DAY 92 Why the pandemic could eventually lower inequality

inequality??/??n??kw?l?ti/
?the unfair difference between groups of people in society, when some have more wealth, status or opportunities than others

equality /i?kw?l?ti/??
the fact of being equal in rights, status, advantages, etc.

History suggests it could precipitate shifts towards a more equal income distribution

precipitate?/pr??s?p?te?t/?
1> to make something, especially something bad, happen suddenly or sooner than it should
2>??to suddenly force somebody/something into a particular state or condition
v（通常指不好的事件或形勢）突然發(fā)生；加速 ;
a?（行動或決定）倉猝的，貿然的，突然的

shift
[c]?a change in opinion, mood, policy, etc.

distribution[?d?str??bju??n]
income distribution??收入的分配

1 For America’s poor, the covid-19 pandemic has delivered a swift and brutal reversal of fortune. At the start of the year unemployment was plumbing new lows. Years of wage growth for low-income workers had healed some of the scars left by the global financial crisis. Already by 2016, the most recent year for which figures are available, the economic expansion had produced a smaller rise in American income inequality, after taxes and transfers, than any expansion since the early 1980s. Between 2016 and 2019 the weekly earnings of low- and middle-income workers grew at an annual average pace of 3.8%. Since covid-19 struck, however, a host of economic statistics—and legions of pundits—have pointed to a resurgence in inequality. Yet if history is a guide, the pandemic could eventually render the distribution of income more egalitarian.

a swift and?brutal reversal? 猛烈而慘痛的損失

deliver
?[transitive]?to give or send information or ideas to somebody

?brutal /?bru?tl/? a
1>?violent and cruel
2>?direct and clear about something unpleasant; not thinking of people’s feelings

reversal/r??v??sl/? n
?a change of something so that it is the opposite of what it was

plumb?/pl?m/? v =?fathom
to try to understand or succeed in understanding something mysterious

?a host of許多，一大群；眾多，大量

pundit??/?p?nd?t/??行家；權威；專家
?a person who knows a lot about a particular subject and who often talks about it in public

?resurgence/r??s??d??ns/? n
?the return and growth of an activity that had stopped?

render?/?rend?(r)/??
1>?render somebody/something + adj. (formal) to cause somebody/something to be in a particular state or condition
2>?(formal) to give somebody something, especially in return for something or because it is expected
3> (formal) to present something, especially when it is done officially =furnish
4>?(formal) to express or perform something
致使;造成? ??給予(幫助);提供(服務)? ? ?
宣布，作出(判決、決定或回應)

egalitarian.??/i?ɡ?l??te?ri?n/? ?n
?a person who believes that everyone is equal and should have the same rights and opportunities
adj. 平等主義的 n. 平等主義；平等主義者

轉移支付（transfer payment）是指政府或企業(yè)無償地支付給個人以增加其收入和購買力的費用。它是一種收入再分配形式。轉移支付包括政府的轉移支付和企業(yè)的轉移支付。政府的轉移支付大都帶有福利支出性質，如社會保險福利津貼、撫恤金、養(yǎng)老金、失業(yè)補助、救濟金以及各種補助費等；農產品價格補貼也是政府的轉移支付。由于政府的轉移支付等于把財政收入還給個人，故有的西方經濟學家稱其為負稅收。

2 There are many reasons why the well-heeled might suffer less in the pandemic. Much of the plunge in asset prices that occurred in March has since been retraced. In places like New York City and Los Angeles, covid-19 seems to have hit poorer neighbourhoods harder. Low-wage earners are often less able to work from home or maintain social distancing. Interruptions to schooling widen the gaps in achievement between children from richer backgrounds and those from poorer families.

well-heeled? ?/?wel ?hi?ld/? 富人們
?having a lot of money? =?rich,?wealthy

retrace??/r??tre?s/??舉（步）折回;沿（原路）返回
go back over again?

3 Meanwhile, workers on the lower rungs of the income ladder have borne the brunt of job losses. America’s unemployment rate rose by roughly ten percentage points, to 14.7%, in April—the highest since the Depression. The jobless rate for workers with a college education went up by nearly six percentage points, to 8.4%; that for workers without a high-school diploma leapt by just over 14 percentage points, to 21.2%. A new paper published by the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago reinforces the point. Between February and April, find its authors, employment among workers in the top fifth of the income distribution dropped by 9%. In the bottom fifth, by contrast, it plunged by 35%.

rung /r??/? 樓梯中間的擋板——>擋板
one of the bars that forms a step in a?ladder

bear? /be?(r)/? v 承受
to be able to accept and deal with something unpleasant? = stand

brunt? /br?nt/? 壓力
承受主要壓力；首當其沖
To?bear the brunt?or?take the brunt of?something unpleasant means to suffer the main part or force of it.

