與FT共進午餐 托馬斯·皮凱蒂

A picnic in the sun on the lawn of the Paris School of Economics would have been better, but it’s too late. We are at Les Jardins de Paul Ha, a bakery turned deli in the 14th arrondissement, and Thomas Piketty is already biting into a hard-boiled egg.

在巴黎經濟學院(Paris School of Economics)草坪上享受陽光下的野餐本來會更愜意，但時間已太晚。我們現在坐在巴黎14區一家麪包房改造的、名爲Les Jardins de Paul Ha的熟食店，托馬斯皮凱蒂(Thomas Piketty)已經咬了一口一隻煮老了的雞蛋。

It’s a five-minute walk from the office of the man the media refer to as a “rock-star economist” but it’s hard to find much glamour here or in his life these days. The success of Piketty’s bookCapital in the Twenty-First Century(2013), a surprise 700-page bestseller, threw him into a year-long media whirlwind. But now its author longs for normality. And so here we are in a deserted backroom eating our meal from plastic containers on dark-blue trays, a faded, peeling poster of a beach in the Seychelles on the wall beside us.

這裏距皮凱蒂的辦公室步行僅五分鐘，媒體稱他爲“搖滾明星經濟學家”，但在這裏，或者在他如今的生活中，已經很難找到多少光芒萬丈的東西。皮凱蒂2013年出版的700頁的《21世紀資本論》(Capital in the Twenty-First Century)意外成爲暢銷書，該書的成功讓他捲入了長達一年的媒體旋風。而現在，這位作者渴望正常的狀態。所以我們坐在僻靜的後屋裏，吃着深藍色托盤上盛在塑料容器中的食物，身旁的牆上貼着一幅褪色、快要脫落的海報，上面是塞舌爾的海灘。

“I have had phases of promotion and conferences, which I enjoy very much, but I need to get back to normal life,” Piketty explains, crossing his legs and leaning on the empty chair next to him. “Normal life is sitting at my desk from 9am to 7pm, with no one bothering me. People don’t realise that research requires time and quiet. So a two-hour break for lunch...” he sighs, rolling his eyes.

“我參加過很多推廣活動和會議，我很享受這些活動，但我需要回歸正常生活，”皮凱蒂解釋說，他翹着二郎腿，靠着旁邊的空椅子。“正常的生活是從上午9點到晚上7點坐在辦公桌前，沒人打擾我。人們不知道研究需要時間和清淨。所以，休息兩小時吃頓午餐……”他不贊同地嘆息道。

I had caught a glimpse of Piketty’s natural habitat when I picked the 44-year-old scholar up from his 12 sq m office, a stuffy room located in a grey postwar building that is home to the research institution he helped set up in 2006.

當我到這位44歲學者12平米的辦公室接他時，我看了一眼他的“自然棲息地”。這是一間位於一座灰色戰後建築中的不通風的房間，這座建築是他2006年幫忙建立的研究機構的所在地。

With its claim that capitalism, by its nature, worsens inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (first published in French in 2013 and then in English eight months later) caused a transatlantic furore, pitting proponents of state intervention against believers in the free market. While the book’s extensive compilation of data on income and wealth distribution has been widely praised, Piketty’s theories and conclusions — that the proportion of income and wealth going to the richest 1 per cent has reached a historic high; that return on capital usually exceeds economic growth, resulting in an automatic increase in inequality — have also been attacked. With his calls for higher taxes and more regulation, he has become the darling of the left and the enemy of the right.

由於宣稱資本主義就本質而言加劇了不平等，《21世紀資本論》（2013年首先出版法文版，八個月後英文版面世）在大西洋兩岸引起了轟動，在國家干預的支持者與自由市場的信徒之間點燃了爭論。雖然該書大量彙編的收入和財富分配數據受到了廣泛稱讚，但皮凱蒂的理論和結論——收入和財富流向最富有1%人羣的比例已達到歷史新高；資本回報率通常超過經濟增長率，導致不平等自動加劇——也受到了攻擊。由於他呼籲增稅以及加強監管，他成了左翼的寵兒，也成了右翼的敵人。

While I wait for my microwaved pasta bolognese to cool down, I ask him how it feels to be a celebrity. Piketty, wearing a close-fitting light-blue shirt with the top two buttons undone, says he welcomes it as long as it translates into selling more books. Two million copies have been bought so far, he says with pleasure.

