亿万富翁的钱从哪来，怎么花
邪恶博士(Dr. Evil)坐在一张桌子旁，一边盯着屏幕，一边把小指头伸向嘴角，宣布他要向这个世界索要100万美元的赎金。这个由演员迈克·迈尔斯(Mike Myers)创造的滑稽反派人物在被低温冷冻了30年之后苏醒过来，当被告知100万美元在1997年不算很多钱时，他感到十分震惊。
Trying to regain his composure, he turns to the screen, voice cracking with uncertainty, and says, “OK then, we hold the world ransom for $100 billion.”
他竭力恢复镇定，转向屏幕，声音有些颤抖，带着点不确定说道，“那好吧，我们向这个世界索要1000亿美元赎金。”
Twenty years after the movie “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” was released, billions of dollars aren’t what they used to be, either.
影片《王牌大间谍》(Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery)已经上映20年，数十亿美元也不像过去那么值钱了。
Bill Gates alone is just $10 billion shy of Dr. Evil’s ransom demand, according to a soon-to-be-released list of the world’s top 10 billionaires by Wealth-X, a financial research firm. Gates, the Microsoft founder, tops the list at $89.3 billion, followed by his friend Warren Buffett at $73.5 billion.
财务研究公司Wealth-X即将发布的世界十大亿万富翁排行榜显示，仅比尔·盖茨(Bill Gates)一个人的财富，距离邪恶博士的要价也就只差100亿美元而已。这位微软创始人以893亿美元位居该榜单首位，紧随其后的是他的朋友、拥有735亿美元财富的沃伦·巴菲特(Warren Buffett)。
The top 10 — nine from the United States, one from Spain — have a combined net worth of $582 billion. While their wealth would certainly be enough to save the world from Dr. Evil, what they do with it in real life is the subject of great interest and debate.
前十位亿万富翁——九名来自美国，一名来自西班牙——的财富净值合计5820亿美元。尽管这些人的财富肯定够将世界从邪恶博士的手中拯救出来，但他们在现实生活中如何运用自己的财富是一个备受关注和有争议的话题。
That is true now more than ever. Issues around money — like wealth inequality and talk of tax cuts for the rich — are among the hottest topics of the day. And the richest president in history is sitting in the Oval Office, with billionaires sprinkled throughout his Cabinet.
在今天尤其是这样。有关金钱的议题——比如贫富悬殊和为富裕阶层减税——都属于当今最热门的话题。有史以来最富有的美国总统正坐在椭圆形办公室里，他的内阁成员也有不少是亿万富翁。
To some, today’s billionaires are like Dr. Evil: selfish, rapacious and bent on world domination. To others, billionaires are worthy of respect for having put their names and fortunes behind an array of philanthropic endeavors, many aimed at improving the lives of people at the very base of the wealth pyramid.
对有些人来说，如今的亿万富翁就像邪恶博士一样：自私、贪婪，一心要主宰这个世界。而在另一些人看来，亿万富翁值得尊敬，因为他们将自己的名字和财富投入到一系列慈善事业中，有许多人致力于改善财富金字塔最底端人群的生活。
There were 2,473 billionaires in the world, as of Wealth-X’s last count through 2015. That was a 6.4 percent increase in billionaires from the year before.
截止Wealth-X2015年最近一次统计之时，世界上有2473名亿万富翁，比前一年的数量增长了6.4%。
But who these billionaires are and what they’re like is more difficult to discern. Many may seem as ordinary as the guy sitting next to you on the train — or in Michael Bloomberg’s case, standing beside you on the subway, when he was mayor of New York. (Bloomberg is No. 9 on Wealth-X’s list.)
但要分辨这些亿万富翁真实和表面的样子，更加困难。有许多看起来就跟火车上坐在你旁边的家伙一样普通——或者像布隆伯格(Bloomberg)那样，在地铁里站在你旁边，当时他还是纽约市长。(布隆伯格在Wealth-X的名单上排名第九。)
There are certainly billionaires who want to save the world, like Gates, Buffett and Bloomberg, who have pledged to give their fortunes away. Others in the top 10 are also philanthropic but are still focusing on their day jobs, like Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Larry Page of Alphabet (the parent of Google) — Nos. 4, 5 and 10.
肯定有盖茨、巴菲特和布隆伯格这样想要拯救世界的亿万富翁，他们承诺捐赠自己的财富。前十位中的其他亿万富翁也参与慈善，不过他们仍然将主要精力放在自己的日常工作上，比如亚马逊(Amazon)的杰夫·贝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)、Facebook的马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)，以及Google母公司字母表公司(Alphabet)的拉里·佩奇(Larry Page)——分别排名第四、第五和第十。
Yet many of the billionaires beyond the top 10 or 20 have a much lower profile. Who outside of finance or hockey knew of Vincent Viola, a former oil trader and current owner of the Florida Panthers, before President Donald Trump nominated him to be secretary of the Army? Now that he has withdrawn, he can return to relative anonymity.
