真实的美国：美国穷人的日子不好过

How Expensive It Is to Be Poor

美国穷人的日子不好过

Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center released a study that found that most wealthy Americans believed “poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.”

本月早些时候，皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)发布的一份研究报告发现，多数富有的美国人相信“现在的穷人日子很好过，因为他们什么都不用做就能拿到政府的救济”。

This is an infuriatingly obtuse view of what it means to be poor in this country — the soul-rending omnipresence of worry and fear, of weariness and fatigue. This can be the view only of those who have not known — or have long forgotten — what poverty truly means.

这种对美国穷人的愚蠢看法令人怒火中烧——那种撕心裂肺、无所不在的担忧和恐惧，那疲惫和倦怠。只有那些不知道——或者早已忘记——什么才是真正的贫穷的人，才会这样看。

“Easy” is a word not easily spoken among the poor. Things are hard — the times are hard, the work is hard, the way is hard. “Easy” is for uninformed explanations issued by the willfully callous and the haughtily blind.

“好过”不是穷人轻易说得出口的词。日子不好过——世道艰难，工作艰难，路途艰难。“好过”，是那些任性的冷血动物和傲慢的瞎子想出来的无知解释。

Allow me to explain, as James Baldwin put it, a few illustrations of “how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

用詹姆斯·鲍德温(James Baldwin)的话说，容我解释一下为什么说“做一个穷人是代价高昂的”。

First, many poor people work, but they just don’t make enough to move out of poverty — an estimated 11 million Americans fall into this category.

首先，很多穷人是有工作的，但收入就是不足以让他们摆脱贫困——约1100万美国人属于这个情况。

So, as the Pew report pointed out, “more than half of the least secure group reports receiving at least one type of means-tested government benefit.”

因此，正如皮尤的报告所指出的，“生活最缺乏保障的群体中，超过半数的人在接受至少一种需要通过经济状况调查的政府救济。”

And yet, whatever the poor earn is likely to be more heavily taxed than the earnings of wealthier citizens, according to a new analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. As The New York Times put it last week:

而且，据税收与经济政策研究所(Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy)的最新分析报告，不管穷人挣到多少钱，税负恐怕都要比富有的国民更重。正如《纽约时报》上周的文章所说：

“According to the study, in 2015 the poorest fifth of Americans will pay on average 10.9 percent of their income in state and local taxes, the middle fifth will pay 9.4 percent and the top 1 percent will average 5.4 percent.”

“根据该研究，2015年最穷的五分之一美国人平均需要将收入的10.9%用于缴纳州和地方税，中间的五分之一需要缴9.4%，最富有的1%平均缴纳5.4%。”

In addition, many low-income people are “unbanked” (not served by a financial institution), and thus nearly eaten alive by exorbitant fees. As the St. Louis Federal Reserve pointed out in 2010:

此外，很多低收入者“没有银行账户”，也就得不到金融机构的服务，因此要活活被过高的费用吞噬。正如圣路易斯联储(St. Louis Federal Reserve)在2010年指出的：

“Unbanked consumers spend approximately 2.5 to 3 percent of a government benefits check and between 4 percent and 5 percent of payroll check just to cash them. Additional dollars are spent to purchase money orders to pay routine monthly expenses. When you consider the cost for cashing a bi-weekly payroll check and buying about six money orders each month, a household with a net income of $20,000 may pay as much as $1,200 annually for alternative service fees — substantially more than the expense of a monthly checking account.”

“无银行账户的消费者仅为了兑现支票就要用去政府救济金的约2.5%到3%、薪水的4%到5%。另外还要花钱购买汇票，用于支付每月的固定开支。一周两次兑现支票，每个月买大概六张汇票，想像一下一个净收入2万美元(约合人民币12.4万元)的家庭每年要另外支付1200美元的服务费——比按月结单的活期账户的费用高出很多。”

Even when low-income people can become affiliated with a bank, those banks are increasingly making them pay “steep rates for loans and high fees on basic checking accounts,” as The Times’s DealBook blog put it last year.

时报“交易录”(DealBook)博客去年说过，即便低收入者可以在银行开户，银行也会越来越多地收取“过高的贷款利息和高昂的基础活期账户费用”。

And poor people can have a hard time getting credit. As The Washington Post put it, the excesses of the subprime boom have led conventional banks to stay away from the riskiest borrowers, leaving them “all but cut off from access to big loans, like mortgages.”

穷人很难拿到贷款。如《华盛顿邮报》(The Washington Post)所说，次级贷款的过度发展导致传统银行对高风险的贷款人避之不及，因而这些人“基本上无缘房贷这样的大额借贷”。

One way to move up the ladder and out of poverty is through higher education, but even that is not without disproportionate costs. As the Institute for College Access and Success noted in March:

接受更高等的教育也是一个提升地位、摆脱贫困的途径，但连这方面的成本都是不对等的。大学入学及成功学会(Institute for College Access and Success)曾在三月指出：

“Graduates who received Pell Grants, most of whom had family incomes under $40,000, were much more likely to borrow and to borrow more. Among graduating seniors who ever received a Pell Grant, 88 percent had student loans in 2012, with an average of $31,200 per borrower. In contrast, 53 percent of those who never received a Pell Grant had debt, with an average of $26,450 per borrower.”

“领取佩尔助学金(Pell Grant)的毕业生家庭收入大多在4万美元以下，他们更有可能去贷款，贷款额也更高。在得到佩尔助学金的毕业年级学生中，88%的学生在2012年有学生贷款，单个借贷者的平均贷款额为31200万美元。相比之下，从未接受佩尔助学金的学生中，有债务的占53%，平均贷款额为26450美元。”

And often, work or school requires transportation, which can be another outrageous expense. According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights:

而工作或上学时常会产生交通费用，那将是又一笔巨额开支。据公民和人权领导人大会(Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights)的报告：

“Low- and moderate-income households spend 42 percent of their total annual income on transportation, including those who live in rural areas, as compared to middle-income households, who spend less than 22 percent of their annual income on transportation.”

“中低收入家庭的年收入中有42%用于交通，包括生活在乡村地区的人，相比之下中等收入家庭的年收入有22%用于交通。”

And besides, having a car can make prime targets of the poor. One pernicious practice that the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. — and the protests that followed — resurfaced was the degree to which some local municipalities profit from police departments targeting poor communities, with a raft of stops, fines, summonses and arrests supported by police actions and complicit courts.

还有，拥有一辆车也可能导致穷人首当其冲成为政府执法的目标。在密苏里州弗格森发生迈克尔·布朗(Michael Brown)被枪杀事件及之后的抗议活动中，一种恶毒的做法再度进入人们视线，那就是在警察行动和法院串谋的支持下，警察局针对穷人社区采取大规模的截查、罚款、传唤和逮捕措施，令一些地方政府获利颇丰。

As NPR reported in August:

正如全国公共广播电台(NPR)在八月的报道所说：

“In 2013, the municipal court in Ferguson — a city of 21,135 people — issued 32,975 arrest warrants for nonviolent offenses, mostly driving violations.”

“2013年，弗格森市法院签发了32975份针对非暴力违法行为的逮捕令，多数是违章驾驶——该市人口为21135人。”