在等待微波爐加熱的意大利肉醬面冷卻之時，我問他做名人感覺如何。身穿修身淺藍色襯衫、敞着領口兩顆鈕釦的皮凱蒂說，只要能轉化爲書的更大銷量，他對此表示歡迎。他開心地說，到目前爲止，他的書已經售出200萬冊。

“The success of my book shows there are a lot of people who are not economists but are tired of being told that those questions are too complicated for them,” he says, picking at a mayonnaise-soaked slice of cucumber. He speaks fast and with plenty of hand gestures. He is curious about my age — “Oh, you’re younger than my sister” — and inquires about my career. He exudes self-confidence.

“這本書的成功表明，有很多人雖然不是經濟學家，但他們厭倦了被告知這些問題對他們來說太複雜，”他邊說，邊小口吃着浸透蛋黃醬的黃瓜片。他語速很快，伴隨許多手勢。他很好奇我的年齡——“噢，你比我妹妹還年輕”，還詢問了我的職業情況。他渾身散發着自信。

“Too often, economists build very complex mathematical models to look scientific and impress people. I have nothing against mathematics — I initially trained as a mathematician — but it’s usually to hide a lack of ideas. What pleases me is that this book reaches ‘normal’ people, a rather wide public. My mother is one example,” he says, adding that she rarely reads big academic books yet understood everything in his.

“經濟學家老愛建立非常複雜的數學模型，以便看起來科學並給人們留下深刻印象。我一點兒也不反對數學——我最初是要被培養成爲一名數學家——但這樣做通常是掩蓋觀點的缺乏。讓我開心的是，這本書可以讓‘普通’人羣（相當廣泛的公衆）讀懂。我母親就是一個例子，”他說，並補充道，她很少讀大部頭學術書籍，但可以明白他書中講的一切。

When I ask if Piketty’s left-leaning family background has anything to do with his initial interest in inequality, he dismisses the link. Politics were not discussed at home, he says. In their youth his parents were Trotskyist militants with the Lutte Ouvrière but they quit the far-left party before he was born. Like many young radicals living in post-May 1968 France, they were lured by life in the countryside and moved out of the capital in the mid-1970s. For three years, they raised goats and sold cheese on markets in Castelnau-d’Aude, a village near Narbonne in southern France. Though neither parent has the baccalaureate, the national high school degree, Piketty’s mother later took night classes to train as a primary school teacher, and his father became a research technician at Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique.

當我問皮凱蒂，他左傾的家庭背景是否與他起初對不平等感興趣有關時，他否認存在關聯。我們家裏不討論政治，他說。他的父母年輕時是工人鬥爭黨(Lutte Ouvrière)的託派武裝分子，但他們在皮凱蒂出生前退出了這一極左政黨。與生活在1968年5月之後法國的許多年輕激進分子一樣，他們被鄉村生活吸引，並在上世紀70年代中期搬離了巴黎。在三年的時間裏，他們飼養山羊，並在卡斯黛諾-奧德（Castelnau-d’Aude，法國南部納博訥附近的一個村莊）的市場裏賣奶酪。儘管皮凱蒂的父母都沒有業士文憑（法國高中文憑），但他的母親後來上了夜校，經培訓成爲一名小學老師，而他的父親成了法國農業科學研究院(Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique)的一名研究技術員。

Both cheered when Socialist leader Fran漀椀猀 Mitterrand was elected president in 1981. “They had long been waiting for the left to come to power,” says Piketty. But his grandfather on his father’s side, “from a bourgeois background,” voted for the centre-right candidate Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, he says. “Like in any other family, some vote for the left, some vote for the right. I love them all!”

當社會黨領導人弗朗索瓦密特朗(Fran漀椀猀 Mitterrand) 1981年當選總統時，他的父母都爲之歡呼。“他們長期以來一直在等待左翼上臺執政，”皮凱蒂說。但他說，他“出身資產階級”的爺爺，投票給了中右翼候選人瓦萊裏吉斯卡爾德斯坦(Valéry Giscard d'Estaing)。“像所有其他家庭一樣，我們家有人投票給左翼，有人投票給右翼。我愛他們所有人！”

His parents were the opposite of pushy, he says. They had little to do with his getting into the 挀漀氀攀 Normale Supérieure, one of France’s most competitive “grandes écoles”, when he was 18, or his teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after earning a PhD at just 22. But they taught him “autonomy, to trust myself” — an approach he says that he replicates with his three daughters, Juliette, 18, Deborah, 15, and Hélène, 12.

