EMERGENCY DEBATE: The Death Of The Middle Class! Only The Top 1% Will Survive!

There is literally no example on planet earth of a high functioning society without big government. 地球上根本不存在一个没有大政府却运转良好的社会。 No, that's not true. 不，那不是真的。 Big government is sucking the life out of small businesses. 大政府正在把小企业的生机一点点榨干。 And I spent countless hours with businesses and they're like, you can't succeed in the UK. 我跟很多企业主打交道，他们说，在英国根本没法成功。 As soon as you earn anything, they'll just tax it off you. 你一赚到钱，就全被税收走了。 So pop off to Dubai, run the business virtually, and pay no tax. 那就去迪拜，远程经营，一分税都不用交。 It's idiotic. 太荒谬了。 I don't know how you can look at that and think this is a good system. 我不明白你怎么看着这种情况还觉得这是个好体制。 No, no. say what needs to happen is reduce the taxes and the pressure on the small businesses cuz everyone in this economy needs to own stuff. 不不，我说的是要减税、减轻小企业的压力，因为这个经济里每个人都需要拥有东西。 We need to own a house, own a business, and own shares. 我们需要有房子、有企业、有股份。 But not everybody can be an entrepreneur. 但并不是所有人都能当企业家。 Correct. 对。 Look, it would be wonderful if everybody owned something. 当然，要是每个人都能拥有点什么，那再好不过了。 But ownership starts with earning enough money so that you can save money so that you can begin to own something. 但拥有的前提是先赚到足够的钱，然后才能存下钱，才能开始拥有东西。 So the problem is wages because most people want to be able to go to work and be treated decently. 所以问题的根源在于工资，因为大多数人只是想去上班、被好好对待。 I want to earn enough money so that I can feel secure. 我想赚足够的钱，让自己有安全感。 I just want to be married, 我只想结婚， have kids, own a house, all that. 生孩子，买房子，这些而已。 That's what I hear. 我就是这么想的。 I want people and I want that for everyone. 我希望所有人都能有这些。 That's gone away. 但这一切已经不在了。 Houses are unaffordable. 房子买不起了。 Local jobs don't exist. 本地工作岗位消失了。 Technology has cut out all the middlemen. 技术把所有中间环节都砍掉了。 No one's paying healthy wages. 没人发得了体面的工资。 We have the most unhappy population. 我们的人口是最不幸福的。 And if you want to fix that, you have to enact this. 如果你想改变这一切，就必须这样做。 Well, I've seen Nick's policies implemented and I don't feel it's enough. 我见过 Nick 的政策被推行，但我觉得还不够。 You haven't seen all of the policies. 你没见过所有政策。 So, but we need people to know that the rules that we grew up with have changed and people have to learn the rules of this new economy. 但我们需要让人们明白，我们成长时遵循的规则已经变了，人们必须学习这个新经济的规则。 Yes. 是的。 Yes. 是的。 Yes. 是的。 I totally agree. 我完全同意。 And if you want to get the economy back on track, the starting point is 如果你想让经济重回正轨，起点是 This is super interesting to me. 这对我来说太有意思了。 My team given me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe. 我的团队给了我这份报告，让我看看你们当中有多少人订阅了这个节目。 And some of you have told us according to this that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. 你们中有些人告诉我们，说你们是被随机取消订阅了。 So, favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button, if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. 所以，想请各位帮个忙，如果你是这个节目的常看观众，请现在检查一下你是否点了订阅按钮。 We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. 我们在订阅人数上即将达到一个相当重要的里程碑。 So, if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. 如果你能做一件简单又免费的事来帮助我们、我的团队、这里的所有人，让这个节目保持免费、每年每周持续进步，那就是点击订阅按钮，并确认你已经点了。 Only thing I'll ever ask of you, do we have a deal? 这是我唯一会向你们提出的请求，我们说好了吗？ If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. 如果你做了，我告诉你我会怎么做。 I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear. 我会确保每一周、每一个月，我们都越来越努力，越来越努力地为你们带来你们想听到的嘉宾和对话。 I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of the D of Sio and I will not let you down. 