However wealthy we may be, we can never find enough hours in the day to do everything we want. Economics deals with this problem through the concept of opportunity cost, which simply refers to whether someone’s time or money could be better spent on something else.
无论我们多么富有，我们都无法在一天中找到足够的时间来做我们想做的一切。经济学通过机会成本的概念来解释这个问题，机会成本简单来说就是指某人的时间或金钱是否可以更好地用于其他事情。
Every hour of our time has a value. For every hour we work at one job we could quite easily be doing another, or be sleeping or watching a film. Each of these options has a different opportunity cost - namely, what they cost us in missed opportunities.
我们每一个小时都有价值。我们用来工作的每一个小时都可以很容易地做另一份工作，或者睡觉、看电影。这些选项中的每一个都有不同的机会成本，即在错过的机会中给我们带来的成本。
Say you intend to watch a football match but the tickets are expensive and it will take you a couple of hours to get to and from the stadium. Why not, you might reason, watch the game from home and use the leftover money and time to have dinner with friends? This - the alternative use of your cash and time - is the opportunity cost.
假设你打算看一场足球比赛，但门票很贵，进出体育场需要几个小时。你可能会想，为什么不在家看比赛，用省下的钱和时间与朋友共进晚餐呢？这就是你的现金和时间的另一种用途，即机会成本。
For economists, every decision is made by knowledge of what one must forgo - in terms of money and enjoyment—in order to take it up. By knowing precisely what you are receiving and what you are missing out on, you ought to be able to make better-informed, more reasonable decisions. Consider that most famous economic rule of all: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Even if someone offers to take you out to lunch for free, the time you will spend in the restaurant still costs you something in terms of forgone opportunities.
对于经济学家来说，每一项决定都是由一个人在金钱和享受方面必须放弃什么才能接受的知识决定的。通过准确地知道你正在接受什么和你错过了什么，你应该能够做出更明智、更合理的决定。想想最著名的经济法则：天下没有免费的午餐。即使有人主动提出免费带你出去吃午饭，你在餐厅花费的时间仍然会让你失去一些机会。
Some people find the idea of opportunity cost extremely discouraging: imagine spending your entire life calculating whether your time would be better spent elsewhere doing something more profitable or enjoyable. Yet, in a sense it’s human nature to do precisely that - we assess the advantages and disadvantages of decisions all the time.
有些人觉得机会成本的想法极为令人沮丧：想象一下，把你的一生都花在计算你的时间是否应该花在其他地方做一些更有利可图或更令人愉快的事情上。然而，从某种意义上说，我们总是准确地评估决策的利弊，这是人类的本性。
In the business world, a popular phrase is “value for money.” People want their cash to go as far as possible. However, another is fast obtaining an advantage: “value for time.” The biggest restriction on our resources is the number of hours we can devote to something, so we look to maximize the return we get on our investment of time. By reading this passage you are giving over a bit of your time which could be spent doing other activities, such as sleeping and eating. In return, however, this passage will help you to think like an economist, closely considering the opportunity cost of each of your decisions.
在商界，一个流行的说法是“物有所值”，人们希望他们的现金尽可能有用。然而，另一个是快速获得优势：“时间价值”。对我们资源的最大限制是我们可以花在某件事情上的小时数，因此我们希望最大限度地提高我们在时间投资上的回报。通过阅读这篇文章，你可以把一点时间花在其他活动上，比如睡觉和吃饭。然而，作为回报，这篇文章将帮助你像经济学家一样思考，仔细考虑你每个决策的机会成本。
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