他的父母並不望子成龍心切，他說。他18歲時考入了法國競爭最激烈的“大學校”(grandes écoles)之一——巴黎高等師範學院(挀漀氀攀 Normale Supérieure)，年僅22歲就獲得博士學位，之後到麻省理工學院(MIT)任教，這些與他的父母都沒有太大關係。但他們教會了他“獨立、相信自己”。他說，他也用這種方法教育他的三個女兒——18歲的朱麗葉(Juliette)、15歲的黛博拉(Deborah)和12歲的埃萊娜(Hélène)。

I am determined to give the bolognese a chance but the floppy, overcooked fusilli brings back bad memories of my school canteen. Given the history of controversy between the French scholar and the Financial Times, I wonder if our lunch destination may be retaliation. After all, Piketty referred to the contentious article that highlighted discrepancies in his research as soon as we stepped in to the deli, joking that he didn’t want to cost the FT too much money given all the “free publicity” it has granted him.

我決定嘗一下這份肉醬面，但這盤軟塌塌、煮得過久的意大利螺旋麪讓我回想起學校食堂的糟糕伙食。考慮到這位法國學者與英國《金融時報》之間有過爭論的歷史，我懷疑今天午餐的選址可能是個報復。畢竟，我們一步入這家熟食店，皮凱蒂就提到了那篇突出其研究中矛盾之處的有爭議的文章，並開玩笑說，鑑於英國《金融時報》給他做的所有“免費宣傳”，他不想再讓我們破費太多。

The FT analysis notably questioned Piketty’s conclusion that wealth inequality had widened in the UK. He responded to the allegations in detail and defended his methodology, arguing that, even if the criticisms were real, the inconsistencies would not change his findings.

英國《金融時報》的分析尤其質疑了皮凱蒂的結論，即英國的財富分配不均已經擴大。他詳細地迴應了這些指責，併爲自己的方法進行了辯護，他稱，即使這些批評在理，那些矛盾之處也不會改變他的發現。

“The FT? I never really read it. Sorry I shouldn’t have said that!” he says mischievously. “I find it a bit predictable. You know, when I read the first two sentences, I feel I know the rest of the story. OK, not always. And then there was the prize. It all looked a bit confused,” he says, referring to the fact that Capital in the Twenty-First Century won the FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year 2014.

“英國《金融時報》？我從未真正讀過這份報紙。對不起，我本不應該這樣說！”他狡黠地說。“我覺得它的內容有點容易預測。你知道，當我讀到頭兩句時，我覺得自己就知道剩下的故事了。好吧，其實並不總是那樣。然後就是獲獎。這一切看起來有點混亂，”他說——他指的是《21世紀資本論》榮獲了英國《金融時報》和麥肯錫2014年度最佳商業圖書獎(2014 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year)。

It would be a mistake, he continues, clearly warming to his theme, for the FT to deny the widening of inequalities in the UK “to defend the interest of your readers”. As I object, it dawns on me that Piketty thinks I am here simply to represent the interests of the top 1 per cent. When we agreed to meet, he said we would walk “to a simple salad and sandwich bar,” emphasising how much “the bill will interest the FT readers.”

他繼續說（明顯地開始對談論自己的領域更加起勁），英國《金融時報》拒絕承認英國不斷加劇的財富分配不均“以維護你們讀者的利益”是一個錯誤。我表示了反對，並逐漸明白皮凱蒂認爲我來這裏只是爲了代表最富有的1%人羣的利益。當我們同意見面時，他說我們可以走到“一個簡單的沙拉和三明治吧”，還強調這頓飯的賬單將讓英國《金融時報》的讀者如何“感興趣。”

Piketty says his interest in inequality crystallised after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the first Gulf war. He recalls visiting Moscow in 1991 and being struck by “the lines in front of shops”. He came back vaccinated against communism — “I believe in capitalism, private property, the market” — but also with a question central to his work: “How come those people had been so afraid of inequality and capitalism in the 19th and 20th century that they created such a monstrosity? How can we tackle inequality without repeating this disaster?”

