科技企业如何为缓解不平等做贡献？

Is monopoly power one of the reasons that the equity markets remain high nearly 10 years into a bull market? It is something I have begun to wonder about recently, since a lack of wage inflation is a key reason that the Federal Reserve is not moving faster to raise interest rates. A rate rise off the back of inflation is one of the most reliable ways to pop a market bubble. Yet many economists believe that one of the reasons that wage growth — a typical driver of inflation — remains relatively flat despite unemployment being at nearly pre-crisis lows is because of job-disrupting technology itself.

垄断力量是不是股票市场保持近10年牛市的原因之一?这是我最近开始思考的一个问题，因为，美联储没有加快升息步伐的一个主要原因是，薪资上涨停滞。在通胀支撑下升息，是刺破市场泡沫最可靠的手段之一。然而，许多经济学家认为，尽管失业率接近危机前的低点，但薪资增长——推升通胀的典型因素——仍然不温不火的原因之一是，抢走人们饭碗的技术本身。

There are a few sectors, like finance and information technology, which have seen strong wage growth. Yet they create relatively few jobs. Finance takes 25 per cent of all corporate profits while creating only 4 per cent of jobs, since it sits at the centre of the dealmaking hourglass, charging whatever rent it likes. Meanwhile, wealth and power continue to flow into the technology sector more than any other — half of all American businesses that generate profits of 25 per cent or more are tech companies. Yet the tech titans of today — Facebook, Google, Amazon — create far fewer jobs than not only the big industrial groups of the past, like General Motors or General Electric, but also less than the previous generation of tech companies such as IBM or Microsoft.

仅有为数不多的几个行业的工资出现强劲增长，其中包括金融和信息技术(IT)行业。但是他们创造的就业岗位相对较少。金融行业在所有公司利润总额中的占比为25%，但创造的就业岗位的占比只有4%，因为它处在交易双方中间的位置，收取多少佣金是它说了算。同时，财富和权力继续向科技行业集中，在利润率达到或超过25%的所有美国企业中，逾一半是科技公司。然而，今天的科技巨擘——Facebook、谷歌(Google)和亚马逊(Amazon)——创造的就业岗位不仅远少于通用汽车(General Motors)或通用电气(General Electric)等老牌工业巨头，而且也比不上IBM或微软(Microsoft)等上一代科技企业。

What’s more, it is not just the top sectors that control the majority of corporate wealth, but the top companies themselves. The most profitable 10 per cent of US businesses are eight times more profitable than the average company. In the 1990s, that multiple was just three. Workers in those super profitable businesses are paid extremely well, but their competitors cannot offer the same packages. Indeed, research from the Bonn-based Institute of Labor Economics shows that the differences in individual workers’ pay since the 1970s is associated with pay differences between — not within — companies. Another piece of research, from the Centre for Economic Performance, shows that this pay differential between top-tier companies and everyone else is responsible for the vast majority of inequality in the US.

更为重要的是，控制美国企业大部分财富的不是为数不多的顶尖行业，而是少数顶级公司。盈利能力最强的10%美国公司的盈利是普通公司平均水平的8倍。上世纪九十年代，这个数值仅为3倍。那些盈利能力超强的公司向员工支付很高的薪酬，但其竞争对手没有能力提供相同的待遇。事实上，总部设在波恩的劳动经济学研究所(Institute of Labor Economics)的研究结果表明，自上世纪七十年代以来，个体劳动者之间的薪酬差距并非缘于公司内部，而是缘于公司间的薪酬差距。另一项来自伦敦政治经济学院(LSE)经济表现中心(Centre for Economic Performance)的研究显示，顶级公司与其他公司之间的薪酬差距是造成美国社会大部分薪酬不平等的原因。

One of the key reasons the top sectors and the top businesses can take so much of the economic pie is that they are the most digitised. As McKinsey Global Institute analysis of the “haves and have-mores” in digital America shows, industries that adopt more technology quickly are more profitable. Tech and finance sit at the top of that chart, but sectors that actually create the most jobs — such as retail, education and government — remain woefully behind the curve in terms of incorporating digital technology into their business models. That means you end up with a two-tiered economy: a top level that’s very productive, takes the majority of wealth, and creates very few jobs, and a bottom one that stagnates.

