Two events from the past week help crystallize this strange, contradictory moment for the U.S. economy.

过去一周发生的两件事有助于说明美国经济眼下这个既奇怪又矛盾的时刻。

On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the surge in energy prices had wiped out a year and a half of wage gains for the average American worker. On Friday, the public-markets debut of SpaceX made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

周三，美国劳工统计局报告称，能源价格飙升已经抹去了美国普通劳动者过去一年半的工资涨幅。周五，SpaceX上市，使埃隆·马斯克成为全球首位万亿美元富豪。

That stark juxtaposition helps explain why many Americans, in survey after survey, say they no longer believe the U.S. economy is working for them. A few people are getting fabulously, unimaginably wealthy at the same time that entire generations of families worry they will never be able to afford to buy a house, raise children or enjoy a comfortable retirement.

这一鲜明对比有助于解释为何在多次民调中许多美国人都表示他们不再相信美国经济是为他们服务的。少数人正在积累令人叹为观止的巨额财富，与此同时，整整几代普通家庭却在担心自己永远买不起房、养不起孩子，也无法安享退休生活。

“I don’t think the stock market is necessarily causing” Americans’ pessimism about the economy, said Stefanie Stantcheva, a Harvard professor who studies public sentiment. “But I don’t think people are looking at it and are thinking, ‘Great, this means I’m going to do very well, too.’ It’s potentially reinforcing this feeling of ‘I’m falling behind.’”

“我并不认为股市本身一定导致了”美国人对经济的悲观看法，研究公众情绪的哈佛大学教授斯特凡妮·斯坦切瓦说，“但我也不认为人们看着股市会觉得，‘太好了，这意味着我也会过得很好。’相反，它可能强化了这样一种感觉：‘我掉队了。’”

Inequality is hardly a new feature in America. But the explosion of wealth at the very top is without precedent in U.S. history. At the height of the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century, the richest handful of Americans had a net worth equivalent to about 3 percent of the country’s annual economic output, according to data compiled by the French economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez. Today, the fortunes of the same 0.00001 percent — about 20 individuals — make up roughly four times as large a share, equivalent to 12 percent of annual output.

不平等在美国算不上新现象。但财富在最顶层群体中的爆炸式增长是美国历史上前所未有的。根据法国经济学家加布里埃尔·祖克曼和伊曼纽尔·赛兹汇编的数据，在19世纪末镀金时代的鼎盛时期，最富有的少数美国人的净资产相当于美国年度经济产出的3%左右。如今，同样是这0.00001%的人（约20人）的财富占比大约是这个数字的四倍，相当于年度产出的12%。

Other economists, using different methodologies, come up with somewhat different numbers. But hardly anyone disputes the basic fact that the wealthiest few have made extraordinary gains in recent years.

其他经济学家采用不同方法得出的数据略有差异，但几乎没有人质疑这样一个基本事实：最富有的少数人近年来实现了惊人的财富增长。

The picture for the other 99 percent of Americans is more nuanced. More than half of U.S. households own stocks, either directly or through retirement accounts, meaning they have benefited at least somewhat from the record-setting run-up in share prices. Wealth has risen more slowly for middle-class families than for the rich over the past decade, Federal Reserve data shows, but it has still risen.

对于其余99%的美国人来说，情况则更为复杂。超过一半的美国家庭通过直接持股或退休账户持有股票，这意味着他们在一定程度上也受益于股价屡创新高的行情。美联储数据显示，过去十年间中产阶级家庭的财富增速慢于富人，但仍有所增长。

For most Americans, however, “wealth” is a somewhat abstract concept, tied up in the house where they live and the retirement accounts they hope to leave untouched for as long as possible. What matters more, day to day, is their income. And the share of national income going to workers has been trending down for decades. It hit a record low in the first quarter of the year, according to data from the Commerce Department.

然而，对大多数美国人来说，“财富”是一个相当抽象的概念，与他们居住的房子和尽量希望不到万不得已不要动用的退休账户紧密相连。对日常生活来说，更重要的是他们的收入。而劳动者在国民收入中所占的份额数十年来一直呈下降趋势，今年一季度更跌至历史低位。

Now, rising costs are again taking a bite out of workers’ paychecks. The recent jump in energy prices — a result of the war with Iran — pushed the annual inflation rate to a three-year high in May. Hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, have fallen for three months in a row, erasing all the gains made during President Trump’s first year in office. Measures of consumer sentiment have plummeted as gas prices have risen.

如今，物价上涨再次侵蚀着劳动者的工资收入。受伊朗战争影响，近期能源价格飙升，美国5月份的年化通胀率升至三年来最高水平。经通胀调整后的时薪已经连续三个月下降，抹去了特朗普总统执政第一年实现的所有涨幅。随着汽油价格上涨，各项消费者信心指标也大幅下降。

Oil prices have eased somewhat in recent weeks on hopes of a lasting cease-fire, and are likely to fall further if the United States and Iran reach a deal and tankers begin to move out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz in greater numbers.

