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Finance and Economics Anthony Atkinson: For Poorer, For Richer
財經：安東尼·阿特金森：為了窮人，為了富人
Anthony Atkinson, a great British economist died on January 1st, age 72.
安東尼·阿特金森，英國偉大的經濟學家，1月1日與世長辭，享年72歲。
“Time is of the essence,” wrote Sir Anthony Atkinson, a British economist, in a report on measuring global poverty, published in July 2016.
“時間是最重要的，”英國經濟學家安東尼·阿特金森先生在2016七月發表的全球貧困評估報告中寫道。
His sense of urgency may have been influenced by another constraint.
他的緊迫感可能受到另一種約束的影響。
In 2014 Sir Anthony had been diagnosed with incurable cancer.
2014年，安東尼先生被診斷為不治之癥。
Some might have paused; he sped up.
有些人可能已經停了下來，他卻加快了腳步。
He chaired the World Bank commission that produced the poverty report, and wrote a book, “Inequality: What Can Be Done?”, in just three months.
他主持了提出貧困報告的世界銀行委員會議，并在短短的三個月內寫了一本書《不平等：可以做什么？》。
On January 1st, his time ran out.
2017年1月1日，他與世長辭。
In his lifetime, he was tipped for a Nobel prize.
在他一生中，他獲得過諾貝爾獎。
On his death, fellow economists rushed to describe him as “one of the all-time greats” and emphasized his extraordinary “decency, humanity and integrity”.
在他去世后，經濟學家們紛紛稱他為“最偉大的人之一”，并強調了他與眾不同的“得體、人性和誠信”。
The two were linked.
這兩者被聯系在一起。
For him, economics was about improving people’s lives.
對他來說，經濟學就是要改善人們的生活。
A six-month stint volunteering as a nurse in a hospital in deprived inner-city Hamburg was an early influence.
在貧困的漢堡市中心內一家醫院，為期六個月的護理志愿者經歷對他產生了早期影響。
He saw poverty, and went on to spend his life combating it.
他了解了貧窮，并堅持用一生去戰勝它。
He fought his battles gently—shying away from the adversarial style he experienced as a student at Cambridge—but with rigorous precision and an unfailing sense of social justice.
他的斗爭很溫和，避開了在劍橋當學生時針鋒相對的方式，但是這種溫和有著嚴格的精度和經久不衰的社會正義感。
As economists fell in love with markets in the 1980s and 1990s, he wrote the best textbook on their failures, with Joseph Stiglitz, another economist.
當經濟學家們癡迷20世紀80年代和90年代的市場時，他和另一位經濟學家約瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨寫了關于失敗最好的教科書。
(Mr Stiglitz’s scrawl was some comfort to Sir Anthony, as evidence of handwriting even worse than his own. )
（作為比他自己的筆跡更糟糕的證據，斯蒂格利茨先生潦草的筆跡對他來說算是些安慰。）
Faced with an imperfect world, he showed how to achieve a second-best compromise.
面對一個不完美的世界，他展示了如何實現最好的妥協。
The theoretical pontificating of 18th- and 19th-century political economists on welfare and inequality had rather fallen out of fashion.
18世紀和19世紀的政治經濟學家提出的關于財富和不平等的理論已經落伍。
Sir Anthony quickly identified a big obstacle to getting the message across: a lack of good data.
安東尼先生很快發現了信息傳遞的一個大阻礙，即缺乏可靠數據。
He pored through historical sources to unearth past trends in income inequality.
他通過仔細研究歷史資料，揭示出過去收入不平等的趨勢。
He created data sets on the highest incomes, findings from which would support the slogans on protesters’ placards.
他還創立了最高收入的數據集，由這些數據可以支持抗議者的布告標語。
Sir Anthony was a mentor and collaborator of Thomas Piketty, famous for his book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”.
托馬斯·皮凱蒂因“21世紀的資本 ”這本書聞名于世，安東尼先生正是他的導師和合作者。
Mr Piketty says that all work on trends in income and wealth inequality stems from Sir Anthony’s.
皮凱蒂先生說，作品中所有關于收入趨勢和財富不平等方面的內容都來自安東尼先生。
In the course of his career, Sir Anthony contributed to an average of nearly a book a year and sat on numerous government commissions.
在他的職業生涯中，安東尼平均每年出一本書，并且出現在許多政府的委員會上。
The legacy of his most cited paper, published in 1970, is an inequality index that bears his name.
他被引用次數最多的論文發表于1970，是一個以他的名字命名的不平等指數。
Existing measures, he showed, might seem like neutral indicators of the spread of incomes in a country.
他表示，現有措施似乎是一個國家收入分配的中性指標。
In fact they contained implicit value judgments.
事實上，它們包含隱性價值判斷。
Some were more sensitive to sagging incomes for the poorest; others would respond more to soaring incomes at the top.
有些人對最貧窮的人的收入下降更敏感；另一些則會對收入的飆升反應更強烈。
Always constructive, he then created a new class of inequality measures, making explicit what had been implicit.
他總是建設性地開創一類新的解決不平等的措施，明確什么是隱性的。
Today they are used by the US Census Bureau.
今天美國人口普查局采用了他的觀點。
He went beyond analysing the world to trying to fix it—in ways that many rejected.
他超出對世界的分析試圖解決世界問題，這種方法被大部分人反對。
His faith in the power of government to right the world’s ills led to radical proposals.
他關于通過政府力量來糾正世界性問題這方面的想法帶來了激進的提案。
His final book on inequality argued for a participation income (a payment for all who contribute to society) and a tax on wealth to finance an inheritance for everyone on reaching the age of 18.
安東尼先生最后一本關于不平等問題的書中贊成參與性收入（支付給對社會有貢獻的人），和對18歲及以上的富人征收融資遺產的賦稅。
He pushed back against pressure to cut taxes and prioritize containing inflation over reducing unemployment.
他頂住壓力，削減稅收和優先遏制通貨膨脹來降低失業率。
To the end, he was battling lifelong challenges: inadequate data; how to harness government for good; and closed minds.
到最后，他畢生都在與挑戰作斗爭：數據不足，如何更好地治理政府，還有封閉的思想。
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