美国经济将更像微软还是亚马逊？
特里萨•梅(Theresa May)生平中最重要的部分，不是她信仰英国国教、属于中产阶层或她的性别。更能说明问题的是，她在成为首相之前，从未担任过英国的反对党领袖或财政大臣。
Those two jobs, which most of her predecessors had done at least one of as a tour of duty for the premiership, acquaint a politician with the full spectrum of work undertaken by the state: the loftiest geopolitics, the technical morass of welfare, the producer interests in healthcare and education. Mrs May’s pedigree is a six-year immersion in the Home Office — a narrow department even before criminal justice fell out of its remit in 2007 — and some journeyman portfolios in opposition. She had never done a business-facing job.
梅的大多数前任，在成为首相之前都担任过这两个职位中的至少一个。这种经历让一位政客熟悉政府承担的一整套任务：高远的地缘政治、福利制度的技术难题、以及医疗和教育领域的生产者利益。她的“血统”是在内政部(Home Office)任职6年——即便在2007年刑事司法职责被剥离之前，该部都是一个职责较窄的部门——并在保守党是反对党期间当过一段学徒。她此前从未担负过跟企业打交道的职责。
On the life-and-death matters of crime, terror and espionage, no recent prime minister has sounded more authoritative. On other subjects, none has shown more nervousness. A lot of government is alien to her. She knows it. Increasingly, we know it too.
在事关生死的犯罪、恐怖主义和间谍问题上，近几十年没有哪位首相听起来比梅更权威。在其他主题上，没有哪位首相表现得比梅更紧张。她对政府中的很多事务都很陌生。她了解这一点。我们也越来越了解这一点。
On Monday, Mrs May retreated from her second big idea in as many months. Both had to do with money, not the existential work of an interior minister. The increase in national insurance charges that she announced and then withdrew under criticism in April constituted a forgivable rookie error.
周一，梅不再坚持她两个月来的第二项大主张。这两项主张都跟钱有关，而非内政大臣负责的那种关系生死的事务。她先是宣布提高国民保险(NI)税，随后因遭到批评而在4月撤销该决定，这可以算是一个新手常犯的错误，可以原谅。
The latest capitulation is worse. Last week, she came up with a flawed but constructive answer to the crisis of funding in social care. The elderly would finance their care out of their own estate upon death. The upper limit on their contribution would go but they could keep £100,000 for their children. In the mixed metaphors that proliferate in politics, a floor would replace a cap.
最新的让步更糟糕。上周，她对社会护理的资金来源危机拿出了一个有缺陷、但颇具建设性的答案。老人们将用自己过世后的遗产为自己的护理买单。他们的贡献上限将被取消，但他们可以给子女留下10万英镑。用政坛流行的混合隐喻来说，下限将取代上限。
The idea turned old age into a high-stakes game of chance — die suddenly and your estate would go untouched, contract dementia and it would shrivel over time — but it confronted voters with the principle that things must be paid for and challenged the Conservative cult of inheritance. Mrs May made it central to her election manifesto. Her self-image as a firm leader hinged on her fidelity to this brave, contentious idea.
这个主张把垂垂暮年变成一场高赌注的豪赌：突然去世，你的遗产将不受影响;患上痴呆，你给子女留下的遗产将随着时间推移而减少——但这让选民面对一个原则：什么事都是要有人买单的;这个方案还挑战了保守党对于财产继承的痴迷。梅将其列为她的竞选宣言的中心内容。她作为一个坚强领导人的自我形象有赖于她对这一大胆、富有争议的主张的忠诚度。
A few days of popular disquiet and the cap is back. If Mrs May did not know that old people feel attached to their asset base, she was derelict. If she did and (admirably) resolved to face them down, then her resolve does not amount to much. Colleagues who defended her proposal in public, lobby interests who fought it and any EU negotiators tuning in from the continent will infer the same lesson: this prime minister is strong and stable, until you test her.
