低迷生產率困擾世界 機器人解救全球經濟

Drew Greenblatt surveys the shop floor of his small factory in a down-at-heel district of Baltimore, Maryland, where two workers are using a large steel-bending robot.

德魯•格林布拉特(Drew Greenblatt)的小工廠位於美國馬里蘭州巴爾的摩一個破敗的地區，他正在視察工廠車間，兩名工人正在操作一個大型的鋼鐵彎軋機器人。

“This part used to be made in China,” he says. “But because of the robotics we stole this [manufacturing] from China and now make it in America.”

“過去這個零部件在中國製造，”他稱，“但是由於機器人技術，我們將這項（製造業務）從中國偷走了，如今在美國製造它。”

The introduction of automation at Marlin Steel Wire Products has helped boost employee productivity fourfold since 1998, estimates Mr Greenblatt, whose customers include carmaker General Motors . The gains in efficiency are impressive but they are not being replicated across America.

格林布拉特估計，自1998年以來，馬林鋼絲產品公司(Marlin Steel Wire Products)引入自動化技術已經幫助將員工的生產率提高了3倍。他的客戶包括汽車製造商通用汽車(General Motors)。該公司生產率的提升令人矚目，但是這種模式並未在美國得到普遍推廣。

Even as US manufacturers adopt automation as part of their fightback against offshoring to Asia, productivity growth across the economy is at a near-standstill. A similar picture is being played out across the globe, exposing the most pressing problem in the world economy today. Only India and sub-Saharan Africa seem to be immune from slowing productivity growth.

即便美國製造商採用自動化作爲反擊製造業崗位向亞洲外流的部分努力，但整個經濟的生產率增長仍近乎處於停滯狀態。類似的景象正在全球各地上演，這暴露了當今世界經濟面臨的最緊迫問題。只有印度和撒哈拉以南非洲地區看上去並未出現生產率增長放緩。

Economists are increasingly alarmed because slower improvements in efficiency will lead to a fall-off in living standards and less-solid public finances. In the medium term, productivity growth is the most important driver of prosperity. Its weakness in recent years lies at the heart of why advanced nations have remained in a low-growth rut since the financial crisis even as unemployment has fallen.

由於生產率提高放緩將導致生活水平下降以及公共財政穩定性降低，經濟學家對此日益擔心。從中期來看，生產率增長是繁榮最重要的推動因素。自金融危機以來，即便失業率已經下滑，但發達國家仍未能擺脫低增長率趨勢，這其中的核心問題就是近年來生產率增長疲軟。

Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve chair, raised America’s “relatively weak” productivity in a speech last week and urged new measures to strengthen education, boost entrepreneurship and lift capital investment.

上週，美聯儲主席珍妮特•耶倫(Janet Yellen)在發表演講時提到了美國“相對疲軟”的生產率，敦促推出新的措施以加強教育、促進創業以及提升資本投資。

New data from the Conference Board think-tank show that average labour productivity growth in mature economies slowed to 0.6 per cent in 2014 from 0.8 per cent in 2013, as a result of ebbing performances in the US, Japan and Europe. Productivity, which tracks how efficiently inputs such as labour and capital are used, tends to evolve over long periods. But the Conference Board readings confirm a longer-term trend of sagging growth that is setting off alarm bells around the world.

智庫機構世界大型企業聯合會(Conference Board)的新數據顯示，由於美國、日本和歐洲的表現日益走下坡路，成熟經濟體的平均勞動生產率增速由2013年的0.8%降至2014年的0.6%。追蹤勞動力、資本等投入使用效率的生產率，往往經過長期演化形成。但是，世界大型企業聯合會的數據證實了生產率增長低迷的長期趨勢，這一趨勢正在全世界範圍敲響警鐘。

“In the past decade the US has had terrible productivity growth and other countries have been slipping relative to the US,” says John Fernald, an economist at the San Francisco Fed.

“過去10年，美國生產率增長表現糟糕，而其他國家相對於美國的差距持續加大，”舊金山聯邦儲備銀行(San Francisco Fed)的經濟學家約翰•弗納爾德(John Fernald)稱。

In the UK, productivity has not improved in eight years, breaking a trend of roughly 2 per cent annual growth stretching back over a century. George Osborne, the chancellor, last week committed the new Conservative government to boosting productivity.

英國的生產率已經8年未出現改善，打破了一個世紀以來每年增長約兩個百分點的趨勢。上週，英國財政大臣喬治•奧斯本(George Osborne)向新的保守黨(Conservative)政府承諾將提高生產率。

Faced with rapidly ageing populations and slowing employment growth, mature economies need to boost productivity sharply if they are to escape stagnating living standards. To compensate fully for slower employment growth over the coming 50 years, productivity growth would need to be 80 per cent faster than over the past half-century, according to calculations from McKinsey, the consultancy.

面對人口迅速老齡化以及就業增長放緩，成熟經濟體如果想擺脫生活水平停滯不前的問題，就需要大幅提高生產率。據諮詢公司麥肯錫(McKinsey)估算，爲了完全彌補未來50年就業增長放緩的影響，生產率增速將需要比過去半個世紀快80%。

Whether such an acceleration can be achieved depends in part on identifying why growth is slowing. To optimists, the poor numbers are a transitory legacy of the recession. The downturn in global demand has temporarily depressed companies’ willingness to invest in new equipment and ideas, and that more cautious outlook dented productivity.

