跟读练习: The Problem with Billionaires — and the Debut of True Net Worth | Randall Lane | TED - 通过YouTube学习英语口语
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I am a journalist, trained as a journalist, but I spent most of my last 35 years as an anthropologist.
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84 句
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I am a journalist, trained as a journalist, but I spent most of my last 35 years as an anthropologist.
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I've kind of been embedded with a very unique subspecies.
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You might know them by their Latin name, Billionaires Maximus.
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And when I got to Forbes out of college in 1991, there were all of 274 billionaires in the world.
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It was a very aspirational little club.
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You know, Bruno Mars in his song "Billionaire" sings of dreaming of being on the cover of Forbes magazine, standing next to Oprah and the Queen.
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Well, you know, fast forward, if we did that cover now, it would be very crowded.
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Forbes tracks 3,428 people we believe have a net worth right now of a billion dollars or more.
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And they all have one thing in common.
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Who wants to know the secret of every billionaire right now in the world, which is nobody likes them.
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Forbes and HarrisX conducted a survey a couple of weeks ago [of] 1,009 Americans.
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The results are not good.
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Trial lawyers are kicking billionaires' ass.
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(Laughter) They are tied with members of Congress.
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They are barely beating TikTok influencers.
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(Laughter) But there's a disconnect going on right now because the world needs billionaires.
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The world desperately needs billionaires.
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If you look at countries that have billionaires, they tend to have all the things that we all love: progress, jobs, growth.
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Let's go to China.
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At the beginning of this century, there were no Chinese billionaires on the Forbes list, and almost 500 million people lived in extreme poverty.
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Fast forward 20 years, it's almost the opposite.
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Almost 500 Chinese billionaires and no one living in extreme poverty.
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That is not a coincidence.
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If you go to Nigeria, one of the largest countries in the world by population, only four billionaires, about 100 million people live in extreme poverty.
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There are no billionaires in Cuba.
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There are no billionaires in Iran.
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There are no billionaires in Belarus.
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History shows that incentive creates personal wealth and societal wealth.
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When you cap earnings, that correlates with repression and stagnation.
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So why all the hate?
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Why all the hate?
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Wealth disparity is some of it.
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In a few weeks, if SpaceX goes public as scheduled, Forbes believes that at that moment, Elon Musk will become the world's first trillionaire.
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That's a million million.
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But here's the deal.
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Elon is no richer, not much richer at least when you measure by GDP, [than] John D. Rockefeller when he became the world's first billionaire a hundred years ago.
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John D. Rockefeller, he was an OG monopolist.
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But by the end of his life, doing lots of good works, he was highly respected.
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Andrew Carnegie even more so.
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People don't resent billionaires.
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People want to become billionaires.
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People resent billionaires when they forget that the purpose of business is to create happiness, not who dies with the most toys.
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(Applause) So here's the scorecard.
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Right now, here are the five richest people in the world, all Americans, all with a net worth north of 200 billion dollars.
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Forbes tracks pretty much every billionaire in terms of how much they give to charity -- how much winds up, [and the] end result into charity.
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Right now, these five collectively, [their] competitive net worth, less than one percent of their net worth, has been donated to charity: 0.9 percent.
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Compare that with the average American -- teacher, fireman -- [who] gives two percent of his or her income to charity.
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That gap, as somebody who loves entrepreneurial capitalism and defends entrepreneurial capitalism, bothers me.
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That gap is why there are pitchforks.
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But that gap is something we can address ...
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by leaning into the final decision maker that a lot of billionaires have when they decide if they're going to be philanthropic or not, which is their egos.
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It turns out that a lot of people care about where they are on various Forbes lists.
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In fact, in 1982, the very first Forbes 400, we had one tycoon who helped us create an immutable law of wealth tracking: the Trump rule.
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Take what the Donald tells you, divide by three and refine from there.
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Saudi Arabia's Prince Al Waleed created an entire public company, basically to get higher on the Forbes list.
