Economic Inequality

<img src="http://www.virtumundo.com/images/spacer.gif" height=15 width=1> There is also a shorter version .

<img src="http://www.virtumundo.com/images/spacer.gif" height=15 width=1> 还有一个较短的版本。

</td > --> January 2016 Since the 1970s, economic inequality in the US has increased dramatically.

</td> --> 2016 年 1 月 自 20 世纪 70 年代以来，美国的经济不平等急剧加剧。

And in particular, the rich have gotten a lot richer.

特别是，富人变得更加富有。

Nearly everyone who writes about the topic says that economic inequality should be decreased.

几乎所有撰写该主题文章的人都表示应该减少经济不平等。

I'm interested in this question because I was one of the founders of

我对这个问题很感兴趣，因为我是该公司的创始人之一

a company called Y Combinator that helps people start startups.

一家名为 Y Combinator 的公司，帮助人们创办初创公司。

Almost by definition, if a startup succeeds, its founders become rich.

几乎根据定义，如果一家初创公司成功，它的创始人就会变得富有。

Which means by helping startup founders I've been helping to increase economic inequality.

这意味着通过帮助初创公司创始人，我一直在帮助加剧经济不平等。

If economic inequality should be decreased, I shouldn't be helping founders.

如果经济不平等应该减少，我就不应该帮助创始人。

No one should be.

没有人应该这样。

But that doesn't sound right.

但这听起来不对。

What's going on here?

这是怎么回事？

What's going on is that while economic inequality is a single measure (or more

正在发生的事情是，虽然经济不平等是一个单一指标（或多个指标）

precisely, two: variation in income, and variation in wealth), it has multiple causes.

准确地说，是两个：收入的变化和财富的变化），它有多种原因。

Many of these causes are bad, like tax loopholes and drug addiction.

其中许多原因都是不好的，例如税收漏洞和毒瘾。

But some are good, like Larry Page and Sergey Brin starting the company you use to find things online.

但有些是好的，比如拉里·佩奇和谢尔盖·布林创办了一家你用来在线查找东西的公司。

If you want to understand economic inequality — and more importantly, if you actually want to fix the bad aspects of it — you have to tease apart the components.

如果你想了解经济不平等——更重要的是，如果你真的想解决它的不好的方面——你就必须梳理各个组成部分。

And yet the trend in nearly everything

然而几乎所有事物的趋势

written about the subject is to do the opposite: to squash together all the aspects of economic inequality as if it were a single phenomenon.

关于这个主题的文章是做相反的事情：将经济不平等的所有方面压缩在一起，就好像它是一个单一现象一样。

Sometimes this is done for ideological reasons.

有时这是出于意识形态原因。

Sometimes it's because the writer only has very high-level data and so draws conclusions from that, like the proverbial drunk who looks for his keys under the lamppost, instead of where he dropped them, because the

有时是因为作者只有非常高级的数据，所以从中得出结论，就像众所周知的醉汉在灯柱下寻找钥匙，而不是在他掉钥匙的地方一样，因为

light is better there.

那里的光线更好。

Sometimes it's because the writer doesn't understand critical aspects of inequality, like the role of technology in wealth creation.

有时这是因为作者不了解不平等的关键方面，例如技术在财富创造中的作用。

Much of the time, perhaps most of the time, writing about economic inequality combines all three.

很多时候，也许是大多数时候，关于经济不平等的写作结合了这三者。

___ The most common mistake people make about economic inequality is to treat it as a single phenomenon.

___ 人们对经济不平等最常见的错误是将其视为单一现象。

The most naive version of which is the one based on the pie fallacy: that the rich get rich by

其中最天真的版本是基于馅饼谬误的版本：富人通过以下方式致富：

taking money from the poor.

从穷人那里拿钱。

Usually this is an assumption people start from rather than a conclusion they arrive at by examining the evidence.

通常这是人们开始的假设，而不是通过检查证据得出的结论。

Sometimes the pie fallacy is stated explicitly: ...those at the top are grabbing an increasing fraction of the nation's income — so much of a larger share that what's left over for the rest is diminished....

有时，馅饼谬误被明确表述为：……那些处于顶层的人正在攫取国家收入中越来越大的一部分——所占的份额如此之大，以致于留给其他人的收入却在减少……

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