保罗克鲁格曼评《美国增长之起落》

Back in the 1960s there was a briefly popular wave of “futurism,” of books and articles attempting to predict the changes ahead. One of the best-known, and certainly the most detailed, of these works was Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener’s “The Year 2000” (1967), which offered, among other things, a systematic list of technological innovations Kahn and Wiener considered “very likely in the last third of the 20th century.”

早在20世纪60年代，“未来主义”思潮曾经有过一个短暂的兴盛，许多书籍文章都试图预测未来的社会变化。其中最著名，也绝对是最详尽的一本书，是1967年出版的赫尔曼·卡恩(Herman Kahn)和安东尼·维纳(Anthony J. Wiener)的《2000年》(The Year 2000)。在这本书里,卡恩和维纳系统化地列出了一份他们认为“在20世纪最后那三分之一的时间里最有可能发生的科技创新”清单。

Unfortunately, the two authors were mostly wrong. They didn’t miss much, foreseeing developments that recognizably correspond to all the main elements of the information technology revolution, including smartphones and the Internet. But a majority of their predicted innovations (“individual flying platforms”) hadn’t arrived by 2000 — and still haven’t arrived, a decade and a half later.

遗憾的是，这两位作者的预测并不太准确。这并不是说他们有什么遗漏。信息科技革命主要元素所带来的一切发展变革，包括智能手机和互联网，都在他们的预见之中。然而，他们预测的绝大多数创新（例如“私人飞行平台”）都落空了，不但未能在2000年实现，即使在15年之后的今天也仍然未见踪影。

The truth is that if you step back from the headlines about the latest gadget, it becomes obvious that we’ve made much less progress since 1970 — and experienced much less alteration in the fundamentals of life — than almost anyone expected. Why?

如果你跳出那些铺天盖地的最新产品报道，就会发现一个明显的现实：自1970年以来，我们社会的进步，以及我们基本生活方式的改变，远逊于我们所有人的预期。

Robert J. Gordon, a distinguished macro and economic historian at Northwestern, has been arguing for a long time against the techno-optimism that saturates our culture, with its constant assertion that we’re in the midst of revolutionary change. Starting at the height of the dot-com frenzy, he has repeatedly called for perspective: Developments in information and communication technology, he has insisted, just don’t measure up to past achievements. Specifically, he has argued that the I.T. revolution is less important than any one of the five Great Inventions that powered economic growth from 1870 to 1970: electricity, urban sanitation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the internal combustion engine and modern communication.

长期以来，科技乐观主义渗透在我们的社会文化之中，人们一直认为我们所身处的时代是一个革命性的变革时代。任教于西北大学的罗伯特·戈登(Robert J. Gordon)，一个杰出的宏观经济学家和经济历史学家，却始终对这种科技乐观主义持反对态度。从互联网最繁荣时期开始，他一再警示世人保持冷静。他指出，信息通讯技术的发展根本不能与过去的成就相提并论。具体而言，他认为：电力、城市卫生、化学与制药、内燃机和现代通讯这“五大发明”推动了从1870到1970这100年间的经济发展，而信息科技革命与其中任何一项发明都无法比拟。

In “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” Gordon doubles down on that theme, declaring that the kind of rapid economic growth we still consider our due, and expect to continue forever, was in fact a one-time-only event. First came the Great Inventions, almost all dating from the late 19th century. Then came refinement and exploitation of those inventions — a process that took time, and exerted its peak effect on economic growth between 1920 and 1970. Everything since has at best been a faint echo of that great wave, and Gordon doesn’t expect us ever to see anything similar.

在《美国增长的起落》(The Rise and Fall of American Growth)这本书中，戈登进一步强调了这一论点，宣称这种经济的快速增长并非理所当然。它只是历史上发生的一个一次性事件，不会如我们所愿一直持续下去。首先，几乎所有“五大发明”都发生在19世纪后期；接着是对这些发明进行提炼和开发的漫长过程，其对经济增长的影响在1920到1970年期间达到顶峰；那以后的一切都不过是之前这个伟大变革的微弱余波而已。戈登认为我们不会再次看到历史的重演。

Is he right? My answer is a definite maybe. But whether or not you end up agreeing with Gordon’s thesis, this is a book well worth reading — a magisterial combination of deep technological history, vivid portraits of daily life over the past six generations and careful economic analysis. Non-economists may find some of the charts and tables heavy going, but Gordon never loses sight of the real people and real lives behind those charts. This book will challenge your views about the future; it will definitely transform how you see the past.

