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Until fairly recently economists envisaged three stages of economic development.
直到不久前，经济学家还认为经济发展分成三个阶段。
First, there was the stage of capital accumulation started by the industrial revolution. The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm called it the age of capital. Society saved a large part of its income to invest in capital equipment. The world gradually filled up with capital goods.
首先是工业革命开启的资本积累阶段。马克思主义历史学家艾瑞克•霍布斯鲍姆(Eric Hobsbawm)将之称为资本时代。社会将很大一部分收入储蓄起来用于投资资本设备。世界上的资本品逐渐多了起来。
This stage, economists thought, would be followed by the age of consumption, in which people began realising the fruits of their previous frugality. They would save less and consume more, as the returns to new investment fell and the possibilities of consumption expanded.
经济学家认为，资本时代之后将是消费时代。在消费时代，人们开始收获他们此前勤俭节约的成果。随着新投资的回报率下降和消费的可能性加大，他们会减少储蓄并增加消费。
Then would come the third and final stage, the age of abundance. With a surfeit of consumption goods, people would start swapping greater consumption for greater leisure. The world of work would recede. This was supposed to be the end point of the economic phase of history.
随后就是第三个、也是最后一个阶段：富足时代。由于消费品变得极大丰富，人们开始更多地休闲，而不是更多地消费。大量工作将会消亡。这被认为是经济发展阶段的终点。
Much of the world has not yet reached the age of consumption.
世界上有很大一部分地区如今还未发展到消费时代。
The Chinese, for example, still save and invest on a colossal scale. Our problem is that western societies remain stuck in the age of consumption. We are much, much richer than we were 100 years ago, but hours of work have not fallen nearly as much as productivity has risen, and we go on consuming more than ever. We seem unable to say "enough is enough". Why not?
例如，中国人仍在大规模地储蓄和投资。我们的问题在于，西方社会依然囿于消费时代。与100年前相比，我们现在要富有得多得多，但工作时间的降幅却比生产率的增幅小不少，我们的消费规模比以往任何时候都大。我们似乎不会说"适可而止"这个词。这是为什么呢？
One starting point to answering this question might be Keynes' futuristic essayEconomic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, published in 1930. In this essay he predicted that by now we would only need to work 15 hours a week "to satisfy the old Adam in us". The rest would be leisure time. What did he get wrong?
要回答这一问题，可能需要从凯恩斯发表于1930年的未来派著作《我们子孙后代的经济可能性》(Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren)说起。凯恩斯在这一著作中预言，到现在这个时候我们每周只需工作15小时"来满足我们的本能需求"，剩下的则是休闲时间。他的预言到底错在哪里？
We can concede straight away that the earlier economists, taking their cue from the privations around them, suffered from a certain poverty of imagination. They thought in terms of quantities: you can eat only so much food, have so many pairs of shoes, live in so many houses, drive so many cars. They failed to allow for continued improvement in the quality of goods, which stimulates the appetite for serial consumption, and so keeps up the hours of work.
我们当然可以承认，早期经济学家的思路受当时物质产品匮乏的限制，在某种程度上缺乏想象力。他们是从数量上考虑问题：你只能吃这么多食物，穿这么多鞋，住这么多房子，开这么多汽车。他们未能考虑到商品质量的持续改善，而这种改善会刺激持续消费的欲望，使得人们无法减少工作时间。
But we must not concede too much under this head. Many improvements are negligible and, even when positive, consumers are constantly seduced by advertisers into over-estimating their benefits – as with the wonderful effects of all those innovative financial products.
但我们决不能认为全部答案就在于此。许多改善其实无足轻重，即便有些改善有积极作用，消费者也往往会被广告商忽悠得高估了它们的益处——比如那种种金融创新产品的神奇效果。
A more serious charge is that many of the older generation of economists underestimated insatiability. Having more seems to make us want more, or different. This is partly because we are by nature restless and easily bored. But it is mainly because wants are relative, not absolute: the grass is always greener on the other side. The richer we become, the more we feel our relative poverty.
更为严肃的解释是，许多老一辈的经济学家低估了人类贪得无厌的本性。我们拥有得越多，似乎就越想要更多的东西，越想要我们手中没有的东西。这在一定程度上归因于我们躁动和容易喜新厌旧的天性。但主要原因是，需要是相对的，而非绝对的：总是这山望着那山高。我们越有钱，就越觉得比别人穷。
There is a third factor, however, for which the earlier economists can't really be blamed. They were not egalitarians, but they did think that growing prosperity would lift up all boats. They did not foresee that the rich would race ahead of everyone else, capturing most of the fruits of increased productivity. (Karl Marx is the main exception here.)
然而，这里面还有第三个原因，而这个原因不能完全归咎于早期的经济学家。他们并非平等主义者，但他们的确认为，只有不断发展经济，才能让所有人过上好日子。他们没有预判到，富人会跑赢其他所有人，将生产率提高的绝大部分果实收入囊中。（在对这个问题的预判上，卡尔•马克思(Karl Marx)是个明显的例外。）
The result has been to leave big holes in our consumption society. A lot of people still do not have enough for a good life. In Britain, 13m households, 21 per cent of the total, live below the official poverty line. There is a lot of underconsumption going on relative to what society is producing. Earlier socialists called it "poverty in the midst of plenty".
结果就是，我们的消费社会出现了巨大的漏洞。许多人仍没有足够的财富过上好日子。在英国，1300万百姓生活在官方制定的贫困线之下，占到总人口的21%。与社会产出相比，社会消费明显不足。早期的社会主义者将此称为"丰裕中的贫困"。
