评论
打印
Becoming financially stable can be a very complicated process, but in the end, it comes down to basic math.
实现财务稳定可能是一个非常复杂的过程，但最终，它归结为基本的数学。
Did you earn more than you spent?
你赚的比花的多吗？
If so, then things should be OK.
如果是这样的话，那么事情应该会没问题。
Well, when put into those terms, the U.S. government is not in the best shape.
嗯，从这些方面来看时，美国政府并不处于最佳状况。
It's expensive to run the government.
政府的运作成本很高。
And in order to pay for social services like Medicare, which is healthcare partially paid for by the government for people over the age of 65, the government needs to collect taxes to cover the cost and the thousands of other costs like it for which the government pays.
为了支付医疗保险等社会服务费用，医疗保险是政府为65岁以上的人支付部分医疗保健费用的服务。政府需要征收税款来覆盖成本，以及政府支付的其他数千项类似费用。
For the last several years, for both Democratic and Republican administrations, the U.S. government has been spending more than it collects in taxes.
在过去的几年里，无论是民主党还是共和党的政府，美国政府的支出都超过了税收收入。
Our Matt Egan breaks down the financial terms for us and makes sense, if you will, of the country's current financial predicament.
我们的马特·伊根为我们分析了财务条款，并解释了该国当前的财务困境。
People sometimes get confused when we talk about the debt and the deficit.
当我们谈论债务和赤字时，人们有时会感到困惑。
Can you explain the difference between the two and the relationship?
你能解释一下这两者之间的区别和关系吗？
The deficit is the difference between what the government is taking in in revenue and what it's spending.
赤字是政府收入和支出之间的差额。
You just take the total revenue, subtract the total expenditure, that's the deficit.
你只需将总收入减去总支出，这就是赤字。
If you go back to the year 2000, it was actually a surplus.
如果你回到2000年，实际上是有盈余的。
Did you say surplus? There was a surplus?
你是说盈余吗？有盈余吗？
Can you believe it?
你能相信吗？
Can we get another surplus anytime soon?
我们能否很快再次获得盈余？
No, we're not even close.
不，我们甚至还没有接近。
I laugh, I should be crying. I mean, no, our deficit is large.
我笑了，我应该哭的。我的意思是，不，我们的赤字很大。
It's 1.6 dollars, 1.7 trillion dollars. That's a long way from zero.
这是1.6万亿美元，1.7万亿美元。那离零还很远。
And all the trend lines look pretty difficult here.
而且这里所有的趋势线看起来都相当困难。
And the national debt has reached a record of over 34 trillion dollars.
并且国债已经达到了创纪录的超过34万亿美元。
For some perspective, if you took 34 trillion dollars one-dollar bills and stacked them on top of each other, they'd reach the moon and back almost five times.
为了更直观地理解，如果你拿34万亿美元的一美元钞票，把它们一张一张地叠起来，它们的长度将接近往返月球五次。
This can all sound so complicated and massive, right?
这一切听起来可能非常复杂和庞大，对吧？
A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there.
一万亿美元在这里，一万亿美元在那里。
Can you talk about what ways all of this will impact the average American, right?
你能谈谈所有这些将以何种方式影响普通美国人，对吗？
The college kid that just graduated, or a new home buyer, or a single mom.
刚毕业的大学生，或者是首次购房者，或者是单身母亲。
It's not one of those cliff events.
这不是那些悬崖事件之一。
It's more of a corrosive on the economy.
这对经济更具腐蚀性。
Yeah, it results in steadily higher interest rates.
是的，这导致利率稳步上升。
It does mean that we're going to be paying more for getting a mortgage loan if we want to buy a home, which is already very unaffordable, you know, given the high rates and the high house prices.
这确实意味着，如果我们想买房，获得抵押贷款的成本会更高，而考虑到高利率和高房价，买房已经非常难以负担了。
It's going to affect rates on getting a loan to purchase a vehicle.
这将影响获得贷款购买车辆的利率。
Credit card loans.
信用卡贷款。
Any borrowing we need to do, it's just going to be more costly to do it.
我们需要进行的任何借贷，都会变得成本更高。
The interest payments on the debt is starting to add up and starting to crowd out the kind of things we want our government to do.
债务的利息支付开始增加，开始排挤我们希望政府做的事情。
I mean, the interest payments now are over a trillion dollars.
我的意思是，现在的利息支付超过了一万亿美元。
In fact, I think we are now spending more on interest payments on the debt than we are on our own national defense.
事实上，我认为我们现在在债务利息支付上的支出比我们在自己的国防上的支出还要多。
I don't think that's ever happened in the history for which we have data.
我认为在我们有数据的历史中，这种情况从未发生过。
And so every billion dollars that we're spending on interest to our creditors is a billion less that we can maybe spend on things that we care about, like education or defense or rebuilding roads and bridges.
因此，我们每向债权人支付10亿美元的利息，就意味着我们可能在我们关心的事情上少花10亿美元，比如教育、国防或重建道路和桥梁。
Is that right?
是那样的吗？
That's exactly right.
那完全正确。
Who gets the blame here?
谁该为此负责呢？
Is this a Republican problem? Is this a Democrat problem? Is it really bipartisan?
这是共和党的问题吗？这是民主党的问题吗？还是两党的问题吗？
If you kind of add up deficit-financed initiatives done under Republican presidents and add up the deficit-financed initiatives done under Democrats, interestingly enough, it comes out to be about the same.
如果你把共和党总统领导下的赤字融资举措加起来，再把民主党总统领导下的赤字融资举措加起来，有趣的是，结果大致相同。
So it's a bipartisan problem.
所以这是一个两党都存在的问题。
We all are guilty of the rising deficit and debt that we're struggling with right now.
我们都对我们现在正在努力应对的不断上升的赤字和债务负有责任。