在几天的公众不安之后，上限又回来了。如果梅当初不了解老年人对于自己资产基础的依附感，那她就太不接地气了。如果她本来就了解这一点，然后(令人敬佩地)决定对他们坚持原则，那么她的决心实在经不起考验。在公开场合为她的提议辩护的同事、反对该提议的游说利益集团，以及从欧洲大陆关注英国事态的欧盟谈判人员，将得出同一个结论：这位首相是强大稳固的——直到你对她进行考验。
In politics, a change of mind is always a “U-turn”, but that image assumes a certain grace of movement. Cars reverse direction smoothly. This government does it with denial and recrimination. “Nothing has changed,” said Mrs May on Monday, like an Iraqi information minister playing down the fall of Baghdad even as American tanks trundle into town. For a moment, there was panic. For a moment, strength and stability looked like elephantine ponderousness.
在政界，改变想法永远是“180度大转弯”，但这种形象假设了某种优雅的转身姿势。就像汽车平稳掉头。本届政府则是用否认和怪罪别人来转身。梅周一表示：“什么都没改变。”就像在美国坦克轰隆隆开进巴格达时，伊拉克信息部长仍在信心满满地声称巴格达没有失守那样。一会儿是恐慌。一会儿是力量和稳定貌似大象般的沉重。
None of this matters now as the election is safe. Her poll lead has “collapsed” to the low double-digits and, if social care is a mess, the ultimate problem is an unrealistic public, not her. The real worry concerns the future under this government. How many more times will it miscalculate and under-prepare, and on what stage? The complex work of EU exit starts in June. The pressure will make the election campaign feel like the non-event it is. The breadth of the work will take Mrs May beyond her comfort zone to the widest possible horizon of subjects.
这些现在都不重要，因为这场大选的结果是没有悬念的。她在民调中的领先优势已“滑坡”至10多个百分点;再说，如果社会护理搞得一团糟，那么最终的问题是不现实的公众，而不是她。真正的担心在于在这届政府领导下的未来。它还会再错判和准备不足几次，还会在哪些问题上出错?退欧的复杂任务将从6月开始。这种压力将让此次竞选像是一件无关紧要的事情(事实上也确实如此)。工作的广度将让梅脱离她的舒适区，面对种种主题。
For all the thought-pieces devoted to a new-ish prime minister — “Who is the real Theresa May?” — the question is no longer what this government stands for but whether it is any good. Or at least whether it is good enough, given the work ahead. The philosophic contents of “Mayism”, and its supposed break with Thatcherism, seems a less pressing conversation than it did last week.
尽管有大量深刻的文章点评这位上任不太久的首相——“哪一个是真正的特里萨•梅”，但问题不再是本届政府主张什么，而是它是否合格。或者说鉴于下一阶段的工作量，它是否足够合格。与上周相比，“梅主义”(Mayism)的哲学内容及其理应发生的与撒切尔主义(Thatcherism)划清界限，似乎已经是不那么紧迫的讨论。
Most prime ministers live to see their greatest strength reinterpreted as their greatest flaw. Margaret Thatcher’s conviction became her brusqueness. Tony Blair’s charisma became his skill at deception. David Cameron’s lack of dogma became his tactical, game-playing shallowness. And Mrs May’s reticence will become her self-doubt. Right now, we attribute her terse, rehearsed statements to a clever strategic ruse or an endearing, low-key Englishness that hints at several fathoms of hidden depth. In time, we might put it down to a simple lack of confidence, as though she knew the reality of her premiership before we did.
多数首相会在有生之年看到他们的最大优势被重新解读为最大缺点。玛格丽特•撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher)的坚定信念变成了唐突。托尼•布莱尔(Tony Blair)的领袖魅力变成了擅长说谎。戴维•卡梅伦(David Cameron)的不教条变成了玩游戏般的、战术性的肤浅。梅的沉默寡言将变成自我怀疑。眼下，我们把她简要、预先准备好的声明归因于明智的战略性计策，或者是惹人喜爱的低调英伦气质(暗示着一些深藏不露的潜质)。到时候，我们可能会把这归因于简单的缺乏信心，就好像她比我们更早知道她作为首相的真实水平。
One of my first economics lessons contrasted perfect competition, which was judged to be a good thing, with monopoly, which was not. There are worse places to begin than by being shown the difference between championing the miracle of the free market and favouring the depredations of dominant businesses.