這種加速能否實現，部分取決於能否確定生產率增速下降的原因。對於樂觀主義者來說，糟糕的數據只是衰退的暫時性後遺症。全球需求下滑暫時性地打壓了公司投資新設備和新想法的意願，人們更加謹慎的觀點拉低了生產率。

But the slowdown predated the financial crisis; Conference Board data reveal a longstanding fall in growth across mature economies. In Europe and Japan it started in the 1990s, and is related to slower adoption of technology, it says.

但是，生產率增長放緩先於金融危機；世界大型企業聯合會的數據顯示，成熟經濟體長期以來普遍存在生產率增長放緩的情況。該機構表示，歐洲和日本生產率增長放緩始於上世紀90年代，與之相聯繫的是技術應用變慢。

Marco Annunziata, the chief economist at General Electric, worries there is a structural problem in Europe due to a lack of risk-taking, low R&D spending and inflexible labour markets.

通用電氣(General Electric)的首席經濟學家馬可•安農齊亞塔(Marco Annunziata)擔心，由於缺乏冒險活動、研發支出較低以及勞動市場缺少靈活性，歐洲可能存在結構性問題。

In the US, the most efficient of the major economies, productivity growth began to ebb in 2005. According to Mr Fernald, this was a result of the lapsing of temporary growth dividends from the 1990s IT revolution.

在美國這個生產率最高的主要經濟體中，生產率增長從2005年開始放緩。弗納爾德表示，這是上世紀90年代信息技術革命帶來的暫時性增長紅利消失所導致的。

This raises the possibility that the recent, dreary productivity growth in the US is actually a return to an older and weaker trend. Even in emerging economies, where efficiency is catching up, the rate of growth has slowed.

這帶來了一種可能性，即美國近期生產率增長低迷實際上是對一種更老、更疲弱趨勢的迴歸。即使在生產率正迎頭趕上的新興經濟體，生產率增長也已經放緩。

This has major implications in terms of a prolonged shortfall in tax revenues and increased public debt. It was just such a scenario — the fall in productivity growth between 2010 and 2015 — that stretched a planned four-year period of austerity in the UK into a decade of public-sector misery.

這會造成重大影響——稅收不足的狀況延長、公共債務增加。正是這種情況，即2010年至2015年英國生產率增速下降，導致了英國規劃的4年緊縮期延長爲公共部門十年困難期。

Optimists counter that it is just a matter of time before we see an upsurge in productivity, pointing to innovation in American IT hubs such as Silicon Valley.

樂觀主義者反駁稱，生產率出現迅速提升只是時間的問題，並把希望寄託在硅谷(Silicon Valley)等美國IT中心的創新上。

Researchers at Blue River Technology, a California-based agricultural robotics company, envisage farms of the future being surveyed by flocks of drones, and tended by fleets of robots and self-driving tractors. It is already operating teams of “lettuce bots”, which are being dragged across fields in Arizona and California to identify 1.5m individual plants an hour and make decisions on how to fertilise them.

位於加州的農業機器人公司Blue River Technology的研究員描繪了未來農場的樣子——成羣無人機在空中巡視，大批機器人以及無人駕駛拖拉機照料着生產。該公司的“生菜機器人”隊伍已經在工作，它們分佈在亞利桑那州和加州的田地間，每小時識別150萬株植物並決定如何施肥。

Some argue that the easiest targets for technological progress have already been met. But others say the world is on the cusp of a machine-driven growth spurt, where driverless cars and robots will replace people, and cite companies such as Blue River as evidence.

一些人認爲，科技進步最容易的目標已經實現。其他人則認爲，世界已步入機器驅動的增長井噴時代，無人駕駛汽車和機器人將取代人類，Blue River之類的公司就是明證。

Another more bullish outlook suggests that the concept of productivity as a measure of living standards is now outdated because quality is difficult to measure in public services such as education, and progress is hard to capture in many consumer technologies. Equivalents to Skype, for instance, were prohibitively expensive a decade ago but now are free, giving people higher standards of living without troubling the statisticians compiling gross domestic product data.

另一種更加樂觀的觀點認爲，將生產率作爲生活水平衡量指標的看法如今已過時，因爲在教育等公共服務中，質量很難衡量，而在許多消費者技術中，進步也很難捕捉。例如，10年前與Skype發揮同樣功效的產品貴得離譜，而如今卻是免費的，這提高了人們的生活水平，而無須麻煩統計師編纂國內生產總值(GDP)數據。

“This takes you into uncharted territory about what progress means in advanced economies,” says Professor Diane Coyle of Manchester university. “There has clearly been an increase in consumers’ welfare, probably extremely large, and we don’t know how it is linked to GDP.”

“這將你帶入一個關於進步在發達經濟體中意味着什麼的未知領域，”曼徹斯特大學(Manchester University)的教授黛安娜•科伊爾(Diane Coyle)稱，“消費者福利明顯有所增加，增幅很可能還極大，而我們不知道這與GDP有何關聯。”

Mismeasurement might explain how many consumers are better off without appearing to have higher incomes in real terms. But statistical arguments cannot raise incomes or tax revenues, nor do they return sectors with previously high productivity growth back to former levels of success.

許多消費者看上去實際收入並未提高，日子卻更好過了，原因或許就在於統計失靈。但是，統計學解釋無法提高收入或稅收，也無法讓之前生產率增速較高的行業獲得之前那種水平的成功。