 1990, for instance, 7.1 percent of Americans had used some sort of illegal drug in the past month, according to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. By 2002 it had risen to 8.3 percent, and by 2013 to 9.4 percent. 事实上，从那时候至今，美国人中的非法毒品使用者数量只增不降，尽管我们花费了数十亿美元，关押了数十万人。比如，根据国家毒品滥用家庭调查，1990年有7.1%的美国人在过去一个月曾服用某种非法毒品。而到2002年，这一数字已经上升到8.3%，到2013年则升到了9.4%。 The utter failure to "end demand" for drugs hasn't dented optimism that we can accomplish the trick with prostitution. During the "National Day of John Arrests" each year, police pose as sex workers online and then arrest would-be clients. Each year, hundreds of men are booked in these stings and charged with offenses ranging from public indecency and solicitation to pimping and sex trafficking. If these anti-trafficking efforts sound a lot like old vice policing, that's because the tactics, and results, are nearly identical. 针对毒品的“终结需求”策略的彻底失败，并没能减少那种认为我们能够在卖淫问题上实现这一计策的乐观主义。在每年的“全国抓嫖日”期间，警察在网上假扮性工作者，然后逮捕企图嫖娼的客户。每年都有好几百男人落入这种圈套，然后被控犯罪，罪名从公共场合猥亵、招嫖到拉皮条、性贩运不等。如果这类反贩运做法听起来特别像是以前那种腐化警察，那是因为两者在策略和结果上都接近于雷同。 In a study released last year by Shared Hope International and Arizona State University, researchers examined end-demand efforts in four metro areas over a four-month period. Between 50 and 60 percent of these efforts involved police decoys pretending to be teens, and no actual victims. A typical tactic is for police to post an ad pretending to be a young adult sex worker, and once a man agrees to meet, the "girl" indicates that she's actually only 16 or 17. 在国际共同希望和亚利桑那州立大学于2014年发布的一项研究中，研究者们考察了四个大都市区的终结需求式措施，历时四个月。其中有50-60%涉及警察设套假扮青少年，没有实际的受害者。一个惯常策略是由警察登一个广告，假扮年轻的成年性工作者，要是有男人同意见面，该“女孩”再表明她实际只有16或17岁。 Shared Hope is candid about the fact that most of the men soliciting sex here are not pedophiles and not necessarily seeking out someone underage. But "distinguishing between demand for commercial sex acts with an adult and demand for commercial sex acts with a minor is often an artificial construct," its report asserted. 共同希望坦白承认一个事实，即此中招嫖的绝大部分男人并非恋童癖，也并不一定是在寻觅未成年人。但上述报告断言，“对两种需求加以区分，一边是与成人进行商业化性行为的需求，一边是与未成年人进行商业化性行为的需求，这种做法通常只是一种人为建构”。 So to save the children, we need to prosecute men who have no demonstrated interest in children, because in the future they may seek sex with adults who could actually turn out to be old-looking teens—got that? 因此，为了拯救孩子，我们需要起诉那些还没有表露出他们对儿童有兴趣的人，因为将来他们可能会与一些成人发生性关系，而后者可能只是看起来比较成熟的青少年而已——能看懂这种逻辑不？ "One shortcoming of the reverse sting approach is that no live victims are rescued from trafficking," Shared Hope admitted. "But it does take intended perpetrators of child sex trafficking off the Internet and off the streets." 共同希望承认：“这种反向设局策略的一个缺陷是，没能救出陷于贩运之中的真正受害者”。“但它确实能将具有儿童性贩运犯罪意图的人从网上和街上移除。” Bipartisan Paranoia 双党妄想症 A federal war on prostitution doesn't play well with large segments of Americans. Fighting human trafficking, on the other hand, is a feel-good cause. At a 2012 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) speech, President Barack Obama insisted that we must call human trafficking "by its true name—modern slavery." And what kind of monster would be against ending slavery? Which brings us to another factor driving all this trafficking action: It makes politicians look good. 美国人中的很大部分对一场针对卖淫的联邦战争并不感冒。但是，打击人口贩运，则是一项令人观感良好的事业。在巴拉克·奥巴马总统于2012年“克林顿全球倡议”（CGI）会议上发表的一场演说中，他强调我们必须“按照其真实名称”来称呼人口贩运——“现代奴隶制”。你要是竟然反对结束奴隶制的斗争，你将是何等邪恶？这就给我们带来了驱动以上种种反贩运行动的另一个因素：它能让政客们很好看。 At a time when Republicans and Democrats can barely agree on anything, human trafficking bills have attracted huge bipartisan support. Here is an area where enterprising legislators can attach their names to something likely to pass. And if it doesn't pass, for whatever reason, it's ripe for demagoguery: "My opponent voted against a bill to fight modern slavery!" Tough-on-crime policies, particularly tough-on-drugs policies, used this tactic for decades, until mass incarceration finally lost its luster. 在这个共和党和民主党几乎不能在任何事情上取得一致的时代，人口贩运法案获得了极大的两党共同支持。这是一个法案还有可能获得通过的领域，有进取心的立法者们有可能将其名字附加在这些法案上。如果它没能通过，无论出于任何原因，它都很适合用于煽动群众。“我的对手投票反对了打击现代奴隶制的法案！”严打犯罪的政策，特别是严打毒品的政策，曾经将这个策略用了数十年，直到大规模收监办法最后黯然收场。 Undoubtedly, many lawmakers do legitimately want to help trafficking victims and hold bad guys accountable; political point-scoring is just a happy side effect. But a less happy side effect is a slew of bad laws, violated rights, and squandered money. The federal government has given away scores of millions in grant dollars for this quixotic crusade. 毫无疑问，确实有许多立法者真正地想要帮助贩运受害者，想要将坏人绳之以法；政治上得分只是一个喜闻乐见的副作用。但是还有个不那么喜闻乐见的副作用，即一连串的糟糕法律、受侵犯的权利和金钱浪费。为了这场唐吉可德式的十字军圣战，联邦政府已经拨出了成千上百万美元的款项。 The resources spent on prostitution stings and public awareness campaigns are resources diverted from mundane but more effective strategies for helping at-risk youth, such as adding more beds at emergency shelters. The State Department's latest Trafficking in Persons report notes that "shelter and housing for all trafficking victims, especially male and labor trafficking victims, continue to be insufficient." Advocates routinely say the biggest barrier to escape for many trafficking victims is simply a lack of places to go. 用于钓鱼抓嫖和提高公共觉悟活动的资源，转移自那些在帮助面临危险的青少年方面看起来单调平凡但也更为有效的策略，比如在应急收容所添加更多床位。国务院最新的《人口贩运》报告指出：“对于所有贩运受害者，特别是男性受害者和劳力贩运受害者，收容住所持续不足。”提倡者反复说过，对于许多贩运受害者而言，逃跑的最大障碍很简单，就是无处可去。 "Studies focused on New York City consistently report that homeless youth often trade sex for a place to stay each night because of the absence of available shelter beds," noted the Urban Institute in a report last year. "These figures are even more striking for LGBTQ youth...According to a survey of nearly 1,000 homeless youth in New York City, young men were three times more likely than young women to have traded sex for a place to stay, and LGBTQ youth were seven times more likely than heterosexual youth to have done so. Transgender youth in New York City have been found eight times more likely than non-transgender youth to trade sex for a safe place to stay." “聚焦于纽约市的研究一致表明，无家可归的青少年通常每晚都会以性关系换取住所，因为可用的收容床位不足。” 城市研究所去年发布的一份报告如此写道。“对于LGBTQ青少年群体来说，这个数字更为惊人……根据一份对纽约市近1000名无家可归青少年的调查，少男为找到住所而出卖性关系的可能性要比少女高出3倍，而LGBTQ青少年做这种事的可能性又要比异性恋青少年高出7倍。研究发现，纽约市的变性青少年为了安全住所而出卖性关系的可能性比非变性青少年要高8倍。” What's more, many of the policies in place to fight trafficking actively work against their own stated mission. The criminalization of prostitution keeps sex workers from reporting abuse and keeps clients from coming forward if they suspect someone is being trafficked. Victims themselves are afraid to go to police for fear they'll be arrested for prostitution—and indeed, they often are. 此外，已经实施的、用于打击贩运的许多政策明显对它们意图实现的使命产生了负面作用。卖淫入罪妨碍了性工作者报告所受虐待，并妨碍了怀疑某人遭到贩运的嫖客挺身而出。受害者本人也不敢去找警察，因为担心因卖淫被捕——他们确实经常因此被捕。 In 2012, 579 minors were reported to the federal government as having been arrested for prostitution and commercialized vice. Prosecutors say they need this as a "bargaining chip" to make the victims testify against their perpetrators. We're just using state violence and the threat of incarceration against children in order to save them! 2012年，在联邦政府收到的报告中，有579名未成年人因卖淫和商业化卖春而遭逮捕。检察官称，他们需要这么做，这是种“议价筹码”，能促使受害者出来为其作案者的罪行作证。为了拯救孩子们，我们正在使用国家暴力和收监威胁来对付他们！ Another misguided government target is the classified advertising website Backpage, home to many an "escort" ad. Lawmakers accuse the site of "profiting off of child exploitation," even though only a miniscule percentage of Backpage ads—which anyone can put up—are posted by traffickers rather than adult sex workers. 政府的另一个误导性靶子是分类广告网站Backpage，那是许多“应召”广告的老巢。立法者们指责该网站“从对儿童的剥削中牟利”，尽管网站上只有极小部分广告——任何人都可以发布——是由人贩子而非成人性工作者所发布的。 Both legislators and anti-trafficking groups have long been intent on shutting the site down. Yet "street-based sex workers, across studies, face much higher rates of violence than indoor sex workers," says Serpent Libertine, a Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP)-Chicago board member. "It's hard to understand how eliminating a low-barrier way to work indoors would promote safety." 立法者和反贩运团体一直以来都想要关闭这个网站。不过，Serpent Libertine却说：“不同研究都表明，站街的性工作者比室内性工作者遭受暴力的可能性大得多”，Libertine是“扩大对性工作者服务项目”（SWOP）芝加哥分支的董事会成员。“通过清除低门槛的室内工作途径，如何能够增进妓女安全呢，这委实难以理解。” Vera Lamarr, also with SWOP-Chicago, pointed out that Backpage cooperates with law enforcement in the U.S. more than many other sites do. "It's hard to understand the desire to take down a website that voluntarily supports efforts against trafficking and willingly cooperates with law enforcement," Lamarr says. "If Backpage closes, their user base could easily migrate to a less cooperative site" or be forced back out on the streets, where traffickers don't leave digital records. 同在SWOP工作的Vera Lamarr指出，Backpage与美国执法机构的合作比其它许多网站都要多。“很难理解为什么要关闭一个主动支持反贩运事业并愿意与执法机构合作的网站”，Lamarr说。“如果Backpage关掉，那他们的用户群可能会轻松地转移到另一个不那么合作的网站去”，或者被迫重新回去站街，街上的人贩子可不会留下什么数字信息记录。 But at least we're getting the really bad guys, right? That's also up for debate. Peruse trafficking arrest records and you'll find many folks like Amber Batt, an Alaska woman who faces 10 to 25 years in federal prison (plus a lifetime on the sex-offender registry) for running an escort service featuring adult women who freely elected to work there. 但至少我们正在抓那些真正的坏蛋，对吧？这一点也有待讨论。细检反贩运逮捕记录，你会找到许多人，比如Amber Batt，她是一位经营应召服务的阿拉斯加妇女，推销的是自愿选择在那里工作的成年妇女，她因此需要在联邦监狱服刑10至25年（再加上终身登记为性犯罪者）。 Or Julie Haner, a 19-year-old Oregon sex worker who was charged with trafficking after taking her 17-year-old friend with her to meet clients. Or Aimee Hart, 42, who served seven months in prison and faces 15 years on the sex-offender registry for driving her adult friend to a prostitution job. Or Hortencia Medeles-Arguello, a 71-year-old Houston bar owner arrested as the leader of a "sex trafficking conspiracy" because she allowed prostitution upstairs. 