Hungry for work

渴求工作

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If these economies were getting going again, those who stayed in cities should be able to find plenty of work, given the exodus to the countryside. Poor workers still have the same skills they had six months ago; most are keen to use them. But demand for labour remains low. Vishwanath Kamble used to earn around 350 rupees a day as a cobbler in Mumbai. With offices shut and few passers-by, he more often gets only ten rupees nowadays. When he says his daily prayers, he pleads for things to go back to how they were before. That is still far off. Data from Google Maps show that even in mid-September visits to Mumbai’s restaurants, cinemas and shopping centres were down by over 70% compared with January and early February.

如果這些經(jīng)濟(jì)體重新開始運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)，考慮到大量人口涌向農(nóng)村，留在城市的人應(yīng)該能夠找到大量工作。貧窮的工人仍然擁有與六個月前相同的技能;大多數(shù)人都熱衷于雇傭他們。但對勞動力的需求仍然很低。Vishwanath Kamble曾經(jīng)在孟買做鞋匠，每天能掙350盧比。由于辦公室關(guān)閉，路人寥寥無幾，如今他通常只能拿到10盧比。當(dāng)他每天做禱告的時候，他懇求一切回到從前的樣子。這還遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)不夠。谷歌Maps的數(shù)據(jù)顯示，即便是在9月中旬，去孟買餐館、電影院和購物中心的游客數(shù)量也比1月和2月初下降了70%以上。

詞匯

given the /考慮到；鑒于

Exodus/大批的離去（復(fù)數(shù) exoduses）

Rupee/盧比（貨幣）

Cobbler/補(bǔ)鞋匠；工匠

Plead/借口；為...辯護(hù)；托稱

Widespread fears about the spread of the virus are still hampering any recovery. “I’m scared too, but what can I do? I have to go to work,” says Munni Mehra, a maid looking for a job in Mumbai. Her husband is working as a cook, earning 10,000 rupees a month. But if Ms Mehra stays at home much longer they will have to go back to their village in Uttarakhand, in India’s far north. Domestic workers see the irony in how middle-class employers think they are the ones at risk if they rehire house servants, says Martha Chen of Harvard, who has been interviewing informal workers around the world throughout the crisis.

對病毒傳播的廣泛擔(dān)憂仍然阻礙著任何復(fù)蘇?！拔乙埠芎ε拢夷茏鍪裁茨?”在孟買找工作的女傭Munni Mehra說。她的丈夫是一名廚師，每月收入1萬盧比。但是，如果Mehra女士在家里呆得太久，他們將不得不回到他們位于印度最北部北阿坎德邦的村莊。哈佛大學(xué)的Martha Chen在危機(jī)期間采訪了世界各地的非正式工人，她說，家政工人看到了諷刺，中產(chǎn)階級雇主認(rèn)為，如果他們重新雇傭傭人，他們就會面臨風(fēng)險(xiǎn)（個人理解為財(cái)產(chǎn)支配&傭人是否攜帶疾病兩種風(fēng)險(xiǎn)，后者下文寫道傭人并非去人員密集場所的主題）。

詞匯

Irony/諷刺；反語；具有諷刺意味的事

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Cleaners, with their meagre salaries, are not the ones visiting shopping malls, spas and cinemas where covid-19 thrives. Raju, a flower-seller in the same city, can no longer deliver flowers to people’s homes because security guards will not let him into posh blocks of flats. With no trains running, he has been unable to get to the wholesale market, so has had to use pricier local suppliers. As a result his costs have soared. Since covid-19 took hold in India, his earnings have almost halved, from 13,000 a month to 7,000 rupees.

拿著微薄薪水的清潔工，并不是光顧購物中心、水療中心和電影院的人，而這些地方正是新冠病毒流行的地方。Raju是同一座城市的一名花商，由于保安不讓他進(jìn)入高檔公寓，他再也不能給人們送花至家中了。由于沒有火車運(yùn)行，他無法到達(dá)批發(fā)市場，因此不得不求助于價格更高的當(dāng)?shù)毓?yīng)商。結(jié)果，他的成本飆升。自從新冠在印度流行以來，他的收入幾乎減半，從每月1.3萬盧比降至7000盧比。

詞匯

?Meagre/瘦的；貧弱的；貧乏的

posh/華麗的；奢侈的

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Nor can poor countries rely on foreign spending. The sharp fall in oil prices earlier this year was enough to slash revenues in countries like Nigeria and Angola that rely on oil exports. In two-thirds of poor countries, commodities make up more than 60% of total merchandise exports, according to the UN’s latest estimates, rising to 88% in Zambia and 100% in Angola. Foreign tourists are not booking safaris in east Africa or beach breaks in Bali. Demand for exports such as Kenyan flowers and Bangladeshi garments has slumped, too. These industries can expect to recover when the pandemic subsides and borders reopen. But the poor cannot wait.

