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Unit 7 How to Get the Poor off Our Conscience
第七單元 怎樣不為窮人的存在感到內疚
John Kenneth Galbraith
約翰·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.
我想認真地思考人類最古老的一種活動。多年來，實際上幾個世紀以來我們一直在從事這一活動，即嘗試怎樣使我們不為窮人的存在而內疚。
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.
自古以來，窮人與富人即相隨相伴，彼此總是很不愉快，有時矛盾激化還充滿危險。普魯塔克曾：“貧富不均乃共和政體最致命的宿疾。”貧窮和富有持續共存產生的問題，特別是證明在他人遭受貧說窮的厄運時我們享有財富有其合理性這一活動，一直是有思想有學問的人幾百年來孜孜不倦地思考探索的問題。
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.
《圣經》提出了最初的解決辦法：在現世受苦受難的人來世會得到更好的回報。他們的貧困只是一種暫時的不幸：如果他們窮困但卻溫順，他們最終將成為這個世界的主人。在某種程度上這是個絕妙的解決辦法，這可以讓富人在享受榮華富貴的同時，羨慕窮人將來的好運。
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.
很長時間以后，即在1776年《國富論》發表二三十年之后——在英國工業革命開始初期貧富不均的問題及其解決辦法開始具有現代的形式。杰里米·邊沁，這位與亞當·斯密幾乎同時代的人，提出了一種方案，這就是功利主義學說。在以后大約半個世紀里，這個學說對英國的思想，在一定程度上亦對美國的思想有著相當的影響力。