又如Julie Haner，她是俄勒冈一位19岁性工作者，因带着她17岁的朋友一起见客而被控贩运罪。又如Aimee Hart，42岁，因开车送其成年朋友去卖淫，已在监狱服刑7个月，并将持续15年被登记为性犯罪者。又如Hortencia Medeles-Aguello，休斯顿一位71岁的酒吧店主，因在其楼上容留卖淫，她被当作“性贩运团伙”的头目而遭逮捕。 There's Trenton McLemore, 29, who faces federal sex trafficking charges for "facilitating" the sex work of his 16-year-old girlfriend by purchasing the girl a cellphone and sometimes texting clients for her. He faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years and possible life in prison, thanks to a joint effort of Irving, Texas, police; Homeland Security; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 还有Trenton McLemore，29岁，他因给他16岁的女友买了一个手机，有时还帮她给客户发短信，被认为“协助”其从事性工作，面临联邦性贩运指控。在德克萨斯Irving市警察、国土安全部、美国移民和海关执法局的共同努力下，他要面对的刚性最短刑期为10年，最高可能为终身监禁。 And Alfonso Kee Peterson, 28, arrested in July for telling a 17-year-old on Facebook that he could help her earn a lot of money from prostitution. The "teen" turned out to be a police decoy. Despite the absence of any real victim or any activity beyond speech, Peterson was charged with one felony count of human trafficking of a minor, one felony count of pandering, and one felony count of attempted pimping; he faces up to 12 years in prison. This important sting apparently warranted the work of several local police departments, the California Highway Patrol, and the FBI. 还有Alfonso Kee Peterson，28岁。因在Facebook上告诉一个17岁女孩他可以帮她通过卖淫赚一大笔，他于今年7月被捕。结果这个“青少年”是个警察诱饵。尽管没有任何真正的受害人，除言论之外也没有任何行动，Peterson仍被控三项重罪罪名，分别是性贩运未成年人、唆使作恶和试图拉皮条；他最高面临12年监禁。这个重要圈套显然让当地几个地方警局、加州公路巡警和FBI的共同工作看起来有了正当理由。 Even if we grant that some of this activity is unsavory, is it really the sort of behavior that warrants lengthy prison sentences and attention from federal agents? Since when is what adults—or even teenagers—willingly do with their genitalia a matter of homeland security? Is this really what President Obama had in mind at the CGI conference when he compared anti-trafficking laws to the Emancipation Proclamation? 即便我们承认上述某些行为确实令人讨厌，它们是否真的属于那种应该处于长期监禁惩罚、需要联邦机构来调查的行为？成年人——或者甚至包括青少年——愿意如何利用他们的生殖器这个问题，从什么时候开始已经成为国土安全事务了？这真的是奥巴马总统在“克林顿全球倡议”会上将反贩运法律和《解放黑奴宣言》作比较时心中所想吗？ "To be sure, linking trafficking and slavery could, in theory, surface important similarities between political economies of chattel slavery (largely) of the past, and modern-day trafficking," the American University law professor Janie Chuang wrote in a paper published in the American Journal of International Law last year. 去年，美利坚大学法学教授Janie Chuang在《美国国际法杂志》上发表了一篇文章，其中写道：“诚然，将贩运和奴隶制联系起来，在理论上可以使（大致上）发生于过去的传统奴隶制和现代贩运之间在政治经济结构上的重要相似点浮出水面。” "Drawing out such nuanced comparisons is not, however, the current trajectory of slavery creep. Instead, this version promotes an understanding of trafficking as a problem created and sustained by individual deviant actors, and thus best addressed through aggressive crime control measures." “但是，描绘这种微妙的对照并不是奴隶制恐慌的当下方向。相反，目前的恐慌助推了一种看法，认为贩运是由变态的个体行动者导致和维持的问题，因此最好用严厉的犯罪控制措施来处理。” For a fraction of the money spent on these measures, state governments or private foundations could fund more beds at emergency shelters. The resources that churches, charities, and radical feminists use trying to convince people that all sex workers are victims (and their clients predators) could go toward helping that minority of sex workers who do feel trapped in prostitution with job placement or getting an education. 只需拿出用于上述措施中的资金的一部分，州政府或私人基金就能为应急收容所提供更多床位。教会、慈善组织和激进女权主义者花了大量资源试图告诉人们，所有性工作者都是受害者（且他们的所有顾客都是侵害者），而这些钱本可以用于帮助性工作者中真正觉得自己受困于卖淫的少数人，帮她们介绍工作或接受教育。 For the vast majority of vulnerable sex workers, the greatest barriers to exit aren't ankle-cuffs, isolation, and shadowy kidnappers with guns, but a lack of money, transportation, identification, or other practical things. Is helping with this stuff not sexy enough? 对于绝大多数容易受到伤害的性工作者来说，离开这一行的最大障碍并非脚链、隔离或如影随形的持枪劫持者，而是没有钱、交通工具、身份证明和其它实用之物。在这些事务方面提供帮助是不是不够性感？ As it stands, many of those "rescued" by police or abolitionist groups find that their self-appointed saviors can't actually offer them housing, food, a job, or anything else of urgent value in starting a life outside the sex trade. Awareness doesn't pay the bills. 事实上，许多被警察和废奴主义团体所“营救”出来的人发现，她们面对的这些自命救世主实际上不能给她们提供住所、食物、工作或任何其它在性交易之外重新开始生活时紧迫需要之物。觉悟并不能用来支付账单。 Kamylla's story typifies this rescue paradox. A Texas mother who had fallen on hard times after an injury ended her construction career, she started working in prostitution last year. One day, producers from the A&E television series 8 Minutes contacted her, having seen her ad on Backpage. Kamylla的故事代表了这种拯救悖论的典型。Kamylla是一位德克萨斯母亲，她的建筑事业因一场事故而被迫终结，生活陷入困境，去年开始从事卖淫业。某天，因为在Backpage上看到了她的广告，A&E电视台的《八分钟》系列节目联系了她。 Though 8 Minutes was marketed as a reality show where a rogue pastor found and "saved" sex trafficking victims in real time, Kamylla and others (who were selling sexual services willingly, even if their situation wasn't optimal) actually talked with producers several times beforehand. The show promised to help with her overdue rent and finding a job, she says. After filming, they gave her $150 and told her they'd be in touch soon about further assistance. 这档节目是以真人秀的形式播出的，一位流氓牧师在其中发现并及时“拯救”了性贩卖受害者。但事实上，Kamylla和其他几个人（尽管她们的境况并不理想，但均为自愿出售性服务）事前已经多次与制片人交谈过。她说，这个节目答应会帮她解决房租逾期问题，并为她找个工作。拍摄之后，电视台给了她150美元，告诉她他们很快就会与她联系，商量后续援助问题。 They never called. When Kamylla followed up, the producers referred her to the same unhelpful social services she'd already tried on her own. Eventually Kamylla returned to Backpage, posting an ad using the same phone number that the producers had used to contact her. The first call she received was from an undercover cop, who arranged to meet her and another sex worker at a motel. Once the women agreed to oral sex for money, "he opened the door and nine police officers came inside the room," she says. Both women were taken to jail and booked on prostitution charges. 他们再没有给Kamylla打过电话。她去追究，制片方就让她去找她自己已经试过、但并不管用的社会服务机构。最终，Kamylla回到了Backpage，所登广告上使用的电话号码正是制片方曾拿来联络她的那个。她接到的第一个电话来自一个卧底警察，后者约她和另外一个性工作者在一家汽车旅馆见面。两个女人才答应收钱给他做口交，“他就把门打开了，一下进来9个警官”，她说。两人均被关进监狱，并以被控卖淫而被登记在案。 In a world with no gray areas—one where traffickers are always evil predators and victims always utterly helpless, where sex workers are never ambivalently engaged with their work, and the bright line between teendom and adulthood is always apparent and meaningful—in this world, the raid-and-rescue model of addressing sex trafficking may make some sense. You don't give a girl chained to a bed a condom and call it a day. 在一个没有灰色地带的世界里——里面的人贩子总是邪恶的侵害者，受害者总是彻底无助，性工作者从事其工作从未进退两难，青少年和成年之间的明确界限总是清楚明晰——在这样的世界中，处理性贩运问题时采用“搜捕拯救”模式可能还有道理。你不会丢个避孕套给一个被锁在床上的女孩，然后收工回家。 But in the world as it exists, sometimes a 17-year-old runaway chooses prostitution because it's better than living in an abusive foster home. Sometimes a sex worker gives all her money to a man because she loves him or thinks she needs him, or that he needs her. Sometimes a struggling mother doesn't love the sex trade, but finds it the best option to feed her kids. 但在现实存在的世界中，有时候，17岁的离家出走者会选择卖淫，因为这比生活于一个残暴虐待的寄养家庭要好。有时候性工作者会把她所有的钱财全部交给一个男人，因为她爱他，或者觉得她需要他或他需要她。有时候，一个苦苦挣扎的母亲并不喜欢性交易，但她觉得这是养活她孩子的最好办法。 Sometimes an immigrant would rather give hand jobs to strangers than face whatever drove her to leave her own country. Harm reduction strategies like handing out condoms in popular prostitution areas, offering STD tests, or even just facilitating online advertising (rather than street work) could prove lifesaving to these women. 有时候，某个移民宁愿给陌生人手交，也不愿意面对那些驱使她离开自己祖国的事情。降低危害的种种策略，比如在卖淫盛行地区分发避孕套，提供性传播疾病检查，甚至仅仅只是促进网上广告（而非站街工作），对这些女人来说，都可能是活命之举。 Yet when it comes to the way we talk about commercial sex, you have to be a victim or a predator. We've created a narrative with no room for nuance. We traffic not in facts but in melodrama. In TV broadcasts, campus panels, and congressional hearings, the most lurid and sensational stories are held up as representative. Legislators assure us that their intent is noble and pure. 但在我们讨论商业化性行为的方式里头，你必须要么是受害者，要么是侵害者。我们所创造出来的是一种没有给微妙差别留下任何空间的叙事。我们不是在事实中、而是在传奇剧中穿梭。在电视节目上、在校园会议上、在国会听证上，被拿出来作为代表的都是那些最为耸人听闻、最具轰动效应的故事。立法者向我们保证，他们的意图高贵而纯洁。 But remember: Tough-on-drugs legislation was never crafted or advertised as a means to send poor people to prison for life over a few grams of weed. It was a way to crack down on drug kingpins, violent gang leaders, evil crack fiends, and all those who would lure innocent children into addiction, doom, and death. 但是，请记住：立法严打毒品，从来就不是为了仅因几克大麻就把穷人终身关进监狱，这类法律并不是为此制定的，也没人这样宣称。它是为了镇压大毒枭、暴力团伙头目、邪恶的可卡因成瘾者和所有那些会引诱无辜少年毒品成瘾、遭遇厄运、走向死亡的人。 Yet in mandating more police attention for drug crimes, giving law enforcement new technological tools and military gear with which to fight it, and adding ever-stricter prison sentences and punishments for drug offenders, we unleashed a corrupt, authoritarian, biased, and fiscally untenable mess on American cities without any success in decreasing drug rates or the violence and danger surrounding an activity that human beings stubbornly refuse to give up. 但是，通过责令警方更加注意毒品犯罪，通过赋予执法机构新的技术工具和军需用品以打击毒品犯罪，通过前所未有地提高毒品犯罪分子的刑期和惩罚，我们在美国各城市释放出了一种腐败、专断、偏执并且在财政上无法维持的糟糕局面，却没能取得任何成功，无论是在减少毒品用量方面，还是在减少围绕这一人们坚决拒绝抛弃的活动而产生的暴力和危险方面。 Unless we can learn the lessons of our past failed crusades, the war on sex trafficking could result in every bit as much misery as its panicky predecessors. Here's hoping it won't take us another four decades to realize that this prohibition doesn't work either. 除非我们能从过去失败的圣战中吸取教训，反性贩运的战争就有可能以一种完全一模一样的结局收尾，其可悲之处与其恐慌前例会是一样的。只希望我们不会又一次再花40年才能意识到，这种禁令同样行不通。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