窮國也不能依賴外國支出。今年早些時候石油價格的大幅下跌足以削減尼日利亞和安哥拉等依賴石油出口的國家的收入。據(jù)聯(lián)合國最新估計(jì)，在三分之二的貧窮國家，商品出口占商品出口總額的60%以上，贊比亞為88%，安哥拉為100%。外國游客沒有預(yù)訂東非的狩獵之旅，也沒有預(yù)訂巴厘島的海灘度假。對肯尼亞鮮花和孟加拉國服裝等出口商品的需求也大幅下降。當(dāng)疫情平息，邊境重新開放時，這些行業(yè)有望復(fù)蘇。但是窮人不能再等了。

詞匯

Garment/衣服，服裝；外表

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For the time being they must rely on help from their own governments. The World Bank reckons that in the past six months 212 countries and territories have rolled out—or made plans to roll out—1,179 social-protection measures that will reach 2bn people. As well as the usual efforts to hand out food and waive utility bills, poor countries are trying out new ideas. Kenya’s government has started a programme to give temporary jobs to more than 26,000 young Kenyans. Montenegro’s is offering subsidies to the tune of 70% of the minimum wage to encourage employers to create new jobs.

目前他們必須依靠本國政府的幫助。世界銀行估計(jì)，在過去的6個月里，212個國家和地區(qū)已經(jīng)或計(jì)劃推出1179項(xiàng)社會保障措施，這些措施將惠及20億人口。除了分發(fā)食物和免除公用事業(yè)費(fèi)用的常規(guī)做法外，貧窮國家也在嘗試新的策略?？夏醽喺畣恿艘豁?xiàng)計(jì)劃，為2.6萬多名肯尼亞年輕人提供臨時工作。黑山共和國提供的補(bǔ)貼高達(dá)最低工資的70%，以鼓勵雇主創(chuàng)造新的就業(yè)機(jī)會。

詞匯

Waive/放棄；擱置

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Cash handouts, heralded by policymakers for years as a cheap and effective form of support, are proving most popular. Technology is helping. A new national ID?system in the Philippines and a unified digital payment system in Tunisia have been speeded up, so that governments can get cash to the poor faster. The Democratic Republic of Congo wants to use mobile-phone data to locate the poor and then send money directly to their e-wallets. In July the central bank also said it would set up special accounts—either through banks or online—to hand out emergency cash.

事實(shí)證明，多年來被政策制定者標(biāo)榜為一種廉價而有效的支持形式的現(xiàn)金發(fā)放最受歡迎。科技也在提供幫助。菲律賓的新國民身份證系統(tǒng)和突尼斯的統(tǒng)一數(shù)字支付系統(tǒng)已經(jīng)在加快落實(shí)，這樣政府就可以更快地向窮人發(fā)放現(xiàn)金。剛果民主共和國希望利用手機(jī)數(shù)據(jù)來確定窮人，然后將錢直接發(fā)送到他們的電子錢包里。今年7月，央行還表示將通過銀行或網(wǎng)上設(shè)立特殊賬戶來發(fā)放應(yīng)急現(xiàn)金。

詞匯

Herald/宣布，通報(bào)

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But such schemes are useful only if governments can afford to hand out serious lumps of cash. Poor countries on average have spent just $4 a head on programmes to help the poor during the covid-19 crisis, compared with an average of $695 per head of the population in rich countries such as Britain, France and America, according to World Bank estimates. The Congolese government plans to hand out $50m to just two million people in Kinshasa and other badly affected provinces, amounting to $25 for each recipient.

