I'd like to start with a simple question:
Why do the poor make so many poor decisions? I know it's a harsh question, but
take a look at the data. The poor borrow more, save less, smoke more, exercise
less, drink more and eat less healthfully. Why?
我想以一个简单的问题开始今天的话题:为什么穷人会做出糟糕的决定？我知道这是一个很残忍的问题，但是数据显示，穷人借多存少，吸烟多锻炼少，酗酒多健康饮食少。为什么？
00:36
Well, the standard explanation was once
summed up by the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. And she called
poverty "a personality defect."
当然，英国首相玛格丽特萨切尔曾总结出了标准的解释，她把贫穷叫做“一种人格缺陷”
00:44
(Laughter)
00:46
A lack of character, basically.
也就是说欠缺某种品质。
00:49
Now, I'm sure not many of you would be so
blunt. But the idea that there's something wrong with the poor themselves is
not restricted to Mrs. Thatcher. Some of you may believe that the poor should
be held responsible for their own mistakes. And others may argue that we should
help them to make better decisions. But the underlying assumption is the same:
there's something wrong with them. If we could just change them, if we could
just teach them how to live their lives, if they would only listen. And to be
honest, this was what I thought for a long time. It was only a few years ago
that I discovered that everything I thought I knew about poverty was wrong.
我敢肯定，没有多少人会如此直率，但是，并非只有撒切尔夫人认为穷人自身有问题。有些人可能会觉得穷人应该为自己的错误负责。
还有一些人可能会认为，我们应该帮助他们做出更好的决定。 但言外之意都是一样的：他们有什么问题。
如果我们能够改变他们就好了，如果我们能够教他们如何过自己的生活就好了，要是他们会听我们的就好了。 说实话，这也正是我想了很久的。 但就在几年前我发现，我认为我所知道的一切关于贫穷的都是错误的。
01:38
It all started when I accidentally stumbledupon a paper by a few American psychologists. They had traveled 8,000 miles,all the way toIndia,for a fascinating study. And it was an experiment with sugarcane farmers. Youshould know that these farmers collect about 60 percent of their annual incomeall at once, right after the harvest. This means that they're relatively poorone part of the year and rich the other. The researchers asked them to do an IQtest before and after the harvest. What they subsequently discovered completelyblew my mind. The farmers scored much worse on the test before the harvest. Theeffects of living in poverty, it turns out, correspond to losing 14 points ofIQ. Now, to give you an idea, that's comparable to losing a night's sleep orthe effects of alcoholism.
一切始于我偶然发现一篇由几个美国心理学家写的论文。为了一项有趣的研究，他们跑了8000英里，一直跑到印度。这是一个对蔗农进行的实验，你应该知道这些农民在收割后会立即得到他们年收入的大约60％。这意味着在一年的部分时间里他们会比较贫穷，而在另一段时间里则相对富裕。研究人员要求他们在收获前后进行智商测试，后来的发现彻底令我震撼。收割前，农民的测试得分比收割后差很多。事实表明，生活在贫困中产生的影响相当于智商下降了14分。为了更好理解，你可以想像一下一夜未眠或酗酒造成的影响。
02:34
A few months later, I heard that EldarShafir, a professor atPrincetonUniversityand one of the authors of this study, wascoming over toHolland,where I live. So we met up inAmsterdamto talk about his revolutionary new theory of poverty. And I can sum it up injust two words: scarcity mentality. It turns out that people behave differentlywhen they perceive a thing to be scarce. And what that thing is doesn't muchmatter -- whether it's not enough time, money or food.
几个月后，我听说普林斯顿大学的教授埃尔达尔•沙菲尔（Eldar Shafir）和这个研究的作者之一要来我住的地方---荷兰。于是我们在阿姆斯特丹会面，探讨一下他的革命性的新贫困理论。我可以用两个字来概括：匮乏状况下的心态。事实证明，当人们感觉到某种东西即将稀缺时，其行为是不同的。而即将稀缺的是什并不重要，无论是没有足够的时间也好，没有足够的金钱或食物也罢。
03:04
You all know this feeling, when you've got
too much to do, or when you've put off breaking for lunch and your blood sugar
takes a dive. This narrows your focus to your immediate lack -- to the sandwich
you've got to have now, the meeting that's starting in five minutes or the
bills that have to be paid tomorrow. So the long-term perspective goes out the
window. You could compare it to a new computer that's running 10 heavy programs
at once. It gets slower and slower, making errors. Eventually, it freezes --
not because it's a bad computer, but because it has too much to do at once. The
poor have the same problem. They're not making dumb decisions because they are
dumb, but because they're living in a context in which anyone would make dumb
decisions.
