塔塔鋼鐵公司 如何幫助轉型中的失業者

The possible closure of Tata Steel’s operations in Port Talbot casts a deep shadow over the area. There’s something familiar about this depressing story. The shipyards of the Clyde and the cotton mills of Manchester have faded. The coalfields of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire were all around me as I grew up in Chesterfield during the miners’ strike of 1984-85. Now the mining jobs are gone. Further afield, there are the job losses in the automobile production lines of Detroit, for the shoemakers of Kobe in Japan, or at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York.

塔塔鋼鐵公司(Tata Steel)可能關停塔爾博特港鋼廠的消息，給這一地區蒙上了厚厚的陰影。這個令人沮喪的故事似曾相識。克萊德(Clyde)的造船廠、曼徹斯特的紡織廠都已衰敗。我在切斯特菲爾德(Chesterfield)長大，周圍有德比郡、諾丁漢郡以及南約克郡的煤田。1984-85年礦工罷工的時候我還是個孩子。如今，採煤工作早已消失。在世界其他地方，底特律的汽車生產線工人、日本神戶的製鞋工人以及紐約州羅切斯特(Rochester)的伊士曼柯達公司(Eastman Kodak)員工，也都失去了工作。

So what should be done when communities are wounded by such blows? One tempting answer is “everything”; that the government should nationalise troubled operations or adopt similar big-bazooka tactics, such as high trade barriers or large subsidies. It’s easy enough to make the emotional case for this but the practical case isn’t so plausible. Would nationalisation have saved Kodak’s film business? Is Manchester the place for a 21st-century Cottonopolis?

那麼，當社區受到此類打擊的傷害時，應該做些什麼呢？一個誘人的答案是，“極盡所能採取一切措施”：政府應將陷入困境的企業收歸國有，或採取類似的大動干戈的策略，如設置高貿易壁壘或提供鉅額補貼。從情感角度而言，我們很容易找到應該這樣做的理由，但從現實角度來看，這樣做的理由並不充分。國有化當初有可能拯救柯達的膠捲業務嗎？曼徹斯特能成爲21世紀的棉都嗎？

Sometimes, government can help restructure a troubled business — as with the Obama administration’s interventions in the case of General Motors, or the long but ultimately successful nationalisation of Rolls-Royce in the 1970s.

有時候，政府能夠協助重組陷入困境的企業——正如奧巴馬(Obama)政府對通用汽車(General Motors)的干預，或是上世紀70年代羅爾斯•羅伊斯(Rolls-Royce)漫長但最終成功的國有化那樣。

However, taxpayers are always at risk of being saddled with the role of supporting industries in inescapable structural decline. The political economy of these cases is skewed towards preservation rather than creative destruction. Old industries under stress have much to gain from government support, and can point to people who need help. There is no constituency for jobs that have not yet been created.

然而，納稅人總是可能被迫承擔起這樣的角色：爲一些處於不可擺脫的結構性衰退中的產業提供支持。這些案例背後的政治經濟學狀況偏向於維持這些產業，而非毀掉舊的、創造新的。處於困境之中的舊產業可從政府支持中獲得大量好處，這些產業可能會拿那些需要幫助的人說事。政客只對現有選民負責，還沒有創造出來的工作崗位上沒有需要他們負責的選民。

So a different answer is that we should do nothing. This laissez-faire reasoning points out that economic change inevitably creates losers but, ultimately, society is better off. We cannot resist change, only adjust. Former autoworkers, steelworkers, and coalminers need to pick themselves up and move to where fresh jobs are available, or retrain.

所以，另一個答案是，我們應什麼都不做。這種主張自由放任的理論認爲，經濟轉型不可避免地會造就輸家，但整個社會最終會變得更富裕。我們無法抵擋轉型，只能適應。昔日的汽車工人、鋼鐵工人、煤礦工人需要振作精神，搬到可以獲得新工作的地方，或者接受再培訓。

There is a logic to this argument but it glosses over the deep wounds of a large industrial closure. It isn’t just that workers lose jobs. The entire economic ecosystem of an area can collapse. Newly jobless workers find that their homes are worthless, their pensions too sometimes.

這種觀點有一定道理，但它對一場大規模工廠倒閉造成的沉重創傷避而不提。不只是工人失業，整個地區的經濟生態系統都可能崩潰。剛剛失業的工人們會發現，自己的住宅變得一文不值，養老金有時也打水漂了。

And workers with the kind of skills that are under pressure from technology or trade may find that they move from one sinking lifeboat to another, with their new jobs under threat from the same forces that destroyed the old ones. More radically, retraining — maybe as a neurosurgeon or data scientist — would solve that problem, but then so would discovering a Rembrandt in the attic.

一些工作技能面臨來自技術或貿易的壓力，懷有這些工作技能的人們或許會發現，自己從一艘漏水的救生艇轉移至另一艘，新找的工作依舊面臨威脅，造成威脅的正是摧毀自己原先工作的那些因素。極端一點說，接受再培訓（或許轉行成爲一名神經外科醫生或數據科學家）倒是可以解決上一個問題，不過在閣樓上發現一幅倫勃朗(Rembrandt)的畫也可以。

Between the ideologically pure answers of “do everything” and “do nothing”, we have the current consensus, “do something”. But what?

