BILLIONAIRES HAVE never exactly been popular, but today they are loathed(被憎恨). Politicians in America’s Congress talk about them far more than ever before, usually to decry(公开谴责) their ill-gotten gains(不义之财) or their malign(有害的；恶意的) influence on politics, or to insist that their wealth needs taxing (see chart 1). Fundraising emails from Democrats are three times as likely to mention billionaires—and almost always negatively—as they were in 2024, according to Andrew Hall of Stanford University. “Every billionaire is a policy failure” is a common cry from the left, linking members of the ten-figure club with a rigged(被操纵的) economy and social decay.
亿万富翁从来就不怎么受欢迎，但如今他们更是遭到憎恨。美国国会的政客们谈论他们的频率远超以往，通常是为了谴责其不义之财或对政治的恶劣影响，或者坚称他们的财富需要征税（见图表1）。斯坦福大学的安德鲁·霍尔表示，民主党人的筹款邮件中提到亿万富翁的可能性是2024年的三倍，而且几乎总是负面的。“每个亿万富翁都是政策失败”是左派的常见口号，将十位数俱乐部的成员与操纵的经济和社会衰败联系起来。
Yet just as politicians think they have hit on(偶然发现；想到) a winning message, something unexpected is happening. More and more billionaires derive(获得；源自) their wealth not from accidents of birth or from gaming the system(钻制度空子), but by providing useful goods and services and by employing thousands of people. Perhaps billionaires are still policy failures—but to a lesser extent than before.
然而，就在政客们以为自己找到了制胜口号之际，一些意想不到的事情正在发生。越来越多的亿万富翁的财富并非来自出身偶然或钻制度空子，而是通过提供有用的商品和服务以及雇佣成千上万的人。也许亿万富翁仍然是政策失败——但程度比以前轻了。
Many billionaires are unquestionably sketchy(可疑的；不靠谱的). John D. Rockefeller, probably the first person in history whose net worth(净资产) crossed $1bn (and in the prices of the early 20th century), was a genius. But his company, Standard Oil, also took advantage of weak competition laws, and probably gave out plenty of bribes, to stack the deck(暗中操纵局面) in its favour. The oligarchs(寡头) who emerged in Russia in the 1990s seized state assets during a period of violent chaos. And dodgy(狡猾的；不可靠的) wealth is a satirist’s dream: C. Montgomery Burns(《辛普森一家》中的反派角色), in “The Simpsons”, skimps on(在……上节省；偷工减料) safety at his nuclear plant to cut costs.
许多亿万富翁无疑是有问题的。约翰·D·洛克菲勒，可能是历史上第一个净资产超过10亿美元的人（按20世纪初的价格计算），是个天才。但他的公司标准石油也利用了薄弱的竞争法，并可能行贿无数，以操纵局面使其对自己有利。1990年代在俄罗斯出现的寡头们在暴力混乱时期攫取了国有资产。而可疑的财富是讽刺作家的梦想：《辛普森一家》中的C·蒙哥马利·伯恩斯为了削减成本，在他的核电站里偷工减料，忽视安全。