当你有太多的事情要做，或者当你不断推迟午休吃午饭时间，结果导致血糖不足的时候，你就会明白这种感觉。此时你的注意力将集中在急迫的需求上，比如你现在必须要吃的三明治，五分钟后要开始的会议，或是明天要付的账单，所以长远的目光已经不复存在。你可以将它与一个同时运行10个大程序的新电脑进行比较。它变得越来越慢，出错，最终死机。这并不是因为这台电脑不好，而是因为它同时运行的程序太多。穷人也有同样的问题。他们作出愚蠢的决定并不是因为他们是愚蠢的，而是因为在他们生活的背景下，在一个任何人都会做出愚蠢决定。
03:54
So suddenly I understood why so many of our
anti-poverty programs don't work. Investments in education, for example, are
often completely ineffective. Poverty is not a lack of knowledge. A recent
analysis of 201 studies on the effectiveness of money-management training came
to the conclusion that it has almost no effect at all. Now, don't get me wrong
-- this is not to say the poor don't learn anything -- they can come out wiser
for sure. But it's not enough. Or as Professor Shafir told me, "It's like
teaching someone to swim and then throwing them in a stormy sea."
所以突然间我明白了为什么我们这么多的反贫困计划是行不通的。例如，对教育的投资往往是完全无效的。贫穷不是缺乏知识。最近对201项关于货币管理培训有效性的研究分析得出的结论是，它几乎没有起到任何作用。现在，不要误解我的意思，这并不是说穷人不学习，他们完全可以更聪明这一点毫无疑问。但这还不够。或者像沙菲尔教授告诉我的那样，“就像教人游泳，然后把它们扔到波涛汹涌的大海里。”
04:36
I still remember sitting there, perplexed.
And it struck me that we could have figured this all out decades ago. I mean,
these psychologists didn't need any complicated brain scans; they only had to
measure the farmer's IQ, and IQ tests were invented more than 100 years ago.
Actually, I realized I had read about the psychology of poverty before. George
Orwell, one of the greatest writers who ever lived, experienced poverty
firsthand in the 1920s. "The essence of poverty," he wrote back then,
is that it "annihilates the future." And he marveled at, quote,
"How people take it for granted they have the right to preach at you and
pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level."
我还记得自己满脸困惑地坐在那里。我突然意识到我们几十年前就已经应该想到了这一点了。我的意思是，这些心理学家根本不需要借助任何复杂的脑部扫描。他们只需要测量一下农民的智商就可以了，智商测试是在100多年前发明的。事实上，我自己以前曾经读过贫穷的心理学。乔治•奥威尔是有史以来最伟大的作家之一，他在二十世纪二十年代第一次经历了贫困。他当时写道：“贫穷的本质是消灭未来”。他引用了一句话，并对这句话感到不可思议，“一旦收入低于一定水平，他们就有权向你传道，并为你祈祷，这无可厚非。”
05:20
Now, those words are every bit as resonant
today. The big question is, of course: What can be done? Modern economists have
a few solutions up their sleeves. We could help the poor with their paperwork
or send them a text message to remind them to pay their bills. This type of
solution is hugely popular with modern politicians, mostly because, well, they
cost next to nothing. These solutions are, I think, a symbol of this era in
which we so often treat the symptoms, but ignore the underlying cause.
当然，这些话在今天依然能够引起共鸣，然而，最大的问题是：可以做些什么？
现代经济学家有一些高招。 我们可以给穷人写信，或给他们发短信，提醒他们支付账单。
这种类型的解决方案在现代政治家中非常受欢迎，主要是因为它们几乎没有成本。 我认为，这些解决方案是我们所处的时代的一个象征，我们常常只对待表象，但却忽视了根本原因。
05:57
So I wonder: Why don't we just change thecontext in which the poor live? Or, going back to our computer analogy: Whykeep tinkering around with the software when we can easily solve the problem byinstalling some extra memory instead? At that point, Professor Shafir respondedwith a blank look. And after a few seconds, he said, "Oh, I get it. Youmean you want to just hand out more money to the poor to eradicate poverty. Uh,sure, that'd be great. But I'm afraid that brand of left-wing politics you'vegot inAmsterdam-- it doesn't exist in the States."
