| 双语新闻 Bilingual News | 双语对照阅读 分级系列阅读 智能辅助阅读 在线英语学习 |
|
| 双语新闻 Bilingual News | 双语对照阅读 分级系列阅读 智能辅助阅读 在线英语学习 |
| [英文] [中文] [双语对照] [双语交替] [] |
| Kat Johnston didn’t expect the pandemic to make her less stressed about her finances. After all, she temporarily lost her job at the library where she worked full time. But, like many Americans, she found an unexpected reprieve from money worries: Months at home limited her spending, and she received expanded unemployment insurance and two one-time checks from the government. | 凯特·约翰斯顿没想到疫情会减轻她的财务压力。毕竟，她暂时失去了在图书馆的全职工作。但是，像许多美国人一样，她发现金钱方面的忧虑得到了意外的缓解：在家几个月限制了她的消费，她得到了扩大的失业保险和政府的两张一次性支票。 |
| “When I first came back to work, I had probably $2,200 in savings — which I know is not much, but it’s more than I’d had in a while,” she said. But it was no match for the inflation that has come since. “That savings is pretty much gone now. As things have gotten so expensive, it’s been almost a paycheck-to-paycheck life.” | “刚开始重新工作的时候，我可能有2200美元的存款——我知道并不多，但这已经比我过去的存款多了，”她说。但这无法与随之而来的通货膨胀抗衡。“这些积蓄现在几乎都花光了。因为东西变得太贵了，几乎过着‘月光族’的生活，”她说。 |
| Ms. Johnston, 31, lives in the Dallas area in a studio apartment and had hoped to upgrade to a one-bedroom — her cat will occasionally use her bed as a litter box, so being able to shut the door would be good. Yet rent is increasing enough that she is considering moving in with a roommate instead. | 31岁的约翰斯顿住在达拉斯地区的一套单间公寓里，她曾经希望能升级到一室一厅——她的猫偶尔会把她的床当成猫砂盆，所以能关上门就好了。然而，房租涨得太多，她开始考虑搬去与人合租。 |
| Gas is so expensive that she is buying just a quarter of a tank at a time. Her $65,000 in student loans from undergraduate and graduate school were in forbearance before the pandemic because she was struggling to afford them on her roughly $40,000 annual income. She has been able to continue not paying them because of a government moratorium, but she knows that may not last forever. | 汽油也太贵了，她每次只能加四分之一油箱的汽油。在大流行之前，她在本科和研究生阶段的6.5万美元学生贷款处于宽限期，因为她很难靠大约4万美元的年收入支付这些贷款。由于政府的暂停计划，她可以继续不还款，但她知道这不是长久之计。 |
| She’d like to find a better-paying job, but she’s unsure about leaving a secure position — and embarking on a draining job search — at a moment when economists and investors warn of an impending recession. “It does feel like whatever I was thinking I was going to do is on hold,” she said. | 她想找一份薪水更高的工作，但在经济学家和投资者警告经济衰退即将来临之际，她不确定是否要离开一份稳定的工作，开始一场耗费精力的求职。“这确实让我感觉，无论我想做什么都要搁置起来，”她说。 |
| Millions of Americans are feeling similarly stuck as their savings run low and their cost of living runs high. Now, the economy appears poised to slow — potentially sharply — in ways that could limit wage growth and cause job losses even as prices remain elevated. But instead of rushing to the economy’s aid by giving Americans money, as they did in March 2020, policymakers are engineering this slowdown. Then, the problem was a global pandemic; now, it’s stubbornly high inflation, and the main way the government knows to solve that is by inflicting some economic pain. | 数以百万计的美国人也有类似的感觉，他们的储蓄越来越少，生活成本越来越高。现在，经济似乎即将放缓——可能是急剧放缓——这可能会限制工资增长，并导致失业，尽管物价仍在上涨。但是，政策制定者们并没有像2020年3月那样，通过给美国人提供资金来迅速救助经济，而是在安排这次放缓。当时的问题是全球性疫情；现在的问题则是顽固的高通胀，政府知道解决这个问题的主要方法是施加一些经济痛苦。 |
| In other words, the long-predicted “cliff” may finally have arrived. | 换言之，预言已久的“断崖”可能终于到来了。 |
| When the first round of pandemic aid programs began to expire in the summer of 2020, economists warned of a looming cliff facing both Americans who still needed government help and the pandemic-addled economy that was not yet ready to stand on its own. They repeated those warnings last fall, when Congress allowed unemployment benefits to expire for millions of workers, and again in January, when monthly payments for families with children came to an end. | 当第一轮疫情援助计划在2020年夏天开始到期时，经济学家警告说，无论是仍然需要政府帮助的美国人，还是饱受疫情困扰、尚未准备好自力更生的经济，都在渐渐接近一处断崖。去年秋天，当国会坐视数以百万计的工人的失业救济金到期，以及今年1月，当有孩家庭的每月补贴结束时，经济学再次发出了这样的警告。 |