【2016-08-24】 @whigzhou: 当前各国（特别是欧日）央行往系统里拼命灌钱、毫无节制抬高杠杆的劲头实在有点疯狂了吧，照这么买下去，流通中的企业债全进央行了，日本央行甚至直接买股票，到明年大企业都变国企了，想想不久前他们还在痛责私人银行家头脑发热，事实证明，论无视风险制造泡沫的胆量，有谁比得过政府呢？ ​​​​  

【2016-07-19】 @隐藏的火星人:我就想问辉总，兼顾后果和公平的最好的策略是什么，对待绿化 @whigzhou: 宪法容许范围内可做的很多，比如停止穆斯林移民，犯罪移民驱逐出境（像瑞士），取缔国内赞助恐怖主义的组织，禁止国内政治组织接受伊斯兰主义组织或政权（比如沙特政府）的捐款，在公职人员中展开忠诚调查（即麦卡锡行动） @whigzhou: 从佛罗里达Boca Raton伊斯兰中心 ([[ICBR]])的例子可看出有多少早该做事情没做，ICBR与恐怖组织的关系确凿无疑，毫不掩饰，十几年来屡屡被联邦政府抓包和定罪，却始终活得好好的，不久前还被棕榈滩县选为投票点，直到本次惨案发生遭大量抗议后才换地方 http://t.cn/RtzHREz @whigzhou: 类似例子比比皆是，几乎是常态 【2016-08-24】 @whigzhou: 终于有动作了  

【2016-08-17】 @whigzhou: 《危险、担忧与公共政策》 某类危险的死亡几率越高，就越“值得担心”，也越值得在公共政策上得到优先处理？ @whigzhou: Pinker式乐观主义就是出于类似的无知，仅以死亡率/谋杀率之类简单数字衡量公共安全，忽略了安全问题的很多重要方面，举个简单例子：A/B两个城市谋杀率同为千分之五，A的谋杀案均匀分布于全市，B的全部集中于其第9区，两市市民对公共安全的感觉完全不同，而且这种不同十分合理。 @whigzhou: 再极端一点，假如B市的谋杀案全部属于黑帮火拼，那么该市良民就会（十分合理的）觉得这个城市非常安全 @whigzhou: 这就是为什么面向非特定人群的恐怖攻击，尽管造成的伤亡对社会总他杀率的贡献率很低，但仍足以引起恐慌，并值得被当作重大安全问题对待，的理由所在

【2016-07-15】 @whigzhou: 神速，脱欧大臣David Davis公布了离欧经济战略 http://t.cn/R5FEuRb Trade deals. Tax cuts. And taking time before triggering Article 50. A Brexit economic strategy for Britain @_bear_:新上任的女首相怎么样？从就任演讲看似乎并不怎么靠谱呢 @whigzhou: 立场跟卡梅隆差不多，你觉得不靠谱的地方（我猜）其实是延续了卡梅隆的纲领，即在社会议题上彻底放弃保守立场（效果是消灭了这些议题），福利问题上从撒切尔立场后撤，走所谓『一族』路线 @whigzhou: 除了这几点，在自由贸易、财政开支、税收、管制等议题上，都算得上亲市场，比川普好多了 @whigzhou: 我的理想人选是最撒切尔主义的Michael Gove，可惜党内支持不足，Gove是那种会向医疗和教育这两个福利主义坚固堡垒发动攻击的人，这对于卡梅隆和梅姨都是不可想象的，目前政治气候下可能也得不到支持，而目前这个大转变最需要的是党内团结，所以我觉得在可能结果里，梅姨还是相当理想的。 @whigzhou: 最可喜的是，梅姨在脱欧问题上完全没有拖泥带水，这一点从原帖所转声明中可以看得很清楚，几个日程期限设定都比之前大家预期的要早 【2016-07-17】 @whigzhou: 梅姨废掉了暖球部，表态支持低价能源开发，赞 http://t.cn/Rthcb1C @whigzhou: 梅姨组建的脱欧三驾马车非常给力，脱欧注定会占据这届政府的大部分注意力，她在社会议题上的倾向就没那么重要了，形势所迫，在经济方面恢复信心将是优先考虑，只要她显示出对这点的领悟，便值得看好  

【2016-06-13】 @海德沙龙 《美国铁路已经落伍了？》 新干线子弹头，欧洲之星，中国高铁……这些耀眼夺目的宏伟工程，在许多人眼里都是现代 工业文明的杰出代表，也是工业党和技术治国论者引为自豪（或艳羡自怜）的对象，即便在美国这个技术治国论素不吃香的地方， 也不乏有人高声质问：我们的高铁在哪里？ @whigzhou: 美国铁路业的活力一度被州际贸易委员会（ICC）的僵硬管制几近扼杀，不过从1970年代中期福特政府所发动的一 系列去管制化改革开始，铁路业又逐渐恢复了活力，此后表现一直不错，只是很少为世人所知。 @whigzhou: 福特是战后历史上被严重低估的一位总统，里根之后的一系列创新浪潮和经济繁荣的制度源头其实都可以追溯到福特 ，他所启动的去管制化改革有幸在卡特、里根和克林顿时期一直得以延续，没有这一系列改革，后来的运输、医疗和互联网发展都 会大打折扣，不过在主流公知叙事中，从来不会有这种人的位置。 @whigzhou: 制度变革与经济/社会表现之间的滞后关系也是现代选举政治所面临的一大困境，碰上那些特别愚蠢的选民时，这问 题就更严重，我敢打赌，今天跺脚痛骂马杜罗的委内瑞拉人里，不少还在怀念查韦斯呢 @PlusKing2022: 福特还是任期太短 没足够时间形成自己的政策 @whigzhou: 但他任内参与谋划经济政策的几员大将政治生命可不短：唐纳德·拉姆斯菲尔德、迪克·切尼、艾伦·格林斯潘 @whigzhou: 而且福特本人是国会老江湖，纸牌屋游戏高手，政策推动能力强  

【2016-03-27】 @whigzhou: 在夏威夷被烟价惊了一下（如果是在纽约会更惊），于是想起数月前读到的一篇讨论香烟税的文章，至少在美国，香烟税是一种典型的穷人税，因为穷人抽烟更多，这回仔细一算才发觉这税对穷人有多重，一位纽约穷人若每天抽一包烟，每月就给政府交了300美元税，而实际上，纽约穷人烟民买烟要花掉1/4收入。 @whigzhou: 准确数字是23.6%，全美低收入烟民平均花14%收入买烟，对比万宝路在中国市场的零售价可知，其中绝大部分是税，详见 http://t.cn/Rq7adcp 【2016-05-31】 @whigzhou: 要是拿走福利就会造反的话，烟民早就造反了，当今欧美香烟税之重，历史上没有任何人头税比得上  

【2016-05-08】 @吴军博士 发布了头条文章：里根可能是唯一一位能称得上是政治家的总统，1964年他在共和党大会上作了题为《抉择的时刻》，铿锵有力，掷地有声，从此一举成名。今天听起来，依然能够感受到一个保守主义者的卓实远见。全文如下： °里根1964年著名的讲演《抉择的时刻》 http://t.cn/Rqn1cnZ @whigzhou: 这篇演讲其他都很好，我唯一不同意的是开头有关赤字和债务的观点，幸好里根上台后抛弃了这个立场，实际上大规模财政赤字恰恰是里根经济政策的一大特色，在债务市场容许的限度内，减税加赤字是很好的组合 @whigzhou: 里根两届任期，国债规模扩大到了原先的3倍，联邦财政支出和税收占GDP比例分别降低了1.3个和1.5个百分点，美妙组合  