所以我想知道，为什么不改变穷人的生活环境呢？或者，再回到我们的计算机比喻：当我们可以通过安装一些额外的内存来轻松地解决问题时，为什么要不停地修改软件？当时，沙菲尔教授露出了茫然的表情。但几秒钟后，他说：“哦，我明白了，你是说要把更多的钱交给穷人来消除贫困，呃，那当然好，但是恐怕你在阿姆斯特丹获得的左派政治烙印在美国是不存在的。”
06:38
But is this really an old-fashioned,
leftist idea? I remembered reading about an old plan -- something that has been
proposed by some of history's leading thinkers. The philosopher Thomas More
first hinted at it in his book, "Utopia," more than 500 years ago.
And its proponents have spanned the spectrum from the left to the right, from
the civil rights campaigner, Martin Luther King, to the economist Milton
Friedman. And it's an incredibly simple idea: basic income guarantee.
但是，这真的是一个老式的左派主张吗？我记得我曾读过一个旧计划，一些历史上主流思想家所提出的东西。哲学家托马斯•沃尔（Thomas More）在500多年前的“乌托邦”（Utopia）一书中首先暗示了这一点。其支持者从左派到右派都有，从民权运动家马丁•路德•金（Martin
Luther King）再到经济学家米尔顿•弗里德曼（Milton Friedman）。这是一个令人难以置信的简单想法：基本收入保障。
07:13
What it is? Well, that's easy. It's a monthly
grant, enough to pay for your basic needs: food, shelter, education. It's
completely unconditional, so no one's going to tell you what you have to do for
it, and no one's going to tell you what you have to do with it. The basic
income is not a favor, but a right. There's absolutely no stigma attached. So
as I learned about the true nature of poverty, I couldn't stop wondering: Is
this the idea we've all been waiting for? Could it really be that simple? And
in the three years that followed, I read everything I could find about basic
income. I researched the dozens of experiments that have been conducted all
over the globe, and it didn't take long before I stumbled upon a story of a
town that had done it -- had actually eradicated poverty. But then ... nearly
everyone forgot about it.
那这又是什么呢？ 其实很容易，也就是一笔每月资助，足以支付你的基本需求：食物，住所和教育。这完全是无条件的，所以没有人会告诉你要为此做什么，也没有人会告诉你要用这笔钱来做什么。基本收入不是施舍，而是权利，绝对没有附加的耻辱。
所以，当我了解到贫穷的本质时，我不禁想：这是我们一直在等待的想法吗？ 难道真的那么简单吗？ 在接下来的三年里，我翻阅了所有关于基本收入的东西，
我研究了全球范围内进行的数十个实验。没有多久，我就偶然发现了一个实际上已经消除了贫困的城镇的故事。 但是，几乎每个人都忘记了这个故事。
08:05
This story starts inDauphin,Canada.In 1974, everybody in this small town was guaranteed a basic income, ensuringthat no one fell below the poverty line. At the start of the experiment, anarmy of researchers descended on the town. For four years, all went well. Butthen a new government was voted into power, and the new Canadian cabinet sawlittle point to the expensive experiment. So when it became clear there was nomoney left to analyze the results, the researchers decided to pack their filesaway in some 2,000 boxes. Twenty-five years went by, and then Evelyn Forget, aCanadian professor, found the records. For three years, she subjected the datato all manner of statistical analysis, and no matter what she tried, theresults were the same every time: the experiment had been a resounding success.
这个故事开始于加拿大的多芬。1974年，这个小镇的每个人都得到了基本的收入保证，从而确保了没有人会在贫困线以下。在实验开始的时候，一队研究人员来到了镇上。四年来，一切顺利。但是后来新政府上台，加拿大新内阁认为这一昂贵的实验没有多少意义。所以当清楚已经没有钱来分析结果的时候，研究人员决定把这些文件打包在2000左右个箱子里。二十五年过去了，加拿大教授Evelyn Forget找到了这些记录。三年来，她对数据进行了各种统计分析，不管她尝试用何种方法分析，结果每次都是一样的：实验取得了巨大的成功。
09:05
Evelyn Forget discovered that the people inDauphin had not only become richer but also smarter and healthier. The schoolperformance of kids improved substantially. The hospitalization rate decreasedby as much as 8.5 percent. Domestic violence incidents were down, as weremental health complaints. And people didn't quit their jobs. The only ones whoworked a little less were new mothers and students -- who stayed in schoollonger. Similar results have since been found in countless other experiments aroundthe globe, from theUStoIndia.
