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Gambling and poverty 赌与贫 Of slots and sloth 等于老虎机和懒惰 How cash from casinos makes Native Americans poorer 看从赌场得来的现金如何令美国原住民愈加贫穷
Jan 17th 2015 | SILETZ RESERVATION, OREGON | From the print edition of The Economist 译者：歌姬 The curse of easy money 不劳而获之财的诅咒
ON A rainy weekday afternoon, Mike Justice pushes his two-year-old son in a pram up a hill on the Siletz Reservation[1], a desolate, wooded area along the coast of Oregon. Although there are jobs at the nearby casino, Mr Justice, a member of the nearly 5,000-strong Siletz tribe, is unemployed. He and his girlfriend Jamie, a recovering drug addict, live off her welfare payments of a few hundred dollars a month, plus the roughly $1,200 he receives annually in “per capita payments”, cash the tribe distributes each year from its casino profits. That puts the family of three below the poverty line. 工作日的一天下午，下着雨，迈克·贾斯蒂斯推着婴儿车里两岁的儿子走在俄勒冈州沿海地区的塞乐茨聚居地的小山上。那里人烟稀少，树木繁茂。虽然附近的赌场提供有工作岗位，身为共约5000人数的塞拉茨部落一员的贾斯蒂斯仍旧没有工作。他和正在接受戒毒治疗的女友洁咪依靠洁咪每月几百美元的福利费，以及他每年收到的约1200美元的“人均报酬”，也就是部落每年分发的赌场红利生活。因此这个三口之家的生活水平在贫困线以下。
It is not ideal, Mr Justice admits, but he says it is better than pouring hours into a casino job that pays minimum wage and barely covers the cost of commuting. Some 13% of Mr Justice’s tribe work at the Chinook Winds Casino, including his mother, but it does not appeal to him. The casino lies an hour away down a long, windy road. He has no car, and the shuttle bus runs only a few times a day. “Once you get off your shift, you may have to wait three hours for the shuttle, and then spend another hour on the road,” he says. “For me, it’s just not worth it.”
贾斯蒂斯承认这种生活并不理想，但也好过倾注大把时间在一份赌场工作上，拿着保底薪资，勉强够个通勤费。贾斯蒂斯所属的部落里有13%的人在奇努克风赌场工作，包括他母亲，但他无意于此。这家赌场距离公路有一小时路程。公路很长且当风。他没有车而来往的公交一天只通几次车。他说：“当你下班后，你也许不得不等候三个小时才能坐到公交车，然后再花一个小时在路上。对我来说，这不值得。” Mr Justice’s situation is not unusual. After the Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that Native American tribes, being sovereign, could not be barred from allowing gambling, casinos began popping up on reservations everywhere. Today, almost half of America’s 566 Native American tribes and villages operate casinos, which in 2013 took in $28 billion, according to the National Indian Gaming Commission. 类似贾斯蒂斯的情况并不少见。自从1987年最高法院裁定自治的美国原住民部落享受赌博许可，各地的聚居区就开始有赌场开业。据国家印第安人博彩委员会称，现在美国的566个原住民部落和村庄里，有将近一半在经营赌场，仅2013年就收入280亿美元。
Small tribes with land close to big cities have done well. Yet a new study in the American Indian Law Journal suggests that growing tribal gaming revenues can make poverty worse. The study looks at two dozen tribes in the Pacific north-west between 2000 and 2010. During that time, casinos owned by those tribes doubled their total annual take in real terms, to $2.7 billion. Yet the tribes’ mean poverty rate rose from 25% to 29%. Some tribes did worse: among the Siletz poverty jumped from 21.1% to 37.8%. 靠近大城市的小部落一直发展不错。但是美国印第安人法学期刊的一项新研究表示这些部落的博彩业收入提高会加剧贫困。这项研究的研究对象是生活在太平洋西北沿岸的二十四个部落，时间是2000年至2010年。在此期间，这些部落经营的赌场的每年的实际总收益翻了一番，达到27亿美元。然而部落的平均贫困率却从25%上升至29%。一些部落情况更糟：塞乐茨部落的贫困率从21.1%骤增至37.8%。
Experts offer several explanations. Drug and alcohol abuse are rampant on reservations, so many tribal members find it hard to hold down a steady job. Poor health is another problem: Native Americans have high rates of obesity and diabetes, which are often aggravated by a lack of good medical care. More than 14% of Native Americans are in poor or fair health, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, compared with 10% of the overall population. Some 27% of Native Americans under 65 lack health insurance, compared with just 17% of Americans. “A lot of people in these communities are suffering,” says Greg Guedel, a Seattle-based attorney who wrote the study. 专家给出了一些解释。吸毒和酗酒在聚居区屡禁不止，因此很多部落成员意识到长期从事一项稳定的工作是有难度的。身体不好也是个问题：肥胖病和糖尿病在美国原住民里发病率很高，而缺乏好的医疗护理通常又加剧了这一情况。据卫生部调查，超过14%的美国原住民处在不甚或较为健康的状况，相当于全国人口的10%。65岁以下的美国原住民中约27%没有医疗保险，仅相当于美国人口的17%。在西雅图工作的该项研究的撰写人律师葛列格·古德拉说：“处于这些社会团体里的人大多正忍受着痛苦。”