皮凱蒂說，他是在柏林牆被推倒及第一次海灣戰爭之後纔開始對不平等感興趣。他回憶起1991年訪問莫斯科，他被“商店門前排起的長龍”所震驚。回來之後，他就對共產主義產生了免疫力——“我信仰資本主義、私有財產和市場”——但他的著作也提出一個核心問題：“那些19、20世紀的人們爲何如此懼怕不平等和資本主義，以至於他們創造出這樣一個怪物？我們怎樣才能在不重蹈這些災難的情況下解決不平等？”

The first Gulf war, he believed, demonstrated the cynicism of the west: “We are told constantly that states can’t do anything, that it’s impossible to regulate the Cayman Islands and the other tax havens because they are too powerful, and all of a sudden we send a million soldiers 10,000km from home to allow the emir of Kuwait to keep his oil.”

他認爲，第一次海灣戰爭展現了西方的犬儒主義：“我們被不斷告知國家不是萬能的，無法管控開曼羣島及其他避稅港，因爲它們太過強大，卻突然派遣大量士兵到離家萬里之外的科威特，幫助該國的埃米爾保住他的石油。”

I am halfway through the now tepid bolognese when I ask him why his work had such an impact in the US without causing anything like such a stir in France at the time of its original publication. Piketty says he caught American attention in 2003 when, together with Emmanuel Saez, a fellow French economist who teaches at the University of California, he first compiled historical data on the US’s wealthiest people. In 2009, newly elected President Obama used the French economists’ graph that showed inequality was back to its 1929 peak. “We became the target of Republican think-tanks,” he recalls. The French version of the book acted as a teaser to those critics, he believes, helping propel it to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list for three weeks when it was released in English.

我邊吃着已經變得溫熱的肉醬面，邊問他爲什麼他的著作在美國影響如此之大，但最初在法國出版時卻沒有引發類似的轟動。皮凱蒂說，他在2003年就引起了美國人的注意，當時他與在美國加州大學任教的法國經濟學家埃曼努埃爾嬠斯(Emmanuel Saez)一起首次彙編了關於美國最富有人羣的歷史數據。2009年，新當選的美國總統巴拉克攠巴馬(Barack Obama)引用了他們的曲線圖，該圖展示出不平等程度已回升至1929年峯值。“我們成了共和黨智庫的攻擊目標，”他回憶說。他認爲，法文版《21世紀資本論》起到了誘導那些批評人士的作用，這幫助英文版發行時將該書推至亞馬遜(Amazon)暢銷書排行榜首位，並持續三週時間。

“The rise of the top 1 per cent is an American thing. It’s not by chance that Occupy Wall Street happened in Wall Street, and not in Brussels, Paris or Tokyo,” he says. “It’s different in Europe. Here, inequality takes the form of unemployment and public debt.”

“最富有1%人羣的崛起是美國人的事。‘佔領華爾街’(Occupy Wall Street)發生在華爾街，而非布魯塞爾、巴黎或東京，這並非偶然，”他說，“歐洲的情況不同。在歐洲，不平等以失業和公共債務的形式存在。”

Though Piketty concedes that the global wealth tax he recommends is a “utopian” dream, he also says a confiscatory tax rate of more than 80 per cent on earnings exceeding $1m would work. In fact, he continues, such a rate was in place for five decades before the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and would curb exuberant executive pay without hurting productivity. “It did not kill US capitalism then — productivity grew the fastest during that time,” he notes. “This idea, according to which no one will accept to work hard for less than $10m per year... It’s OK to pay someone 10, 20 times the average worker’s salary but do you really need to pay them 100 or 200 times to get their arses in gear?”

儘管皮凱蒂承認自己建議的全球財富稅是一個“烏托邦式的”夢想，但他還說，對超過100萬美元的收入課以80%以上的沒收性稅率將是可行的。實際上，他繼續說，這樣的稅率在羅納德里根(Ronald Reagan)成爲美國總統之前的50年間一直存在，而且會在抑制過高的高管薪酬的同時不損害生產率。“這種稅率當時沒有扼殺美國的資本主義——那段時期的生產率增長最快，”他說，“有種想法，認爲如果一年賺不到1000萬美元，沒人會願意努力工作……向某人支付10或20倍於普通工人的工資，沒問題，但爲了讓他們好好工作，你真的需要付給他們100或200倍工資嗎？”