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Every year before the Forbes issue came out, the billionaires issue, he would buy up his own stock, pump up his own stock, and after it came out, he would sell it.
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Look, it’s like a 10-digit cardiogram there.
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(Laughter) Kylie Jenner's team gave us what we believe are bogus numbers about her company to get onto the Forbes billionaires list, and she's not even the thirstiest member of the Kardashian family.
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(Laughter) During COVID, Kanye West called me maybe every other day.
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We talked about an hour at a time, mostly about how he thinks he was richer than we said he was.
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When we respectfully disagreed, he respectfully responded by tweeting my cell phone to 30 million followers on Twitter.
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(Laughter) That was a tough day.
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(Laughter) But Kanye inspired an idea.
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Why can't we lean into this strange leverage we have over some people?
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Why can't we create a list that rewards people for donating to charity versus penaliz[ing] them by taking them further down on the Forbes list?
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(Applause) So we've created something called True Net Worth, and we're going to debut it right here.
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(Cheers and applause) True Net Worth is your regular net worth, combined with the money you've donated that we appreciate like you still own it.
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(Applause) Here is a refresher.
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Here are the top five in the world.
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Here are the top five by true net worth.
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(Applause) Look at my friend Warren Buffett.
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He's already given more away, in today's dollars, than he still has.
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He's pledged 99 percent of what's left to charity, and he stipulated that all that money has to be spent down within 10 years of his death, as opposed to just sitting in a foundation, gathering interest for years.
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(Applause) That's true net worth.
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Now let's look at the biggest movers on this list.
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(Applause and cheers) MacKenzie Scott is giving away money faster, smarter, no-strings-attached than pretty much anyone in history.
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She's the 84th richest person in the world by net worth.
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She's 26th by true net worth.
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(Cheers and applause) People don't value what you can't measure.
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True net worth offers role models for billionaires, for millionaires, for thousandaires.
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Give while you live.
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Give faster and bigger maybe than you're comfortable with, give your money or your time.
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But what all of it does is support the system that makes all of us prosperous.
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Thank you. (Cheers and applause)
为什么要通过这个视频练习口语？
这个视频探讨了亿万富翁存在的两面性，反映出社会对富人复杂的情感。在学习英语口语时，通过分析这种深刻话题，我们可以增强自己的表达能力。练习时，你不仅是在接受信息，在了解不同观点的同时，还能培养更流利的口语和更丰富的词汇。利用 shadow speech 技术进行口语练习，可以帮助你提升语音和语调，使沟通更自然。观看这样的讨论视频，可以让你在真实的语境中感受到语言的魅力。你可以在 看YouTube学英语 的同时，逐步克服语言障碍，提升自信。
语法与表达在语境中的运用
在视频中，演讲者使用了一些重要的表达结构，以下是几个关键例子：
- “The world needs billionaires” — 这句话展示了需要和重要性的联系，使得听众理解在经济中亿万富翁的角色。
- “There is a disconnect going on” — 使用了“disconnect”这样一个词，使得听众感受到当下社会的矛盾。
- “Wealth disparity is some of it” — 在讨论财富不平等时，通过“is some of it”表达了情况的复杂性。
- “People resent billionaires when they forget” — 这个结构强调了条件关系，展示了富人如何受到社会情绪的影响。
这些表达能帮助你在与他人讨论社会议题时，更加清晰地表达观点。
常见的发音陷阱
在视频中，有一些词汇和语调可能会对学习者构成挑战：
- Billionaire — 这个词的发音强调第一音节，“bill-”，而后面的音节相对较轻。
- Disconnect — 注意发音中的重音位置，轻声“nect”部分。
- Wealth disparity — 对于这个词组的流利发音，注意“wealth”和“disparity”的连读。
通过 shadow speak 的方式练习这些词汇，可以帮助你克服发音的问题，并提升你的英语口语能力。
什么是跟读法？
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。