【2015-12-05】 @朱世巍 日本政府将采取强力措施促进农地集约化经营：对放弃耕种的土地增税；对长期出租的土地减税 @朱世巍:日本所面临的最艰巨问题，1是宪法，2个人口，3是农业。安倍似乎是真心要解决这三大难题——果然不是一个混日子的首相 @李佳苏勒Iridium: 咱大大战后第一相打底儿，千古一相封顶。看能做到哪儿。 @熊也餐厅: 不搞凯恩斯主义更好我得写信提醒他老一下。 @whigzhou: 这条政策比他的凯恩斯主义更蠢～ @whigzhou: 安倍就是个强国家主义者，只不过恰好是右翼国家主义而已 @李佳苏勒Iridium: 在你球村，五分之一的人生活在一个极权政权之下，没有人是能够独善其身的，你不咬蛇并不会保证蛇不咬你。共产党用黑金炸美国政客，关起门来搞自由主义行吗？门能关上吗？埃及之恶不在压榨费拉，而在腐蚀罗马。先发制人好 @whigzhou: 这些跟他愚蠢的经济政策有啥关系？自削国力以先发制人？ @whigzhou: 要让日本恢复活力，有个（说起来）简单的办法：解除一切与土地和住房有关的用途管制、流通管制、租金管制，卖掉全部非军用国有土地，让房价降下来，等宅男宅女都住上大浩斯，就愿意生孩子了，补贴农业，保护耕地，惩罚弃耕，显然都与此背道而驰 @熊也餐厅:弃用雇佣终身制。弃日语讲英语。 @whigzhou: 终身雇佣、不肯破产之类是文化特性，政府管不了也不该管，但管制、补贴、财政政策是政府一手制订的  

Where the Middle Class Goes to Die 哪里的中产阶级没活路？ 作者：Kevin D. Williamson @ 2014-9-18 译者：Marcel ZHANG（@马赫塞勒张） 校对：史祥莆（@史祥莆），慕白（@李凤阳他说） 来源：National Review，http://www.nationalreview.com/article/388336/where-middle-class-goes-die-kevin-d-williamson In progressive Manhattan, inequality is maxed out. 在进步主义盛行的曼哈顿，不平等已达到空前程度。 A new report being released today by the Census Bureau finds that Manhattan has the highest level of income inequality in the United States. That is not entirely surprising, though it would also not have been surprising if it had been San Francisco or another progressive fiefdom. 美国人口调查局(Census Bureau)今天发表的一份报告显示，曼哈顿是全美收入差距最悬殊的地方。而这并不怎么出人意料，就算是出现在旧金山或其他进步主义大本营也不会令人吃惊。 For all the rhetoric about wicked 1 percenters and inequality, progressivism is a luxury good, and progressive-dominated enclaves are generally pretty okay places to live if you have a fair amount of money, but sort of stink if you’re in the middle or at the lower end of the earnings curve. 不论怎样夸张描绘那可恶的“1%”【译注：在近年来美国有关贫富差距和反全球化的抗议（比如“占领华尔街”运动）中，抗议者常自称为“99%”，而将最富裕阶层称为“1%”】和收入差距，进步主义都是一种奢侈品。此外，如果你手头有些钱的话，这些由进步派主导的地方都是很不错的安居之地；但若你处于收入曲线的中段或末端的话，那就有点不妙了。 Because most Americans experience New York City as tourists or in television shows and movies, it is easy to forget that the hometown of Wall Street and a very large population of obnoxious celebrities is a poor city: New York City is not only poorer than the New York State average, its median household income is, in absolute dollar terms, lower than that of such dramatically less expensive areas as Austin, Texas, or Cleveland County, Okla., where the typical household income is a few thousand dollars a year more than in New York City but the typical house costs less than a third of what the typical New York City home costs — and 17 percent of what the average Manhattan home costs. (And it’s a house, not a two-room coop.) 由于大多数美国人都只是到纽约旅行过，或是在电影电视中了解的纽约，所以很容易忘了，这个华尔街的故乡，这个充斥着众多令人生厌的名流的城市，其实是个“穷人之城”——在富裕程度方面，纽约市不仅低于纽约州的平均水平，而且其家庭中位数收入（以不变价美元计算）甚至还低于诸如德克萨斯州的奥斯汀和俄克拉何马州的克里夫兰县这样物价远低于纽约市的地区，这些地区的典型家庭年收入比纽约市高出几千美元，但是其一般房价却不足纽约一般房价的三分之一，甚至仅相当于曼哈顿房屋均价的17%。（而且这可是独栋屋，不是两居室公寓。） Inequality per se is a relatively minor and generally misunderstood issue, inasmuch as if New York’s median household earned four times what it does now but its top–5 percent households earned ten times what they do, there would be more income inequality but a much higher overall standard of living for rich and middle-class alike. 不平等本身其实是个相对次要并且被广泛误解的问题，因为如果纽约的家庭中位数收入是现有水平的四倍，但收入排名前5%的家庭收入是现在的10倍，那么收入差距就会更加悬殊，但是富裕阶层和中产阶层的总体生活水平却大大提高了。 What is particularly salient about the progressive governance of places such as New York City and San Francisco is not the income inequality coincident with it — which has many causes, only some of which are directly related to public policy — but the myriad ways in which misgovernment makes these cities such hostile places to live for people of relatively modest means. 像纽约和旧金山这种城市的进步主义治理模式，其最显眼的地方，不是与这种治理模式相伴的收入不平等（收入不平等的原因有很多，而只有一部分与公共政策有关），而是对于相对不富裕的人群来说，这些城市处处表现出敌意，而那都是由于治理不善的缘故。 As indicated above, the income figures by themselves hardly tell the story. The median household income in the city of New York is a few hundred dollars a year more than the median household income in the state of Texas, but in practical terms the average New York City household is much worse off. 正如上文所指出，收入数据本身并不能解释一切。纽约的家庭中位数年收入比德州高出几百美元，但实际上纽约普通家庭的状况要差得多。 The most obvious issue is the cost of housing, which for New Yorkers is about four times what it is for Texans. Housing prices are a function of supply and demand, and demand for New York City housing is relatively high, a fact that probably does not have very much to do with public policy. I have lived in New York City for some time, and I have never met anybody who says he moved here because it is so well governed. 其中最明显的问题就是住房成本，纽约人的住房成本大约是德州人的四倍。房价乃供求使然，而且纽约的住房需求相对较高，这个事实恐怕跟公共政策没多大关系。本人在纽约住过一段时间，而我从未听闻有人说搬到这是因为这儿的治理有多么好。 On the other hand, supply is highly restricted, and that is a direct consequence of bad public policy, an economic reality that is obvious even to such sympathetic progressives as Matt Yglesias, who sensibly notes that limitations on the number of new housing units in places such as Washington, D.C., bias construction toward high-priced luxury homes, while hostile zoning codes in places such as San Francisco prevent markets from responding to demand and lead to “deliberately underutilized” mass-transit arteries. 另一方面，住房供给却是被严格限制的，而这就是不良政策的直接后果了，这个经济现状非常显而易见，就连Matt Yglesias这样抱同情之心的进步派人士都说，在像华盛顿这样的地方对新建住房单位数量加以限制，会导致高价豪宅数量增多，而在旧金山等地实施的限制措施则阻碍了市场对需求的回应，从而导致了“蓄意不充分利用的”公交要道的产生。 In New York City, housing prices are kept artificially high by draconian restrictions on new construction, rent control and the less aggressive “rent stabilization,” political interference with development financing, onerous union rules that drive up construction prices, byzantine regulation that imposes enormous compliance costs, and more. Even in a city in which four of the five boroughs are located on islands, there are vast tracts of underused real estate, the development of which could alleviate housing expenses for the middle class and the poor. 在纽约，房价被人为抬高的原因有很多：针对新建房屋的严苛限制、租房管制以及不那么激进的“租房稳定措施”、政治因素对开发融资的妨碍、抬升造价的繁冗的工会规定、错综复杂的监管规章带来的巨大合规成本，如此等等不一而足。即使是在这个五个行政区中有四个都坐落在岛屿上的城市，也有大片的地产都未被充分利用，对这些地产的开发，将能够减轻中产和贫困阶层的住房负担。 There is also the problem of the 13th month’s rent in New York City. 纽约市还有个第13个月房租的问题。 If you earn the median income of $52,223 in New York City and you live within the city limits — not just in Manhattan but in the distant Bronx and Staten Island, too — you pay the city nearly $1,800 a year in additional income tax for the privilege. 在纽约市，如果你能赚到该市的中位数收入52,223美元，并且住在纽约市区里（不仅仅是曼哈顿，还包括布朗克斯和史泰登岛），那么你就要为这项特权支付每年近1,800美元的附加所得税。 You can basically forget about owning a home — the median house price in the city is more than a half a million dollars — but renting won’t be easy, either: Applying New York landlords’ prevailing 40-times-the-rent rule, you can afford about $1,300 a month; not impossible if you’re single, but a substantial challenge for a family. 你基本可以不用想买房子的事了，因为这个城市的房价中位数已经不止50万美元，但租房住也不容易：套用盛行于纽约房东之间的“40倍房租规则”，你仅能负担不到每月1,300美元的房租，如果你是单身的话，这个数目不至于完全租不到够你住的房子，但这点钱要想租到够一家人住的房子，那就难咯。 But in any case, you’ll be paying a 13th month’s rent and change to the city for the privilege of residing within its boundaries. Assuming you are single, taxes and rent would consume between 50 percent and 60 percent of your income. Move to Houston, and you’d get a $3,000-a-year discount before even accounting for the lower cost of housing. 但无论如何，你都要为了居于城内这项特权支付这第13个月的租金给这座城市。假设你是单身，那么光缴税缴租都要花掉你收入的五到六成。如果搬到休斯敦，你就能每年少付3,000美元，就这还没算更低的住房成本呢。 If you are truly concerned about inequality, then that matters a great deal, because income inequality is only one kind of economic inequality, and one of the less important kinds: Wealth inequality is more significant. If the majority of your income is being consumed by taxes and rent, saving and investing becomes hard. 如果你果真对不平等耿耿于怀的话，那这就是关乎要害的大事了，因为收入不平等只是经济不平等的一种，而且还是不那么重要的一种——财富不平等更加重要。如果你的大部分收入都用来缴税缴租了的话，那就很难进行储蓄和投资。 And given progressives’ abysmal record in providing key municipal services such as effective law enforcement and decent public schools to low-income communities, there are powerful incentives to take on additional expenses by paying the premium for living in a better neighborhood or enrolling your children in private schools. 而且考虑到进步派在提供关键市政公共服务上（比如有力的执法和面向低收入社群的适宜的公立学校）的糟糕记录，那你就有很强动机想要居住在更好的街区，或让你的孩子就读于私立学校，但这就要支付额外的费用。 When it comes time to pay for college or to leave behind a bequest for children or grandchildren — an important means of building wealth within families — you’re almost certainly better off in San Antonio or Provo than in New York or San Francisco. 一旦到了该支付大学学费或为你的子孙后代留下遗产（这是一种积累家族财富的重要方式）的时候，那么几乎可以肯定的是，如果你住在圣安东尼奥或普罗沃的话，会比住在纽约或旧金山的情况要好。 Highly skilled, highly educated people are likely to do well wherever they are, and creative, dynamic, global cities such as New York are gold mines for them. But not everybody is going to be an investment banker or a tech entrepreneur. If you want to get a picture of what progressive policies look like for everybody else, try living in New York City for a year with an average New York City income — and try it with a family. 高技能水平、高学历人群可能在哪里都会过得不错，而且像纽约这样富有创意和活力四射的国际大都市对于他们来说更是一座金矿。但并不是每个人都能成为投行家，或创办一家科技企业。如果你想了解一下在其他人眼中进步主义政策是怎么样的，那就试试在纽约市拿着平均收入生活一年，而且要拖家带口。 Kevin D. Williamson is roving correspondent at National Review. Kevin D. Williamson，《国家评论》杂志流动通讯记者 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

