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Unit 7 How to Get the Poor off Our Conscience
第七单元 怎样不为穷人的存在感到内疚
John Kenneth Galbraith
约翰·肯尼思·高伯瑞
I would like to reflect on one of the oldest of human exercises, the process by which over the years, and indeed over the centuries, we have undertaken to get the poor off our Conscience.
我想认真地思考人类最古老的一种活动。多年来，实际上几个世纪以来我们一直在从事这一活动，即尝试怎样使我们不为穷人的存在而内疚。
Rich and poor have lived together, always uncomfortably and sometimes perilously, since the beginning of time. Plutarch was led to say: "An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of republics." And the problems that arise from the continuing co-existence of affluence and poverty-and particularly the process by which good fortune is justified in the presence of the ill fortune of others-have been an intellectual preoccupation for centuries. They continue to be so in our own time.
自古以来，穷人与富人即相随相伴，彼此总是很不愉快，有时矛盾激化还充满危险。普鲁塔克曾：“贫富不均乃共和政体最致命的宿疾。”贫穷和富有持续共存产生的问题，特别是证明在他人遭受贫说穷的厄运时我们享有财富有其合理性这一活动，一直是有思想有学问的人几百年来孜孜不倦地思考探索的问题。
One begins with the solution proposed in the Bible: the poor suffer in this world but are wonderfully rewarded in the next. The poverty is a temporary misfortune; If they are poor and also meek, they eventually will inherit the earth. This is, in some ways, an admirable solution. It allows the rich to enjoy their wealth while envying the poor their future fortune.
《圣经》提出了最初的解决办法：在现世受苦受难的人来世会得到更好的回报。他们的贫困只是一种暂时的不幸：如果他们穷困但却温顺，他们最终将成为这个世界的主人。在某种程度上这是个绝妙的解决办法，这可以让富人在享受荣华富贵的同时，羡慕穷人将来的好运。
Much, much later, in the twenty or thirty years following the publication in 1776 of The Wealth of Nations-the late dawn of the Industrial Revolution in Britain-the problem and its solution began to take on their modern form. Jeremy Bentham, a near contem porary of Adam Smith, came up with the formula that for perhaps fifty years was extraordinarily influential in British and, to some degree, American thought. This was utilitarianism.
很长时间以后，即在1776年《国富论》发表二三十年之后——在英国工业革命开始初期贫富不均的问题及其解决办法开始具有现代的形式。杰里米·边沁，这位与亚当·斯密几乎同时代的人，提出了一种方案，这就是功利主义学说。在以后大约半个世纪里，这个学说对英国的思想，在一定程度上亦对美国的思想有着相当的影响力。
