美国已经破产！大地360

Author PragrU字幕组

美国已经破产！ | 文字稿

I’m here to collect your $600,000 share of the national debt!
我是来讨你的那份 60 万国债的！

“What! We don’t have $600,000!
「什么！我们没有 60 万！」

I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to your baby.
我不是跟你说，我是跟你宝宝说。

Have a nice life.
人生愉快。

This isn’t a made-up horror story. It’s real. It is the unpaid credit card bill our kids and our grandkids are facing—money they didn’t spend but will have to pay.
这不是虚构的恐怖故事。这是真的。这就是我们孩子和我们孙子要面对的未偿还信用卡账单——他们没有花但是要还的钱。

The Democrats point their finger at the Republicans. The Republicans point back at the Democrats. The truth is that the politicians of both parties have brought us to the edge of this financial cliff.
民主党指责共和党。共和党反过来指责民主党。事实是两党的政客一起把我们带到了财政悬崖的边缘。

They say they’re spending all this money with the best of intentions: the trillions are needed to end hunger and reduce inequality; provide everyone with free health care; and save the planet from global warming.
他们说他们花这些钱是出于最好的意图：我们需要这几万亿来终结饥馑和减少不平等；给所有人提供免费医保；拯救地球于全球暖化。

But there is no way around the simple math. You can’t spend what you don’t have—not indefinitely. Debts have to be repaid.
但你没办法绕过简单的数学。你不能花你没有的东西——不能无限期地。债务必须偿还。

We’ve been sweeping this problem under the proverbial rug for decades, but now we’re running out of rug.
数十年来我们一直对这个明显的问题置若罔闻，但如今我们再也无法忽视。

During the year of the Covid crisis, a Republican president, Donald Trump, approved a massive increase in government spending. His reasoning went like this: We shut down the economy. We have to help people out.
在新冠危机这一年，共和党总统唐纳德·川普批准大幅提高政府支出。他这么说他的理由：我们关停了经济，我们必须帮人们一把。

Did he go too far? Maybe, but just about everyone agreed something had to be done.
他做得太过火了吗？也许吧，但几乎每个人都同意必须做点什么。

Then, Joe Biden, a Democrat president, entered the White House and called for $1.9 trillion in additional spending—even though one trillion of the previous Covid relief money had not yet been spent, and even though the economy was already well on the way to recovering.
之后，乔·拜登，一名民主党总统，入主白宫并要求增加 1.9 万亿支出——即便之前的一万亿新冠救济金都还没花出去，即便经济已经有望开始复苏。

Then the new President quickly asked for another $1.1 trillion for “infrastructure”, which used to mean projects like roads, bridges, and airports, but now includes giveaways like electric car charging stations for Tesla owners. By the way, 19 Republican Senators joined the Democrats. Nobody is blameless.
新总统很快又要求另外 1.1 万亿「基础设施」支出，它通常指的是道路、桥梁、机场等项目，但如今包括免费为特斯拉车主提供电动车充电站。顺便一提，19 名共和党参议员同意民主党。没人可以免于指责。

But, wait—that only turned out to be President Biden's opening bid. He put another $3.5 trillion in spending on the table for a whole slew of goodies: free child-care, free community college, student loan forgiveness, expanded Medicare and Medicaid, vast subsidies for “green” technology, and on and on.
且慢，这原来只是拜登总统的首次开价。他又提出了另外 3.5 万亿支出，用来发放一大堆好处：免费儿童保育、免费社区大学、学生债务赦免、医疗保险与医疗补助扩张，大幅补贴「绿色」科技，等等等等。

Add all this extra spending and you arrive at $6 trillion dollars. Yes, that’s a six with 12 zeroes after it.
所有这些额外支出加起来是整整 6 万亿美元。没错，6 之后接 12 个 0。

This is a level of spending we have never seen before.
这是我们前所未有的支出水平。

The numbers are so big, it’s impossible to grasp. But to offer a little perspective consider this.
数字大得无法理解。为了有个简单概念，不妨这么想。

