Coffee Is One Routine New York Won t Give Up
咖啡 紐約人不願割捨的日常
By Sanam Yar

For many New Yorkers, the ritual of grabbing a daily coffee is one of the last luxuries they are holding on to while social distancing.
對許多紐約客來說每天喝杯咖啡的儀式，是他們在維持社交距離下保有的最後幾種奢侈之一。

On weekends, people line up six feet apart outside cafes offering cappuccinos and mochas to-go. Bodegas continue to serve steaming hot cups of coffee to regulars and emergency workers alike. Some businesses are even taking coffee orders for delivery.
每到週末，人們就在提供外帶卡布奇和摩卡咖啡的咖啡館外排隊，間隔6呎（約1.8公尺）。小型便利商店繼續向老顧客和救難人員提供熱騰騰的咖啡。一些商家甚至接單外送咖啡。

New York is fueled and anchored by its coffee purveyors, and contains more of them per capita than any other city in the United States, according to a study by WalletHub.
根據個人理財網站「錢包中心」的調查，紐約靠著咖啡館穩固茁壯，而且平均每人享有的咖啡館數量比美國任何其他城市都多。

Now that many of those shops have temporarily or permanently closed, a morning latte has come to represent something more: supporting a local business, while preserving a sense of routine.
眼見許多咖啡館暫時歇業和永久停業，早晨買杯拿鐵含意就更深了：支持本地商家，並維持日常感。

In the years leading up to the pandemic, Lesley Berson, 47, would take her son’s hand and make the trip across the street from their Harlem apartment to Lenox Coffee several times a week. The shop’s staff “remembers him from when he was little,” she said. “They’ve watched him grow up.”
在新冠肺炎疫情大流行之前的這些年，每周總有幾回，現年47歲的雷思麗．伯爾森會牽著兒子的手，從哈林區的家過馬路到藍納克斯咖啡館消費。伯爾森說，這家店的員工「打從兒子還小就認得他，一路看著他長大」。

These days, visiting the shop has become an opportunity to maintain that sense of normalcy and socialize, if only briefly.
如今，去咖啡館成了維持正常感和與人打交道的機會，哪怕只是短暫的。

“So much of what we love about the neighborhood is centered around having your barista and having your bartender know who you are and going back to the same place over and over again,” said Ms. Quanci, 29, who works as a stylist. “Right now everyone is scared and nervous. We’re trying our hardest to ensure that the institutions around us continue to exist.”
29歲、擔任造型師的昆西說：「我們對這鄰里的喜愛，有很大一部份跟讓咖啡店店員和酒保認識我們，以及一次次回到同樣店家消費密不可分。現在人人緊張害怕。我們盡最大努力確保周圍店家繼續存活。」

Many coffee shop owners have found themselves choosing between keeping their stores open and risking the safety of their staff, or facing financial ruin and leaving their employees without work. The cafes that remain open only offer orders for takeout or delivery, and are often operating at reduced hours.
許多咖啡館老闆面對選擇，是要維持營業並讓員工冒著染疫風險，還是停業導致重大損失，並使員工失業。繼續開門的咖啡館只提供外帶或外送，而且通常縮短營業時間。

“If we were to close, we would not reopen,” said Sabrina Meinhardt, the director of operations at Dépanneur in Brooklyn. “Customers are very grateful and say ‘thank you,’ and tips have been really wonderful.
布魯克林區咖啡館「便利商店」營運長薩布麗娜．邁因哈特說：「如果我們關門，就不會再開了。客人都很感激地說『謝謝』，小費也給得很大方。」

Other coffee shop employees described feeling that they weren’t just providing a service, but that their presence was symbolic.
其他咖啡館的店員說，覺得自己不只在賣咖啡，自己的存在也具象徵意義。

“I know it’s not just the coffee,” said Sarah Madges, 29, a barista and manager at Swallow Cafe, which has three locations in Brooklyn. “Everyone who comes in, I can tell for the most part this is the one thing they do that day that contains a semblance of normalcy and provides comfort, even if that comfort comes through a mask and gloved hand. It’s the closest people can get to an organic human interaction.”
29歲的莎拉．麥吉斯是「燕子咖啡館」的咖啡師兼經理，這家咖啡館在布魯克區有三家店。麥吉斯說：「顧客走進店裡時，我多半能察覺，他們當天來店消費是為尋找似曾相識的正常感和慰藉，就算這種慰藉得透過口罩和戴手套的手來傳遞。這是人們能得到最接近活生生人際互動的體驗。」

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/style/coronavirus-coffee-open-nyc.html

2020-05-17．聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析．李京倫譯、核稿/樂慧生

說文解字看新聞 李京倫

紐約客愛喝咖啡，新冠疫情再嚴重也不忘買本杯外帶，為的是那分一如往常的安心感。

根據「美國傳統英語字典」，routine是一套慣常不變的行動或程序，通常機械性地執行。get (somebody) into a routine是努力（使某人）習慣新的程序。slip/fall/settle into a routine是不費力地習慣新程序。break a routine是指打破習慣，去做不同於例行程序的事。disrupt/upset somebody’s routine是擾亂某人的生活常軌。

per capita是拉丁文，意為「每單位人口」或「每個人」，廣見於社會科學和統計文章。在統計學上，per capita用來比較人口規模不同國家的經濟指標，最常見的是人均國內生產毛額（GDP）和人均所得（income）。

per capita用來比較傳染病流行程度時，「每單位人口」通常指每10萬人，也可能每100萬人。例如美國約翰霍普金斯大學比較各國新冠肺炎死亡率，發現比利時最高，每10萬人有73.67人死亡，就可以說Coronavirus deaths per capita were highest in Belgium, topping a list of 173 countries worldwide.