| The loss of those programs and others, including enhanced nutrition benefits, was painful for many families. But for the economy as a whole, the cliffs turned out to be more like potholes. Consumers kept on spending, in part because trillions in government aid had allowed many Americans to build up at least a small financial buffer — as Ms. Johnston did — and in part because a record-setting recovery in the job market gave workers an income boost that helped offset the loss in government aid. | 失去这些和其他项目，包括增强营养福利，让许多家庭感到痛苦。但对于整个经济而言，这样的断崖更像是路上的坑洼。消费者继续消费，部分原因是数万亿美元的政府援助让许多美国人至少建立了一个小的财务缓冲——正如约翰斯顿那样——部分原因是就业市场创纪录的复苏让工人的收入增加，帮助抵消了政府援助到期的损失。 |
| Now, as savings run dry and consumers struggle under the weight of higher prices and rising interest rates, early cracks are beginning to show — and are likely to widen from here. | 现在，随着储蓄逐渐枯竭，消费者在物价上涨和利率上升的重压下挣扎，早期的裂痕开始显现——而且可能从现在开始扩大。 |
| Pay gains have been falling behind inflation for months. Credit card balances, which fell early in the pandemic, are rising toward a record high. Subprime borrowers — those with weak credit scores — are increasingly falling behind on payments on car loans in particular, credit bureau data show. Measures of hunger are rising, even with unemployment still low and the overall economy still strong. | 几个月来，工资增长一直落后于通货膨胀。疫情初期曾经下降的信用卡债正在上升，接近历史最高水平。信用局的数据显示，次级借款人（信用评分较低的人）拖欠汽车贷款的情况尤其严重。尽管失业率仍然很低，整体经济仍然强劲，但饥饿指标仍在上升。 |
| “It’s a grim picture already,” said Elizabeth Ananat, an economist at Barnard College who has studied the pandemic’s impact on low-income families. “Families are doing much worse than they were a few months ago.” | “形势已经很严峻了，”巴纳德学院的经济学家伊丽莎白·安纳特说，她研究了疫情对低收入家庭的影响。“家庭的情况比几个月前糟糕得多。” |
| Low-income households, at least on average, emerged from the first two years of the pandemic in remarkably strong financial shape. Trillions of dollars in government aid ensured that poverty fell in 2020, despite the loss of tens of millions of jobs. New rounds of assistance in 2021, including monthly payments through an expanded Child Tax Credit, led to a sharp drop in measures of childhood poverty and hunger. | 至少平均而言，低收入家庭在疫情头两年里的财务状况可以算非常好。尽管失去了数千万个工作岗位，数万亿美元的政府援助确保了2020年贫困人口的减少。2021年的新一轮援助，包括一项扩大的儿童家庭税收抵免带来的每月增收，导致儿童贫困和饥饿指标大幅下降。 |
| Those programs came from a very different economic moment, however. In 2020, and to a lesser degree in 2021, the needs of individual households and the needs of the broader economy were aligned: Stimulus checks and other forms of government aid helped jobless workers and their families avoid eviction, while at the same time helping businesses avoid bankruptcy, landlords avoid foreclosure, and cities and states avoid a collapse in their tax revenue. | 然而，这些计划来自一个非常不同的经济时刻。在2020年——以及程度较轻的2021年——单一家庭的需求与更广泛的经济需求是一致的：刺激支票和其他形式的政府援助帮助失业工人及其家人避免被赶出住所，同时帮助企业避免破产，帮助房东避免丧失抵押品赎回权，帮助城市和州避免税收暴跌。 |
| Today, that alignment has broken down. Giving people money now might help them pay their bills, but it could also make inflation worse by adding to demand as businesses are already failing to produce enough goods and hire enough workers. | 今天，这种一致性已经破裂。现在给人们钱可能会帮助他们支付账单，但由于企业已经无法生产足够的商品和雇用足够的工人，这也会增加需求，从而使通货膨胀恶化。 |
| The Federal Reserve is instead trying to cool off the economy by raising interest rates, making it more expensive to borrow money to buy a house or expand a company. Weaker business activity will slow hiring, leading to slower wage growth and, most likely, more layoffs. It could also allow America’s goods and services — limited for more than a year by supply chain snarls and labor shortages — to catch up to demand, putting a damper on rising prices. | 相反，美联储正试图通过提高利率来给经济降温，让贷款买房或扩张公司变得更加昂贵。疲软的商业活动将减缓招聘速度，导致工资增长放缓，并且很可能会导致更多裁员。它还可以让一年多以来因供应链混乱和劳动力短缺而受到限制的美国商品和服务赶上需求，抑制价格上涨。 |
