長遠看 搶走美國人工作的不是中國大綱

The first job that Sherry Johnson, 56, lost to automation was at the local newspaper in Marietta, Georgia, where she fed paper into the printing machines and laid out pages. Later, she watched machines learn to do her jobs on a factory floor, and in inventory and filing.

現年56歲的謝麗•約翰遜(Sherry Johnson)第一次因爲自動化而失去工作，是在佐治亞州瑪麗埃塔的當地報紙印廠，她負責將紙張送入印刷機和擺放頁面。後來，她眼睜睜地看着機器學會了她在車間的工作，以及盤貨和報表方面的工作。

“It actually kind of ticked me off because it’s like, How are we supposed to make a living?” she said. She took a computer class at Goodwill, but it was too little too late. “The 20- and 30-year-olds are more up to date on that stuff than we are because we didn’t have that when we were growing up,” said Johnson, who is now on disability and lives in a housing project in Jefferson City, Tennessee.

“這確實令我憤怒，我覺得，這樣到底讓我們怎麼謀生？”她說。她參加了好意組織(Goodwill)的電腦課程，但是有點太晚了。“二三十歲的人比我們更能適應，因爲我們成長的時候根本沒有這種事情，”約翰遜說，她現在靠殘疾補助生活，住在田納西州傑斐遜城一處市政住房裏。

Donald Trump told workers like Johnson that he would bring back their jobs by clamping down on trade, offshoring and immigration. But economists say the bigger threat has been something else: automation.

唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)告訴約翰遜這樣的工人們，通過嚴格限制貿易、離岸外包與移民，他會爲他們帶回工作。但經濟學家說，更大的威脅來自另一件事：自動化。

“Over the long haul, clearly automation’s been much more important — it’s not even close,” said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard who studies labor and technological change.

“從長期角度來看，顯然自動化因素更加重要——其他因素都與它差得很遠，”研究勞動力與技術變化的哈佛大學經濟學教授勞倫斯•卡茨(Lawrence Katz)說。

No candidate talked much about automation on the campaign trail. Technology is not as convenient a villain as China or Mexico, there is no clear way to stop it, and many of the technology companies are in the United States and benefit the country in many ways.

在競選期間，沒有一位候選人談到關於自動化的問題。科學技術不像中國或墨西哥，可以方便地拿來充當罪魁禍首，目前沒有明確的方式來阻止它，而且許多科技公司都在美國，並在許多方面令這個國家受益。

Trump told a group of tech company leaders last Wednesday: “We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation. Anything we can do to help this go along, we’re going to be there for you.

特朗普上週三告訴一組科技公司的領導人：“我們希望你們能繼續保持令人難以置信的創新。我們願意做任何事情來幫助這種情況持續下去，我們會支持你們。”

Andrew F. Puzder, Trump’s pick for labor secretary and chief executive of CKE Restaurants, praised robot employees in an interview with Business Insider in March. “They’re always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case,” he said.

特朗普選擇的勞工部部長、CKE餐廳公司首席執行官安德魯•F•普茲代爾(Andrew F. Puzder)在3月接受商業內幕(Business Insider)網站採訪時曾稱讚機器人員工。“它們總是彬彬有禮，總是會追加銷售，從不休假，從不遲到，從不打滑摔倒，也不會有年齡、性別或種族歧視的情況，”他說。

Globalization is clearly responsible for some job loss, particularly trade with China during the 2000s, which led to the rapid loss of 2 million to 2.4 million net jobs, according to research by economists including Daron Acemoglu and David Autor of MIT.

根據麻省理工大學的達龍•阿賽莫格盧(Daron Acemoglu)和戴維•奧特(David Autor)的研究，全球化顯然造成了一些職位流失，特別是與中國在21世紀以來的貿易迅速導致了200萬到240萬就業淨損失。

People who work in parts of the country most affected by imports generally have greater unemployment and reduced income for the rest of their lives, Autor found in a paper published in January. Still, over time, automation has had a far bigger effect than globalization, and would have eventually eliminated those jobs anyway, he said in an interview. “Some of it is globalization, but a lot of it is we require many fewer workers to do the same amount of work,” he said. “Workers are basically supervisors of machines.”

奧特在1月份發表的一篇論文發現，在美國，受進口影響最嚴重的地區通常失業率更高，在餘生裏的收入會減少。不過，隨着時間的推移，自動化已經產生了比全球化更大的影響，並且最終會消除這些工作崗位，他在接受採訪時說。“其中一些是因爲全球化，但很多工作機會的消失是因爲我們要求少得多的工人來完成同樣的工作量，”他說。“工人基本上是機器的監督者。”

When Greg Hayes, the chief executive of United Technologies, agreed to invest $16 million in one of its Carrier factories as part of a Trump deal to keep some jobs in Indiana instead of moving them to Mexico, he said the money would go toward automation.