The Middle-Class Squeeze 夹缝中的中产阶级 编辑：Jennifer Erickson @ 2014-9-24 译者：松旭斋天胜（@松旭斋天胜） 校对：安德（@ HuZhenbo）、带菜刀的诗人（@带菜刀的诗人） 制图：amen（@治愈系历史） 来源：美国进步中心（Center for American Progress），https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/MiddeClassSqueeze-INTRO.pdf A Picture of Stagnant Incomes, Rising Costs, and What We Can Do to Strengthen America’s Middle Class 面对收入停滞、生活费高涨的局面，怎么做才能巩固中产阶级 【插图】 America's middle class is being squeezed by stagnant—and in many cases declining—incomes and rising costs. 美国的中产阶级正被停滞甚至往往是减少的收入和高涨的生活费压得喘不过气。 Why the middle-class squeeze matters 为何需要关注中产阶级重压 The American middle class is in trouble. 美国中产阶级有麻烦了。 The middle-class share of national income has fallen, middle-class wages are stagnant, and the middle class in the United States is no longer the world’s wealthiest. 美国中产阶级收入在国民收入中占比减少，薪资停滞，他们已不再是世界上最富有的中产。 But income is only one side of the story. The cost of being in the middle class—and of maintaining a middle-class standard of living—is rising fast too. For fundamental needs such as child care and health care, costs have risen dramatically over the past few decades, taking up larger shares of family budgets. The reality is that the middle class is being squeezed. 但收入只是问题的一方面。做一个中产阶级、并维持中产阶级生活品质的成本，正在飞涨。过去几十年中，儿童保育和医疗保障等基本生活需求的费用迅速飙升，在家庭预算中比重增大。现实告诉我们，中产阶级正被压得喘不过气来。 As this report will show, for a married couple with two children, the costs of key elements of middle-class security—child care, higher education, health care, housing, and retirement—rose by more than $10,000 in the 12 years from 2000 to 2012, at a time when this family’s income was stagnant. 正如本报告随后将展示的那样，对于一对育有两个子女的夫妇而言，从2000年到2012年的12年间，界定中产阶级的那些关键元素的花费，即儿童保育、高等教育、医疗保障、住房和退休保障的成本，上涨了10000美元，而与此同时，家庭收入却停滞不前。 As sharp as this squeeze can be, the pain does not stop at one family, or even at millions of families. Because of the critical role that middle-class consumers play in creating aggregate demand, the American economy is in trouble when the American middle class is in trouble. And the long-term health of the U.S. economy is at risk if financially squeezed families cannot afford—and smart public policies do not support—developing the next generation of America’s workforce. It is this workforce that will lead the United States in an increasingly open and competitive global economy. 如此严峻的挤迫并不止于一个家庭，或者甚至是百万个家庭。因为中产阶级消费者在创造总需求中扮演着关键角色，当中产阶级出问题，美国经济也随之陷入麻烦。进一步来说，如果经济承受重压的家庭无法负担培养美国下一代劳动力的费用，公共政策也不提供适时的辅助，那么美国经济的长期发展也将处于危险之中。毕竟，未来是由这一代劳动力在更加开放、竞争也更激烈的全球经济体系中领导美国。 This report provides a snapshot of the American middle class and those struggling to become a part of it. It focuses on six key pillars that can help define security for households: jobs, early childhood programs, higher education, health care, housing, and retirement. Each chapter is both descriptive and prescriptive—detailing both how the middle class is doing and what policies can help it do better. 本报告提供了美国中产阶级和正为之而奋斗的人们的一幅速写。它将重点放在对家庭保障起决定作用的六根重要支柱上：就业、儿童保育、高等教育、医疗保障、住房和退休保障。每一部分都在描述现象之余提供建议，不仅详细阐述中产阶级目前的状况，也详尽分析怎样的政策可帮其改善现状。 Defining the middle class 定义中产阶级 Statistically, when we talk about the middle class, we generally mean the middle three quintiles of American households by income—those making between the 20th and 80th percentiles of the income distribution. In reality, however, being middle class in America is at its core about economic security. 统计学上，当我们讨论中产阶级时，一般是指全美收入水平处于中间60%的家庭，即落在20%到80%区间内的家庭。但实际上，美国中产阶级的核心在于家庭经济保障能力。 As Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) wrote in the 2011 report “Saving the American Dream,” “Most of us don’t expect to be rich or famous, but we do expect a living wage and good American benefits for a hard day’s work.” 正如参议员Tom Harkin（民主党，爱荷华州）在其2011年题为《挽救美国梦》的报告中写道：“我们中的大部分不求成为富翁或是出名，但我们都希望每日的辛勤工作可以换来足以负担生活开支的工资和良好的社会福利保障。” At the Center for American Progress, our work has focused on the importance of both strengthening and growing America’s middle class. So while the middle three quintiles will always be just that, it is our goal to ensure that as many Americans as possible have the cornerstones of the American Dream, including access to education, health care, housing, and the ability to retire. 在美国进步中心（Center for American Progress），我们致力于巩固和发展美国的中产阶级。因此，虽然统计学角度的中产只是那60%的人群，但我们志在让尽可能多的美国人拥有美国梦的基本条件，包括受教育的机会、医疗、住房和养老保障。 So even as this report measures what has been happening to the middle class, we articulate our hopes for all Americans. To be clear, having more than 46 million Americans in poverty is both contrary to our national character and to our economic aspirations. So too is having millions of young people unemployed and underemployed and 11 million aspiring Americans living in the country without legal status. 因此，即便这篇报告的主体是美国中产阶级，我们却是怀着对所有美国人的希望而发声。更直白地说，让4600万人陷入贫困不仅不符合我们的民族特质，也不符合我们的经济发展志向。我们同样关注那几百万失业或半失业的年轻人，以及1100万拥有抱负却没有合法身份的美国人。 Having more workers in good jobs—who have access to good education; affordable child care, health care, and housing; and the ability to retire with dignity—is our clear objective. The closer we get to this reality, the better it will be for all of our families and the sustainable growth of our economy. 我们的目标很明确：让劳动者适得其所，拥有受教育的机会，有能力支付儿童保育、医疗保障和住房的费用，最终有保障、有尊严地退休。我们离实现这个目标越近，对所有家庭以及经济的可持续发展就越有利。 What’s more, we know that areas with larger middle classes and less inequality also have more economic mobility. And opportunity is what America is about: 97 percent of Americans believe that every person should have an equal opportunity to get ahead in life. We all have an interest in a strong and growing middle class. 另外，我们已经知道，一个地区中产阶级越多、贫富差距越小，该地区的经济流动性就越高。美国最珍视的是机会：97%的美国人相信每个人都应当有平等的机会获得成功。更强大且持续增长的中产阶级，是我们共同的目标。 Squeeze part I: A snapshot of incomes 重压之第一部分：收入概况 When we think about the golden age of the American middle class, we often think of the decades following World War II. To be sure, the mid-20th century legislated unequal treatment and therefore limited opportunities for many Americans, but even with that marked and deep-rooted inequality, the economic statistics from that period tell a story of growing wealth and security for America’s middle class. 提到美国中产阶级的黄金时代，人们通常会想到二战后的几十年。诚然，20世纪中期的立法并不平等，也限制了许多美国人的机会，但即使在如此显著且根深蒂固的不平等之下，那一时期的经济数据仍表明当时美国的中产阶级财富增长，且拥有家庭保障。From 1948 to 1973, America experienced a period in which growing compensation tracked growing worker productivity: A worker in 1973 was almost twice as productive as a worker in 1948 and earned nearly twice as much. This golden age built the middle class as prosperity was increasingly shared. The economy grew by an average of 3.9 percent from 1948 to 1973, and the bottom 90 percent of families reaped 68 percent of the gains. 1948年到1973年间的美国，见证了劳动报酬与生产率齐头并进的时期：1973年劳动者的生产率几乎是1948年劳动者的两倍，且收入也几乎是其两倍。这一普遍繁荣的黄金时期造就了当时的中产阶级。从1948年到1973年，经济总量平均每年增长3.9%，金字塔底部的90%家庭获得了总收入的68%。 However, around 1973, American productivity growth slowed, increasing about half as quickly between 1973 and the early 1990s as it had during the previous 25 years. Furthermore, compensation started to decouple from productivity, growing about one-third as quickly as before. 然而，到了1973年左右，美国的生产率增速放缓，1973年到1990年代早期的增速只有之前25年的一半。此外，劳动报酬开始落后于生产率，增长速率则只有之前的三分之一。 【插图】 As the 1990s tech boom progressed and the economy heated up, productivity accelerated again: Productivity growth from 1991 to 2012 averaged 2.2 percent per year, yet compensation growth only averaged 1 percent per year. A worker today is almost 60 percent more productive than a worker in 1991 but has seen only half of that productivity growth translate into higher compensation. And the vast majority of this wage growth took place toward the end of the 1990s tech boom, as real wages and benefits jumped about 16 percent between 1995 and 2001. 因九十年代科技业繁荣和经济升温，劳动生产率再次加速：1991年到2012年间，生产率年平均增幅为2.2%，而劳动报酬增幅却仅为每年1%。现在的工人几乎比1991年高效60%，但仅有一半的生产率增长转化为了劳动报酬。并且，大部分薪资增长发生在九十年代科技业繁荣的末期——1995年到2001年，扣除通胀影响的实际薪资增长了约16%。【编注：此处存在一个误解（或误导），劳动生产率的提高未必反映工人的“生产效率”有任何提高，而完全可能仅由要素组合变化或该组合中非劳动要素的改进所带来，比如某项生产中，一台原本产能为每天5件的机器换成了产能每天10件的机器，同时其操作方法完全不变，此时工人的禀赋和表现皆无任何变化，但劳动生产率大幅提高了。】 Real compensation growth has slowed further since the start of the 21st century. What’s worse, health insurance premiums over this period ate into even modest compensation gains. Therefore, many Americans saw stagnant or declining take-home pay even as productivity continued to rise. 实际的劳动报酬增长速率从21世纪伊始便继续放缓。更严重的是，医疗保险费用在此期间将仅有的一点劳动报酬增长也侵吞殆尽。正因为如此，许多美国人发现虽然生产率持续提高，劳动者实际领回家的钱一直没变，甚至还有减少。 In other words, American workers have been squeezed for decades when it comes to take-home pay, even before 2007 and the Great Recession. The financial crisis and the Great Recession itself then took a catastrophic toll on millions of Americans, as unemployment skyrocketed and trillions of dollars in household wealth vanished. And while the economy has picked up since bottoming out in 2009, and private-sector job growth began to bounce back in 2010, the gains from this postcrash period have been strikingly unequal. Ninety-five percent of all income gains since the start of the recovery have accrued to the top 1 percent of U.S. households. 换言之，2007年和经济大衰退之前，美国劳动者数十年来真正拿到手里的钱已经一直在减少。随后的金融危机和经济大衰退又给了美国人一记重击，失业率急速增长，数以万亿美元的家庭财富蒸发。虽然2009年经济触底后开始恢复，2010年私营企业就业率反弹，但经济危机后的收入分配却极其不平等。危机后的几年，新增收益的95%都聚集在前1%的家庭中。 The trends in rising inequality are also striking when measured by wealth. Among the top 20 percent of families by net worth, average wealth increased by 120 percent between 1983 and 2010, while the middle 20 percent of families only saw their wealth increase by 13 percent, and the bottom fifth of families, on average, saw debt exceed assets—in other words, negative net worth. 按财富计，不平等的上升趋势也同样惊人。资产净值前20%的家庭在1983年到2010年间平均财富增长为120%，中间20%的家庭只增长了13%，最下层20%家庭的平均负债超过了资产，即资产净值为负。 Families of color have fallen further behind white families in building wealth: A survey that tracked white and African American families between 1984 and 2009 found that the wealth gap between them nearly tripled, from $85,000 to $236,500. Homeowners in the bottom quintile of wealth lost an astounding 94 percent of their wealth between 2007 and 2010. 有色人种家庭在创造财富上愈发逊于白人家庭：一项跟踪调查显示，从1984年到2009年，白人家庭和非洲裔家庭的财富差距扩大了将近三倍，从85000美元变为236500美元。财富排名最末20%的家庭在2007年到2010年间，失去了高达94%的财富。