伊夫林•福特（Evelyn
Forget）发现，多芬人不仅变得更富有，而且变得更聪明，更健康。小孩的学业成绩大幅提升。住院率下降了8.5％。家庭暴力事件下降，心理健康投诉也下降。人们并没有放弃工作。唯一少一点工作时间的是刚生了孩子的母亲和学生，因为他们在校呆的时间更长。在美国和印度之外的全球其他无数实验中也发现了类似的结果。
09:41
So ... here's what I've learned. When it comes
to poverty, we, the rich, should stop pretending we know best. We should stop
sending shoes and teddy bears to the poor, to people we have never met. And we
should get rid of the vast industry of paternalistic bureaucrats when we could
simply hand over their salaries to the poor they're supposed to help.
所以...这正是我所学到的。说到贫穷，我们富人不应当继续假装我们知道怎样做最好。我们应该停止把鞋子和泰迪熊送给穷人，和我们从未见过的人。我们应该摆脱这种广泛存在的家长式的官僚，我们只要把他们的薪水交给他们应该帮助的穷人。（原谅我，这句话我实在搞不明白their指谁）
10:05
(Applause)
10:08
Because, I mean, the great thing aboutmoney is that people can use it to buy things they need instead of things thatself-appointed experts think they need. Just imagine how many brilliantscientists and entrepreneurs and writers, like George Orwell, are now witheringaway in scarcity. Imagine how much energy and talent we would unleash if we gotrid of poverty once and for all. I believe that a basic income would work likeventure capital for the people. And we can't afford not to do it, becausepoverty is hugely expensive. Just look at the cost of child poverty in theUS, forexample. It's estimated at 500 billion dollars each year, in terms of higherhealth care spending, higher dropout rates, and more crime. Now, this is anincredible waste of human potential.
我的意思是，金钱的伟大之处在于，人们可以用它来购买他们需要的东西，而不是自行任命的专家认为他们需要的东西。想象一下，有多少像乔治•奥威尔（George Orwell）这样的杰出的科学家，企业家和作家，由于缺乏基本保障而日渐枯萎。想象一下，如果我们一劳永逸地摆脱贫困，我们将解放出多少能量和才能。我相信，基本的收入就像风险投资资本一样为人民服务。我们不能这样做，是因为贫穷实在是太昂贵了。例如，来看看美国儿童贫困的代价。估计每年有5000亿美元的支出，全部花费在了更高的医疗费，辍学率和犯罪率上。嗯，这是一个令人难以置信的人类潜力的浪费。
11:00
But let's talk about the elephant in the
room. How could we ever afford a basic income guarantee? Well, it's actually a
lot cheaper than you may think. What they did in Dauphin is finance it with a
negative income tax. This means that your income is topped up as soon as you
fall below the poverty line. And in that scenario, according to our economists'
best estimates, for a net cost of 175 billion -- a quarter of US military
spending, one percent of GDP -- you could lift all impoverished Americans above
the poverty line. You could actually eradicate poverty. Now, that should be our
goal.
现在让我们来谈谈这个无法规避的问题。我们怎样才能负担基本的收入保证？实际上，比你想象的便宜很多。他们在多芬所做的是用负所得税来融资。这意味着，一旦你低于贫困线，你的收入就会增加。在这种情况下，根据我们经济学家的最佳估计，净成本为1750亿美元-美国军费的四分之一，占GDP的百分之一，这样一来就可以把所有贫困的美国人提升到贫困线以上。你实际上可以消除贫困。现在，这应该是我们的目标。
11:40
(Applause)
11:41
The time for small thoughts and little
nudges is past. I really believe that the time has come for radical new ideas,
and basic income is so much more than just another policy. It is also a
complete rethink of what work actually is. And in that sense, it will not only free
the poor, but also the rest of us.
小想法和小动作的时代已经过去了。 我相信，激进的新思想的时代到来了，基本收入不仅仅是另一种政策，同时也是对工作究竟是什么的全面重新思考。 从这个意义上来讲，这不仅能解救穷人，还能解救其余的人。
12:03
Nowadays, millions of people feel that
their jobs have little meaning or significance. A recent poll among 230,000
employees in 142 countries found that only 13 percent of workers actually like
their job. And another poll found that as much as 37 percent of British workers
have a job that they think doesn't even need to exist. It's like Brad Pitt says
in "Fight Club," "Too often we're working jobs we hate so we can
buy shit we don't need."