Outrage Could Endanger the Economy
紓困引發民怨 恐危害美經濟
By Neil Irwin

The United States economy is in free fall, with tens of millions of people unemployed and countless businesses at risk of collapse. Congress has already allocated nearly $3 trillion to contain the crisis, and it is widely understood that it will need to do more.
美國經濟處於自由落體狀態，數千萬人失業，無數企業面臨倒閉的危險。美國國會已撥出近3兆美元來遏制這場危機，但咸信這麼做還不夠。

Yet with stunning speed, the political conversation has pivoted from whatever-it-takes determination toward a different feeling: outrage.
然而，政治對話已以驚人速度從不惜一切的決心，轉向一種不同的感覺：憤怒。

Increasingly, lawmakers, media coverage and ordinary voters are focused not on preventing a potential depression, but on litigating which recipients of federal rescue are morally worthy and which are not.
愈來愈多國會議員、媒體報導與選民不再把關注重點置於防止潛在的經濟蕭條，而是置於爭論收受聯邦救助的對象在道德上哪些站得住腳，哪些則否。

For many on the political left, that has expressed itself as outrage at big corporations taking advantage of government rescues or cheap credit supplied by the Federal Reserve. On the right, it has included anger at federal government support for state and local governments, and at expanded unemployment insurance benefits supporting the jobless. For the news media, it has meant articles about rescue money going to arguably unworthy organizations like prep schools and steakhouse chains.
對許多左派人士來說，這自行表達了對大企業利用政府救助或聯準會所提供廉價貸款的憤怒。在右派方面，這包括了對聯邦政府支持州與地方政府，以及對擴大失業保險福利以支持失業者的憤怒。對新聞媒體來說，這意味著針對救助資金流向預備學校跟連鎖牛排館等顯然不適格組織所做報導。

In effect, a scramble is underway to define who counts as deserving of a piece of the multi-trillion dollar federal rescues. The risk is that this fuels a sense of scarcity, of zero-sum jockeying. It has the potential to limit the government’s response and suspend help to affected individuals, businesses and governments before the crisis is anywhere close to ending.
實際上，一場爭奪戰已然展開，以界定誰才夠資格從這數兆美元聯邦救助金中分得一杯羹。風險在於，這助長了稀缺感，即零和的競爭。在危機尚不知何時方能結束以際，這可能會限制政府的反應，並中斷對受影響個人、企業與政府的援助。

“My conservative friends don’t think states and cities deserve help,” said Tony Fratto, who worked in the George W. Bush White House and is now a partner at Hamilton Place Strategies. “My progressive friends think certain businesses don’t deserve help. And my libertarian friends don’t want anyone to get help.”
曾在小布希總統任內於白宮工作、現為漢密爾頓地方策略公司合夥人的法拉托說：「保守派朋友認為州跟城市不值得幫助。進步派朋友認為某些企業不值得幫助。自由派朋友則不希望任何人獲得幫助。」

“These are the seeds of long, slow, painful recoveries,” he said.
他說道：「這些都是讓復甦漫長、緩慢且痛苦的種子。」

In particular, there is an emerging tendency to apply a lens that made more sense in the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath: the idea of “moral hazard.” Economists use the term to refer to the bad incentives that are created when people or companies know they will be rescued from their mistakes.
尤其是現在出現一種新趨勢，即採用一種用於2008年全球金融危機及餘波時期更為合理的觀點：「道德風險」的概念。經濟學家使用該術語來指在人們或公司知道他們犯了錯卻能獲得救援的情形下，祭出的不良激勵措施。

In the last crisis, conservatives complained about mortgage relief for home buyers who had borrowed more than they could afford.
在上次危機中，保守派不滿超過自身承受能力貸款購房者獲得房貸減免。

The bank bailouts of that era involved huge moral hazard problems, in that the very financial institutions that had fueled a mortgage bubble were being protected from its full consequences.
那時對銀行的紓困涉及巨大的道德風險問題，因為獲得保護，使其免於承擔全部後果的金融機構，正是那些助長抵押貸款泡沫的禍首。

But arguments that similar concerns should apply in the COVID-19 crisis are less persuasive.
可是，類似顧慮也應適用於2019新型冠狀病毒疫情危機的論點，則較不具說服力。

But that crucial difference – that corporations are victims of the coronavirus, not the cause of it – is ignored by an emerging thread of commentary.
然而，企業是新冠疫情的受害者，而非造成疫情的原因這一關鍵差異，卻被一系列新興評論所忽視。

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/upshot/bailout-backlash-moral-hazard.html

2020-05-17．聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析．陳韋廷譯、核稿/樂慧生