| Fed policymakers argue that this strategy is necessary to put the economy on a more sustainable path. But even as conditions take a turn for the worse, inflation will probably take a while to slow, and Fed officials themselves think it will still be elevated at the end of the year. | 美联储政策制定者认为，要让经济走上更可持续的道路，这样的战略是必要的。然而，尽管情况正变得更糟，通胀却可能需要一段时间才能放缓，而美联储官员自己认为，到今年年底通胀仍会上升。 |
| “The transition is going to be very difficult,” said Seth Carpenter, global chief economist at Morgan Stanley and a former Fed economist. “At least historically, it takes a really long time for inflation to come down, even after the economy slows.” | “过渡将非常困难，”摩根士丹利全球首席经济学家、前美联储经济学家赛斯·卡彭特说。“至少从历史上看，即使在经济放缓之后，通胀也需要很长时间才能下降。” |
| And inflation, too, is uniquely difficult for poorer families, who have less flexibility to adjust their spending in response to higher prices. That is especially true right now, when inflation is concentrated in essential categories like rent, food and fuel. | 通货膨胀给较贫穷的家庭带来的困难尤其严重，在应对价格上涨时，他们调整支出的灵活性较小。现在尤其如此，因为通货膨胀集中在租金、食品和燃料等基本类别上。 |
| “This should not be an abstract conversation,” said Michelle Holder, president and chief executive of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a progressive research organization. “This is a very real burden for families, particularly low-income families. People are making tough choices in terms of what do they cut back on, and for lower income families there’s not a lot of wiggle room there.” | “这不应该是一个抽象的对话，”进步主义研究组织华盛顿公平增长中心的总裁兼首席执行官米歇尔·霍德尔说。“这对家庭来说是一个非常现实的负担，尤其是低收入家庭。人们正在艰难地选择削减哪方面的支出，而对于低收入家庭来说没有太多的回旋余地。” |
| Many progressives initially resisted calls for the Fed to raise rates, arguing that the strong labor market — and the rare bargaining power that it gave to workers — was worth a brief period of rapid price increases. That has begun to shift as inflation worsens. Some economists who focus on labor issues now say the Fed is right to try to contain it, but that the government should simultaneously provide support to the families who need it the most. | 许多进步派人士最初拒绝美联储加息的呼吁，认为强劲的劳动力市场——以及它赋予工人的难得的议价能力——使短暂的快速物价上涨值得承受。随着通货膨胀的恶化，这种情况已经开始转变。一些关注劳工问题的经济学家现在表示，美联储试图遏制它是正确的，但政府应该同时向最需要它的家庭提供支持。 |
| “The hunger of children is not a necessary cost to pay to bring down inflation,” Ms. Ananat, of Barnard, said. | “降低通货膨胀不一定要以儿童的饥饿为代价，”巴纳德的阿纳纳特说。 |
| Republicans, meanwhile, have blamed the Biden administration — and in particular, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that Democrats passed early last year — for making inflation worse. Many economists, among them Democrats, agree that the spending did drive at least some of the inflation, making the politics of economic aid even more fraught. | 与此同时，共和党人指责拜登政府——尤其是民主党去年初通过的1.9万亿美元的《美国救援方案法》——导致通胀恶化。许多经济学家，其中包括民主党人，都认为支出确实至少推动了部分通货膨胀，这使得经济援助的政治更加令人担忧。 |
| The economy remains strong for now, but early signs of a pullback are surfacing. Job growth, while fast, is slowing. Jobless claims, still low, have picked up. Evictions are mounting in some cities where bans have expired, and retail sales fell in May. | 美国经济目前仍然强劲，但回落的初步迹象正在浮现。就业增长虽然很快，但正在放缓。仍处于低位的初请失业金人数已经有所回升。在一些禁令已经到期的城市，被赶出住所的人数正在增加。5月零售额下降。 |
| “I think we are starting to see indications that the good times are coming to an end for some people,” said Karen Dynan, a former Treasury Department chief economist who is now at Harvard University. “There will be some generalized pain.” | “我们开始看到一些迹象表明，对某些人来说，好时光即将结束，”前财政部首席经济学家、现就职于哈佛大学的凯伦·戴南说。“会出现一些普遍的痛苦。” |
OK阅读网 版权所有(C)2017 | 联系我们