从 DOAC 最开始，我就一直信守这个承诺，我不会让你们失望的。 Please help us. 请帮帮我们。 Really appreciate it. 真的非常感谢。 Let's get on with the show. 我们继续节目。 Nick, I want to start with your background and your context so I can understand your perspective and who you are. Nick，我想先从你的背景和背景故事说起，这样我能理解你的视角，了解你是谁。 You sold a company for almost $7 billion, 你以将近 70 亿美元卖掉了一家公司， correct? 对吗？ And what's so fascinating about you is you typically billionaires have a certain narrative and perspective on the world. 让我觉得特别有意思的是，亿万富翁通常有一套固定的叙事和世界观。 You seem to have a very different one. 你似乎有一套截然不同的。 I do. 确实如此。 Who are you? 你是谁？ Where have you come from? 你从哪里来？ And what is your perspective on the world as it relates to the subjects that you know we're going to discuss today? 你对今天我们要讨论的这些议题，有着怎样的世界观？ I was raised in a civic family, I should say. 我是在一个有公民意识的家庭长大的，我应该这么说。 What does that mean? 那是什么意思？ That means a family that takes uh civic responsibility seriously. 意思是一个认真对待公民责任的家庭。 Uh but we were middle class people and my father started to work for this tiny uh family business that uh his his father had started manufacturing bed pillows and down comforters which is how I got my start in business. 不过我们是中产阶级家庭，我父亲在一家小小的家族企业工作，那是他祖父创立的，生产床枕和羽绒被，这也是我最初踏入商界的起点。 And to make an incredibly long story short, I had a very early intuition uh about the internet u and uh the role that it would play in commerce. 长话短说，我对互联网以及它在商业中将扮演的角色，很早就有一种直觉。 And as luck would have it, I had a friend who agreed with that proposition and his name was Jeff Bezos. 而且我很幸运，我有一个朋友认同这个判断，他叫 Jeff Bezos。 And so he wanted to start an e- retailer. 于是他想创办一家电子零售商。 He was working in New York uh uh for a hedge fund uh dating one of my closest friends. 当时他在纽约的一家对冲基金工作，正在和我的一位很亲近的朋友约会。 And for a variety of reasons, he ended up sending his stuff from New York to Seattle to my house and we started Amazon.com together. 各种机缘巧合之下，他把他的东西从纽约运到西雅图，运到我家，我们就一起创立了 Amazon.com。 But from that started starting other tech companies. 但从那以后，我们又创立了其他科技公司。 you know, I've helped run, you know, manufacturing businesses, e-commerce businesses. 我参与经营过制造业企业、电商企业。 my friends and I own a bank, you know, like that, you know, and I think that that very broad perspective on markets began to inform an intuition that everything that people are taught about economics today, that sort of the conventional view is a pack of lies and that if you take it seriously and enact policy on the basis of it, the only thing that can happen is that the rich will get richer and everyone else will get poorer. 我和朋友们还拥有一家银行，就是这样。我觉得这种极为宽广的市场视野，让我形成了一个直觉，现在人们所被灌输的那套经济学，那种所谓的主流观点，是一套谎言。如果你认真对待它、基于它来制定政策，那唯一的结果就是富人越来越富，其他所有人越来越穷。 And uh you know a signal piece of that evidence for me sort of a thing that really sort of galvanized my interest was that I got a look at the IRS tax tables in 2007208 which showed American income shares in the history of that and in 1980 the top 1% of Americans shared about 8 and a half% of national income. 让我对这一点格外警醒的一个关键证据，是我在 2007-2008 年看到了美国国税局的税收数据，显示的是美国历史上的收入份额。1980 年，美国最富有的 1% 人口大约占国民收入的 8.5%。 uh by 2007 that 8% had grown to 22% as I recall so triple largely as a share of national income. 到 2007 年，这个 8% 已经增长到大约 22%，也就是说国民收入份额大约翻了三倍。 While the bottom 50% of Americans their share fell from about 18% in 1980 to 12% in about 2007. 而与此同时，美国底层 50% 人口的份额，从 1980 年的大约 18% 下降到了 2007 年的大约 12%。 And what I did is I took those numbers and I stuck them in a spreadsheet and said what happens if this trend continues for another 30 years? 