大衛·馬爾凱塞
2025年7月26日
四十多年來，羅伯特‧賴希一直在敲響美國日益加劇的不平等現象的警鐘。他曾擔任三屆總統政府成員，其中包括柯林頓總統時期的勞工部長。他也是加州大學柏克萊分校、布蘭迪斯大學和哈佛大學備受尊敬的教授。如今，他在網路上發聲，出乎意料的是，這位79歲的老人已成為新媒體明星，在Substack、TikTok和Instagram上擁有了數百萬忠實的粉絲。自始至終，他傳遞的訊息始終如一：不平等——無論是經濟、種族或政治層面的——都會侵蝕社會信任，削弱人們對民主的信仰，並為煽動家創造機會。
正因如此，我想和賴希談談當下的政治時刻。這一時刻在許多方面都體現為貧富差距的擴大，以及對這一趨勢日益增長的抵制。想想喬什·霍利等一些共和黨人所傳遞的經濟民粹主義信息，或者關注收入不平等問題的年輕而富有魅力的政治家的崛起，比如民主社會主義者亞歷山大·奧卡西奧-科爾特斯和佐赫蘭·馬姆達尼，他們在我和賴希首次交談幾天后就贏得了紐約市民主黨市長初選。
但我也想和賴希談談他目前的個人狀況。他最近從教40多年後退休了。事實上，他最後一次演講的準備工作正是紀錄片《最後一課》的主題，目前正在戲院上映。賴希的回憶錄《Coming Up Short》也即將出版，將於8月5日出版。在這本書以及我們的對話中，他反思了嬰兒潮一代同胞的政治失敗、他所認為的暴力和霸凌文化的興起，以及民主黨人為何未能與苦苦掙扎的美國人產生共鳴。
For more than four decades, Robert Reich has been ringing the alarm bell about rising inequality in America. He did it as a member of three presidential administrations, including a stint as labor secretary under President Clinton. He did it as a revered professor at U.C. Berkeley, Brandeis and Harvard. He’s currently doing it online, where, somewhat improbably, the 79-year-old has become a new-media star, having built a devoted audience of millions across Substack, TikTok and Instagram. Through it all, his message has remained consistent: Inequality — be it economic, racial or political — erodes social trust, diminishes belief in democracy and can create openings for demagogues.
Which is why I wanted to talk to Reich about this political moment, one defined in so many ways by a widening gap between the haves and have-nots, and also by growing resistance to that trend. Think here of the economic populist messaging coming from some Republicans, like Josh Hawley, or the rise of young and charismatic politicians who focus on income inequality, people like the democratic socialists Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani, who won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary just a few days after Reich and I first spoke.
But I also wanted to talk to Reich about the personal moment in which he finds himself. He recently retired from teaching after more than 40 years. Indeed, the run-up to his final lecture is the subject of a documentary, “The Last Class,” which is currently in theaters. Reich also has a memoir on the way, “Coming Up Short,” which will be published on Aug. 5. In the book, and in our conversation, he reckons with the political failures of his fellow baby boomers, the rise of what he sees as a culture of brutality and bullying and why Democrats have failed to connect with struggling Americans.
Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few by Robert B. Reich 書評 By Paul Krugman
克魯格曼：美國該行動起來拯救資本主義了
【一個月前，在接受在接受彭博電視台Guy Johnson採訪時，Rogers Holdings的董事長吉姆·羅傑斯斷定，美國經濟在未來12個月將陷入衰退。這位知名投資人表示，美國經濟在一年內陷入下滑的可能性是100%。
這恐怕不是我們聽到的關於美國經濟衰退的最新論調了，這樣的調子至少從2008年金融危機以來就不絕於耳。作為世界最強的資本主義國家，美國的道路似乎越走越窄。在美國政治家羅伯特·萊希看來，美國今日的窘境正是資本主義下的蛋。以往人們將這一切歸咎於技術進步帶來的不平等，實際上，真正的原因在於寡頭壟斷。更可怕的是，政治權力和市場權力相互結合，加劇了這種不平等。至於是否能夠拯救資本主義，羅伯特·萊希也沒有那麼樂觀。】
如今看來，1991年還是個單純的年代。那年，羅伯特·萊希（Robert Reich，又譯羅伯特·萊克）出版了《國家的作用》（The Work of Nations）一書，影響深遠，這本書也是萊希得以成為克林頓政府內閣成員的原因之一，在當時，的確意義非凡——然而現在，時代已經發生了變化。比起這本書里相對樂觀的態度，萊希在新書《拯救資本主義》（Saving Capitalism）裡則悲觀了許多，前後兩種態度差異表明，美國的發展狀況並不樂觀。
某種意義上說，《國家的作用》極具開創性，該書重點關注日益加劇的收入不平等問題，該議題當時早已受到許多經濟學家的高度重視，我也很關注，但一直未進入政治話語體系。萊希當時主要把不平等看成一個技術性問題，認為能找到一個技術性解決方案，獲得雙贏。那是他過去的看法了。最近，萊希提出了一個悲觀的觀點：他主張要發動一場階級戰爭——號召工人階級起義，反抗美國寡頭統治集團發動的階級戰爭，實際上這場悄悄發動的階級戰爭已經持續數十年了。
1.
為了解《國家的作用》和《拯救資本主義》的差異，你要知道兩點。第一，美國政治轉向，愈發醜惡（即趨向於寡頭統治），這一點我們都很熟悉，稍後會詳談。第二是“偏向高技能的技術革新”（skill-biased technological change，下稱SBTC）理論的興起和衰落，儘管這聽起來更像是一場業內人士的討論，實際上卻有著巨大的政策和政治意義。這一理論曾經得到經濟學家的廣泛認可並以SBTC的縮寫形式被頻繁提及。
1980年前後，SBTC開始受到廣泛關注，那時候美國大學畢業生的薪水漲幅開始遠遠超過高中及高中以下學歷的美國人。原因為何？
一種解釋是國際貿易增長，美國從低工資國家進口更多的勞動密集型產品。原則上說，這種進口不僅會加劇不平等，還會導致受教育程度較低的工人工資下降；國際貿易標準理論支持此原則，但作出的推斷實際上比許多非經濟學家的設想要糟糕得多。然而計算結果似乎並不符合實際狀況。1990年前後，美國對發展中國家的貿易規模仍然很小，不足以解釋為何大學畢業生和高中畢業生相對收入的差距會迅速擴大。而且，貿易本該促使本國就業人群向技術密集型產業集聚，但實際狀況卻是：各產業內部技術水平升級並迅速擴展到整個經濟體。
因此，許多經濟學家轉向了另一種解釋：一切都是技術——尤其是信息技術革命的結果。這種觀點認為，現代技術的發展減少了對常規化人力的需求，加大了對創造性思維活動的需求；同時，儘管人均受教育水平在提升，但提升的速度跟不上技術變革的速度，這就導致了大學畢業生收入的增加以及無相應技能者收入的相對（或絕對）減少。
目前還沒有直接證據證明“技術因素是薪水變化的驅動力”，SBTC理論有待驗證，技術因素的影響只能通過假定的效果推斷出來。然而，技術因素的影響卻已在許多充滿公式和數據的科技論文裡被明確標出。1992年，哈佛大學勞倫斯·F·卡茨和芝加哥大學凱文·M·墨菲合作寫了一篇論文1，文中更是整理了技術因素的影響，受到多次引用。萊希的《國家的作用》在某種程度上也普及了SBTC理論，書中用生動的語言將抽象的經濟學理論轉化成普通人能夠理解的話語。在萊希看來，技術不僅正在減少常規作業，甚至還在取代一些曾經需要面對面交流才能進行的工作；但技術也給符號分析人員（symbolic analysts）——那些有天賦並且接受過創意工作訓練的人——帶來了新的機遇。萊希針對日益加劇的收入不平等的解決方案是：無論是通過擴大傳統教育規模，還是通過在崗職工的再培訓，總之要讓更多的人接受必要的職業訓練。
這是種樂觀且誘人的願景，此處可以看出該理論為何如此受歡迎。儘管今天仍然有人把技術進步視為不平等加劇和工資增長滯後的原因（該理論尤其在反對黨內變化的溫和共和黨人和一些哀嘆民粹主義盛行的“第三條道路”的擁護者中大為流行），但SBTC理論卻在過去的二十五年裡屢屢受挫，以至於人們已經放棄了用該理論來解釋日益加劇的收入不平等。
這個故事得分階段來看2。首先，20世紀90年代，技能差距在社會底層停止擴大：接近中產的工人實際工資增長速度不再超過社會底層工人，甚至還慢了一點。作為回應，一些經濟學家修改了SBTC理論，聲稱技術進步沒有使低收入階層失業，反而耗空了中產階級——但這聽起來似乎讓原本就不嚴密的理論更加陷入困境。2000年左後，大學畢業生的實際工資也停止增長；而高收入人群（約為總人群的百分之一，比例甚至更小）的收入則繼續猛增。很明顯，這種收入分化和教育程度幾乎無關，畢竟對沖基金經理和高中老師接受的正式教育水平相差無幾。
2000年後，另一種情況開始出現：總體上看，勞動力相較於資本而言，節節敗退。數十年穩定發展後，國民收入中職工報酬的比例迅速下跌。當然這也可以用技術來解釋：也許機器人不僅代替了受教育程度低的工人，而是在代替全部的工人。但這種說法面臨很多問題：一方面，如果我們正在經歷機器人驅動的技術革命，為何生產率增速卻在放緩而非加速？另一方面，如果機器人能夠愈發輕鬆地替代人類工作了，那麼各大公司應該會爭先恐後地抓住這新的機遇並加大商業投資力度，然而我們並沒有看到機器人產業投資的增長，事實上大公司更傾向於把收益存入銀行賬戶，或是增持股票。
簡單說來，從科技角度來解釋收入不平等拉大越來越不合理；而認為提升工人技術就能扭轉這一趨勢的觀點也同樣說不通。那麼原因到底是什麼呢？
2.
