Globalization and Inequality

全球化和不平等

 

Surprisingly little is known about the causes of inequality. A Serbian-American economist proposes an interesting theory

人们对造成不平等状况的原因知之甚少，令人惊讶。一位塞尔维亚裔的美国经济学家提出了一项有趣的理论。

 

Like Mr. Piketty, he begins with piles of data assembled over years of research. He sets the trends of different individual countries in a global context. Over the past 30 years the incomes of workers in the middle of the global income distribution – factory workers in China, say – have soared, as has pay for the richest 1%. At the same time, incomes of the working class in advanced economies have stagnated. This dynamic helped create a global middle class. It also caused global economic inequality to plateau, and perhaps even decline, for the first time since industrialization began.

 

像皮凯蒂一样，米兰诺维奇也以多年研究积累的大量数据开篇。他将不同国家的趋势置于全球背景之下。过去三十年，在全球收入分配中处于中间阶层的工人（如中国工厂的员工）的收入已经暴涨，最富裕的1%阶层的收入也是如此。与此同时，发达经济体工薪阶层的收入则处于停滞状态。这样的动态变化帮助创造了全球的中产阶级。它也使得全球经济不平等状况趋向稳定，甚至可能是自工业化开始以来第一次减缓。

 

To help interpret these facts, Mr. Milanovic provides the readers with a series of neat mental models. He muses, for instance, that at the dawn of industrialization, inequality within countries (or class-based inequality) was responsible for the largest gaps between rich people and poor. After industrialization, inequality across countries (or location-based inequality) became more important. But as gaps between countries become ever narrower, class-based inequality will become more important as most of the differences in incomes between rich people and poor people will once again be due to gaps within countries. He seasons the discussion with interesting comments, such as how incomes and inequality fell over the course of the Roman Empire.

 

为了解释这些事实，米兰诺维奇为读者提供了一系列简明巧妙的心智模式。例如，他思忖道，在工业化初始，各个国家内部的不平等状况（或各阶层间的不平等）是造成富人和穷人间最大差距的原因。工业化之后，各国之间的不平等（或因位置造成的不平等）变得更为重要。但是随着各国间的差距越来越小，各阶层间不平等的重要性将提高，因为富人和穷人之间的收入差别，大部分将再次归因于各国内部的差距。他的讨论还佐以有趣的评论，例如收入和不平等状况在罗马帝国时期如何下降。

 

Mr. Milanovic’s boldest contribution is about “Kuznets waves”, which he offers as an alternative to two other prevailing theories of inequality. Simon Kuznets, a 20th-century economist, argued that inequality is low at low levels of development, rises during industrialization and falls as countries reach economic maturity; high inequality is the temporary side-effect of the developmental process. Mr. Piketty offered an alternative explanation: that high levels of inequality are the natural state of modern economies. Only unusual events, like the two world wars and the Depression of the 1930s, disrupt that normal equilibrium.

 

米兰诺维奇最引人注目的贡献是“库兹涅茨波形”（Kuznets waves），他提出的这一理论是关于不平等的另两种盛行理论之外的又一选择。20世纪的经济学家西蒙·库兹涅茨（Simon Kuznets）认为，不平等程度在经济发展水平较低时期较低，在工业化时期会加剧，而当各国到达经济成熟期时则会下降；不平等程度高是发展过程中暂时的副作用。皮凯蒂则提出了另一种解释：高度不平等是现代经济的自然状态，只有非常事件，如两次世界大战和20世纪30年代的大萧条，才会打破这种正常的均衡。

 

Mr. Milanovic suggests that both are mistaken. Across history, he reckons, inequality has tended to flow in cycles: Kuznets waves. In the pre-industrial period, these waves were governed by Malthusian dynamics: inequality would rise as countries enjoyed a spell of good fortune and high incomes, then fall as war or famine dragged average income back to subsistence level. With industrialization, the forces creating Kuznets waves changed: to technology, openness and policy (TOP, as he shortens it). In the 19th century technological advance, globalization and policy shifts all worked together in mutually reinforcing ways to produce dramatic economic change. Workers were reallocated from farms to factories, average incomes and inequality soared and the world became unprecedentedly interconnected. Then a combination of forces, some malign (war and political upheaval) and some benign (increased education) squeezed inequality to the lows of the 1970s.