leap?/li?p/
leap (in something) (from…) (to…)?to increase suddenly and by a large amount? =shoot up

reinforce?/?ri??n?f??s/? v
?to make a feeling, an idea, etc. stronger

4 Were the crisis of unemployment to end as swiftly as it began, the effects of these uneven job losses on inequality would be limited, and fleeting. Many jobless workers are earning more in unemployment benefits than they did on the job, thanks to a top-up of $600 per week enacted by Congress in March. Of the more than 20m Americans who were out of work in April, 78% were reported to be temporarily laid off. But the danger is that temporary job losses become permanent. The authors of the Becker Friedman paper calculate that active employment—or the number of workers counted on payrolls—declined by 14% between February and April. About 40% of that fall occurred at firms that had ceased operations, at least temporarily. Not all will reopen. A new working paper by Jose Maria Barrero of Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University and Steven Davis of the University of Chicago is similarly gloomy, concluding that 42% of pandemic-related job losses will be permanent. Meanwhile, the crush of claimants has overwhelmed some state governments and slowed the flow of unemployment aid. Top-up benefits are due to expire in July, when millions will still be jobless.

?fleeting ?/?fli?t??/? 短時間存在
?lasting only a short time

unemployment benefits? ?收入津貼
top-up?/?t?p ?p/? n 充值
?a payment that you make to increase the amount of money, etc. to the level that is needed

?active employment 正在工作并領薪水
the number of workers counted on?payrolls? ?

payroll? ?/?pe?r??l/? ?工資名單
1>??a list of people employed by a company showing the amount of money to be paid to each of them
2>??[usually singular]?the total amount paid in wages by a company

?gloomy/?ɡlu?mi/??depressing
nearly dark, or badly lit in a way that makes you feel sad

claimant? /?kle?m?nt/? 領取失業(yè)救濟金的人
a person who claims something because they believe they have a right to it

5 The most vulnerable workers are therefore likely to be squeezed hard by the recession. But if history is a guide, those at the top of the income distribution could yet face a reckoning. Disruptive global events have often precipitated shifts towards a more equal distribution of income and wealth. In his influential book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, Thomas Piketty points out that high levels of inequality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were reduced by the calamitous events of the period from 1914 to 1945. In that time the share of income earned by America’s top 1%, for instance, dropped from 19% to 14%. The combination of depression, war, inflation and taxes compressed incomes and laid waste to vast fortunes. Walter Scheidel, a historian, goes further still in his book on long-run inequality, “The Great Leveller”. Since antiquity, he argues, only four forces have ever managed to reduce inequality in a sustained way: war, revolution, state failure and pandemic. (The troubles often coincide: a pandemic contributed to the failure of the Roman empire; another coincided with the end of the first world war.)

reckoning/?rek?n??/? ?
1>?[countable, usually singular, uncountable]?a time when somebody’s actions will be judged to be right or wrong and they may be punished
2>??[uncountable, countable]?the act of calculating something, especially in a way that is not very exact
報應;清算? ??（尤指并不十分準確的）預計，估計，估算

disruptive?/d?s?r?pt?v/??破壞性的;制造混亂的
1>?causing problems, noise, etc. so that something cannot continue normally
2>?new and original, in a way that causes major changes to how something is done

precipitate

calamitous? /k??l?m?t?s/
?causing great damage to people’s lives, property, etc. =?disastrous
不幸的;災難性的;嚴重的

lay waste 使荒蕪
lay something waste?|?lay waste (to) something
?(formal)?to destroy a place completely

antiquity[?n?t?kw?ti]
1>?Antiquity?is the distant past, especially the time of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.
古代，古時（尤指古埃及、古希臘、古羅馬時期）
2>?things such as buildings, statues, or coins that were made in ancient times and have survived to the present day.?古跡;古建筑;古物
3>?The?antiquity?of something is its great age.古老；年代悠久

state failure? 國家滅亡

coincide?/?k???n?sa?d/
[intransitive]?(of two or more events)?to take place at the same time

contributed to
to be one of the causes of something

托馬斯·皮凱蒂（Thomas Piketty），1971年生于法國上塞納省。法國著名經濟學家，巴黎經濟學院教授，法國社會科學高等研究院研究主任，主要研究財富與收入不平等。

《21世紀資本論》法國經濟學家、巴黎經濟學院教授托馬斯·皮凱蒂對過去300年來歐美國家的財富收入做了詳盡探究，通過大量的歷史數據分析，旨在證明近幾十年來，不平等現象已經擴大，很快會變得更加嚴重。他認為，我們正在倒退回“承襲制資本主義”的年代。在這樣的制度下，經濟的制高點不僅由財富決定，還由繼承的財富決定，因而出身要比后天的努力和才能更重要。皮凱蒂指出，最富有的那批人不是因為勞動創(chuàng)造了財富，只是因為他們本來就富有。一句話：人生而不平等。由于資本回報率傾向于高于經濟增長率，貧富不均是資本主義固有的東西，所以要徹底鏟除經濟中的這種不平等現象，就需要在全球范圍內對富人征收累進稅來保護民主社會。