關於經濟兩極分化的原因問題，經濟學家談論的焦點不再是技術，而是權力。這聽起來有些偏離主線，難道經濟學家不是應該只關注市場的這只“無形的手”（市場競爭機制，即供需關係）嗎？但經濟學一直以來都有考慮“市場權力”的傳統，或者叫做“壟斷的效果”。的確，這些概念已經被好幾代人忽略了，但它們正在強勢回歸，我們也可以把萊希的新書部分地看作對“市場權力”概念的推廣，就像《國家的作用》也可以被部分視為對SBTC理論的普及。萊希論文里當然還有其他觀點，我稍後會介紹，但我們還是從經濟學家們最容易同意的部分開始講起。
市場權力有一個準確的定義：如果經濟活動參與者有能力影響他們買入或賣出商品的價格，而非被動接受由“無形的手”所決定的價格，這就是市場權力。獨家壟斷賣方會為他們的產品定價，獨家壟斷買方（市場內唯一的買方）也會為他們買入的貨物定價。賣方寡頭（僅有幾個大賣家，求過於供）比賣方獨家壟斷的情況更為複雜，卻也同樣涉及市場權力。重點是：在普通人看來，我們的經濟明顯由獨家壟斷和寡頭壟斷的賣方所操控，而非像經濟學家常常設想的那樣，更多地由參與價格製定的小經營者組成。
但那重要嗎？1953年米爾頓·弗里德曼在一篇影響深遠的論文裡寫道，實際市場行為只有和簡單供需分析的預測不符時，壟斷才會起作用，而事實上幾乎沒有證據能夠表明壟斷會對市場產生重要影響3。弗里德曼的觀點不僅在經濟學領域內大為流行，事實上也擴展到了政治討論中。壟斷概念從未從教科書中消失過，反壟斷法也是一項重要的政策武器，但20世紀50年代後，兩者的影響力一直在減退。
但很明顯，對反壟斷的忽視顯然是智慧和政策的雙重失誤。更多證據證明，市場權力對經濟行為影響重大，未能實施有效的反壟斷監管是當前經濟疲軟的主要原因。
萊希精心挑選了一些例子，闡述壟斷在市場中所扮演的角色，第一個就是寬帶案件。他寫道，大多數美國人能否使用互聯網，或多或少都由當地電信公司決定；結果，美國寬帶不僅比其他國家慢，還貴。另一個事例和農業有關，比較典型，農業通常被視作擁有完美競爭機制的模範行業。他注意到，孟山都（Monsanto）這一家公司，目前作為轉基因大豆和轉基因玉米的獨家供應商，佔據了行業主要市場。最近《美國展望》上刊登的一篇文章也指出，類似的行業壟斷的例子也很容易找到，包括太陽鏡、注射器、貓食等等行業4。
統計數據也可證明壟斷力量正在壯大。近日，白宮經濟顧問委員會的主管傑森·弗爾曼（Jason Furman），以及前奧巴馬政府管理及預算辦公室主任彼得·奧斯澤格（Peter Orszag）合作的一份文件表明，賺取“超常”回報的公司數目正在增加——也就是說，這些公司能持續保持高收益率，不被競爭者削弱5。
其他證據也能間接表明市場權力的強大作用。例如，關於最低薪資調整的影響，有很多實證分析。傳統的供需分析認為，提高最低工資標準會降低就業率。但萊希書中寫道，目前我們收集了許多地方樣本，可進行對照實驗，將最低工資標準提高縣的就業率和最低工資標準未提高的鄰縣就業率做比較。實驗數據無法證明最低工資標準提高會對就業率產生負面的影響。
那麼為何不提高最低工資標準呢？目前主要的猜想是：僱傭低薪員工的公司（如快餐連鎖店）在人力市場上有著很大的買方壟斷權；也就是說，這些公司是特定就業市場上低薪勞動力的主要購買者。因而，買方獨家壟斷下，即使人工工資已經觸底，買方招到的員工未必會少，就像賣方獨家壟斷下，即使價格已經高到離譜，賣方也未必會少賣，或許還會賣得更多。
我們假設：導致不平等加劇的不是現代科技，而是迅速擴大的市場權力，我們又要如何理解當前的一切呢？
第一個回答是，這種假設解決了其他解釋產生的一些謎團。很明顯，這解釋了為何高利率沒有刺激高投資的問題。試想那些控制當地網絡設施的壟斷公司：高收益並沒有刺激他們去研發更快的網絡連接設備——相反，他們缺乏提升服務水平的動力，而如果他們面對激烈競爭，收益更低，反而研發動力更強。把這種邏輯擴展到整個經濟體，那麼，某些行業利潤率高而投資低迷的狀況也就能理解了。
另外，市場權力還能夠解釋收入不平等的劇烈轉向為何與政策轉向（尤其是美國政治劇烈的右傾轉向）相一致的問題。至於哪些公司能夠行使市場權力，這在很大程度上由政治決定，這樣一來，市場權力和政治力量就緊密結合在一起了。
3.