然而，排在前10或前20之外的许多亿万富翁要低调得多。在被唐纳德·特朗普总统提名为陆军部长之前，金融或冰球界之外有谁知道文森特·维奥拉(Vincent Viola)?他之前是一名石油商人，现为佛罗里达美洲豹队(Florida Panthers)的所有人。现在他已经选择退出了，又可以回归相对的默默无闻。
For that matter, Wilbur L. Ross, Trump’s choice for commerce secretary, is the wealthiest of the president’s billionaire cabinet picks. He would pop up in the headlines every few years for a deal he was making but then return to what could be called the quiet opulence of the billionaire class.
说到这一点，被特朗普选中担任商务部长的威尔伯·L·罗斯(Wilbur L. Ross)是总统内阁人选中最富有的亿万富翁。每隔几年，他就会因为正在进行的交易出现在新闻头条中，但接着便回归到富豪阶层的低调奢华状态。
“We know that things are quite different for a billionaire individual or a billionaire family than they are for even a very wealthy ultra-high-net-worth family,” said Belinda Sneddon, national practice executive in the family office group at U.S. Trust.
“我们知道跟其他人——哪怕是特别富有的超高净值家庭——相比，亿万富翁个人或家族的情况是非常不一样的，”美国信托公司(U.S. Trust)家族办公室全国业务主管贝琳达·斯内登(Belinda Sneddon)说。
“They’re different in how they can invest their assets and what their portfolio may look like,” Sneddon said. “In many ways, they face different risks, both personal risks and cyber risks, than the average individual does. They often think about structuring decisions differently from a succession-planning standpoint as well as the structure they create around themselves and their family.”
“在如何投资自己的资产和选择什么样的投资组合上，他们有所不同，”斯内登说。“从许多方面讲，他们面临的风险都与普通人不一样，不管是就个人风险还是网络风险而言。在考虑结构性决策时，他们往往想法有别，既要从接班人规划的角度看问题，也要围绕自身和家族利益搭建架构。”
But billionaires are as different from one another as members of any other economic group. How they amassed their billions, and how that pile is growing, tells a lot about the economy today.
但与其他任何经济群体一样，亿万富翁彼此之间的差别也很大。从他们如何积聚数百亿美元财富，这财富如何增长，可以看出当下经济的许多问题。
Road to Billions
通往亿万财富的道路
Just as the best teacher in the country is going to earn less money than a mediocre investment banker, the industries in which future billionaires begin their careers determine the magnitude of their wealth and how quickly it is going to grow.
这个国家最好的老师也不会比一名普通的投资银行家赚得多，未来亿万富翁在什么行业起步，决定了他们能拥有多大规模的财富，以及这财富能以多快的速度增长。
Six of the top 10 billionaires made their money in technology. But in Wealth-X’s research, technology ranks sixth overall for the number of billionaires on the list, with 114 around the world.
在排名前十的亿万富翁中，有六人是在科技行业获得了财富。但Wealth-X的研究发现，在上榜的所有亿万富翁中，处在科技行业的在全世界有114人，是人数第六多的行业。
Finance has created the most billionaires, with 377, or 15 percent of the world’s billionaires. It is followed by industrial conglomerates, with 317, or 13 percent.
金融业产生了最多的亿万富翁，有377人，占世界上所有亿万富翁的15%。第二多是工业集团，有317人，占13%。
After that, the concentration in particular industries drops. Real estate is third with 141. The group of people who identify their industry as nonprofits (meaning they made their money some other way or inherited it) is fourth, with 122. Manufacturing, in fifth place, has 120.
在此之下，特定行业的集中度有所下降。房地产业以141人位居第三。自认为处在非营利行业的群体(意味着他们是通过其他方式获得财富，或者是继承)排在第四位，有122人。制造业排第五，有120人。
“Globalization has been a big trend,” said Benjamin Kinnard, a research analyst at Wealth-X. “The market is now 7 billion people, not just the size of your domestic country.”
“全球化一直是个大趋势，”Wealth-X的研究分析师本杰明·金纳德(Benjamin Kinnard)说。“这个市场现在有70亿人，不只是你所在国家的规模。”
He added that finance had a bigger lead in first place several years ago, but it has been losing ground as industries like technology boom.