他说得是否正确？我的回答是：绝对有可能。不过，不管你最终是否同意戈登的论断，这本书都值得一读。它将深刻的科技发展史、过去六代人日常生活的生动描述，以及细致的经济分析完美地整合在一起。如果你不是一个经济学家，也许你会觉得有些图表比较难懂，但是戈登从未忽视那些图表背后的民众真实生活。这本书不但会挑战你对未来的视角，而且肯定会改变你对过去的看法。

Indeed, almost half the book is devoted to changes that took place before World War II. Others have covered this ground — most notably Daniel Boorstin in “The Americans: The Democratic Experience.” Even knowing this literature, however, I was fascinated by Gordon’s account of the changes wrought by his Great Inventions. As he says, “Except in the rural South, daily life for every American changed beyond recognition between 1870 and 1940.” Electric lights replaced candles and whale oil, flush toilets replaced outhouses, cars and electric trains replaced horses. (In the 1880s, parts of New York’s financial district were seven feet deep in manure.)

这本书一半以上篇幅都被用来专门描绘“二战”之前所发生的变化。对这一阶段的研究不乏著述，其中最引人注目的是丹尼尔·布尔斯廷(Daniel Boorstin)的《美国人：南北战争以来的经历》(The Americans：The Democratic Experience)。虽然我对这些文献相当熟悉，戈登对其“五大发明”所带来的变革之描述依然使我着迷。如他所说：“除了南方乡下，每一个美国人的日常生活在1870到1940年间都发生了翻天覆地的变化。”电灯代替了蜡烛和油灯，抽水马桶代替了屋外的茅房，汽车和电动火车代替了马车（在19世纪80年代，纽约金融区的一部分还泡在七英尺深的马粪中呢）。

Meanwhile, backbreaking toil both in the workplace and in the home was for the most part replaced by far less onerous employment. This is a point all too often missed by economists, who tend to think only about how much purchasing power people have, not about what they have to do to get it, and Gordon does an important service by reminding us that the conditions under which men and women labor are as important as the amount they get paid.

同时，无论是在工作场所，还是家庭生活中，繁重的劳作大多被相对轻松的工作所代替。这一点经常被经济学家们所忘记。他们一般只考虑民众的购买力，而不考虑他们为了获得这些购买力所需要付出的劳动。戈登的重要贡献是提醒我们，民众的劳作条件与他们的收入所得同样重要。

Aside from its being an interesting story, however, why is it important to study this transformation? Mainly, Gordon suggests — although these are my words, not his — to provide a baseline. What happened between 1870 and 1940, he argues, and I would agree, is what real transformation looks like. Any claims about current progress need to be compared with that baseline to see how they measure up.

这段历史是一段很有意思的往事。然而，除此之外，对这些变迁的研究究竟有什么重要性呢？我的理解是这样的：戈登提出，这段历史可以为我们研究后期历史提供一个对比的基准。戈登声称，1870到1940年这段时期是一个真正变革的样本，我同意他的这个说法。我们需要与这个历史上的变革时期去比较，才能对现代社会发展进程的快慢做一个恰当的判断。

And it’s hard not to agree with him that nothing that has happened since is remotely comparable. Urban life in America on the eve of World War II was already recognizably modern; you or I could walk into a 1940s apartment, with its indoor plumbing, gas range, electric lights, refrigerator and telephone, and we’d find it basically functional. We’d be annoyed at the lack of television and Internet — but not horrified or disgusted.

如此，我们不得不赞同他所说：1940年以后所发生的一切，与以前根本无法相提并论。“二战”前夕的美国城市生活已经相当现代化；我们可以随意走进一间1940年时的公寓，看到它里面的下水设施、煤气灶、电灯、冰箱和电话，我们会觉得它已经具备一间房子的所有基本功能。也许我们会因为没有电视和网络而感到不便，但却不会感到无法忍受。

By contrast, urban Americans from 1940 walking into 1870-style accommodations — which they could still do in the rural South — were indeed horrified and disgusted. Life fundamentally improved between 1870 and 1940 in a way it hasn’t since.