羅伯特·萊希從未隱藏自己的野心。《國家的作用》（The Work of Nations）書名就有意暗指亞當·斯密的著作《國富論》(The Wealth of Nations)；他也明確表示，希望讀者不要僅把他的作品視為實用指南，而應當作基礎性的閱讀文本。《拯救資本主義》雖短小緊湊，卻顯得更雄心勃勃。萊希將他對市場經濟根本性的重新考量納入他對收入不平等的新思考。他堅稱自己並非主張制定新政策來限制和削弱市場的運轉；確切地說，他認為自由市場的定義是一個政治決策，而政府可以製定完全不一樣的遊戲規則：“政府不是乾涉自由市場，政府要創造市場。”
老實說，我對這套推廣理論的措辭有著複雜的情感。從某些方面看來，這些措施似乎讓步太多了，甚至接受了“自由市場是好的”這種傳統觀念，同時要求大幅度調整政策。我擔心，如果把一切都塞進這個龐大而理性的框架，這會偏離萊希（和我）所支持的政策，這政策雖然平凡但重要。
無論人們對這套政策組合的看法如何，萊希很好地闡釋了一點，擴大的不平等很大程度上反映了政治決策，而這些政治決策本可以反向而行。市場權力的增強表明政府正在放棄反壟斷法，從結果看，反壟斷法越來越缺乏正當性；而在某些情況下，市場權力的增強又是某些政治力量暗暗支持壟斷的結果——例如，電信公司成功且長久地限制公眾使用互聯網（指當地電信公司壟斷互聯網接入業務且缺乏技術研發動力）。
同樣，當我們發現從事金融行業的少數人收入驚人時，就要意識到這些收入的正當性應當受到質疑。正如萊希所說，我們有充分的理由相信，一些金融公司的高收益主要依賴於政府有意放鬆對內幕交易的管制。我們還要意識到，金融業的異常成長揭示了政府解除對銀行業的管制後無力監管新型金融活動的後果。
同時，過去那種讓廣大工人群體而非僅僅少數精英分子獲益的市場權力形式已經衰落了，這主要也是政治決策的後果。我們總認為工會一蹶不振是技術革新和全球化帶來的後果，不可避免，但只要看看加拿大，就知道這種觀點站不住腳。曾經，美國和加拿大各有三分之一的工人是工會成員；而如今，美國工會成員的比例已降至11%，加拿大這一比例卻仍有27%。差別主要在政治方面，20世紀80年代，美國政策敵視工會，而加拿大的政策並未跟風。工會的衰落不僅直接影響了工人的收入水平，更重要的影響在於：世界貨幣基金組織研究人員發現，工會衰落和占總人口百分之一的最富裕階層的收入提高有密切聯繫，這表明強大的工會運動能遏制財富過於向社會頂層集中6。
根據他的模式，萊希認為，與其說工會是市場權力的來源，不如說是能夠遏制壟斷者破壞市場的“抗衡力量”（引自加爾布雷思）。如果工會不受到重重限制，他們可能會通過集體談判來協商工資以及工作環境，以此來抗衡壟斷力量。無論如何，工會衰落的因果，和壟斷力量上升的因果一樣，很好地展示了政治在收入不平等日益加劇的過程中所扮演的重要角色。
那政治為何朝這個方向發展呢？和其他評論者一樣，萊希認為政治權力和市場權力是相互促進的。頂級富豪通過支付競選獻金、組織遊說以及允諾成功競選後的回報來擴大自身的政治影響力。政治影響力反過來也可用於改寫遊戲規則——反壟斷法、解除控制、調整合同法、剝奪工會權利——總之用各種方式推動財富向社會頂層聚攏，而結果是寡頭政治螺旋式的惡性循環。萊希指出，美國過去一代人就是這麼走過來的。恐怕他說對了，那麼我們該做些什麼來扭轉這種趨勢呢？
4.
任何人如果想要扭轉這種螺旋遞增的收入不平等，都要先回答兩個問題。首先，你認為什麼政策能夠扭轉這種不平等？其次，你會通過什麼途徑獲得政治權力從而讓這些政策生效？而在我看來，羅伯特·萊希的《拯救資本主義》只是粗略地回答了這兩個問題。
在他給出的新政策建議中，萊希主張要通過一系列的政策組合來變革“預先分配”方式——即要改變市場收入的分配方式——而非改變再分配方式。（萊希認為，再分配可以看作是當前規則下對“前分配”的調整實施。）這些變革將包括一些標準的自由主義主張，例如提高最低工資標準，轉變勞工法及其實施過程中的反工會偏見，以及通過修改合同法來授予工人權利去反抗雇主、債主以維護自身權益等。萊希還提出了一個不那麼正統的建議，即通過修改立法等措施使得大公司恢復到它們半個世紀前的樣子：不僅對股東（stockholder）負責，也對更廣泛的利益相關者（stakeholder）負責，包括工人和顧客在內。
這樣的措施就夠了嗎？在我看來，這些措施似乎沒有一個能夠達到預期目標。但羅斯福新政的成功經驗告訴我們，一個計劃內的這些要素可能會產生協同效應。而這些措施自然值得一試。（注：羅斯福新政使美國成功轉型為中產階級國家，而70年代開始盛行的“反羅斯福新政”則使美國成功轉型為寡頭統治國家）
但是如何在政治上做到這一點呢？萊希表明了自己的樂觀態度，給出的理由是兩黨的政客逐漸都開始傾向於發表民粹主義言論。例如，特德·克魯茲（Ted Cruz）就曾批評那些“有權有勢，走在權力走廊上（注：指左右決策的權力中心）”的人。而萊希也承認“這些聲明的真誠性應當受到質疑”，事實的確如此。克魯茲曾提議要大幅削減稅收，而這會導致社會福利支出的大幅降低，而那些削減的稅收中大約有60%會流向收入分配中最頂層百分之一的人群。事實上，克魯茲並沒有把他的錢（應該說，你們的錢）花在他所承諾的地方。
儘管如此，萊希還是認為這種心口不一其實無關緊要。理由如下：如果連克魯茲這類人都感到有必要說這樣一番話，其實這暗示著公共輿論已經發生了徹底的變革，而這種公共輿論的變革最終會引發他所追求的那種政治變革。我們只能期待他的推斷是正確的。而在此期間，《拯救資本主義》能夠很好地引導我們的國家。
註釋：
1. “相對工資的變化，1963－1987:供需因素，”《經濟學季刊》，第107卷第1期，1992年2月。
2. Lawrence Mishel, Heidi Shierholz, and John Schmit對SBTC衰落情況的概述，“別責怪機器人了：評估對薪酬不平等擴大的就業兩極化解釋”，EPICEPR工作報告，2013年11月
3. “實證經濟學的方法論，”《實證經濟學論文集》，芝加哥大學出版社，1953年
4. David Dayen，在“恢復反壟斷”，2015年秋
5. Jason Furman and Peter Orszag，“從企業微觀層面看不平等加劇進程中租金的作用”， 2015年十月，www.whitehouse.gov.
6. Florence Jaumotte and Carolina Osorio Buitron，“工會權力及不平等現狀”，www.voxeu.org, 2015年10月22日
【一個月前，在接受在接受彭博電視台Guy Johnson採訪時，Rogers Holdings的董事長吉姆·羅傑斯斷定，美國經濟在未來12個月將陷入衰退。這位知名投資人表示，美國經濟在一年內陷入下滑的可能性是100%。
這恐怕不是我們聽到的關於美國經濟衰退的最新論調了，這樣的調子至少從2008年金融危機以來就不絕於耳。作為世界最強的資本主義國家，美國的道路似乎越走越窄。在美國政治家羅伯特·萊希看來，美國今日的窘境正是資本主義下的蛋。以往人們將這一切歸咎於技術進步帶來的不平等，實際上，真正的原因在於寡頭壟斷。更可怕的是，政治權力和市場權力相互結合，加劇了這種不平等。至於是否能夠拯救資本主義，羅伯特·萊希也沒有那麼樂觀。】
如今看來，1991年還是個單純的年代。那年，羅伯特·萊希（Robert Reich，又譯羅伯特·萊克）出版了《國家的作用》（The Work of Nations）一書，影響深遠，這本書也是萊希得以成為克林頓政府內閣成員的原因之一，在當時，的確意義非凡——然而現在，時代已經發生了變化。比起這本書里相對樂觀的態度，萊希在新書《拯救資本主義》（Saving Capitalism）裡則悲觀了許多，前後兩種態度差異表明，美國的發展狀況並不樂觀。
某種意義上說，《國家的作用》極具開創性，該書重點關注日益加劇的收入不平等問題，該議題當時早已受到許多經濟學家的高度重視，我也很關注，但一直未進入政治話語體系。萊希當時主要把不平等看成一個技術性問題，認為能找到一個技術性解決方案，獲得雙贏。那是他過去的看法了。最近，萊希提出了一個悲觀的觀點：他主張要發動一場階級戰爭——號召工人階級起義，反抗美國寡頭統治集團發動的階級戰爭，實際上這場悄悄發動的階級戰爭已經持續數十年了。
1.
