中英双语 纽约时报 那些有钱人不会告诉你的事.doc

OPINION What the Rich Won’t Tell You By?RACHEL SHERMAN?September 12, 2017 观点 那些有钱人不会告诉你的事 RACHEL SHERMAN?2017年9月12日 Over lunch in a downtown restaurant, Beatrice, a New Yorker in her late 30s, told me about two decisions she and her husband were considering. They were thinking about where to buy a second home and whether their young children should go to private school. Then she made a confession: She took the price tags off her clothes so that her nanny would not see them. “I take the label off our six-dollar bread,” she said. 我在闹市区的一家饭馆和30多岁的纽约人比阿特丽斯(Beatrice)一起吃午饭时，她告诉我，她和她丈夫正在考虑两个决定：在什么地方买第二套住宅，以及是否要送他们年幼的孩子去私立学校。然后，她坦白说：她会把价签从买来的衣服上摘掉，这样就不至于让她的保姆看到价钱。“我会把我们六美元买的面包的标价也撕下来，”她说。 She did this, she explained, because she was uncomfortable with the inequality between herself and her nanny, a Latina immigrant. She had a household income of $250,000 and inherited wealth of several million dollars. Relative to the nanny, she told me, “The choices that I have are obscene. Six-dollar bread is obscene.” 她解释说，她之所以这样做，是因为她对自己与保姆之间的贫富差距感到不适，她的保姆是一位来自拉脱维亚的移民。她本人的家庭收入为每年25万美元（约合163万元人民币），还继承了数百万美元的财富。她对我说，相对于保姆来说，“我所拥有的选择多得惊人。六美元面包的价钱也高得惊人。” An interior designer I spoke with told me his wealthy clients also hid prices, saying that expensive furniture and other items arrive at their houses “with big price tags on them” that “have to be removed, or Sharpied over, so the housekeepers and staff don’t see them.” 与我聊过的一位室内设计师告诉我，他的有钱客户们也会把价格隐藏起来，他说，运到他们住所的昂贵家具和其他物品，“上面带有价格很高的标签，必须先摘下来，或用永久墨水笔把标价覆盖起来，这样的话，管家和家政人员就不会看到了。” These people agreed to meet with me as part of research I conducted on affluent and wealthy people’s consumption. I interviewed 50 parents with children at home, including 18 stay-at-home mothers. Highly educated, they worked or had worked in finance and related industries, or had inherited assets in the millions of dollars. Nearly all were in the top 1 percent or 2 percent in terms of income or wealth or both. They came from a variety of economic backgrounds, and abo