近几周，随着持久停火的希望升温，油价已有所回落，若美伊最终达成协议、更多油轮开始穿越霍尔木兹海峡驶出波斯湾，油价很可能进一步下跌。

本周，芝加哥一家壳牌加油站的油价。

But relief at the pump is not likely to end Americans’ anxiety after years of one economic shock after another. First, the Covid-19 pandemic shut down large parts of the economy and put tens of millions of people out of work, at least temporarily. Then inflation soared to the highest level in four decades. Since then, Americans have endured high interest rates, tariffs and repeated recession scares.

但油价回落不太可能消除美国人在经历了多年经济冲击后的焦虑。新冠疫情导致大部分经济活动陷入停滞，数千万人失业（至少是暂时失业）。随后，通胀飙升至40年来的最高水平。自那以后，美国人一直在忍受高利率、高关税和一波又一波的衰退恐慌。

“If you think about what it felt like to go through Covid, and then inflation, and also political unrest and instability, you come out of those things thinking, ‘How am I supposed to plan for the future?’” said Elizabeth Wilkins, president of the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank.

“想想先后经历疫情、通胀以及政治动荡和不安是什么感觉。经历这些之后，你会想：‘我怎么可能规划未来？’”左倾智库罗斯福研究所所长伊丽莎白·威尔金斯说。

Now Americans face a new threat in the form of artificial intelligence, which tech industry leaders warn could eliminate whole categories of white-collar work. Many economists are skeptical of those predictions, but polls show that many workers are worried about what the technology will mean for their careers. Voters across the country have also rebelled against plans to build A.I. data centers in their communities, citing their impact on electricity bills, water supplies and air quality.

如今，美国人面临人工智能这一新威胁。科技行业领袖警告称，人工智能可能会彻底淘汰某些白领职业。许多经济学家对这些预测持怀疑态度，但民调显示，许多劳动者担心这项技术会给他们的职业生涯带来怎样的冲击。全美各地的选民还纷纷抵制在自己的社区建设人工智能数据中心的计划，理由是它们会推高电费、消耗水资源并影响空气质量。

Given those concerns, it is hardly surprising that the public is uncomfortable with the surge in wealth that has accompanied the A.I. boom. Companies connected to the technology have driven the recent gains in the stock market. SpaceX’s debut on Friday was the first in what is expected to be a series of giant initial public offerings for A.I. companies. (SpaceX, though best known for its rockets and satellites, also owns an A.I. lab and has made huge investments in A.I. infrastructure.)

考虑到这些担忧，公众对伴随人工智能热潮而来的财富激增感到不安就不足为奇了。与该技术相关的公司推动了近期股市的上涨。SpaceX周五的上市是人工智能公司一系列大规模IPO中的第一个。（SpaceX虽以火箭和卫星闻名，但也拥有自己的人工智能实验室，并在人工智能基础设施上投入了巨额资金。）

In addition to making Mr. Musk a trillionaire, the SpaceX I.P.O. alone was expected to mint thousands of new millionaires and several billionaires.

SpaceX这次IPO不仅让马斯克成为万亿富翁，还有望造就数千名新的百万富翁和数名亿万富翁。

“Many of the tech moguls who are the current superrich have not helped themselves in the conversation by saying, ‘My innovation is going to obliterate your life,’” said Glenn Hubbard, an economist at Columbia Business School who served as a top adviser to President George W. Bush. “It’s not too crazy to imagine a backlash.”

哥伦比亚商学院经济学家、曾担任乔治·W·布什总统高级顾问的格伦·哈伯德说：“当今这些超级富豪中的许多科技大亨在公共舆论中的言论也没有给自己加到分，说什么‘我的创新将彻底颠覆你的生活’，不难想象会引发强烈反弹。”

Mr. Hubbard said he did not necessarily see a problem with the existence of billionaires or even trillionaires, as long as people were getting rich through entrepreneurship and innovation rather than through corruption or cronyism. But he said policymakers should take the public attitudes seriously. Congress should consider ways to tax billionaires more effectively, he said, and to ensure that the wealthy don’t exert undue influence on the political system.

哈伯德表示，他不认为亿万富翁甚至万亿富翁的存在本身是个问题，只要这些财富来自创业和创新，而非腐败或裙带关系。但他表示，政策制定者应该认真对待公众的情绪。他说，国会应考虑如何更有效地对超级富豪征税，并确保富人不会对政治体系施加不适当的影响。

Many progressive economists, however, argue that enormous fortunes like Mr. Musk’s inherently distort both the economic and the political systems, giving the superrich too many ways to avoid regulation, taxation and oversight.

然而，许多进步派经济学家认为，像马斯克拥有的此等巨额财富本身就会扭曲经济和政治体系，它让超级富豪有太多办法逃避监管、税收和监督。

“It’s the power to influence markets, it’s the power to buy competitors, it’s the power to influence policymaking,” said Mr. Zucman, one of the French scholars of wealth inequality. “If you want a well-functioning market economy, it’s not good to have too much concentrated power with extreme wealth at the very top. It distorts markets. It distorts democracy.”

“这是影响市场的权力、是收购竞争对手的权力、是左右政策制定的权力，”研究财富不平等问题的法国学者祖克曼说。“如果你想拥有一个运转良好的市场经济，让极致的财富和权力高度集中在最顶端的少数人手里不是好事。它会扭曲市场，也会扭曲民主。”