如今，数百万人觉得自己的工作没有什么意义或重要性。最近在142个国家的23万名员工中进行的调查发现，只有13％的员工喜欢他们的工作。另一项民意调查显示，多达37％的英国工人有一份他们认为甚至不需要存在的工作。就像布拉德•皮特（Brad Pitt）在“搏击俱乐部”（Fight Club）中所说的那样：“我们经常在做我们讨厌的工作，所以我们可以买到我们不需要的东西。
12:32
(Laughter)
12:33
Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not talking
about the teachers and the garbagemen and the care workers here. If they
stopped working, we'd be in trouble. I'm talking about all those well-paid
professionals with excellent résumés who earn their money doing ... strategic
transactor peer-to-peer meetings while brainstorming the value add-on of
disruptive co-creation in the network society.
现在，不要误会我的意思，我不是在谈论这里的老师，清洁工和护理人员。如果他们停止工作，我们会遇到麻烦。我正在谈论所有那些有着漂亮简历的高薪的专业人士，他们的赚钱方式包括......战略交易者对等会议，同时集思广益，共同创造网络社会的破坏性共同创造的附加价值。
12:54
(Laughter)
12:55
(Applause)
12:56
Or something like that. Just imagine again
how much talent we're wasting, simply because we tell our kids they'll have to
"earn a living." Or think of what a math whiz working at Facebook
lamented a few years ago: "The best minds of my generation are thinking
about how to make people click ads."
或类似于此的工作。再试想一下，仅仅因为我们告诉我们的孩子他们必须“谋生”就会有多少才华被浪费。或者想想几年前在Facebook工作的一位数学专家的哀叹：“我这一代人最好的头脑正在考虑如何让人们点击广告。
13:16
I'm a historian. And if history teaches us
anything, it is that things could be different. There is nothing inevitable
about the way we structured our society and economy right now. Ideas can and do
change the world. And I think that especially in the past few years, it has
become abundantly clear that we cannot stick to the status quo -- that we need
new ideas.
我是一名历史学家。 如果历史能够告诉我们什么，那便是：事情完全可以有所不同。 我们现在构建社会经济结构的方法并非无可更改。
理念可以而且的确改变了世界。 特别是在过去几年，我觉得已经非常清楚，我们不能坚持现状，我们需要新的想法。
13:40
I know that many of you may feel
pessimistic about a future of rising inequality, xenophobia and climate change.
But it's not enough to know what we're against. We also need to be for
something. Martin Luther King didn't say, "I have a nightmare."
我知道，日益增加的不平等，仇外心理和气候变化可能会让你们中许多人对未来感到悲观。但仅仅知道我们反对什么是不够的。我们也需要支持一些东西。毕竟马丁•路德•金没有说：“我有一个噩梦。”
13:55
(Laughter)
13:57
He had a dream.
13:58
(Applause)
13:59
So ... here's my dream: I believe in a
future where the value of your work is not determined by the size of your
paycheck, but by the amount of happiness you spread and the amount of meaning
you give. I believe in a future where the point of education is not to prepare
you for another useless job but for a life well-lived. I believe in a future
where an existence without poverty is not a privilege but a right we all deserve.
So here we are. Here we are. We've got the research, we've got the evidence and
we've got the means.
所以...这就是我的梦想：我相信未来工作的价值并不取决于薪水的大小，而是取决于你所传播的快乐的数量和你给予的含义。我相信在未来，教育的重点不是要让你为另一项无用的工作做好准备，而是为了一个健康的生活。我相信，一个没有贫困的存在不是一种特权，而是一种我们应得的权利。所以我们才会出现在这里。我们已经有了研究，有了证据，我们已经有了方法。
14:33
Now, more than 500 years after Thomas More
first wrote about a basic income, and 100 years after George Orwell discovered
the true nature of poverty, we all need to change our worldview, because
poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is a lack of cash.
现在，在托马斯•沃尔（Thomas
More）第一次提到基本收入的500多年后，在乔治•奥威尔（George Orwell）发现贫穷的本质100年之后，我们都需要改变我们的世界观，因为贫穷不是缺乏品格，贫困是缺乏现金。
14:51
Thank you.
写在后面：Rutger Bregman是乌托邦的倡导者，他的相关著作名为"Utopia for Realists."
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