我最早上过的经济学课程之一将完全竞争(被评判为好事)与垄断(不被认为是好事)进行对照。一个不那么糟糕的起点是看到两个方面的差异：一方面是倡导自由市场的奇迹，另一方面是赞成霸王企业的劫掠。
But monopoly power has often seemed like yesterday’s issue. Standard Oil was broken up in 1911; AT&T in 1984. To the extent that we economists worried about companies being too big, we were thinking about the systemic risks from banks that were too big to fail. But we are starting to notice again the risks not of corporate failure but of corporate success.
但垄断权力经常似乎是昨天的问题。标准石油(Standard Oil)在1911年被分拆;AT&T在1984年被分拆。以至于当我们这些经济学家担心公司太大时，我们想到的是大到不能倒的银行构成系统性风险。但是，我们正开始再次注意到企业成功(而非企业失败)的风险。
The most obvious examples are the big digital players: Google dominates search; Facebook is the Goliath of social media; Amazon rules online retail. But, as documented in a new working paper by five economists, American business is in general becoming more concentrated.
最明显的例子是数字领域的大企业：谷歌(Google)主导搜索;Facebook是社交媒体的巨人;亚马逊(Amazon)统治线上零售。但是，正如五位经济学家在一份新的工作论文中所记载的那样，总体而言，美国商界正在变得更加集中。
David Autor and his colleagues looked at 676 industries in the US — from cigarettes to greeting cards, musical instruments to payday lenders. They found that for the typical industry in each of six sectors — manufacturing, retail, finance, services, wholesale and utilities/transportation — the biggest companies are producing a larger share of output.
戴维•奥托尔(David Autor)和他的同事们考察了美国的676个行业——从卷烟到贺卡、从乐器到高利贷机构。他们发现，在制造业、零售业、金融业、服务业、批发业和公用事业/运输业这六个部门的典型行业里，大型公司的产出占比更大了。
For example, in the early 1980s the largest four players in any given US manufacturing industry averaged 38 per cent of sales; three decades later the figure was 43 per cent. In utilities and transportation the typical market share of the biggest four companies rose from 29 per cent to 37 per cent. In retail, overshadowed by Walmart and Amazon, the rise was dramatic: 14 per cent to 30 per cent.
以1980年代初为例，在任何给定的美国制造行业，最大4家公司在行业销售中平均占到38%;30年之后，这个比例变成了43%。在公用事业与运输业中，最大4家公司的占比由29%升高至37%。在沃尔玛(Walmart)和亚马逊主导的零售行业，占比升幅是戏剧性的：从14%升至30%。
This is surprising. As the world economy grows, one might expect markets to become more like the perfectly competitive textbook model, not less. Deregulation should allow more competition; globalisation should expose established players to pressure from overseas; transparent prices should make it harder for fat cats to maintain their position. Why hasn’t competition chipped away at the market position of the leading companies? The simplest explanation: they are very good at what they do. Competition isn’t a threat to them. It’s an opportunity.
这一现象令人惊讶。随着世界经济的增长，人们也许预期市场会变得更像完全竞争的教科书模式，而不是更不像。去监管应该会提高竞争程度;全球化应该会让成熟企业面对来自海外的压力;透明的价格应该会让“肥猫们”更难保住自己的地位。为何竞争没有削弱领先公司的市场地位?最简单的答案是：这些公司非常擅长自己所做的事情。竞争对它们而言并非威胁，而是机会。
What Professor Autor and his colleagues call “superstar firms” tend to be more efficient. They sell more at a lower cost, so they enjoy a larger profit margin. Google is the purest example: its search algorithm won market share on merit. Alternatives are easily available, but most people do not use them. But the pattern holds more broadly: superstar firms have grown not by avoiding competitors but by defeating them.