 

米兰诺维奇认为这两种说法都不对。他认为纵观历史，不平等状况倾向于周期式波动：即库兹涅茨波形。在工业化之前，这些波形受到马尔萨斯动态支配：当国家福星高照、收入高企时，不平等状况会加深；而当战争或饥荒将收入拖回到勉强糊口的水平时，不平等状况会缓解。有了工业化，产生库兹涅茨波形的力量变成了技术、开放和政策（米兰诺维奇取首字母将其缩写为TOP）。19世纪，技术进步、全球化和政策转变共同作用，相辅相成，从而产生了巨大的经济变革。工人们被重新分配，从农场来到工厂，平均收入和不平等状况飙升，整个世界互相连通的程度前所未有。种种因素的合力，有的有害（战争和政治动乱），有的有益（不断提升的教育水平），将不平等状况压至20世纪70年代的低点。

 

Since then, the rich world has been riding a new Kuznets wave, propelled by another era of economic change. Technological progress and trade work together to squeeze workers, he says; cheap technology made in foreign economies undermines the bargaining power of rich-world workers directly, and makes it easier for firms to replace people with machines. Workers’ declining economic power is compounded by lost political power as the very rich use their fortunes to influence candidates and elections.

 

自那时起，在又一个经济变革时代的推动下，富裕世界乘上了新一波的库兹涅茨浪潮。他认为，技术进步和贸易的共同作用压制了工人，而外国经济体产生的低成本技术则直接削弱了富裕国家工人的议价能力，公司更容易以机器取代人力。政治力量的缺失使得工人们不断下降的经济力量雪上加霜，因为富商大贾运用他们的财富影响候选人和选举。   

 

This diagnosis carries with it a predictive element. Mr. Milanovic expects rich-world inequality to keep rising, in America especially, before eventually declining. Importantly, he argues that the downswing in inequality that occurs on the backside of a Kuznets wave is an inevitable result of the preceding rise. Where Mr. Piketty sees the inequality-compressing historical events of the early 20th century as an accident, Mr. Milanovic believes them to be the direct result of soaring inequality. The search for foreign investment opportunities engendered imperialism and set the stage for war. There are parallels, if imperfect ones, to the modern economy; rich economies seem to be stagnating as the very rich struggle to find places to earn good returns on their piles of wealth.

 

这一分析带有预测的成分。米兰诺维奇预计富裕世界，尤其是美国的不平等程度会不断提高，直至最终下降。重要的是，他认为在一个库兹涅茨波形的下行区间出现的不平等程度降低，是之前不平等程度提高的必然结果。皮凯蒂认为20世纪早期不平等状况引发的历史事件是偶然事故，但米兰诺维奇相信那些是之前不平等程度剧增的直接后果。寻找外国投资机会产生了帝国主义，酝酿了战争。这与现代经济发展相似，但不完全一样；富裕经济体似乎处于停滞状态，因为富人很难找到地方为其大量财富赚得高额收益。

 

Mr. Milanovic’s analysis leads him to consider some dark possibilities as he looks ahead. America looks to be falling into the grips of an undemocratic plutocracy, he says, which is dependent on an expanding security state. In Europe right-wing nativism is on the rise. The good news is that emerging economies will probably continue on their path toward rich-world incomes – though that, he allows, is not guaranteed, and could be threatened by political crisis in China or in other markets.

 

米兰诺维奇的剖析让他在展望未来时考虑到一些黯淡前景。他称，依赖于一种不断扩展的安全状态，美国似乎正落入不民主的富豪统治集团之手。在欧洲，右翼本土主义正在崛起。好消息是新兴经济体可能会继续在接近富裕世界收入的道路上前行，尽管他认为这一趋势无法保证，也可能受到中国或其他市场政治危机的威胁。

 

The book’s conclusion is a little unsatisfying. A theory in which rising inequality eventually triggers countervailing social dislocations feels intuitively right, but it also leaves many important questions unanswered. When is war, rather than revolution, the probable outcome of inequality? Are governments at the mercy of the cycle, or can they act pre-emptively to flatten out the waves and avoid crises of high inequality? Mr. Milanovic’s contributions are ultimately similar to those made by Mr. Piketty. The data he provides offer a clearer picture of great economic puzzles, and his bold theorizing chips away at tired economic orthodoxies. But the grand theory does as much to reveal the scale of contemporary ignorance as to illuminate the mechanics of the global economy.

 

这本书的结论部分有点不尽如人意。不断加深的不平等最终会触发对抗性的社会混乱，这在直观上看似正确，但仍然遗留了很多重要问题没有解答。什么时候会有战争而不是革命，作为不平等可能导致的结果是什么？政府是受制于周期，还是可以先发制人，平息波动，避免严重不平等产生的危机？米兰诺维奇的贡献究其根底与皮凯蒂相似。他提供的数据让我们对宏大的经济谜题有了更清晰的了解，他的大胆立论层层削弱了陈腐的经济正统观点。但是宏伟的理论不只阐明了全球经济的机制，也揭示了当代人的无知程度。

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