相反，1940年的城市美国人却会对1870年代的住房感到无法忍受——那时在美国南方乡下还可以找到这种房子。在1870年到1940年间，人类的生活条件发生了前所未有的根本变化。

Now, in 1940 many Americans were already living in what was recognizably the modern world, but many others weren’t. What happened over the next 30 years was that the further maturing of the Great Inventions led to rapidly rising incomes and a spread of that modern lifestyle to the nation as a whole. But then everything slowed down. And Gordon argues that the slowdown is likely to be permanent: The great age of progress is behind us. But is Gordon just from the wrong generation, unable to fully appreciate the wonders of the latest technology? I suspect that things like social media make a bigger positive difference to people’s lives than he acknowledges. But he makes two really good points that throw quite a lot of cold water on the claims of techno-optimists.

当然，在1940年，尽管许多美国人已经过上了比较现代的生活，但很多人还未能享受同等条件。在接下来的30年里，随着“五大发明”进一步成熟，人们的收入迅速提升，现代生活方式在全国大幅扩展。但是，在此之后，进展逐步放缓。戈登认为这种缓慢的进展可能才是永久常态，大变革时期已经结束。然而，这会不会是因为戈登那代人头脑已经老化，无法充分体会最新科技之神奇呢？我认为，戈登的确没有完全意识到像网络社交媒体这样的新科技给人们生活带来的正面影响。但是，有两点他说得非常好，十分切中科技乐观主义者观点的要害。

First, he points out that genuinely major innovations normally bring about big changes in business practices, in what workplaces look like and how they function. And there were some changes along those lines between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s — but not much since, which is evidence for Gordon’s claim that the main impact of the I.T. revolution has already happened.

首先，他指出：真正的重大革新往往会根本改变商业行为，为企业工作场所及其职能带来巨大的变化。20世纪90年代中期开始的这10年中，这方面的确发生了一些变化，然而那之后，就再没有什么改变了。这正印证了戈登的断言：信息科技革命的主要影响已经过去了。

Second, one of the major arguments of techno-optimists is that official measures of economic growth understate the real extent of progress, because they don’t fully account for the benefits of truly new goods. Gordon concedes this point, but notes that it was always thus — and that the understatement of progress was probably bigger during the great prewar transformation than it is today.

其次，技术乐观主义者的一个主要观点是，经济增长的官方数据低估了进步的真实程度，因为他们没有充分考虑真正的新产品所带来的益处。戈登承认这一点，但指出，这和过去并没有什么不同。相反，在战前的大变革时期，这种低估很有可能要比今天更甚。

So what does this say about the future? Gordon suggests that the future is all too likely to be marked by stagnant living standards for most Americans, because the effects of slowing technological progress will be reinforced by a set of “headwinds”: rising inequality, a plateau in education levels, an aging population and more.

这对未来意味着什么呢？戈登认为，对大多数美国人来说，未来很有可能是生活水平停滞不前。技术进步的缓慢将被一系列“逆向”因素强化：贫富差距不断加大、教育水平不再提高、人口趋于老龄化，等等。

It’s a shocking prediction for a society whose self-image, arguably its very identity, is bound up with the expectation of constant progress. And you have to wonder about the social and political consequences of another generation of stagnation or decline in working-class incomes.

我们社会的自我形象，甚至可以说自我认同，都以不断的发展进步为核心。戈登对未来的预测实在是振聋发聩、发人深省。我们不得不认真思考，如果下一代工薪阶层收入继续停滞或下降，这将会带来什么样的社会和政治后果。

Of course, Gordon could be wrong: Maybe we’re on the cusp of truly transformative change, say from artificial intelligence or radical progress in biology (which would bring their own risks). But he makes a powerful case. Perhaps the future isn’t what it used to be.

当然，戈登也有可能错了。也许我们正处在一个真正的革命性变革的前夕，这种变革也许是人工智能或者在生物学上的根本性进展（当然伴随而来的还有相应的风险）。但是他的确提出了一个强有力的论证。也许，未来和过去的确不再相同。