他还表示，前几年金融的领先优势更大，但随着科技等行业繁荣起来，这种优势便逐渐减弱。
And while billionaires in the United States are often better known than those elsewhere, there are more billionaires in Europe (although they have less total wealth than their U.S. counterparts).
尽管相比其他地方，美国的亿万富翁往往更为人所知，但欧洲的亿万富翁总数更多(不过他们的财富总额少于美国的亿万富翁)。
Asia is gaining ground quickly. Research from UBS calculated that a new billionaire is created every three days in Asia, with 65 percent of the region’s billionaires in China.
亚洲在快速赶上。据瑞银(UBS)估算，亚洲每三天就诞生一名新的亿万富翁，而该地区65%的亿万富翁集中在中国。
While the number of billionaires in China is rising at a fast clip, the pace of growth in billionaires worldwide is slowing. Wealth-X said the number will be 3,250 by 2020, down 16 percent from an earlier prediction of 3,873. This is because economic growth is expected to slow around the world.
尽管中国亿万富翁的数量在快速增长，但全球亿万富翁的增长速度却在减慢。Wealth-X表示，至2020年，全球亿万富翁数量将达到3250人，比早年预计的3873人少16%。这是因为全球经济增长预计将放缓。
And not all billionaires are household names.
上榜的亿万富翁并非全都家喻户晓。
Ma Jianrong, executive chairman of Shenzhou International Group Holdings, which is the leading textile company in China and manufactures clothing for Nike, Adidas, Puma and Uniqlo, is worth $4.3 billion.
身家43亿美元的申洲国际集团控股有限公司执行董事长马建荣就不太为人所知。他的公司是中国领先的纺织企业，为耐克(Nike)、阿迪达斯(Adidas)、彪马(Puma)和优衣库(Uniqlo)加工服装。
Kevin Systrom, chief executive of Instagram, is surely well known in Silicon Valley — and among students at Stanford University (his alma mater) who want to emulate his route to a net worth of $1.2 billion by age 33. But he is not as recognizable as Zuckerberg of Facebook.
Instagram首席执行官凯文·斯特罗姆(Kevin Systrom)在硅谷肯定是大名鼎鼎——那些想要像他一样在33岁获得12亿美元资本净值的斯坦福大学(他的母校)校友也都知道他。但他不像Facebook的扎克伯格那样广为人知。
What is expected of people who have more money than they could spend in several lifetimes? It depends on whom you ask.
对于钱多得几辈子也花不完的人，我们该期待些什么?答案取决于你问的是谁。
A recent report from Oxfam International, the antipoverty charity, argued that eight billionaires had as much wealth as half of the world’s population — or 3.6 billion people — and that that was a travesty.
反贫困慈善组织乐施会国际联会(Oxfam International)最近发布的一份报告称，八名亿万富翁拥有的财富与全世界一半人口——或说36亿人——的财富相当，这是一个莫大的讽刺。
“It is obscene for so much wealth to be held in the hands of so few when one in 10 people survive on less than $2 a day,” Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam, said in a statement. “Inequality is trapping hundreds of millions in poverty. It is fracturing our societies and undermining democracy.”
“每10个人里就有1个人仍以平均每天不足2美元的钱过活，在这样的情况下，有如此多的财富掌握在如此少的人手中，让人难以接受，”乐施会执行总干事温妮·比扬依玛(Winnie Byanyima)在一份声明中表示。“不平等正在令数亿人陷入贫困。它在撕裂我们的社会，在破坏民主。”
Philanthropy has become important to many billionaires, and not just through the Giving Pledge, Buffett’s compact to get the wealthiest to give away at least half of their fortunes. Nor is it confined to the United States, with its tradition of charitable giving.
对许多亿万富翁而言，慈善正变得重要起来。出现这种趋势，不只是因为巴菲特让最富裕人群捐赠至少一半财富的协议“赠予誓言”(Giving Pledge)的影响，也不局限于有慈善捐赠传统的美国。
But there are limits to what even a billionaire can do. Bloomberg, in an interview in 2014, recalled the time he was approached at a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, by a hedge fund manager offering him $1 billion over five years to change public education in New York.
但一个人的能力是有限的，哪怕他是个亿万富翁。布隆伯格曾在2014年接受采访时回忆，在爱达荷州太阳谷举办的一个会议上，有一名对冲基金经理走到他面前，表示想在五年里提供10亿美元资金，用于改善纽约的公共教育。
“When I explained to him that New York City’s annual school budget was $22 billion a year,” Bloomberg said, “that was the last time we ever heard from him.”
“当我向他解释纽约每年的学校预算是220亿美元时，”布隆伯格说，“他再也没跟我们联系过。”