為了解《國家的作用》和《拯救資本主義》的差異，你要知道兩點。第一，美國政治轉向，愈發醜惡（即趨向於寡頭統治），這一點我們都很熟悉，稍後會詳談。第二是“偏向高技能的技術革新”（skill-biased technological change，下稱SBTC）理論的興起和衰落，儘管這聽起來更像是一場業內人士的討論，實際上卻有著巨大的政策和政治意義。這一理論曾經得到經濟學家的廣泛認可並以SBTC的縮寫形式被頻繁提及。
1980年前後，SBTC開始受到廣泛關注，那時候美國大學畢業生的薪水漲幅開始遠遠超過高中及高中以下學歷的美國人。原因為何？
一種解釋是國際貿易增長，美國從低工資國家進口更多的勞動密集型產品。原則上說，這種進口不僅會加劇不平等，還會導致受教育程度較低的工人工資下降；國際貿易標準理論支持此原則，但作出的推斷實際上比許多非經濟學家的設想要糟糕得多。然而計算結果似乎並不符合實際狀況。1990年前後，美國對發展中國家的貿易規模仍然很小，不足以解釋為何大學畢業生和高中畢業生相對收入的差距會迅速擴大。而且，貿易本該促使本國就業人群向技術密集型產業集聚，但實際狀況卻是：各產業內部技術水平升級並迅速擴展到整個經濟體。
因此，許多經濟學家轉向了另一種解釋：一切都是技術——尤其是信息技術革命的結果。這種觀點認為，現代技術的發展減少了對常規化人力的需求，加大了對創造性思維活動的需求；同時，儘管人均受教育水平在提升，但提升的速度跟不上技術變革的速度，這就導致了大學畢業生收入的增加以及無相應技能者收入的相對（或絕對）減少。
目前還沒有直接證據證明“技術因素是薪水變化的驅動力”，SBTC理論有待驗證，技術因素的影響只能通過假定的效果推斷出來。然而，技術因素的影響卻已在許多充滿公式和數據的科技論文裡被明確標出。1992年，哈佛大學勞倫斯·F·卡茨和芝加哥大學凱文·M·墨菲合作寫了一篇論文1，文中更是整理了技術因素的影響，受到多次引用。萊希的《國家的作用》在某種程度上也普及了SBTC理論，書中用生動的語言將抽象的經濟學理論轉化成普通人能夠理解的話語。在萊希看來，技術不僅正在減少常規作業，甚至還在取代一些曾經需要面對面交流才能進行的工作；但技術也給符號分析人員（symbolic analysts）——那些有天賦並且接受過創意工作訓練的人——帶來了新的機遇。萊希針對日益加劇的收入不平等的解決方案是：無論是通過擴大傳統教育規模，還是通過在崗職工的再培訓，總之要讓更多的人接受必要的職業訓練。
這是種樂觀且誘人的願景，此處可以看出該理論為何如此受歡迎。儘管今天仍然有人把技術進步視為不平等加劇和工資增長滯後的原因（該理論尤其在反對黨內變化的溫和共和黨人和一些哀嘆民粹主義盛行的“第三條道路”的擁護者中大為流行），但SBTC理論卻在過去的二十五年裡屢屢受挫，以至於人們已經放棄了用該理論來解釋日益加劇的收入不平等。
這個故事得分階段來看2。首先，20世紀90年代，技能差距在社會底層停止擴大：接近中產的工人實際工資增長速度不再超過社會底層工人，甚至還慢了一點。作為回應，一些經濟學家修改了SBTC理論，聲稱技術進步沒有使低收入階層失業，反而耗空了中產階級——但這聽起來似乎讓原本就不嚴密的理論更加陷入困境。2000年左後，大學畢業生的實際工資也停止增長；而高收入人群（約為總人群的百分之一，比例甚至更小）的收入則繼續猛增。很明顯，這種收入分化和教育程度幾乎無關，畢竟對沖基金經理和高中老師接受的正式教育水平相差無幾。
2000年後，另一種情況開始出現：總體上看，勞動力相較於資本而言，節節敗退。數十年穩定發展後，國民收入中職工報酬的比例迅速下跌。當然這也可以用技術來解釋：也許機器人不僅代替了受教育程度低的工人，而是在代替全部的工人。但這種說法面臨很多問題：一方面，如果我們正在經歷機器人驅動的技術革命，為何生產率增速卻在放緩而非加速？另一方面，如果機器人能夠愈發輕鬆地替代人類工作了，那麼各大公司應該會爭先恐後地抓住這新的機遇並加大商業投資力度，然而我們並沒有看到機器人產業投資的增長，事實上大公司更傾向於把收益存入銀行賬戶，或是增持股票。
簡單說來，從科技角度來解釋收入不平等拉大越來越不合理；而認為提升工人技術就能扭轉這一趨勢的觀點也同樣說不通。那麼原因到底是什麼呢？
2.
關於經濟兩極分化的原因問題，經濟學家談論的焦點不再是技術，而是權力。這聽起來有些偏離主線，難道經濟學家不是應該只關注市場的這只“無形的手”（市場競爭機制，即供需關係）嗎？但經濟學一直以來都有考慮“市場權力”的傳統，或者叫做“壟斷的效果”。的確，這些概念已經被好幾代人忽略了，但它們正在強勢回歸，我們也可以把萊希的新書部分地看作對“市場權力”概念的推廣，就像《國家的作用》也可以被部分視為對SBTC理論的普及。萊希論文里當然還有其他觀點，我稍後會介紹，但我們還是從經濟學家們最容易同意的部分開始講起。
市場權力有一個準確的定義：如果經濟活動參與者有能力影響他們買入或賣出商品的價格，而非被動接受由“無形的手”所決定的價格，這就是市場權力。獨家壟斷賣方會為他們的產品定價，獨家壟斷買方（市場內唯一的買方）也會為他們買入的貨物定價。賣方寡頭（僅有幾個大賣家，求過於供）比賣方獨家壟斷的情況更為複雜，卻也同樣涉及市場權力。重點是：在普通人看來，我們的經濟明顯由獨家壟斷和寡頭壟斷的賣方所操控，而非像經濟學家常常設想的那樣，更多地由參與價格製定的小經營者組成。
但那重要嗎？1953年米爾頓·弗里德曼在一篇影響深遠的論文裡寫道，實際市場行為只有和簡單供需分析的預測不符時，壟斷才會起作用，而事實上幾乎沒有證據能夠表明壟斷會對市場產生重要影響3。弗里德曼的觀點不僅在經濟學領域內大為流行，事實上也擴展到了政治討論中。壟斷概念從未從教科書中消失過，反壟斷法也是一項重要的政策武器，但20世紀50年代後，兩者的影響力一直在減退。
但很明顯，對反壟斷的忽視顯然是智慧和政策的雙重失誤。更多證據證明，市場權力對經濟行為影響重大，未能實施有效的反壟斷監管是當前經濟疲軟的主要原因。
萊希精心挑選了一些例子，闡述壟斷在市場中所扮演的角色，第一個就是寬帶案件。他寫道，大多數美國人能否使用互聯網，或多或少都由當地電信公司決定；結果，美國寬帶不僅比其他國家慢，還貴。另一個事例和農業有關，比較典型，農業通常被視作擁有完美競爭機制的模範行業。他注意到，孟山都（Monsanto）這一家公司，目前作為轉基因大豆和轉基因玉米的獨家供應商，佔據了行業主要市場。最近《美國展望》上刊登的一篇文章也指出，類似的行業壟斷的例子也很容易找到，包括太陽鏡、注射器、貓食等等行業4。
統計數據也可證明壟斷力量正在壯大。近日，白宮經濟顧問委員會的主管傑森·弗爾曼（Jason Furman），以及前奧巴馬政府管理及預算辦公室主任彼得·奧斯澤格（Peter Orszag）合作的一份文件表明，賺取“超常”回報的公司數目正在增加——也就是說，這些公司能持續保持高收益率，不被競爭者削弱5。
其他證據也能間接表明市場權力的強大作用。例如，關於最低薪資調整的影響，有很多實證分析。傳統的供需分析認為，提高最低工資標準會降低就業率。但萊希書中寫道，目前我們收集了許多地方樣本，可進行對照實驗，將最低工資標準提高縣的就業率和最低工資標準未提高的鄰縣就業率做比較。實驗數據無法證明最低工資標準提高會對就業率產生負面的影響。
那麼為何不提高最低工資標準呢？目前主要的猜想是：僱傭低薪員工的公司（如快餐連鎖店）在人力市場上有著很大的買方壟斷權；也就是說，這些公司是特定就業市場上低薪勞動力的主要購買者。因而，買方獨家壟斷下，即使人工工資已經觸底，買方招到的員工未必會少，就像賣方獨家壟斷下，即使價格已經高到離譜，賣方也未必會少賣，或許還會賣得更多。
我們假設：導致不平等加劇的不是現代科技，而是迅速擴大的市場權力，我們又要如何理解當前的一切呢？
第一個回答是，這種假設解決了其他解釋產生的一些謎團。很明顯，這解釋了為何高利率沒有刺激高投資的問題。試想那些控制當地網絡設施的壟斷公司：高收益並沒有刺激他們去研發更快的網絡連接設備——相反，他們缺乏提升服務水平的動力，而如果他們面對激烈競爭，收益更低，反而研發動力更強。把這種邏輯擴展到整個經濟體，那麼，某些行業利潤率高而投資低迷的狀況也就能理解了。
另外，市場權力還能夠解釋收入不平等的劇烈轉向為何與政策轉向（尤其是美國政治劇烈的右傾轉向）相一致的問題。至於哪些公司能夠行使市場權力，這在很大程度上由政治決定，這樣一來，市場權力和政治力量就緊密結合在一起了。
3.