Walter Scheidel沃爾特沙伊德爾;

6 Past crises are a far cry from today’s difficulties. The Black Death compressed income gaps by dramatically reducing the ratio of workers to arable land. Even in the worst possible case, covid-19 will kill far fewer than the 30-60% of Europeans felled by bubonic plague. Stockmarkets could plunge again, but it is very unlikely that they will match the collapse of nearly 90% that took place between 1929 and 1932. Yet some comparisons can still be made. The debts racked up by governments during this pandemic will in some cases reach heights last seen during the world wars. When governments eventually balance the books—and especially if they reduce debt burdens via taxation, financial repression or debt restructuring—the wealthy could find themselves footing the bill.

a far cry? =remote
a very different experience from something??

arable?[??r?bl]adj. 適于耕種的；可開墾的
connected with growing crops such as?wheat

felled???
fell[fel]
1>?If trees?are felled, they are cut down.
2>? If you?fell?someone, you knock them down, for example in a fight.
砍伐，砍倒(樹木)? ? ??擊倒;打倒??

bubonic plague.? ?淋巴腺鼠疫
/bju??b?n?k ?ple?ɡ/(also?the plague)
?a disease spread by?rats?that causes a high temperature,?swellings?(= areas that are larger and rounder than usual)?on the body and usually death

racked up = accummulate?
?to collect something, such as profits or losses in a business, or points in a competition

reach heights

book 賬本
financial repression? ?經濟收縮（美聯(lián)儲的一種手段）
debt restructuring? 債務重組

footing the bill.? 為賬單付錢

Time for a redeal

redeal
重新發(fā)牌——>重新洗牌
deal /di?l/??發(fā)牌
to give cards to each player in a game of cards

7 Furthermore, the crisis could have indirect effects that influence the trajectory of inequality. In a critique of Mr Piketty’s arguments published in 2017 Marshall Steinbaum, now of the University of Utah, argued that the wars and the Depression of the 20th century mainly led to greater egalitarianism by discrediting ruling elites and the regressive policies that had enabled the rises in inequality in the first place. That created space for social democracy to bloom. Inequality fell not only because of higher taxes but also because of extensions to the welfare state.

trajectory? /tr??d?ekt?ri/? ?發(fā)展軌跡
the curved path of something that has been fired, hit or thrown into the air

critique? /kr??ti?k/? 評論文章
a piece of written criticism of a set of ideas, a work of art, etc.

egalitarianism? /i?ɡ?l??te?ri?n?z?m/? 平等主義
?the belief that everyone is equal and should have the same rights and opportunities

discrediting
? 聲譽受損
discredit/d?s?kred?t/
to make people stop respecting somebody/something

?regressive/r??ɡres?v/
1>??becoming or making something less advanced
2>??(specialist)?(of taxes)?having less effect on the rich than on the poor

?regressive?policies 累退稅政策
對窮人征收更高的稅，對富人征收的稅更少。（與累進稅相反）

in the first place
used at the end of a sentence to talk about why something was done or whether it should have been done or not
首先，從一開始;?壓根兒;?固;?當初;

extensions to the?welfare state.? ……的普及
welfare state.? 福利性國家

8 History need not repeat itself. Governments and economic systems of all kinds have struggled to manage the pandemic effectively and equitably. But it does not take much imagination to see that if politicians allow the costs of the pandemic to be borne unequally they could sow the seeds of a transformative populist backlash. They would do well to heed the lessons of the past.

equitably/?ekw?t?bli/??
?in a fair and reasonable way in which everyone is treated the same

backlash??/?b?kl??/n? 沖擊
a strong negative reaction by a large number of people, for example to something that has recently changed in society
backlash (from somebody)
backlash (against something)?

transformative populist? ?變革的民粹主義者

? populist? ?/?p?pj?l?st/??
believing in or supporting?populism?(= a type of politics that claims to represent the opinions and wishes of ordinary people)

transformative?
[?tr?ns'f?:m?t?v]? ?
adj.有改革能力的，變化的，變形的;

heed?/hi?d/? =notice
to pay careful attention to somebody’s advice or warning

民粹主義（populism），又譯平民主義，是在19世紀的俄國興起的一股社會思潮。民粹主義的基本理論包括：極端強調平民群眾的價值和理想，把平民化和大眾化作為所有政治運動和政治制度合法性的最終來源；依靠平民大眾對社會進行激進改革，并把普通群眾當作政治改革的唯一決定性力量；通過強調諸如平民的統(tǒng)一、全民公決、人民的創(chuàng)制權等民粹主義價值，對平民大眾從整體上實施有效的控制和操縱。

大危機在人的一生中往往僅會遇到一次，決策者缺乏經驗，又總是面臨民粹主義、狹隘的民族主義和經濟問題政治化這三座大山，政治家往往被短期民意綁架、被政治程序鎖定和不敢突破意識形態(tài)束縛，這是普遍的行為模式，這一點在希臘危機中表現得最為明顯。