But the biggest problem may be the way casino profits are sometimes disbursed. Per capita payments have grown as gaming revenues have risen. “These payments can be destructive because the more generous they become, the more people fall into the trap of not working,” says Ron Whitener, a law professor, tribal judge and a member of the Squaxin Island Tribe in Washington state. Of the 17 tribes in the study that handed casino profits directly to members, ten saw their poverty rates rise. Of the seven tribes that did not, only two saw such an increase (see chart). 不过最大的问题可能在于有时支出赌场收益的方式。“人均报酬”随着博彩收入的提高而增加。华盛顿斯凯尔革欣岛屿部落的一员亦任部落法官的法学教授罗恩·怀特奈尔说：“这些报酬也许会带来灾难，因为报酬越多，就会有越多的人陷入不去工作的怪圈。”接受研究的部落里，有17个部落直接将赌场收益分发给成员，其中10个部落的贫困率有所上涨。而另外7个不直接分发收益的部落中，只有两个部落的贫困率升高了（如图）。 Per capita payments range from as little as a few hundred dollars a year to more than $100,000. In some tribes, members receive 18 years of per capita payments in a lump sum when they turn 18. 'There are a lot of very successful car dealerships around reservations that make their money off 18-year-old',adds Mr Whitener. 人均报酬少则每年只有几百美元，多则超过10万美元。一些部落的成员会在年满18岁时一次性收到18年份的人均报酬。怀特奈尔补充道：“聚居区周边有很多成功的汽车代理商，他们都是18岁后开始挣钱的。”
One very small tribe in the study, Jamestown S’Klallam in northern Washington, has eliminated poverty entirely. That tribe does not issue any per capita payments and has used its casino profits to diversify into other businesses, such as harvesting huge molluscs for export to China. Squaxin Island, which reduced its poverty rate from 31.4% in 2000 to 12.4% in 2010, used casino profits to get into cigarette manufacturing about ten years ago. Leaders of the Siletz tribe, by contrast, allot 40% of the casino’s net revenues to per capita payments and only 17% towards economic development. Of the tribes surveyed, the Siletz has one of the highest poverty rates.
接受研究的一个很小的位于华盛顿北部的部落詹姆斯敦圣克拉拉姆已经完全摆脱了贫困。这个部落没有发放任何个人报酬，而是利用赌场收益从事其他行业的多元化经营，比如采收大量软体动物出口中国。斯凯尔革欣岛屿部落大约十年前便利用赌场收益投资烟草制造，贫困率已从2000年的31.4%降至2010年的12.4%。相反，塞乐茨部落的首领把赌场全部收益的40%作为个人报酬发放，仅17%用于发展经济。在被调查研究的部落里，塞乐茨的贫困率是最高之一。 Direct payments are popular, so tribal leaders are reluctant to cut them. And some experts think they help. “I get terribly annoyed by folks who suggest that Natives become lazy once they have a little guaranteed income,” says David Wilkins, a professor of American-Indian studies at the University of Minnesota. He says he doesn’t hear that argument used often against rich non-Natives with trust funds. Perhaps he has never seen the film “Arthur”.
直接发放报酬很受成员支持，所以部落首领不愿去削减它们。而且部分专家认为这么做是有用的。研究美国印第安人的明尼苏达州立大学教授大卫·威尔金斯说：“我很生气，因为有人提出一旦原住民有了点固定收入，就会懒惰起来。”他说他不会接受这种通常用来反对享受着信托资金的非原住民富人的理由。也许他是没看过电影《亚瑟王》。 Kevin Goodell, a 51-year-old Siletz tribal member, works on the tribe’s forestry crew. It had several job openings last year—but no qualified applicants, according to Mr Goodell. He says he tried to get young people interested, but they told him they didn’t want to work in the woods. With free housing and health care, “a lot of people have figured out a way to use the system to survive,” he says. “Why get a job if you don’t need one?” 51岁的塞乐茨部落成员凯文·古德尔在部落里的林业小队工作。据古德尔说，去年有几个岗位缺人，但却没有合格的应征者。他说他尽力让年轻人对此感兴趣，但年轻人告诉他，他们不想在森林里工作。很多人住着免费的房子，又享受着医疗保健。他说：“他们已经学会利用体制生存。既然不需要工作，又何必去找呢？” 注： [1] The Siletz Reservation is a 5.852 sq mi (15.157 km2) Indian reservation in Lincoln County, Oregon, United States, owned by the Confederated Tribes of Siletz. The reservation lies on numerous non-contiguous parcels of land in east-central Lincoln County, mostly east of the city of Siletz, between it and the Polk County line. |
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