我把这些数字放进表格，问自己：如果这个趋势再持续 30 年，会发生什么？ And the answer is revolution. 答案是：革命。 You know, it just it's just arithmetic because you cannot sustain a capitalist democracy if the top 1% controls 45 or 50% of income and the bottom 50% shares five. 这不是什么深刻的政治洞见，这只是纯粹的数学，如果最富的 1% 控制了 45% 甚至 50% 的收入，而底层 50% 只分到 5%，资本主义民主就根本无法维系。 This is not a deep political insight. 这不是什么深刻的政治洞见。 This is just math. 这只是数学。 And I and I freaked out and decided that I needed to devote myself to trying to figure out why this happened and how you could how you could fix it. 我当时彻底慌了，决定必须全力投入，搞清楚这是为什么发生的，以及如何去修复它。 And so I have been writing about this and working on it since then. 所以从那以后，我一直在就这个问题写作和开展工作。 Why did this feel so important to you? 为什么这件事对你来说感觉那么重要？ I've heard you talk about pitchforks. 我听你谈到过干草叉。 Even a cursory reading of history will tell you that when societies get as unequal as the societies we now live in, uh, terrible things start to happen. 随便翻一翻历史你就会知道，当一个社会的不平等程度达到我们现在所生活的这种程度，可怕的事情就会开始发生。 This leads to either a police state or a revolution. 这要么导向警察国家，要么导向革命。 And I believe that the pitchforks are here. 我相信干草叉已经来了。 I think the Trump administration is the is the, you know, one of the canonical examples of a society beginning beginning to tear itself apart. 我认为特朗普政府就是一个社会开始撕裂自身的典型案例之一。 And I just think it's the responsibility of people with power and resources to do the right thing. 我只是认为，拥有权力和资源的人有责任做正确的事。 Don, same question for you. Daniel，同样的问题问你。 Yeah, I grew up in Australia and um as a teenager, I discovered entrepreneurship. 我在澳大利亚长大，十几岁的时候发现了创业这件事。 I got an entrepreneurial mentor uh very early on and I did two years in a startup and it was really exciting and I loved it. 我很早就找到了一位创业导师，在一家初创公司待了两年，感觉非常刺激，我非常喜欢。 Um and I felt like I discovered a cheat code in life which was entrepreneurship and starting businesses and small businesses and then at 21 I went off and started my own company which was my first agency and it grew really rapidly. 我感觉自己发现了人生的作弊码，那就是创业，创办企业、小企业。然后在 21 岁时，我离开去创办了自己的第一家公司，是一家代理公司，成长得非常快。 Uh went from zero to a million in its first year and then 10 million in year three and it was like this exciting young company with all these cool young people working there and living there. 第一年从零做到了一百万，第三年做到了一千万，就是那种令人兴奋的年轻公司，里面全是酷酷的年轻人，大家在那里工作，也在那里生活。 We actually kind of did. 我们确实是那样的。 Yeah. 对。 We actually were in a big house and we kind of spent a lot of time together. 我们其实住在一栋大房子里，一起度过了很多时光。 Yeah. 是的。 I just fell in love with entrepreneurship and small business and family business and all of those kind of things. 我就这样爱上了创业、爱上了小企业、家族企业，以及所有那些东西。 And I also 15 years ago started an entrepreneur accelerator where people who want to get together and talk about entrepreneurship and figure out how to run their businesses can get together and and figure out how to do that. 15 年前，我还创办了一个创业者加速器，让想要聚在一起讨论创业、研究如何经营企业的人能够汇聚一堂，共同探索。 Um so for the last 15 years I've spent uh countless hours with uh 5 a half thousand businesses all over the world who are getting together talking about how entrepreneurship works. 过去 15 年，我花了无数时间和来自世界各地的 5500 多家企业打交道，大家聚在一起探讨创业的运作方式。 And over the years I've also come to a similar conclusion that the technological revolution that we've seen in the last 25 years has hollowed out the middle class. 多年来，我也得出了一个类似的结论：过去 25 年我们见证的技术革命已经掏空了中产阶级。 And I basically said I can't play by the rules that I grew up in. 我基本上想清楚了，我没办法再按照我成长时的那套规则来玩了。