顶尖行业和顶尖企业从经济大蛋糕中分走如此大的一块，主要原因之一就是，他们的数字化程度最高。正如麦肯锡全球研究院(McKinsey Global Institute)题为《数字时代的美国：赚钱和赚大钱企业的故事》(Digital America: A tale of the haves and have-mores)的分析报告显示，快速应用更多技术的行业盈利能力更强。科技和金融行业位于行业排名表的顶端，但实际创造就业岗位最多的行业——如零售、教育和政府——在将数字技术融入其业务模式方面仍远远落后于其它行业。结果是一个经济体中形成两个层级：上层生产率非常高，占有了大部分财富，创造了很少的就业机会，而下层则处于停滞不前的状态。

This creates strange new market dynamics and exacerbates the disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street that was already well under way since the 1980s. The markets can do incredibly well, even if the majority of workers do not, because they are increasingly driven by a small handful of top-tier companies in the information technology business. This is not just a phenomenon in the US. As Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, says, “technology has become the only big story in the markets” in high-growth countries such as China, where the weighting of tech stocks in major indexes is similar to roughly 25 per cent you see in the S&P 500.

这种双层经济结构产生了一个新的怪异市场动态，进一步加剧了自上世纪八十年代以来，华尔街和实体经济脱节的情况。即使大多数工人的生活状况并不乐观，但市场依然可以牛气冲天，因为市场越来越多地由少数顶尖IT公司所驱动。这一现象并非美国所独有。摩根士丹利投资管理(Morgan Stanley Investment Management)新兴市场业务主管鲁奇尔•夏尔马(Ruchir Sharma)表示，在诸如中国这样的高增长国家，“技术已经成为市场上唯一的重大题材”，科技股在主要股指中所占的权重为25%左右，与其在标准普尔500(S&P 500)指数中的权重相当。

Tech stocks — with the exception of the big platform companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, which control vast amounts of data — seem overvalued to me. Yet the only things that I can see that would prick that bubble is a significant move away from easy monetary policy — which cannot happen at the moment for reasons already discussed — or a shift in the regulatory environment for technology. While that probably will not happen in the next couple of years, it is interesting how quick the reaction can be from investors when they think the playing field has changed.

我认为，科技股——谷歌、Facebook、苹果(Apple)和亚马逊等控制大量数据的公司除外——的估值似乎有些偏高。然而，就我所见，会刺破这一泡沫的只有两件事：大规模撤出宽松货币政策(基于已经讨论过的原因，这在目前不会发生)，或者是科技行业所面临的监管环境发生变化。虽然后一项在未来几年也不会发生，但是，当投资者认为游戏规则已发生变化时，其反应速度能有多快倒确实值得我们关注。

A few weeks ago, the Chinese internet company Tencent saw its stock price fall quickly on the news that it would limit users under 12 years of age to one hour of play on its most popular game, Honour of Kings. This followed criticism after the death by stroke of a 17-year-old who had been playing the game for 40 hours straight and reports of another teenager who broke his legs after jumping from a window when his parents stopped him playing. Extreme, but perhaps a harbinger of things to come as the public begins to understand the cognitive effects of digital technology.

不久前，中国互联网公司腾讯(Tencent)的股价急跌，因为有消息称，该公司将为其最受欢迎游戏《王者荣耀》(Honour of Kings)制定新规，12岁以下用户每日限玩一小时。之前，一位17岁少年在连续玩游戏40个小时后脑梗死亡，另有报导称，一少年因父母阻止其玩游戏跳窗，摔断了双腿。上述事件引来批评声一片。尽管腾讯的做法比较极端，但随着公众开始了解数字技术对人们的认知产生的影响，未来可能会有更多类似的举措出台。

No wonder some big tech companies are trying to shift the “winner-takes-all” narrative and focus on their role in supporting larger economic ecosystems. In China, Alibaba is leading an effort to connect broadband into more than 1,000 rural communities, in order for local merchants to have access to the digital technologies that have become the only real place that wealth and profits live these days. In a more economically bifurcated and politically polarised world, there are plenty of good reasons for them to do so. Perhaps the US tech giants should take heed.

难怪一些大型科技公司正在努力改变“胜者为王”的故事，而是着重在建设更广泛的经济生态系统方面发挥作用。在中国，阿里巴巴(Alibaba)正在牵头开展一项将宽带接入1000多个村子的行动，以便当地商户能够接触到数字技术——数字技术已成为当今世界唯一真正创造财富和利润的领域。在一个经济两级分化和政治极化日益严重的世界，它们有充分的理由这么做。也许，美国的科技巨擘也应效仿其做法。