羅伯特·萊希從未隱藏自己的野心。《國家的作用》（The Work of Nations）書名就有意暗指亞當·斯密的著作《國富論》(The Wealth of Nations)；他也明確表示，希望讀者不要僅把他的作品視為實用指南，而應當作基礎性的閱讀文本。《拯救資本主義》雖短小緊湊，卻顯得更雄心勃勃。萊希將他對市場經濟根本性的重新考量納入他對收入不平等的新思考。他堅稱自己並非主張制定新政策來限制和削弱市場的運轉；確切地說，他認為自由市場的定義是一個政治決策，而政府可以製定完全不一樣的遊戲規則：“政府不是乾涉自由市場，政府要創造市場。”
老實說，我對這套推廣理論的措辭有著複雜的情感。從某些方面看來，這些措施似乎讓步太多了，甚至接受了“自由市場是好的”這種傳統觀念，同時要求大幅度調整政策。我擔心，如果把一切都塞進這個龐大而理性的框架，這會偏離萊希（和我）所支持的政策，這政策雖然平凡但重要。
無論人們對這套政策組合的看法如何，萊希很好地闡釋了一點，擴大的不平等很大程度上反映了政治決策，而這些政治決策本可以反向而行。市場權力的增強表明政府正在放棄反壟斷法，從結果看，反壟斷法越來越缺乏正當性；而在某些情況下，市場權力的增強又是某些政治力量暗暗支持壟斷的結果——例如，電信公司成功且長久地限制公眾使用互聯網（指當地電信公司壟斷互聯網接入業務且缺乏技術研發動力）。
同樣，當我們發現從事金融行業的少數人收入驚人時，就要意識到這些收入的正當性應當受到質疑。正如萊希所說，我們有充分的理由相信，一些金融公司的高收益主要依賴於政府有意放鬆對內幕交易的管制。我們還要意識到，金融業的異常成長揭示了政府解除對銀行業的管制後無力監管新型金融活動的後果。
同時，過去那種讓廣大工人群體而非僅僅少數精英分子獲益的市場權力形式已經衰落了，這主要也是政治決策的後果。我們總認為工會一蹶不振是技術革新和全球化帶來的後果，不可避免，但只要看看加拿大，就知道這種觀點站不住腳。曾經，美國和加拿大各有三分之一的工人是工會成員；而如今，美國工會成員的比例已降至11%，加拿大這一比例卻仍有27%。差別主要在政治方面，20世紀80年代，美國政策敵視工會，而加拿大的政策並未跟風。工會的衰落不僅直接影響了工人的收入水平，更重要的影響在於：世界貨幣基金組織研究人員發現，工會衰落和占總人口百分之一的最富裕階層的收入提高有密切聯繫，這表明強大的工會運動能遏制財富過於向社會頂層集中6。
根據他的模式，萊希認為，與其說工會是市場權力的來源，不如說是能夠遏制壟斷者破壞市場的“抗衡力量”（引自加爾布雷思）。如果工會不受到重重限制，他們可能會通過集體談判來協商工資以及工作環境，以此來抗衡壟斷力量。無論如何，工會衰落的因果，和壟斷力量上升的因果一樣，很好地展示了政治在收入不平等日益加劇的過程中所扮演的重要角色。
那政治為何朝這個方向發展呢？和其他評論者一樣，萊希認為政治權力和市場權力是相互促進的。頂級富豪通過支付競選獻金、組織遊說以及允諾成功競選後的回報來擴大自身的政治影響力。政治影響力反過來也可用於改寫遊戲規則——反壟斷法、解除控制、調整合同法、剝奪工會權利——總之用各種方式推動財富向社會頂層聚攏，而結果是寡頭政治螺旋式的惡性循環。萊希指出，美國過去一代人就是這麼走過來的。恐怕他說對了，那麼我們該做些什麼來扭轉這種趨勢呢？
4.
任何人如果想要扭轉這種螺旋遞增的收入不平等，都要先回答兩個問題。首先，你認為什麼政策能夠扭轉這種不平等？其次，你會通過什麼途徑獲得政治權力從而讓這些政策生效？而在我看來，羅伯特·萊希的《拯救資本主義》只是粗略地回答了這兩個問題。
在他給出的新政策建議中，萊希主張要通過一系列的政策組合來變革“預先分配”方式——即要改變市場收入的分配方式——而非改變再分配方式。（萊希認為，再分配可以看作是當前規則下對“前分配”的調整實施。）這些變革將包括一些標準的自由主義主張，例如提高最低工資標準，轉變勞工法及其實施過程中的反工會偏見，以及通過修改合同法來授予工人權利去反抗雇主、債主以維護自身權益等。萊希還提出了一個不那麼正統的建議，即通過修改立法等措施使得大公司恢復到它們半個世紀前的樣子：不僅對股東（stockholder）負責，也對更廣泛的利益相關者（stakeholder）負責，包括工人和顧客在內。
這樣的措施就夠了嗎？在我看來，這些措施似乎沒有一個能夠達到預期目標。但羅斯福新政的成功經驗告訴我們，一個計劃內的這些要素可能會產生協同效應。而這些措施自然值得一試。（注：羅斯福新政使美國成功轉型為中產階級國家，而70年代開始盛行的“反羅斯福新政”則使美國成功轉型為寡頭統治國家）
但是如何在政治上做到這一點呢？萊希表明了自己的樂觀態度，給出的理由是兩黨的政客逐漸都開始傾向於發表民粹主義言論。例如，特德·克魯茲（Ted Cruz）就曾批評那些“有權有勢，走在權力走廊上（注：指左右決策的權力中心）”的人。而萊希也承認“這些聲明的真誠性應當受到質疑”，事實的確如此。克魯茲曾提議要大幅削減稅收，而這會導致社會福利支出的大幅降低，而那些削減的稅收中大約有60%會流向收入分配中最頂層百分之一的人群。事實上，克魯茲並沒有把他的錢（應該說，你們的錢）花在他所承諾的地方。
儘管如此，萊希還是認為這種心口不一其實無關緊要。理由如下：如果連克魯茲這類人都感到有必要說這樣一番話，其實這暗示著公共輿論已經發生了徹底的變革，而這種公共輿論的變革最終會引發他所追求的那種政治變革。我們只能期待他的推斷是正確的。而在此期間，《拯救資本主義》能夠很好地引導我們的國家。
註釋：
1. “相對工資的變化，1963－1987:供需因素，”《經濟學季刊》，第107卷第1期，1992年2月。
2. Lawrence Mishel, Heidi Shierholz, and John Schmit對SBTC衰落情況的概述，“別責怪機器人了：評估對薪酬不平等擴大的就業兩極化解釋”，EPICEPR工作報告，2013年11月
3. “實證經濟學的方法論，”《實證經濟學論文集》，芝加哥大學出版社，1953年
4. David Dayen，在“恢復反壟斷”，2015年秋
5. Jason Furman and Peter Orszag，“從企業微觀層面看不平等加劇進程中租金的作用”， 2015年十月，www.whitehouse.gov.
6. Florence Jaumotte and Carolina Osorio Buitron，“工會權力及不平等現狀”，www.voxeu.org, 2015年10月22日
Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few
by Robert B. Reich
Knopf, 279 pp., $26.95
Back in 1991, in what now seems like a far more innocent time, Robert Reich published an influential book titled The Work of Nations, which among other things helped land him a cabinet post in the Clinton administration. It was a good book for its time—but time has moved on. And the gap between that relatively sunny take and Reich’s latest, Saving Capitalism, is itself an indicator of the unpleasant ways America has changed.