The importance of the middle class to economic growth 中产阶级对经济增长的重要性 Rising inequality is not simply a question of distribution; it also poses real questions for how our economy operates. The increasing resources available to the wealthiest Americans have created demand for such luxuries as private jets—which creates jobs building those jets—but the declining purchasing power of middle-class Americans means that there is less demand for goods and services more broadly in the economy. 不平等加剧不只是个分配问题，它也是为经济运转方式带来了问题。最富有美国人的财富持续增长催生了私人飞机等奢侈品需求，当然，这创造了更多飞机制造业的职位，但是中产阶级购买力下降意味着商品和服务的总需求减少了。 A recent analysis showed that giving $1 to a low-income household produces three times as much consumption as giving $1 to a high-income household. And it is certainly true that increasing the concentration of wealth means more jobs managing finances and fewer jobs making the goods that middle-class consumers once bought in numbers that drove much of our economic growth. 近期的一项分析显示，低收入家庭收入每增加1美元所产生的消费是高收入家庭的三倍。财富集中意味着更多的理财业务职位【编注：这一断言并无道理，财富集中可能增加也可能减少理财职位，要看集中的结果是增加还是减少了财富规模达到需要理财的程度的人数】，和更少的制造业职位，这些工作曾为所制造的产品曾被中产阶级消费者大量购买，而正是这些消费极大地推动了经济增长。 CAP outlined the economic importance of a strong and growing middle class—and the concerns for our economy from growing inequality—in a 2012 report, “The American Middle Class, Income Inequality, and the Strength of the Economy.” The report details the importance of the middle class to human capital, stable demand, entrepreneurship, and support for institutions. 美国进步中心曾在2012年一份题为《美国中产阶级、收入不均及经济实力》的报告中概述了强大且持续增长的中产阶级对于经济的重要性，也说明了扩大的贫富差距对经济造成的问题。该份报告详尽分析了中产阶级对人力资本、稳定的需求、创业的重要性，以及对现行社会制度的支持。【编注：此处institutions含义不明，可能是指制度，也可能是指组织机构】

Squeeze part II: A snapshot of rising costs 重压之第二部分：成本上升情况速览 While real incomes have been stagnant or declining in recent years, the other side of the story is the increase in the costs of various items that define a middle-class standard of living. Not only have families’ costs for things from higher education to health care increased rapidly relative to overall consumer inflation, but these costs are also consuming a growing share of family budgets, leaving less and less room for discretionary spending and saving. 近年来实际收入停滞甚至减少的同时，定义中产阶级生活标准的各元素成本却在增长。在家庭支出中，高等教育和医疗保障等项的支出不仅相对消费者物价指数急速增长，它们在家庭预算中比重也在扩大，给自由消费和存款留下的空间越来越少。 When looking at the changes in consumer price indices for core elements of middle-class security, it is painfully easy to see the squeeze in action; prices for many cornerstones of middle-class security have risen dramatically at the same time that real incomes have fallen. 令人心痛的是，在一份与中产阶级经济保障能力相关元素的价格指数变动图表中，可以非常直观地看到压力的存在。对中产阶级经济保障能力至关重要的各项物价飙升，但与此同时，实际收入却在减少。 【插图】 As stark as the data appear when comparing stagnant or falling incomes to rising prices, they are even worse than the Consumer Price Index above might suggest. 虽然停滞或减少的收入和飞升的物价在数据上已十分明显，但实际情况比上图中消费者物价指数所显示的更糟糕。 Let’s consider what has happened to the finances of a typical middle-class family since 2000. 让我们来看看对于一个普通中产阶级家庭来说，2000年以来都有哪些变化。 The median family saw its income fall by 8 percent between 2000 and 2012. Even when we look at just married couples with two children—a type of family that tends to have higher incomes—median income was virtually frozen between 2000 and 2012. 处于中间的家庭在2000到2012年间收入降低了8%。即便我们只把目光放在通常有更高收入的育有两个子女的夫妇上，处于中间的家庭收入在2000到2012年间也仅是持平。 At the same time, this type of family also faced a severe middle-class squeeze as the costs of key elements of security rose dramatically, including child care costs—which grew by 37 percent—and health care costs—both employee premiums and out-of-pocket costs—which grew by 85 percent. 与此同时，这一类家庭也面临着巨大压力：中产保障关键元素的价格急剧升高，儿童保育费用上涨了37%，医疗保障（包括就业医保和自费医疗）费用上涨了85%。 In fact, investing in the basic pillars of middle-class security—child care, housing, and health care, as well as setting aside modest savings for retirement and college—cost an alarming $10,600 more in 2012 than it did in 2000. 事实上，2000到2012年，花费在中产保障关键元素（儿童保育、住房、医疗保障以及为退休和大学存款）上的费用上涨了令人震惊的10,600美元。 Put another way, in 12 years, this household’s income was stagnant—rising by less than 1 percent—while basic pillars of middle-class security rose by more than 30 percent. As the cost of basic elements of middle-class security rose, the money available for everything else—from groceries to clothing to emergency savings—fell by $5,500. 换句话说，12年间，家庭收入没变，或仅提高不到1%，而花费在中产保障上的钱却多了30%。随着各项基本元素的成本上涨，留给其他花销的钱——比如食品杂货、衣服和应急存款等，减少了5500美元。 And while for the purposes of this example we have assumed this household kept retirement savings constant, data about worryingly low savings confirm that for millions of families, their retirement funds are bearing much of the pain of the squeeze. 然而，虽然我们在上述例子中假定该家庭每年留给退休保障的钱维持不变，但令人担忧的低储蓄数据却表明，对于数以百万计的家庭而言，退休保障承受着大部分压力。 【插图】 注：因四舍五入，数据可能略有偏差。2000年至2012年数据根据现有最准确数据估算。详见本系列报告的方法论部分。 来源：见系列报告的方法论部分。 The data paint a clear picture: The middle class is being squeezed. So it should come as no surprise that in a 2014 Pew Research Center survey, 57 percent of Americans responded that they think their incomes are falling behind the growing cost of living, up from 47 percent in 2006. In fact, the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as middle class has fallen to 44 percent, down from 53 percent in 2008. 数据清晰地描绘出这样的图景：中产阶级正受到重压。2014年皮尤研究中心（Pew Research Center）的一项调查显示，57%的美国人认为他们的收入赶不上生活成本的增长速度，而2006年如此认为的人只占47%。这样的结果在意料之中。事实上，认为自己属于中产阶级的美国人由2008年的53%降低到了如今的44%。 Policies to alleviate the squeeze 减轻重压的政策 Understanding that middle-class families are clearly squeezed—with adverse effects on our entire economy—we must craft policies to alleviate the squeeze. This requires two things: growing incomes and containing costs. 既然已经了解了中产阶级面临的困难和它将对我们整个经济带来的负面影响，我们必须设计出合理的政策减轻他们的压力。这包括两方面：增加收入和限制支出。 Jobs 就业 Given that the majority of middle-class families derive their incomes from jobs—as opposed to investments—improving our lackluster jobs picture is the first task to address the middle-class squeeze. To do this, we need to invest in a dynamic economy powered by skilled workers who operate in an environment that lets them and their businesses compete at home and abroad. 鉴于大部分中产阶级收入来源于就业而非投资，减轻压力的第一步便是改善就业环境。我们需要构建一个由技术劳动者支撑的、充满活力的经济环境，让劳动者和企业无论是在本国还是在国际上都具有竞争力。 Doing so will require myriad policies outlined in depth in CAP’s long-term growth strategy, 300 Million Engines of Growth: A Middle-Out Plan for Jobs, Business, and a Growing Economy. Five areas that would directly help the jobs and income pictures in the shorter term include policies to: 为此，美国进步中心在题为《促进增长的三亿个发动机：中产阶级辐射计划，就业、企业和繁荣经济》的长期发展战略中列举了多项政策。