但這些計(jì)劃只有在政府能夠負(fù)擔(dān)得起大量現(xiàn)金的情況下才有用。據(jù)世界銀行估計(jì)，在新冠危機(jī)期間，貧窮國家在幫助窮人的項(xiàng)目上平均每人只花費(fèi)4美元，而在富裕國家，如英國、法國和美國，人均花費(fèi)為695美元。剛果政府計(jì)劃向金沙薩和其他受災(zāi)嚴(yán)重省份的200萬人發(fā)放5000萬美元，相當(dāng)于每人25美元。

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And in other countries governments are doing far from enough. A World Bank survey in Ethiopia in June found that 2% of households had received government help in the previous three weeks. A poll of people in Indian cities by the London School of Economics at around the same time found that only a fifth of those responding had received any money from the government. The transfers on average made up less than a quarter of their monthly salary.

而在其他國家，政府做得還遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)不夠。世界銀行6月份在埃塞俄比亞進(jìn)行的一項(xiàng)調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn)，2%的家庭在過去三周內(nèi)接受了政府援助。與此同時，倫敦政治經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)院(London School of Economics)在印度城市進(jìn)行的一項(xiàng)民意調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn)，只有五分之一的受訪者接受過政府的捐款。平均而言，（財(cái)政）轉(zhuǎn)賬所得不到他們月薪的四分之一。

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Other governments are barely doing anything at all. Residents of Ca?ales, a poor suburb of Cárdenas, a smallish city in the Mexico, say the only help they have received was a single round of food packages from the state government in May. Marco Antonio González Cruz has been jobless since the pandemic struck. But he isn’t holding out for help from politicians. “They only come when they want the vote,” he says. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing populist, created a slew of welfare programmes after taking office in 2018, including an expanded pensions system, an apprenticeship scheme for the young and a tree-planting programme in a number of Mexico’s states. But he has provided close to nothing in response to the worst recession the country has seen in a century.

其他政府幾乎什么都沒做?？{萊斯是墨西哥一個小城市卡德納斯的貧困郊區(qū)，當(dāng)?shù)鼐用裾f，他們得到的唯一幫助是州政府5月份發(fā)放的一袋食品。自從大流行爆發(fā)以來，Marco Antonio Gonzalez Cruz一直失業(yè)。但他并沒有向政客們尋求幫助。“他們只有在需要投票的時候才會來，”他這樣說道。左翼民粹主義者、總統(tǒng)Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador在2018年上任后創(chuàng)建了一系列福利項(xiàng)目，包括擴(kuò)大養(yǎng)老金體系、為年輕人提供學(xué)徒培訓(xùn)計(jì)劃以及在墨西哥多個州實(shí)施的植樹計(jì)劃。但在應(yīng)對國家百年來最嚴(yán)重的經(jīng)濟(jì)衰退方面，他幾乎沒有提供任何措施。

Because the urban poor have been harder hit than those in rural areas, governments need to spend any money they do have more cleverly. The Indian government should expand its rural employment guarantee scheme to urban areas, suggests Abhijit Banerjee, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The programme, which provides 100 days of guaranteed work every year, could deploy low-skilled workers as assistants in primary schools or care workers for the elderly. “If the cities recover, then there is hope,” argues Mr Banerjee, who won the Nobel prize for economics last year.

由于城市貧困人口比農(nóng)村貧困人口受到的打擊更大，政府需要更明智地使用他們手頭的任何資金。麻省理工學(xué)院的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家Abhijit Banerjee建議，印度政府應(yīng)該將其農(nóng)村就業(yè)保障計(jì)劃擴(kuò)大到城市地區(qū)。該計(jì)劃每年提供100天有保障的工作，可以安排低技能工人在小學(xué)擔(dān)任助理或?yàn)槔夏耆颂峁┳o(hù)理。去年獲得諾貝爾經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)獎的Banerjee表示:“如果城市復(fù)蘇，那么就有希望。”

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Governments will struggle to continue funding such efforts as revenues fall. Emerging-market governments issued $124bn in hard-currency debt in the first six months of the year. But there are limits to how much more they can borrow. The recent wave of sovereign downgrades has been startling, even compared with previous crises.

隨著財(cái)政收入的下降，政府將很難繼續(xù)為這類努力提供資金。今年上半年，新興市場政府發(fā)行了1240億美元的硬通貨債券。但他們能借到的更多資金是有限的。即使與之前的危機(jī)相比，最近的主權(quán)債務(wù)降級浪潮也是令人吃驚的。

詞匯

sovereign wealth fund?? /主權(quán)基金（主要由政府投資）