The Work of Nations was in some ways a groundbreaking work, because it focused squarely on the issue of rising inequality—an issue some economists, myself included, were already taking seriously, but that was not yet central to political discourse. Reich’s book saw inequality largely as a technical problem, with a technocratic, win-win solution. That was then. These days, Reich offers a much darker vision, and what is in effect a call for class war—or if you like, for an uprising of workers against the quiet class war that America’s oligarchy has been waging for decades.
1.
To understand the difference between The Work of Nations and Saving Capitalism, you need to know about two things. One, which is familiar to most of us, is the increasingly ugly turn taken by American politics, which I’ll be discussing later. The other is more of an insider debate, but one with huge implications for policy and politics alike: the rise and fall of the theory of skill-biased technological change, which was once so widely accepted among economists that it was frequently referred to simply as SBTC.
The starting point for SBTC was the observation that, around 1980, wages of college graduates began rising much more rapidly than wages of Americans with only a high school degree or less. Why?
One possibility was the growth of international trade, with rising imports of labor-intensive manufactured goods from low-wage countries. Such imports could, in principle, cause not just rising inequality but an actual decline in the wages of less-educated workers; the standard theory of international trade that supports such a principle is actually a lot less benign in its implications than many noneconomists imagine. But the numbers didn’t seem to work. Around 1990, trade with developing countries was still too small to explain the big movements in relative wages of college and high school graduates that had already happened. Furthermore, trade should have produced a shift in employment toward more skill-intensive industries; it couldn’t explain what we actually saw, which was a rise in the level of skills within industries, extending across pretty much the entire economy.
Many economists therefore turned to a different explanation: it was all about technology, and in particular the information technology revolution. Modern technology, or so it was claimed, reduced the need for routine manual labor while increasing the demand for conceptual work. And while the average education level was rising, it wasn’t rising fast enough to keep up with this technological shift. Hence the rise of the earnings of the college-educated and the relative, and perhaps absolute, decline in earnings for those without the right skills.
This view was never grounded in direct evidence that technology was the driving force behind wage changes; the technology factor was only inferred from its assumed effects. But it was expressed in a number of technical papers brandishing equations and data, and was codified in particular in a widely cited 1992 paper by Lawrence F. Katz of Harvard and Kevin M. Murphy of the University of Chicago.1 Reich’s The Work of Nations was, in part, a popularization of SBTC, using vivid language to connect abstract economic formalism to commonplace observation. In Reich’s vision, technology was eliminating routine work, and even replacing some jobs that historically required face-to-face interaction. But it was opening new opportunities for “symbolic analysts”—people with the talent and, crucially, the training to work with ideas. Reich’s solution to growing inequality was to equip more people with that necessary training, both through an expansion of conventional education and through retraining later in life.
It was an attractive, optimistic vision; you can see why it received such a favorable reception. But while one still encounters people invoking skill-biased technological change as an explanation of rising inequality and lagging wages—it’s especially popular among moderate Republicans in denial about what’s happened to their party and among “third way” types lamenting the rise of Democratic populism—the truth is that SBTChas fared very badly over the past quarter-century, to the point where it no longer deserves to be taken seriously as an account of what ails us.
The story fell apart in stages.2 First, over the course of the 1990s the skill gap stopped growing at the bottom of the scale: real wages of workers near the middle stopped outpacing those near the bottom, and even began to fall a bit behind. Some economists responded by revising the theory, claiming that technology was hollowing out the middle rather than displacing the bottom. But this had the feel of an epicycle added to a troubled theory—and after about 2000 the real wages of college graduates stopped rising as well. Meanwhile, incomes at the very top—the one percent, and even more so a very tiny group within the one percent—continued to soar. And this divergence evidently had little to do with education, since hedge fund managers and high school teachers have similar levels of formal training.
Something else began happening after 2000: labor in general began losing ground relative to capital. After decades of stability, the share of national income going to employee compensation began dropping fairly fast. One could try to explain this, too, with technology—maybe robots were displacing all workers, not just the less educated. But this story ran into multiple problems. For one thing, if we were experiencing a robot-driven technological revolution, why did productivity growth seem to be slowing, not accelerating? For another, if it was getting easier to replace workers with machines, we should have seen a rise in business investment as corporations raced to take advantage of the new opportunities; we didn’t, and in fact corporations have increasingly been parking their profits in banks or using them to buy back stocks.
In short, a technological account of rising inequality is looking ever less plausible, and the notion that increasing workers’ skills can reverse the trend is looking less plausible still. But in that case, what is going on?
2.
Economists struggling to make sense of economic polarization are, increasingly, talking not about technology but about power. This may sound like straying off the reservation—aren’t economists supposed to focus only on the invisible hand of the market?—but there is actually a long tradition of economic concern about “market power,” aka the effect of monopoly. True, such concerns were deemphasized for several generations, but they’re making a comeback—and one way to read Robert Reich’s new book is in part as a popularization of the new view, just as The Work of Nations was in part a popularization of SBTC. There’s more to Reich’s thesis, as I’ll explain shortly. But let’s start with the material that economists will find easiest to agree with.
Market power has a precise definition: it’s what happens whenever individual economic actors are able to affect the prices they receive or pay, as opposed to facing prices determined anonymously by the invisible hand. Monopolists get to set the price of their product; monopsonists—sole purchasers in a market—get to set the price of things they buy. Oligopoly, where there are a few sellers, is more complicated than monopoly, but also involves substantial market power. And here’s the thing: it’s obvious to the naked eye that our economy consists much more of monopolies and oligopolists than it does of the atomistic, price-taking competitors economists often envision.
But how much does that matter? Milton Friedman, in a deeply influential 1953 essay, argued that monopoly mattered only to the extent that actual market behavior differed from the predictions of simple supply-and-demand analysis—and that in fact there was little evidence that monopoly had important effects.3 Friedman’s view largely prevailed within the economics profession, and de facto in the wider political discussion. While monopoly never vanished from the textbooks, and antitrust laws remained part of the policy arsenal, both have faded in influence since the 1950s.
It’s increasingly clear, however, that this was both an intellectual and a policy error. There’s growing evidence that market power does indeed have large implications for economic behavior—and that the failure to pursue antitrust regulation vigorously has been a major reason for the disturbing trends in the economy.
Reich illustrates the role of monopoly with well-chosen examples, starting with the case of broadband. As he notes, most Americans seeking Internet access are more or less at the mercy of their local cable company; the result is that broadband is both slower and far more expensive in the US than in other countries. Another striking example involves agriculture, usually considered the very model of a perfectly competitive sector. As he notes, a single company, Monsanto, now dominates much of the sector as the sole supplier of genetically modified soybeans and corn. A recent article in The American Prospect points out that other examples of such dominance are easy to find, ranging from sunglasses to syringes to cat food.4
There’s also statistical evidence for a rising role of monopoly power. Recent work by Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Peter Orszag, former head of the Office of Management and Budget, shows a rising number of firms earning “super-normal” returns—that is, they have persistently high profit rates that don’t seem to be diminished by competition.5
Other evidence points indirectly to a strong role of market power. At this point, for example, there is an extensive empirical literature on the effects of changes in the minimum wage. Conventional supply-and-demand analysis says that raising the minimum wage should reduce employment, but as Reich notes, we now have a number of what amount to controlled experiments, in which employment in counties whose states have hiked the minimum wage can be compared with employment in neighboring counties across the state line. And there is no hint in the data of the supposed negative employment effect.
Why not? One leading hypothesis is that firms employing low-wage workers—such as fast-food chains—have significant monopsony power in the labor market; that is, they are the principal purchasers of low-wage labor in a particular job market. And a monopsonist facing a price floor doesn’t necessarily buy less, just as a monopolist facing a price ceiling doesn’t necessarily sell less and may sell more.