• Boost aggregate demand, including through extending federal unemployment insurance; raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour; strengthening the Earned Income Tax Credit by expanding it for workers without children and lowering the eligibility age from 25 to 21; and making long-term investments in our economic growth that will also pay dividends now in the form of expanding high-quality early childhood education and infrastructure
• 刺激总需求：延长联邦失业保险；将联邦最低工资提高为每小时10美元；将劳动所得税扣抵制度的适用对象扩大到无子女劳动者和25岁以下、21岁以上的劳动者，以加强其效力；通过开办高质量早教机构、建设基础设施造福当下，促进经济增长
• Foster inclusive capitalism that will see more gains shared with workers, including through expanding tax incentives that transfer ownership or at least a share of profits from capital ownership to employees; offering grants to regional inclusive capitalism centers; stopping policies that inhibit the growth of sharing programs; and promoting existing best practices through an Office of Inclusive Capitalism
• 促成包容性资本主义，与劳动者分享更多收益：给将所有权转让给劳动者或将不少于一股的资本收益赠予劳动者的公司以税收优惠；为包容性地区资本中心提供补助；停止妨碍分享项目发展的政策；通过设立包容性资本办公室鼓励促进目前的最佳实践
• Ensure basic workplace protections to maximize workforce participation, including through developing a federal paid family and medical leave program to ensure working families have access to wage replacement when they need it most, via the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, or the FAMILY Act, as well as establishing a national paid sick days standard via the Healthy Families Act
• 确保基本工作场所保护以最大化劳动者参与：通过家庭与医疗保险假期法案（简称FAMILY法案），由联邦建立家庭与医疗假期资助项目来确保在劳动者家庭在最需要时可获取工资替代【编注：此处工资替代似乎是指让雇员选择以医疗保障代替部分工资报酬】；通过健康家庭法案创立全国性带薪病假标准
• Strengthen unions, including by modernizing the union election process; ensuring that all workers, regardless of their occupation or location, have the right to join a union if they so desire; better protecting workers who choose to unionize by making the right to join a union a civil right; and establishing more meaningful penalties and remedies for workers who are fired or discriminated against for exercising their right to organize
• 强化工会：推进工会选举制度现代化；确保任何职业、处于任何地点的劳动者都有权自愿加入工会；最好促使加入工会的权利成为一项基本民权以更好地保护选择加入工会的劳动者；为因行使工会组织权利而遭解雇或歧视的劳动者提供更多有意义的处罚或矫正措施
• Improve education and workforce-development programs, including a dramatic expansion of apprenticeship programs in high-growth sectors, by creating a $1,000 federal tax credit for each apprentice hired; establishing competitive grants to support promising apprenticeship partnerships in new high-wage, high-growth occupations; improving apprenticeship marketing to businesses; leveraging the federal workforce and federal contracting to support apprenticeships; and improving the portability of apprenticeships by offering grants for employers to come together to write national guideline standards for apprenticeships in key high-growth occupations
• 改善教育和劳动力发展项目：在高增长行业设立1000美元/位的联邦抵税额，以大幅扩展这些行业的学徒项目；创立竞争性补助金以支持前景好的新兴高报酬、高发展职业的学徒合伙项目；努力将学徒推销给企业；促使联邦劳动者和联邦合同支持学徒；给协同编写有关学徒的全国性指导标准的新兴行业雇主提供补助金，以促进学徒项目的可移植性

Early childhood programs 儿童保育项目 High-quality early childhood programs—including both child care and preschool programs—are critical for workers with young children who hope to remain in the workforce. Research shows that these programs are also critical educational investments in the children themselves. 高质量的儿童保育项目——包括儿童照料和学前教育——对育有子女且想继续工作的劳动者十分重要。调查表明，这些项目也是对儿童自身非常重要的教育投资。 So with two generations relying on the existence and affordability of high-quality programs, it is critical to address the high cost of child care, which rose dramatically from 2000 to 2012. To do so, we recommend policies that would: 这样，两代人都将仰赖可负担的高质量教育资源，所以关键是要解决儿童保育的高成本问题，如我们所见，这项成本在2000到2012年间急剧增长。为此，我们推荐以下政策：

• Provide high-quality preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds through a partnership between the federal and state governments
• 通过联邦和州政府合作，向3至4岁儿童提供高质量学前教育
• Expand and reform the child care subsidy system, which is currently insufficient to reach even a majority of low-income working parents, let alone those struggling to stay in the middle class, by both providing additional resources to help families access high-quality child care and ensuring that child care assistance declines gradually as parents earn more money, rather than cutting off abruptly
• 扩大和改革儿童保育补贴制度。目前连大部分低收入劳动者父母都无法受惠于该项目，更别提中产阶级了。通过提供额外资源以帮助家庭获得高质量儿童保育的机会，使儿童保育援助随着父母收入增加逐渐减少，而非突然被取消
• Reform the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit by making it refundable and raising the amount that can be claimed to cover more of the actual cost of child care
• 改革受抚养人抵税额政策，使其变为可退税部分，同时提高征税额度，用于补贴儿童保育的实际开支
• Expand Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships building on the initial investment already made and reaching additional children
• 扩大早期启蒙幼儿资助合作计划，在原有投资的基础上，让更多儿童受益

Higher education 高等教育 Increases in higher-education costs are a huge part of the middle-class squeeze. These costs affect what parents can do to help their children pay for college and what students can bear in terms of debt as they enter an uncertain job market. 高等教育费用增长是造成中产阶级压力的一大原因。这项费用影响着父母为子女支付大学学费的能力和学生本身在工作未定情况下的负债能力。 What’s more, the real and perceived costs of higher-education affect who applies for and who goes to college—representing a real constraint on economic mobility, which carries a cost for individuals and for the economy. To help alleviate the middle-class squeeze in higher education, we propose policies that would: 进一步而言，大学的实际学费和感知成本影响着学生是否申请、是否入学的问题。这极大地限制着经济流动性，从而让个体和经济付出代价。为减轻高等教育给中产阶级带来的压力，我们提出以下政策建议：

• Promote consumer choice by establishing a student-record system that can be used to create improved consumer-choice tools that highlight outcomes such as graduation rates and labor-market outcomes, and by creating a federal accountability system with institutions placed in broad categories, rather than rankings, which indicate their performance across key metrics
• 优化消费者选择：建立学生档案系统，提供毕业率、就业信息等资料；设立联邦审核系统，将大学按照在各关键指标的表现分成大类，而非提供综合排名
• Restore public investment in higher education, including through increasing funding for the Pell Grant program to help low- and lower-middle-income students; creating a competitive federal grant program to support public institutions—matched with state funds—to support state policies that promote on-time completion and that significantly lower the cost of postsecondary education
• 振兴公共教育投资：增加佩尔助学金项目（Pell Grant program）的经费，用以帮助低收入和中低收入学生；设立有竞争性的联邦补助金项目，用以支持公立机构；设立相对应的州补助金项目，用以支持按时结业的和显著降低高等教育费用的州级政策
• Innovate to bring down costs and improve quality through increasing support for the First in the World Fund; using experimental site authority to give institutions flexibility from existing federal requirements in exchange for a commitment to implement innovative programs that reduce costs for students; creating an alternative to accreditation where institutions could choose to focus exclusively on improving the learning outcomes of their students; and increasing investment in research and development.
• 通过创新来降低费用并提高教育质量：加强对“世界第一”基金（First in the World Fund）的支持；通过使用实验性场地增加教育机构的灵活性，设立帮助学生减轻学费的创新项目；设立全新的评价机制，让教育机构能够转而更专注于学生的学习成果；增加对科研和发展项目的投资

Health care 医疗保障 Access to affordable health care is critical for all American households, and the rising costs of health care in recent decades have kept a basic underpinning of middle-class security out of reach for too many. 对于每个美国家庭来说，获得平价医疗保障至关重要。然而，保障中产阶级的基础医疗支出近几十年来出现的增长让太多家庭负担不起。 While the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, has already made a difference for millions of Americans—from the ability of children under age 26 to remain on their parents’ health insurance plans to a prohibition on exclusion from coverage based on pre-existing conditions—more needs to be done to bend the cost curve and to ensure that people have access to high-quality coverage. A single health event should not wipe out a person’s savings. To help lower costs, we therefore propose policies to: 虽然平价医疗法案（Affordable Care Act，ACA）已经改变了几百万美国人的生活——该项法案允许未满26岁的子女留在父母的医保方案中，并禁止保险公司因投保前已存在病情而设立不保事项——要进一步扭转费用增长、让人们获得平价医疗的机会，能做的还有更多。疾病或意外不应当把人们的存款消耗殆尽。为了降低费用，我们提出以下政策：

• Accelerate the use of alternatives to fee-for-service payment to reduce costs and improve care coordination, with Medicare leading the way by encouraging private payers to participate in alternative payment methods, especially bundled payments
• 促进按服务计酬模式以外的替代收费方式的使用；降低成本、改善医疗分配；由医疗保险制度牵头，鼓励独立付款人使用其他付费方式，尤其是捆绑付费
• Leverage insurance exchanges to improve access to lower-cost, high-quality insurance products, including through state marketplace officials using their broad authority to exclude low-value plans and reward plans that offer more value to consumers
• 利用保险交易市场，使人们有机会购买低价高质量的保险产品；州市场监管人员运用他们的权威排除价值低的产品，奖励能给消费者提供更高价值的产品
• Increase transparency to allow consumers to choose high-quality, lower-cost providers and services via the Department of Health Human Services, ensuring that the ACA’s requirement to provide cost-sharing information is implemented in a consumer-friendly way. Congress should also modify the ACA’s cost-sharing disclosure requirements so that the plan’s quoted costs for episodes of care are guaranteed
• 增加透明度：消费者可以通过卫生及公共服务部（Department of Health Human Services）选择性价比更高的医保公司，保证ACA法案中对成本信息公开的要求得到落实；国会也应当修改法案中对成本信息公开的要求，使每项保险的报价得以固定
• Reform restrictive state scope-of-practice laws to maximize use of nonphysician providers, with the federal government providing bonus payments to states that meet scope-of-practice standards delineated by the Institute of Medicine
• 改革各州的限制性适用范围法律，以最大化对非医师保险供应商的使用；联邦政府给符合美国医学研究所（Institute of Medicine）有关适用范围规定的州提供奖金
• Address cost shifting to employees by encouraging employers to share health care savings with employees via more transparency, with employers providing annual notices about how much the employer expects to pay, on average, for health care benefits per employee, as well as how much the employer expects the employee will spend, on average, for health care during the upcoming year
• 保证员工知悉费用变化：鼓励雇主更透明地向员工分享医疗保障存款信息；雇主每年定期通知员工每年平均应缴医疗保障费用，及雇主对员工来年医疗消费平均预估值

Housing 住房 Having an affordable place to call home is out of reach for far too many families, putting the most basic piece of middle-class security in doubt. New mortgages are at their lowest level in 17 years, millions of Americans still owe more than their homes are worth, and half of all renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. 对于太多家庭来说，想以平实的价格换来一处能被称作“家”的地方太难了。这极大地威胁了中产阶级经济保障能力。新的住房贷款起码要17年才能还清，上百万的美国人负债比他们的房产价值还高，一半的租客起码将收入的30%用在房租上。 The federal government has a huge role to play in steering the country out of the housing crisis and building a stronger and more equitable housing-finance system. To do so, we suggest policies that would: 联邦政府在引导国家走出住房危机，以及建立一个更强大、更公平的住房财政系统上，可发挥巨大作用。为此，我们提出以下政策：