在“極盡所能”與“什麼都不做”這兩個從意識形態角度而言都很純粹的答案之間，我們有了當前的共識——“做一些事情”。但做哪些事情呢？

There are three broad approaches to looking after the losers from economic change: try to bring new jobs to people; try to help the people change to find new jobs; just send money.

照顧經濟轉型造成的輸家，大致有三種方式：設法爲人們創造新的就業機會；設法幫助人們改變自己，找到新工作；直接給錢。

Bringing new jobs to people is the most natural idea, but regional regeneration is difficult. Depressed communities often stay depressed. A Sheffield Hallam University study from 2014, The State of the Coalfields, found that 30 years after the miners’ strike, coalfield communities have lower employment rates and higher reliance on disability benefits. The track record of place-based regeneration policies is patchy and sobering.

爲人們創造新的就業機會是最自然的想法，但區域復興很困難。蕭條的社區通常會蕭條下去。謝菲爾德哈勒姆大學(Sheffield Hallam University)自2014年開始的一項“煤田現狀”(The State of the Coalfields)研究發現，那場礦工罷工爆發30年後，煤田社區的就業率變得更低，對傷殘撫卹金的依賴度更高。針對某個區域的振興政策很少實施，效果也不好。

If the jobs won’t move, perhaps the workers can? An influential 1992 study by economists Olivier Blanchard and Lawrence Katz found that the US labour market once worked this way. While a shock could have a lasting effect on a local economy, the unemployment rate itself would subside, “not because employment picks up, but because workers leave the state”.

如果引不來工作機會，或許勞動者可以搬走？經濟學家奧利維耶•布朗夏爾(Olivier Blanchard)與勞倫斯•卡茨(Lawrence Katz)在1992年做的一項有影響力的研究發現，這種方式曾在美國勞動力市場奏效。雖然產業沒落的衝擊會對當地經濟造成持久影響，但失業率本身會下降，“不是因爲就業回升，而是因爲工人們離開了這個州”。

But new research from Mai Dao, Davide Furceri and Prakash Loungani at the IMF finds that US workers move less than they did back in the 1980s. Instead of moving, they are more likely to stay put and stay jobless. (Mobility has improved in the European Union, albeit from much lower levels.)

但國際貨幣基金組織(IMF)的Mai Dao、達維德•富爾切裏(Davide Furceri)以及普拉卡什•隆加尼(Prakash Loungani)的新研究發現，比起上世紀80年代，美國勞動者如今更少遷移。他們更可能留在原地、保持失業狀態，而不是搬走。（歐盟(EU)內部的勞動者流動水平有所改善，儘管起始水平低得多。）

We don’t really know why mobility is falling in the US. Maybe because dual-income households find it harder to move — but then the same pattern is seen for single people. Housing costs increasingly prevent poor people from moving to booming areas such as New York and London in search of work.

我們其實並不知道爲什麼美國勞動者的流動水平在下降。也許是因爲雙職工家庭覺得更難以遷居別處——但是單身勞動者的流動水平也在下降。住房成本使窮人越來越難以搬至紐約、倫敦等繁榮地區尋找工作。

“My guess is that there’s no one reason for the fall in mobility,” says Betsey Stevenson of the University of Michigan, also formerly chief economist at the US labour department. Stevenson, like many economists, argues that education must be a huge part of the answer to economic shocks. The jobs have changed, and so must we.

美國勞動部前首席經濟學家、密歇根大學(University of Michigan)的貝齊•史蒂文森(Betsey Stevenson)表示：“我的猜想是，並非單一原因導致了勞動者流動水平的下降。”和許多經濟學家一樣，史蒂文森認爲，教育必須是應對經濟衝擊策略的主要部分。工作機會已經變了，我們也必須改變。

Education is, indeed, a remarkable thing. Lawrence Katz has observed that between 1979 and 2012, the wage gap between a US household of two college graduates and a household of two high school graduates grew by around $30,000 — a sum that dwarfs most shifts in the economic landscape. But it is easy to be glib about retraining: governments are tempted to use training programmes as a way to make work and shift people off the welfare rolls.

教育確實是件了不起的事情。卡茨發現，1979年至2012年間，兩個大學畢業生組成的美國家庭與兩個高中畢業生組成的家庭之間的工資差距增加了約3萬美元——這一數字足以使經濟圖景中多數變化相形見絀。但再培訓很容易被草草對待：政府有動機把培訓項目當做創造就業和減少失業救濟金領取人數的方式。

So a final answer as to how to compensate the losers is the simplest: give them money. That is a strategy that offers both more, and less, than it might seem at first glance. But that is a topic for next week.

所以，如何來補償輸家的最終答案其實最簡單：給他們錢。比起乍看上去，這一策略提供的既多又少。但這將是下次的題目。