Suppose that we hypothesize that rising market power, rather than the ineluctable logic of modern technology, is driving the rise in inequality. How does this help make sense of what we see?
Part of the answer is that it resolves some of the puzzles posed by other accounts. Notably, it explains why high profits aren’t spurring high investment. Consider those monopolies controlling local Internet service: their high profits don’t act as an incentive to invest in faster connections—on the contrary, they have less incentive to improve service than they would if they faced more competition and earned lower profits. Extend this logic to the economy as a whole, and the combination of a rising profit share and weak investment starts to make sense.
Furthermore, focusing on market power helps explain why the big turn toward income inequality seems to coincide with political shifts, in particular the sharp right turn in American politics. For the extent to which corporations are able to exercise market power is, in large part, determined by political decisions. And this ties the issue of market power to that of political power.
3.
Robert Reich has never shied away from big ambitions. The title of The Work of Nations deliberately alluded to Adam Smith; Reich clearly hoped that readers would see his work not simply as a useful guide but as a foundational text. Saving Capitalism is, if anything, even more ambitious despite its compact length. Reich attempts to cast his new discussion of inequality as a fundamental rethinking of market economics. He is not, he insists, calling for policies that will limit and soften the functioning of markets; rather, he says that the very definition of free markets is a political decision, and that we could run things very differently. “Government doesn’t ‘intrude’ on the ‘free market.’ It creates the market.”
To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this sales pitch. In some ways it seems to concede too much, accepting the orthodoxy that free markets are good even while calling for major changes in policy. And I also worry that the attempt to squeeze everything into a grand intellectual scheme may distract from the prosaic but important policy actions that Reich (and I) support.
Whatever one thinks of the packaging, however, Reich makes a very good case that widening inequality largely reflects political decisions that could have gone in very different directions. The rise in market power reflects a turn away from antitrust laws that looks less and less justified by outcomes, and in some cases the rise in market power is the result of the raw exercise of political clout to prevent policies that would limit monopolies—for example, the sustained and successful campaign to prevent public provision of Internet access.
Similarly, when we look at the extraordinary incomes accruing to a few people in the financial sector, we need to realize that there are real questions about whether those incomes are “earned.” As Reich argues, there’s good reason to believe that high profits at some financial firms largely reflect insider trading that we’ve made a political decision not to regulate effectively. And we also need to realize that the growth of finance reflected political decisions that deregulated banking and failed to regulate newer financial activities.
Meanwhile, forms of market power that benefit large numbers of workers as opposed to small numbers of plutocrats have declined, again thanks in large part to political decisions. We tend to think of the drastic decline in unions as an inevitable consequence of technological change and globalization, but one need look no further than Canada to see that this isn’t true. Once upon a time, around a third of workers in both the US and Canada were union members; today, US unionization is down to 11 percent, while it’s still 27 percent north of the border. The difference was politics: US policy turned hostile toward unions in the 1980s, while Canadian policy didn’t follow suit. And the decline in unions seems to have major impacts beyond the direct effect on members’ wages: researchers at the International Monetary Fund have found a close association between falling unionization and a rising share of income going to the top one percent, suggesting that a strong union movement helps limit the forces causing high concentration of income at the top.6
Following his schema, Reich argues that unions aren’t so much a source of market power as an example of “countervailing power” (a term he borrows from John Kenneth Galbraith) that limits the depredations of monopolists and others. If unions are not subject to restrictions, they may do so by collective bargaining not only for wages but for working conditions. In any case, the causes and consequences of union decline, like the causes and consequences of rising monopoly power, are a very good illustration of the role of politics in increasing inequality.
But why has politics gone in this direction? Like a number of other commentators, Reich argues that there’s a feedback loop between political and market power. Rising wealth at the top buys growing political influence, via campaign contributions, lobbying, and the rewards of the revolving door. Political influence in turn is used to rewrite the rules of the game—antitrust laws, deregulation, changes in contract law, union-busting—in a way that reinforces income concentration. The result is a sort of spiral, a vicious circle of oligarchy. That, Reich suggests, is the story of America over the past generation. And I’m afraid that he’s right. So what can turn it around?
4.
Anyone hoping for a reversal of the spiral of inequality has to answer two questions. First, what policies do you think would do the trick? Second, how would you get the political power to make those policies happen? I don’t think it’s unfair to Robert Reich to say that Saving Capitalism offers only a sketch of an answer to either question.
In his proposals for new policies, Reich calls for a sort of broad portfolio, or maybe a market basket, of changes aimed mainly at “predistribution”—changing the allocation of market income—rather than redistribution. (In Reich’s view, this is seen as altering the predistribution that takes place under current rules.) These changes would include fairly standard liberal ideas like raising the minimum wage, reversing the anti-union bias of labor law and its enforcement, and changing contract law to empower workers to take action against employers and debtors to assert their interests against creditors. Reich would also, in a less orthodox move, seek legislative and other changes that might move corporations back toward what they were a half-century ago: organizations that saw themselves as answering not just to stockholders but to a broader set of “stakeholders,” including workers and customers.
Would such measures be enough? Individually, none of them sounds up to the task. But the experience of the New Deal, which was remarkably successful at creating a middle-class nation—and for that matter the success of the de facto anti–New Deal that has prevailed since the 1970s at creating an oligarchy—suggest that there might be synergistic effects from a program containing all these elements. It’s certainly worth trying.
But how is this supposed to happen politically? Reich professes optimism, citing the growing tendency of politicians in both parties to adopt populist rhetoric. For example, Ted Cruz has criticized the “rich and powerful, those who walk the corridors of power.” But Reich concedes that “the sincerity behind these statements might be questioned.” Indeed. Cruz has proposed large tax cuts that would force large cuts in social spending—and those tax cuts would deliver around 60 percent of their gains to the top one percent of the income distribution. He is definitely not putting his money—or, rather, your money—where his mouth is.
Still, Reich argues that the insincerity doesn’t matter, because the very fact that people like Cruz feel the need to say such things indicates a sea change in public opinion. And this change in public opinion, he suggests, will eventually lead to the kind of political change that he, justifiably, seeks. We can only hope he’s right. In the meantime, Saving Capitalism is a very good guide to the state we’re in.
- 1“Changes in Relative Wages, 1963–1987: Supply and Demand Factors,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 107, No. 1 (February 1992). ↩
- 2A good overview of the decline of SBTC is Lawrence Mishel, Heidi Shierholz, and John Schmitt, “Don’t Blame the Robots: Assessing the Job Polarization Explanation of Growing Wage Inequality,” EPI - CEPR working paper, November 2013. ↩
- 3“The Methodology of Positive Economics,” in Essays in Positive Economics (University of Chicago Press, 1953). ↩
- 4David Dayen, “Bring Back Antitrust,” Fall 2015. ↩
- 5Jason Furman and Peter Orszag, “A Firm-Level Perspective on the Role of Rents in the Rise of Inequality,” October 2015, available at www.white house.gov. ↩
- 6Florence Jaumotte and Carolina Osorio Buitron, “Union Power and Inequality,” www.voxeu.org, October 22
GM just announced a round of layoffs, impacting 1000 workers. But the company reported Q3 earnings that put it on track for record profits this year. Its CEO received $27M in compensation in 2023. And GM announced $6B in stock buybacks this June. Textbook corporate greed.
他最重視社會平等.....這次在Wikipedia 才知道他的身高。(所以有人建議他移民荷蘭以拯救美國之數字.....90年代初，我與一位義大利同事到荷蘭廠開會，我們發現到了巨人國，男女皆然......)
今天他談平均身高與國力---以及美國的速食文化之惡.....
我也順便找一下台灣的資料。
Robert Reich 2015.9.7
I’ve just come from ABC’s “This Week,” where Newt Gingrich, Matthew Dowd, Donna Brazile, and I went from talking about “American Pharoah”’s Triple Crown win to the Republican and Democratic primaries. In other words, it was all about horse races. The media seems to have no other way to address American politics than to ask who’s ahead and who's behind, rather than what the candidates stand for and what America needs.