• Require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to support a healthier and more equitable housing market by increasing access to and affordability of mortgages, providing struggling borrowers with better loan modifications that include principal reductions, and capitalizing the National Housing Trust Fund and Capital Magnet Fund
• 要求联邦国民按揭贷款协会（Fannie Mae，又称房利美）和联邦住房抵押贷款公司（Freddie Mac，又称房地美）扶持更公正的住房市场：增加住户取得住房贷款的机会；给有困难的贷款人提供包括房贷本金减免的优惠调整；资本化国家住房信托基金（National Housing Trust Fund）和磁性资本基金（Capital Magnet Fund）
• Reform the housing-finance system to realign incentives, enable broader access to affordable and sustainable mortgages, and support the creation of more affordable rental housing
• 改革住房财政系统：调整优惠政策，使人们有更多机会获取费用更低、更持久的住房贷款；建造更多廉租房
• Track cash investor activity in the single-family rental market and monitor its potential impact on tenants, rents, neighborhoods, and homeownership opportunities
• 跟踪单一家庭租房市场中现金投资人的活动：监测此类投资对住户、房租、社区和获得房屋所有权机会的潜在影响

Retirement 退休保障 Among the top concerns of middle-class Americans is whether they will be able to afford to retire. Unfortunately for many, saving for retirement has become much more difficult in recent decades as families have struggled to find money to save and as the workplace-retirement-plan environment has fundamentally changed. 美国中产阶级的一大担忧是退休保障问题。很不幸的是，对于许多人来说，最近几十年为退休而存款已变得越来越难：家庭很难存下什么钱，在职退休储蓄计划的大环境也发生了根本性的改变。 As incomes have stagnated and as employers have shifted away from pensions to 401(k)-style plans, employees have been forced to shoulder far more risk and to invest what little they can set aside in savings vehicles that are often designed to take advantage of their lack of investment experience. With approximately half of all American households in danger of having insufficient savings for retirement, we propose policies that would: 随着收入停滞，雇主停止提供类似401(k)的退休金计划，职工不得不自己承担风险，向原本就利用他们投资经验缺乏的理财产品投资。几近一半的美国家庭都面临着退休金不足的危险。我们提出以下建议：

• Encourage the adoption of hybrid retirement plans such as CAP’s Safe, Accessible, Flexible, and Efficient, or SAFE, Retirement Plan at both the state and national levels
• 鼓励混合型退休金计划：例如美国进步中心提出的“安全、方便、灵活、高效”或简称SAFE的联邦和州级退休金计划
• Increase access to existing alternative savings options such as the low-cost Thrift Savings Plan which—by allowing all workers the ability to join—would not only give many a chance to save through a workplace plan but also would provide them with access to one of the best 401(k) plans available
• 增加其他退休存款计划的曝光度：例如低费用的互助存款计划（Thrift Savings Plan）。允许所有劳动者加入该计划后，它不仅能给许多人提供工作地退休计划账户，还提供最好的401(k)计划之一
• Require 401(k) and IRA plans to be more transparent about fees and investment practices through the adoption of a retirement label on all qualified plan options that informs consumers about the high risks of fees and lets them know how the fees in a given plan compare with fees in other plans of the same type
• 要求401(k)计划和个人退休金账户（IRA）缴费、投资更加透明。为告知消费者缴费风险，以及本计划与其他同类计划费用对比的计划添加标识。
• Make tax incentives for saving simpler and fairer by replacing the complex web of tax deductions that disproportionately benefit the wealthy with a Universal Savings Credit that would turn all existing deductions into a single, streamlined credit, as well as by potentially introducing a progressive match for low-income savers’ contributions
• 给更简单、公平的计划提供税收优惠。用通用存款抵税额替代复杂且更利于有钱人的抵税机制。为低收入存款者提供更先进的计划匹配方式

Conclusion 结论 To have a strong and growing economy, we need a strong and growing middle class. The longer the middle-class squeeze continues unabated, the more these trends will continue to affect both families across the country and our economic prospects as a nation. 只有强大且持续增长的中产阶级才能造就强大且持续增长的经济。中产阶级承受重压的时间越长，对全国的家庭和经济形势影响就越大。 We know what policies would help reverse the middle-class squeeze. Now, we just need to act. 我们已经知道怎样的政策能够减轻中产阶级的压力。现在，只待行动。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

Jeb Bush’s Beltway Climb 杰布·布什的华府攀登路 作者：社论 @2015-7-24 译者：王涵秋    校对：Animu (@丹哲生) 来源：华尔街日报 网址：http://www.wsj.com/articles/jeb-bushs-beltway-climb-1437693373 He proposes reforms that are good, bad and ugly. 他提出的改革之中，有好的，有坏的，还有不堪入目的 As Florida Governor, Jeb Bush conquered what he called “Mount Tallahassee,” and now that he’s running for President he is proposing to do the same to “Mount Washington.” On Monday he offered some initial ideas on how to do it, and some are better than others. 作为佛罗里达州州长，杰布·布什已经成功登上了他所称的“塔拉哈西之巅”；既已开始竞选总统，他还要登上“华盛顿之巅”。本周一，他已就如何开展竞选提出了一些初步想法，其中某些胜过另一些。 The good news is that he wants to start by reducing the size of the bureaucratic Everest. “You can have a fast-expanding economy or you can have a fast expanding government, but you can’t have both,” he said in a speech at Florida State University. 好消息是，他打算从裁减巨如珠峰的官僚机构入手。在佛罗里达州州立大学的一次演讲中他说道：“你要么有个迅速扩张的经济，要么有个迅速扩张的政府，但你不可能两者兼得。” His best idea would freeze the federal workforce and then reduce it by 10% over four years through attrition. In particular he proposes a “three-out, one-in” rule—one new hire for every three who leave. 杰布·布什最好的主意是，冻结现有的联邦政府雇员规模，并于之后四年内逐渐削减10%的雇员数量。特别是，他提出了“三出一进”则——每三人离职才可招募一位新员工。 According to the White House budget office historical tables, that would shrink federal civilian employment by some 210,000 from the 2.114 million full-time equivalent (FTE) positions in the executive branch in 2015. As recently as 2008 there were 1.875 million FTEs. 根据白宫预算办公室以往的数据可知，杰布·布什的政策，将使2015年行政部门中的联邦非军事雇员数量，从目前的211.4万人（按全职工时折算）缩减约21万人。晚至2008年，该数字还仅为曾为187.5万FTEs。【译注：FTE，full-time equivalent，一种人力资源统计指标，意为按全职工时折算后的雇员人数，假如全职工时为8小时，那么每天工作2小时兼职雇员，便计为0.25个FTE。】 For skeptics who doubt this is possible, Mr. Bush pointed to his record in Florida, where the state workforce fell by 11% over his eight years despite a rising state population. He can also point to Journal contributor and NYU scholar Paul Light, who has described the “inefficiency and bloat” of more than 10,000 senior executives “who occupy more than 60 layers of management just at the top” of the Washington organization chart. Ten percent may be shooting too low. 面对那些怀疑这是否可能做到的质疑者，他拿出了自己在佛州的记录，在其执政的8年内，尽管人口增长，该州雇员仍缩减了11%。他还援引了杂志撰稿人、纽约大学学者Paul Light的论点，后者将1万多资深行政官员的低效与臃肿形容为“这些人占据了管理部门的60层，层层积压在华盛顿组织结构图的上端”。或许砍去10%只嫌太少。 Mr. Bush also wants a line-item veto along the lines Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan has proposed. This is a hardy perennial, but it would at the margin enhance the power of a President who wants to control spending (unlike the current one). 布什先生还提倡一种类似威斯康星州共和党人保罗·瑞安（Paul Ryan）提出的部分否决权【译注：美国总统只有完全认可或完全否决某一立法的权力。最近一次鲜有例外发生在克林顿任上，但仅过了两年，最高法院便裁定部分否决权违宪。】这是个屡屡被提出的经年老话题了，不过它确可在边际上增强一位有意控制支出的总统的权力（而非像在任这位）。 “If we reform how government works,” Mr. Bush said, “and build capacity for people to achieve earned success by our very nature we’ll all become conservatives because the demands on government will subside.” “如果我们能改革政府的工作方式，”布什先生说，“为人民创造一个靠自己双手劳动赢得成功的环境，那么我们会统统成为保守派，因为我们将不再有求于政府。” Mr. Bush’s other ideas are more populist gimmicks than genuine reforms. Take his pitch to dock the pay of Senators and Congressmen when they don’t show up for votes. We’d be happier if a couple hundred of them didn’t show up at all. But in any case Mr. Bush couldn’t do this without Congress’s consent, and he’d need their votes to get more important things done. Americans can always throw the bums out during elections. 至于布什先生的其他想法，与其说真正的改革，倒像是亲民的噱头。比如呼吁在参议员和众议员不出席投票时扣他们工资的提案。其实要是有几百位议员不出席投票，我们会更开心。但无论如何，布什先生不可能未经国会同意就这么做，他需要他们的选票来完成更重要的事情。而且在选举期间，美国人总是可以把那些尸位素餐的人给拉下马。 Even worse is Mr. Bush’s call for a six-year ban on lobbying for former members of the House and Senate, as well as expanding the definition of lobbyist so more people come under its restrictions. This buys into the liberal narrative that the problem in Washington is too many lobbyists. 更糟糕的是，布什先生提出的对卸任国会议员施加在6年内禁止游说的禁令，并且扩大说客的定义，使得更多人被该禁令所约束。如此便投合了自由派的说法，即华盛顿的问题是说客太多。 Businesses have no choice but to lobby a government that can cripple them with a single new regulation. The First Amendment also gives all Americans the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” 生意人游说政府实属情非得已，毕竟政府只需一条新管制法规即可让他们遭殃。而且第一宪法修正案也给予了所有美国公民“就其委屈苦衷向政府请愿申诉”的权利。 The real problem is the opportunities for corruption and special dealing that a too-large government provides. Every new regulation or twist of the tax code is an opening for some powerful Member to assist the powerful. But the solution is to reduce the size and scope of the regulatory state and to reform the tax code. Mr. Bush says he plans to propose both regulatory and tax reforms, and those will do more to reduce the influence of lobbyists than will restrictions on lobbyists that will be evaded in any case. 真正的问题在于一个过于庞大的政府创造了腐败及特殊对待的机会。每次新设管制、每次税法繁琐化，都为一些权势人物去支援另一些权势人物创造了新契机。但解决办法是减少政府管制的规模和范围，并改革税法。布什先生说他计划提出管制和税收两方面兼有的改革，比起用禁令规限说客，这些改革才更能缩减他们的影响，而禁令总是会被绕过。 One other benefit of a government that tries to do fewer things with fewer people: It might be able to launch a website without crashing. 一个致力于雇更少人、做更少事的政府，将带来的另一个好处：它或许有能力建成一个不会崩溃的网站了。【编注：这句似乎在嘲讽联邦政府专为奥巴马医保建立的网站，该网站花了大价钱，却故障频频。】 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——