聯合技術公司(United Technologies)首席執行官格雷格•海耶斯(Greg Hayes) 同意爲該公司旗下的一家開利公司(Carrier)工廠投資1600萬美元，這是同特朗普交易的一部分，目的是保持印第安納州的一些工作機會，而不是把這些機會轉到墨西哥去。海耶斯說，這筆錢將用於自動化。

“What that ultimately means is there will be fewer jobs,” he said on CNBC.

“最終這意味着工作機會的減少，”他在接受CNBC採訪時說。

Take the steel industry. It lost 400,000 people, 75 percent of its workforce, between 1962 and 2005. But its shipments did not decline, according to a study published in the American Economic Review last year. The reason was a new technology called the minimill. Its effect remained strong even after controlling for management practices; job losses in the Midwest; international trade; and unionization rates, found the authors of the study, Allan Collard-Wexler of Duke and Jan De Loecker of Princeton.

以鋼鐵工業爲例。在1962年至2005年間，該行業失去了40萬人，佔其總勞動力的75％。但是，根據杜克大學的艾倫•康拉德-韋克斯勒(Allan Collard-Wexler)和普林斯頓大學的揚•德•洛克(Jan De Loecker)去年在《美國經濟評論》(American Economic Review)上發表的一項研究，該行業的出貨量並沒有下降。原因是一種名爲微型鋼鐵廠(minimill)的新技術。即便考慮了管理實踐、中西部的失業、國際貿易和工會化進程等因素，其影響依然強大。

Another analysis, from Ball State University, attributed roughly 13 percent of manufacturing job losses to trade and the rest to enhanced productivity because of automation. Apparel making was hit hardest by trade, it said, and computer and electronics manufacturing by technological advances.

來自鮑爾州立大學(Ball State University)的另一項分析認爲，在製造業內，大約有13％的失業應歸因於貿易，其餘則是因爲自動化提高了生產力。分析稱，服裝製造受到貿易的打擊最大，計算機和電子製造業則受技術進步影響最大。

Over time, automation has generally gone well: As it has displaced jobs, it has created new ones. But some experts worry that this time could be different. Even as the economy has improved, jobs and wages for a large segment of workers — particularly men without college degrees doing manual labor — have not recovered.

隨着時間的推移，自動化總體來說進展順利：雖然它取代了一部分工作，但也創造了新的工作。但有些專家擔心目前這段時間可能有所不同。即使經濟有所改善，對於大部分工人，特別是沒有大學學位、做體力勞動的工人來說，工作和工資仍未恢復。

Even in the best case, automation leaves the first generation of workers it displaces in a lurch because they usually lack the skills to do new and more complex tasks, Acemoglu found in a paper published in May

阿賽莫格盧在5月發表的論文中指出，即使在最好的情況下，自動化亦令第一代被替代的工人處於困境，因爲他們通常缺乏技能去執行新的、更復雜的任務。

Labor economists see ways to ease the transition for workers displaced by robots. They include retraining programs, stronger unions, more public-sector jobs, a higher minimum wage, a bigger earned-income tax credit and, for the next generation, more college degrees. Few are policies that Trump has said he will pursue.

勞動經濟學家們發現了一些方法，能幫助被機器人替代的工人更好地完成過渡期，其中包括再培訓計劃、更強大的工會、增加公共部門工作、更高的最低工資、更大的勞動所得稅抵扣，以及爲下一代提供更多的大學學位。其中很少有哪一項政策是特朗普所謀求實現的。

“Just allowing the private market to automate without any support is a recipe for blaming immigrants and trade and other things, even when it’s the long impact of technology,” said Katz, who was the Labor Department’s chief economist under President Bill Clinton.

“只是允許自動化進入私人市場，卻沒有任何支持，所以，即便失業原因是科技的長期影響，人們也會責怪移民、貿易和其他事情，”卡茨說，他曾在比爾•克林頓(Bill Clinton)總統任期內擔任勞工部首席經濟學家。

It’s not only manual labor: Computers are learning to do some white-collar and service-sector work, too. Existing technology could automate 45 percent of activities people are paid to do, according to a July report by McKinsey. Work that requires creativity, management of people or caregiving is least at risk.

不僅僅是體力勞動：計算機也在學習做一些白領和服務部門的工作。根據麥肯錫7月份的報告，目前僱傭人力進行的活動，有45%可以被技術自動化。需要創造力的工作、人力管理工作或看護類工作風險最小。

Johnson in Tennessee said her favorite and best-paying job, $8.65 an hour, was at an animal shelter, caring for puppies.

田納西州的約翰遜說她最喜歡的一份工作是在一個動物收容所照顧小狗，這也是她報酬最高的工作，每小時8.65美元。

It was also the least likely to be done by a machine, she said: “I would hope a computer couldn’t do that, unless they like changing dirty papers and giving them love and attention.”

這或許是機器最難以勝任的工作了，她說，“我希望電腦幹不了這個，除非它們喜歡給小狗換髒紙墊、給予它們愛與呵護。”