Seven months until the first primaries, and 17 until Election Day, we have plenty of time for a national debate about the nation’s real challenges. Yet every Republican candidate is repeating the same platitudes (strengthen the military, lower taxes, and promote religious values) the GOP has been spewing for 35 years. Scott Walker leads the pack in Iowa, but on the basis of, what? Fighting unions, defunding Planned Parenthood, making it harder for students and low-income people to vote, blocking abortions after 20 weeks even in cases of rape or incest, and threatening a constitutional amendment allowing states to decide on same-sex marriage. Oh, and he rides a Harley. He’s a brainless knee-jerk conservative whom the media is celebrating because he happens to be up in Iowa, whose Republican caucuses haven’t predicted anything in years.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are discussing real issues. She wants to create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and expand Obama’s executive order on immigration, roll back Republican state laws designed to suppress the votes of the poor, automatically register citizens to vote when they turn 18, demilitarize the police, and get rid of mandatory prison sentences. Bernie Sanders wants to bust up the biggest Wall Street banks, make higher education free, and strengthen safety nets. But as long as the media remains fixated on the political horse race, America isn’t going to be debating any of this. Horse-race reportage allows the Republicans to get away with their racism, homophobia, anti-worker economics, and total dearth of ideas, while burying the important initiatives Democrats are proposing.
So what's the answer?
Just spoke to gathering of human-resource professionals, several of whom told me afterwards they were angry and frustrated with the financial types in their firms who “think only about the short-term bottom line” and don’t consider the long-term well-being of the company and its employees. When I asked them how pay was determined, they said they’re instructed to benchmark what competitors pay their top executives and recommend pay at or above the top of the range, so their firm gets the best. But they’re also instructed to recommend below-average pay for lower-level managers and employees, on the theory those jobs are fungible. The director of HR for one of America’s biggest corporations told me “this can’t go on. A revolution is coming.” Really?
*****
論破產法的起草和執行的操弄
2 million remain in danger of foreclosure. Likewise, graduates who can’t repay their student debts aren’t allowed to use bankruptcy to negotiate reductions in their payments, resulting in extraordinary hardship for those who can’t find jobs paying enough. Bankruptcy in Detroit, meanwhile, is requiring sacrifices even by municipal pensioners whose pensions were supposedly guaranteed under Michigan’s constitution. In none of these instances have the big banks had to share the pain. In fact, they're more profitable than ever. The real looming bankruptcy is of our democracy, and the power of Big Finance to set the rules.
*****
論平均身高與國力
The Netherlands has the world’s tallest people, with an average male height of over 6 feet and average female of 5’7.” It’s also where incomes are highest. That’s no accident. People in wealthy countries are on-average significantly taller than people in poor ones, because they’re more likely to have better nutrition as kids. The United States used to be the tallest country in the world but is now one of the shortest of all developed nations (I assure you I’m not solely responsible for bringing down the average). Average heights have grown steadily across Europe since the 1960s, but the United States hasn't gotten significantly taller. European countries have done a good job ensuring all their citizens get adequate nutrition; we haven't. Low-income kids in America consume an inordinate amount of fast food. That’s bad for height. In a recent British study, one group of schoolchildren was given hamburgers, French fries, and other fast foods; the other got 1940’s-style wartime rations like boiled cabbage and corned beef. Within eight weeks, the children on the rations were both taller and slimmer than the ones on a regular diet.
網路舊資料：
台灣人的平均身高
男生一百七十一點六公分
女生一百五十九點五公分
我國教育部於九十一年四月調查發現(18歲)男生平均身高為171.5公分，
女生平均身高約159.0公分，男生平均體重為65.0公斤，女生平均體重為53.0公斤。
歐洲女性的平均身高多少？ 168.7
美國女性的平均身高多少？ 170.1
日本女性的平均身高多少？ 165.4
日本男性的平均身高多少？ 170
日本男性的平均身高多少？ 170
韓國女性的平均身高多少？ 164.5
越南和東南亞女性平均身高多少？ 160.3 161.2
拉美女性的平均身高多少？ 167.5
荷蘭人的平均身高為歐洲之冠，男生平均身高約184公分，
女生平均身高則約174公分。
Robert Reich: 'Freedom' Is Just Another Word For Letting the Rich Get Richer
Photo Credit: Via Comedy Central
July 3, 2014 |
On Monday the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Affordable Care Act, ruling that privately-owned corporations don’t have to offer their employees contraceptive coverage that conflicts with the corporate owners’ religious beliefs.
The owners of Hobby Lobby, the plaintiffs in the case, were always free to practice their religion. The Court bestowed religious freedom on their corporation as well—a leap of logic as absurd as giving corporations freedom of speech. Corporations aren’t people.
The deeper problem is the Court’s obliviousness to the growing imbalance of economic power between corporations and real people. By giving companies the right not to offer employees contraceptive services otherwise mandated by law, the Court ignored the rights of employees to receive those services.
(Justice Alito’s suggestion that those services could be provided directly by the federal government is as politically likely as is a single-payer federal health-insurance plan—which presumably would be necessary to supply such contraceptives or any other Obamacare service corporations refuse to offer on religious grounds.)
The same imbalance of power rendered the Court’s decision in “Citizens United,” granting corporations freedom of speech, so perverse. In reality, corporate free speech drowns out the free speech of ordinary people who can’t flood the halls of Congress with campaign contributions.
Freedom is the one value conservatives place above all others, yet time and again their ideal of freedom ignores the growing imbalance of power in our society that’s eroding the freedoms of most people.
This isn’t new. In the early 1930s, the Court trumped New Deal legislation with “freedom of contract”—the presumed right of people to make whatever deals they want unencumbered by federal regulations. Eventually (perhaps influenced by FDR’s threat to expand the Court and pack it with his own appointees) the Court relented.
But the conservative mind has never incorporated economic power into its understanding of freedom. Conservatives still champion “free enterprise” and equate the so-called “free market” with liberty. To them, government “intrusions” on the market threaten freedom.
Yet the “free market” doesn’t exist in nature. There, only the fittest and strongest survive. The “free market” is the product of laws and rules continuously emanating from legislatures, executive departments, and courts. Government doesn’t “intrude” on the free market. It defines and organizes (and often reorganizes) it.
Here’s where the reality of power comes in. It’s one thing if these laws and rules are shaped democratically, reflecting the values and preferences of most people.
But anyone with half a brain can see the growing concentration of income and wealth at the top of America has concentrated political power there as well—generating laws and rules that tilt the playing field ever further in the direction of corporations and the wealthy.
Antitrust laws designed to constrain monopolies have been eviscerated. Competition among Internet service providers, for example, is rapidly disappearing—resulting in higher prices than in any other rich country. Companies are being allowed to prolong patents and trademarks, keeping drug prices higher here than in Canada or Europe.
Tax laws favor capital over labor, giving capital gains a lower rate than ordinary income. The rich get humongous mortgage interest deductions while renters get no deduction at all.
The value of real property (the major asset of the middle class) is taxed annually, but not the value of stocks and bonds (where the rich park most of their wealth).
Bankruptcy laws allow companies to smoothly reorganize, but not college graduates burdened by student loans.
The minimum wage is steadily losing value, while CEO pay is in the stratosphere. Under U.S. law, shareholders have only an “advisory” role in determining what CEOs rake in.
Public goods paid for with tax revenues (public schools, affordable public universities, parks, roads, bridges) are deteriorating, while private goods paid for individually (private schools and colleges, health clubs, security guards, gated community amenities) are burgeoning.
I could go on, but you get the point. The so-called “free market” is not expanding options and opportunities for most people. It’s extending them for the few who are wealthy enough to influence how the market is organized.
Most of us remain “free” in the limited sense of not being coerced into purchasing, say, the medications or Internet services that are unnecessarily expensive, or contraceptives they can no longer get under their employer’s insurance plan. We can just go without.
We’re likewise free not to be burdened with years of student debt payments; no one is required to attend college. And we’re free not to rent a place in a neighborhood with lousy schools and pot-holed roads; if we can’t afford better, we’re free to work harder so we can.
But this is a very parched view of freedom.
Conservatives who claim to be on the side of freedom while ignoring the growing imbalance of economic and political power in America are not in fact on the side of freedom. They are on the side of those with the power.
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