M20:37
嗯，是这样，我记得我引用过一句话——我想当时是 Katharine Graham 在转述你父亲的话，是几年前说的——如果你非常有钱，可能比较好的做法是，给孩子留的钱要够他们去做任何事，
Yeah, well, I quoted—I think Katharine Graham was quoting your father at the time, but some years back—as saying, if you're quite rich, probably the idea of leaving your children enough so they can do anything but not enough so they can do nothing.
但又不能多到让他们什么都不用做。
Is not a bad formula.
我觉得这不是个坏公式。我想，如果你说的是那些没那么富有的人，从社会层面上看，你知道，如果由我来设计制度，我不会设计一个包含继承的体系；但考虑到现实就是这样，我觉得在较低的财富层级上，在这个社会里把财产留给孩子，完全没问题。
I think if you're talking about people that aren't quite rich, I've seen, you know, socially, I wouldn't have a system that involved inheritances, but recognizing the situation that exists, I think probably at lower levels, that leaving to the children in this society is perfectly okay.
但我很相信 meritocracy，所以如果让我来设计一整套制度，配上 consumption tax 之类的安排，我大概会把继承也看作一种消费，而且会对它课以非常重的税。
But I believe enough in a meritocracy that if I were devising the system with a consumption tax and everything, I would probably make inheritance a form of consumption that would be very heavily taxed.
因为我不相信，一个人仅仅因为碰巧出生在“对的子宫”里，本质上就有资格去过一种和别人完全不同的人生；而另一些人只是因为在“子宫选择”这件事上没那么走运。
Because I don't believe that because you happen to come out of the right womb, essentially, that you are entitled to live an entirely different life than somebody who wasn't quite as lucky in terms of womb selection.
不过就我自己来说，你知道，我遵循的就是那个原则：给到他们足够去做任何事，但不要多到让他们什么都不做。
But in my own case, you know, I follow the enough so they can do anything but not enough so they can do nothing.
我觉得社会把这一切都给了我——我是非常幸运的。
I think that society showered all this—I was very lucky.
我在历史上一个恰到好处的时间点，以一种恰到好处的方式被“接线”好了，所以我才能在这种市场经济里做得非常好。就像 Bill Gates 跟我说过的，如果我生在几千年前，我大概早就成了某种动物的午餐了。
I was wired the right way at the right time in history to do very well in this kind of a market economy where, as Bill Gates has told me, if I was born some thousands of years ago, I'd have been some animal's lunch.
对，你知道，我跑得又不快，而且不同时代有用的资产也是不一样的。
Yeah, you know, I don't run very fast, and there are different assets that are useful at different times.
呃，而且，你知道，我天生就不是那种能下 championship bridge 或者 championship chess 的人，我也不是那种能当篮球明星之类的人。
Uh, and, you know, I'm not wired to play championship bridge or championship chess, or I'm not wired to be a basketball star or anything.
只不过刚好我所处的这个领域里，擅长 capital allocation 会得到惊人的回报，这并不代表我就比别人更有价值，或者更值得什么。
It just so happens I'm in an area where it pays off like crazy to be good at capital allocation, and that doesn't make me a more worthwhile human being than anybody else or anything.
这只意味着我很幸运。
It just means I was lucky.
而这种幸运，是否应该让很多代人都因此受益——对这一点，我会有一些保留。
And should that luck enable many generations of people—that I would have some reservations about that.
所以，这就是我自己对继承的看法。不过 Charlie 家庭更大，他也许能给你一个更好的答案。
So that's my own feeling on inheritance, but Charlie has a bigger family and he can give you a better answer.