奥托尔教授及其同事所称的“超级明星公司”通常效率更高。这类公司以较低的成本实现较高的销售，所以利润率更高。谷歌就是最纯粹的例子：它的搜索算法凭借本事赢得了市场份额。其他搜索引擎唾手可得，但大多数人并不使用它们。但是，这一模式适用于更广范围：超级明星公司成长壮大，靠的不是避开竞争对手，而是击败它们。
This is not entirely bad news. But it’s not entirely good news, either. The superstar firm phenomenon is the best explanation we have of a little-noticed but worrisome trend: since 1980, in the US and many other advanced economies, workers have been getting a steadily smaller slice of the economic pie (the distribution of this labour income also became much more unequal during the 1980s and 1990s).
这并非完全是坏消息。但也并非完全是好消息。超级明星公司现象是对人们很少注意到、但令人担忧的一个趋势的最好解释：自1980年代以来，在美国和其他许多发达经济体里，劳动者在经济蛋糕所获得份额一直在稳步减少(在1980年代至1990年代，劳动力收入分配的不平等程度也大大加深了)。
Workers, from shelf-stackers to chief executives, have seen their total share of economic value-added fall from about 66 per cent to about 60 per cent in the US since 1980. This decline in “labour share” is often blamed on international trade making life harder for workers and easier for footloose capital. Prof Autor and his colleagues find little evidence for this idea.
自1980年以来，美国劳动者——从理货员到首席执行官——在经济增加值中获得的总回报的份额从约66%下降到约60%。这种“劳动收入份额”的降低，经常被归咎于国际贸易让劳动者的日子更难过，让自由流动的资本的日子更加好过。奥托尔教授和他的同事基本没有找到支持这一观点的证据。
Superstar firms, instead, seem to be the cause. The story is simple. These businesses are highly productive and achieve more with less. Because of this profitability, more of the value added by the company flows to shareholders and less to workers. And what happens in these groups will tend to be reflected in the economy as a whole, because superstar firms have an increasingly important role.
相反，超级明星公司似乎是其中原因。整件事十分简单。这些公司的生产率非常高，能以更少投入实现更大产出。由于具备这种盈利能力，公司增加值中流向股东的部分更多，流向劳动者的部分更少。发生在这些公司里的情况，倾向于在整体经济中得到反映，因为超级明星公司的角色越来越重要。
All this poses a headache for policymakers — assuming policymakers can pay attention to the issue for long enough. The policy response required is subtle: after all, the growth of innovative, productive companies is welcome. It’s the unintended consequences of that growth that pose problems.
这一切都让政策制定者感到头疼——假定他们关注这个问题的时间足够长的话。所需的政策回应是微妙的：毕竟，创新型、生产型公司的增长是可喜的。这种增长的意外后果才构成问题。
Those consequences are not easy to predict, but here are two possibilities. Either the US economy ends up like Amazon, or it ends up like Microsoft. The Amazon future is one of relentless competition, a paradise for consumers but a nightmare for workers, and with the ever-present risk that dominant businesses will snuff out competition as the mood takes them.
这些后果不容易预料到，但存在两种可能性。美国经济最终要么像亚马逊，要么像微软(Microsoft)。如果像亚马逊，未来美国经济的特征是毫不留情的竞争，是消费者的天堂，但却是劳动者的噩梦，并时刻存在着一种风险：霸王企业可能随心所欲地扼杀竞争。
The Microsoft future epitomises the economist John Hicks’s quip: “the best of all monopoly profits is a quiet life”. Microsoft in the 1990s became famous as a once-brilliant company that decided to pull up the drawbridge, locking in consumers and locking out competitors.
如果像微软，那么未来美国经济就成为约翰•希克斯(John Hicks)的妙语“垄断利润的最高境界是安逸日子”的体现。1990年代，曾经杰出的微软决定放下吊桥，把消费者关在里面，把竞争对手挡在外面，由此出名。
In either scenario ordinary people lose out, unless they can enjoy returns from capital as well as returns from working. In the very long run a superstar economy could become a technological utopia, where nobody needs to work for a living. That would require quite a realignment in our economic system; I wouldn’t bet on such an outcome happening by chance.
无论是哪种情形，普通人都会沦为输家——除非他们在得到劳动报酬的同时享受到资本回报。从长远看，超级明星型经济可能成为一个技术乌托邦，谁也不需要靠劳动来谋生。那将要求对我们的经济制度进行一场相当规模的重构;我不会押注碰巧会得到这种结果。
