We have great corporate bureaucracies replete with corporate bureaucrats, but they are good; only public bureaucracy and government servants are bad. In fact we have in the United States an extraordinarily good public service-one made up of talented and dedicated people who are overwhelmingly honest and only rarely given to overpaying for monkey wrenches, flashlights, coffee makers, and toilet seats. (When these aberrations have occurred they have, oddly enough, all been in the Pentagon.)We have nearly abolished poverty among the old, greatly democratized health care assured minorities of their civil rights, and vastly enhanced educational opportunity. All this would seem a considerable achievement for in competent and otherwise ineffective people. We must recognize that the present condemnation of government and government administration is really part of the continuing design for avoiding responsibility for the poor.
我们有庞大的企业官僚机构，充斥着企业官僚，但他们是好的；只有政府官僚和政府官员不好。实际上，美国有非常优秀的公共服务队伍一支由富有才干和敬业精神的人组成的队伍，他们非常诚实，以致像出高价购买活动扳手、手电筒、咖啡壶以及马桶座圈以获取回扣的情况极为罕见。（奇怪的是，这些过失如果出现，全都发生在五角大楼）我们几乎消除了老人的贫穷状况，使医疗照顾更为民主，使少数人种的民权得到保障，并极大地增加了受教育的机会，这一切对那些无能因而低效的人们来说似乎是相当大的成就。我们必须承认眼下对政府和政府管理部门的指责实际上也是逃避对穷人负责的方案的一部分。
The second design in this great centuries-old tradition is to argue that any form of public help to the poor only hurts the poor. It destroys morale. It seduces people away from gainful employment. It breaks up marriages, since women can seek welfare for themselves and their children once they are without husbands.
为解决困扰我们长达几个世纪的问题而提出的第二种方案认为，任何形式的社会援助只会伤害穷人本身。它摧毁人的斗志，诱惑人们不再自食其力。它坏婚姻，因为妇女离开自己的丈夫也能为自己和孩子求得保障。
There is no proof of this-none, certainly, that compares that damage with the damage that would be inflicted by the loss of public assistance. Still, the case is made-and believed-that there is something gravely damaging about aid to the unfortunate. This is perhaps our most highly in fluential piece of fiction.
这是无稽之谈—当然根本没有两者的比较，即得到救助受到的伤害与失去救助受到的伤害进行的比较。尽管如此，人们还是提出并坚信这一观点，即帮助穷人会造成严重的伤害。这种说法也许是我们最有影响的一个虚构故事。
The third, and closely related, design for relieving ourselves of responsibility for the poor is the argument that public-assistance measures have an adverse effect on incentive. They transfer income from the diligent to the idle and feckless, thus reducing the effort of the diligent and encouraging the idleness of the idle.
与第二种方案密切相关的推卸责任的第三种方案认为，社会援助措施对激励机制有不利影响。这些措施是把勤奋工作的人的收入转给那些懒惰和无能的人，这会打击勤劳者的工作积极性，却会鼓励懒散的人继续懒惰下去。
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