$6 trillion is more money (adjusted for inflation) than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Louisiana Purchase, the Transcontinental Railroad, the Interstate highway system, and the Moon Landing combined.
6 万亿美金（经通胀调整）比我们在革命战争、南北战争、一战、二战、路易斯安那购地、州际铁路、州际高速公路系统和登月加起来的花费还要多。

Normally, we borrow money as a nation during a period of crisis. Then, when the crisis ends, we start to pay down the debt.
通常情况下，我们在危机时期作为一个国家借钱。然后，等危机结束，我们就开始偿还债务。

What the Progressive Left wants to do is launch the biggest spending spree in American history—after the crisis is over!
进步左派想做的是发动美国史上最大的支出狂潮——在危机结束后！

What’s looming ahead, however, is a new crisis: a nuclear-sized debt bomb. Our multi-trillion dollar national debt was bad enough before all this proposed spending.
然而，前方潜伏的是一场新的危机：一个债务核弹。我们原本的数万亿美元国债已经够糟了，现在又提出这些支出。

But, progressive politicians and some economists tell us we have nothing to worry about. All we need to do is tax the rich! But there aren’t enough millionaires and billionaires to pay this kind of bill. Or they say, as long as China keeps buying up our debt we're fine. We can spend all we want.
但是，进步派政客和一些经济学家跟我们说根本不用担心。我们要做的就是向富人征税！但没有足够的百万富翁和亿万富翁来为这些账单买单。他们又说，只要中国继续买我们的国债就没问题。我们想怎么花都行。

But do we really want to be in debt to the Chinese for trillions of dollars? They aren't exactly our best friend.
但我们真的想欠中国人几万亿美元吗？他们算不上我们最好的朋友。

And what if there is so much debt, the Chinese and other nations can’t buy all of it, even if they wanted to.
那如果国债实在太多，中国和其他国家即便想也不能全部买下来？

You know what happens then?
你知道那时会发生什么吗？

The US government is forced to buy its own debt. This just means we print money to pay our bills. If your common sense tells you that’s crazy, that’s because it is.
美国政府被迫买自己的债。这就意味着我们要印钱来付我们的账单。如果你的常识告诉你这太疯狂了，因为它确实疯狂。

If printing money could make a nation rich, then Argentina, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe would be among the richest nations in the world.
如果印钱可以让一个国家富裕，那阿根廷、委内瑞拉和津巴布韦会是世界上最富裕的国家。

You don’t have to be an economist to know that printing money is the perfect recipe for serious inflation.
你不用是经济学家也知道印钱是严重通胀的完美诱因。

And inflation is a prosperity killer. It shrinks what you can buy with your paycheck, and it eats away at your savings.
而通胀会扼杀繁荣。它减少你工资所能购买的东西，还会蚕食你的积蓄。

In the 1970s prices rose so fast that the economy crashed and unemployment soared. Things were so bad economists created a misery index: inflation plus unemployment, and that hit 20%.
在 1970 年，价格上涨得如此之快，以致经济崩溃，失业率飙升。情况糟糕到经济学家创建了一个痛苦指数：通胀加上失业率，而它达到了 20%。

And today, prices for everything, from gas to food, are on the rise again.
今天，所有东西的价格，从汽油到食品，又在上升了。

Once inflation gets going, it’s hard to stop.
一旦通胀开始，就难以停止。

Runaway inflation leads to financial ruin.
通胀失控会导致财政崩溃。

This is what happened after World War I in Germany, for example. The debts were so high and the currency so debased that women had to bring wheel barrels full of bills to the grocery store to pay for food.
举个例子，这就是一战后德国所发生的情况。债务如此之高，货币贬值如此历害，以至于妇女要带一手推车钞票去杂货店买食物。

And we know where that led.
我们也知道后来发生了什么。

If that’s not the future we want for our kids, we need to stop the wild spending and defuse the debt bomb.
如果我们不想这是我们孩子的未来，我们必须停止这疯狂的支出并拆除债务炸弹。

The sooner, the better.
越早越好。

I'm Stephen Moore, economist at FreedomWorks, for Prager University.

我是史蒂芬·摩尔，Freedom Works 的经济学家，为 PragerU 制作。