对机器人征税不合逻辑

I usually agree with Bill Gates on matters of public policy and admire his emphasis on the combined power of markets and technology. But I think he went seriously astray in a recent interview when he proposed, without apparent irony, a tax on robots to cushion worker dislocation and limit inequality.

在公共政策问题上，我通常认同比尔?盖茨(Bill Gates)的看法，钦佩他对市场与技术结合起来的力量的注重。但我认为，在最近一次采访中，他的观点有些严重离谱，他提议对机器人征税（看似不带讽刺），以缓解员工失业和限制不平等。

The Microsoft co-founder is right about the gravity of the problem and need for action, but he is profoundly misguided in his proposed solution — and in ways that point up problems with the current public debate.

对于这个问题的严重性以及采取行动的必要性，微软(Microsoft)联合创始人是正确的，但他提出的解决方案是严重误导的，而且突出了当前公共辩论的问题。

First, I cannot see any logic to singling out robots as job destroyers. What about kiosks that dispense aeroplane boarding passes? Word processing programmes that accelerate the production of documents? Mobile banking technologies? Autonomous vehicles? Vaccines that, by preventing disease, destroy jobs in medicine?

首先，我认为单独把机器人列为就业破坏者是毫无道理的。那些发放登机牌的自助终端呢？加快文件制作的文字处理程序呢？手机银行技术呢？自动驾驶汽车呢？通过预防疾病而破坏医药行业就业的疫苗呢？

There are many kinds of innovation that allow the production of more or better output with less labour input. Why pick on robots? Does Mr Gates think anyone, let alone the US Congress, the Trump administration or a commission comprised of his fellow technocrats, can distinguish labour-saving activities from labour-enhancing ones?

有很多创新可以带来用更少的劳动力投入获得数量更高或质量更好的产出。为什么选择机器人呢？盖茨是否认为，任何人都能把劳动力节约型活动与劳动力提高型活动区别开来吗？更别提美国国会、特朗普政府或由和他一样的技术官僚组成的委员会了。

Surely even if experts could draw such distinctions, the ability of the US Internal Revenue Service to administer them is in doubt.

即便专家们可以区分，美国国税局(IRS)管理这些差异的能力肯定也是令人存疑的。

Second, much innovative activity, even of a robot-like variety, involves producing better goods and services rather than simply extracting more output from the same input.

其次，大量创新活动（包括涉及机器人的活动）关乎生产出质量更好的产品和服务，而不是仅仅用同样的投入获得更多的产出。

Autonomous vehicles, for example, will probably be safer than ones driven by humans. Robotics already help surgeons perform certain operations better than they can on their own. Online reservation systems are faster and more convenient than travel agents.

例如，自动驾驶汽车很可能要比人类驾驶更安全。机器人已经能够帮助外科医生完成某些手术，而且比人类医生做得更好。在线订票系统比旅行社速度更快，也更方便。

Moreover, because of emulation and competition, innovators capture only a small part of the benefit of their innovation. It follows that there is as much a case for subsidising as taxing types of capital that embody innovation.

另外，由于模仿和竞争，创新者仅获得了自己的创新的一小部分好处。按此推理，对于包含创新的资本，既有征税的理由，也有补贴的理由。

Third, and perhaps most fundamentally, why tax in ways that reduce the size of the pie rather than ways that assure that the larger pie is well distributed? Imagine that 50 people can produce robots who will do the work of 100. A sufficiently high tax on robots would prevent them from being produced.

第三，这或许是最根本的一点，为什么要以缩小大饼的方式课税呢，而不是确保把一张更大的饼合理分配？假设有50人可以生产机器人，这些机器人可以做100人的工作。对机器人征收重税将阻止他们被生产出来。

Surely it would be better for society to instead enjoy the extra output and establish suitable taxes and transfers to protect displaced workers?

让社会享受额外的产出，同时设置合理的税收和转移机制以保护下岗员工，难道不是更好的方式吗？

It is hard to see why shrinking the pie, rather than enlarging it as much as possible and then redistributing, is the right way forward.

让人很难理解的是，缩小这个饼（而不是尽可能做大这个饼然后再分配）怎么会是正确的前进道路。

This last point has long been standard in international trade theory. Indeed, it is common to point out that opening a country up to international trade is just like giving it access to a technology for transforming one good into another. The argument, then, is that since one surely would not regard such a technical change as bad, neither is trade, and so protectionism is bad. Mr Gates’ robot tax risks essentially being protectionism against progress.

长期以来，后一种观点一直是国际贸易理论体系的标准内容。的确，人们经常指出，让某个国家向国际贸易开放，就像令其获得技术把一种产品加工成另一种一样。所以，这里的主张是，由于人们肯定不会把这种技术变革视为坏事，贸易也不是坏事，因此保护主义是坏事。盖茨提出的对机器人征税的看法可能在实质上是一种反对进步的保护主义。

None of this is to minimise the problem of job destruction and rising inequality (although it is a major paradox that we seem to be seeing unprecedentedly rapid job destruction by machinery while at the same time observing extraordinarily low productivity growth).

这些都不会最小化就业破坏和不平等程度上升的问题（不过这里有一个重大的矛盾：一方面，我们似乎在目睹机器造成空前迅速的就业破坏，另一方面，我们也看到生产率增速特别低）。

Rather, it is to suggest that staving off progress is a poor strategy for helping less-fortunate workers. In addition to difficulties of definition and collateral costs, there is the further problem that in an open world, taxes on technology are likely to drive production offshore rather than create jobs at home.

相反，这表明了要帮助不那么幸运的劳动者，阻止进步是一种糟糕战略。除了定义的困难和连带损害，还有一个问题，那就是在一个开放的世界里，对技术课税很可能会把生产推向海外，而不是在国内创造就业。

There are many better approaches. Governments will, however, have to concern themselves with problems of structural joblessness. They likely will need to take a more explicit role in ensuring full employment than has been the practice in the US.

有很多更好的战略。然而，政府不得不关心结构性失业的问题。相比美国的实践，他们可能需要在确保完全就业方面发挥更突出的作用。

Among other things, this will mean major reforms of education and retraining systems, consideration of targeted wage subsidies for groups with particularly severe employment problems, major investments in infrastructure and, possibly, direct public employment programmes.

除了其他措施外，这将意味着对教育和再培训体系进行大规模改革、考虑面向失业尤其严重的群体的针对性薪资补贴、大规模基础设施投资以及可能的直接公共雇佣计划。

This will be a major debate that I suspect will define a large part of the politics of the industrial world over the next decade. Little is certain. But we will do better going forward than backward.

这将是一场重大辩论，我认为它将在很大程度上决定未来10年工业化国家的政治。现在一切都不确定。但前进要比后退好。

That means making America even greater, not great again. And it means embracing rather than rejecting technological progress.

这意味着让美国变得更伟大，而不是再次伟大。而且这意味着接受（而不是拒绝）科技进步。

The writer is Charles W Eliot university professor at Harvard and a former US Treasury secretary

本文作者是哈佛大学(Harvard)查尔斯?W?艾略特校级教授(Charles W Eliot university professor)，曾担任美国财长