经济与社会科学2017economistsview.typepad.com
IT 是 1970 年代以来收入与财富不平等加剧的根源
IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s
进阶 · 约 75 分钟读完前置知识：经济学基础、收入分配与资本理论、基础计量/统计
导读
这篇论文研究1970年代以来收入和财富不平等为何持续上升，并将信息技术（IT）置于解释核心，讨论其如何影响资本与财富形成、垄断力量等机制。作者也承认1980年代劳动份额偏低与其余结果不完全一致，且工会削弱、自动化、外包和全球化等因素在垄断力上升前已压低工资份额。
HN 关注点：把复杂的不平等上升归因于IT这一单一因素是否成立，讨论焦点包括知识产权避税、自动化、工会衰落等替代解释。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：质疑 1 补充 2
补充IT提升知识产权价值，放大了转让定价避税，可能是另一条不平等的渠道。
另一种可能：IT带来的知识产权价值上升，使转让定价成为企业更高效的避税手段，它们可把几乎全部利润转移到开曼群岛等避税天堂。税务机关要判断跨国公司的两家子公司之间交易是否属于“公平市场价”，在交易钢筋时还算可行，但交易“谷歌搜索算法的许可”时就很难，因为知识产权按定义就是独特的，而非普通商品。
m12k查看英文原文
Here's another possibility: The highly increased value of intellectual property that comes from IT has made transfer pricing a much more efficient means of tax avoidance for companies, who are free to move almost all their profits to the Cayman Islands and other tax havens. Expecting our tax authorities to judge whether a trade between two subsidiaries of a multinational is at 'fair market value' makes sense if they're trading steel bars, not so much if they're trading e.g. a 'license for the Google search algorithm'. Intellectual property, pretty much by definition, is unique rather than a commodity.
补充自动化造成无处可去的剩余人口，会加剧社会冲突和资本主义危机。
自动化取代人并不新鲜，新的是被取代者如今无处可去。20年代农业机械化 displaced 的农民可以进城上流水线；对骡子这类役畜，可以干脆不再繁殖。但自动化取代的是人，即使人被系统变得“可弃”，社会也不会停止生育。美国工业已能满足消费需求时，如何处理自动化造成的剩余人口日益关键。随着自动化扩散，资本主义危机会加剧，工作与不工作、纳税与不纳税者之间的冲突会尖锐化，并可能催生一场由各阶层组成的反革命运动：他们怨恨维持这些“可弃者”的成本，却决心维持制造并增加“可弃者”的制度。
jrochkind1查看英文原文
// Automation replaces men. This of course is nothing new. What is new is that now, unlike most earlier periods, the displaced men have nowhere to go. The farmers displaced by mechanization of the farms in the 20's could go to the cities and man the assembly lines. As for the work animals like the mule, they could just stop growing them. But automation displaces people, and you don't just stop growing people even when they have been made expendable by the system. Under Stalin the kulaks and all those who didn't go along with the collectivization of agriculture were just killed off. Even then, if they had been ready to go along, Stalin could have used them. But in the United States, with automation coming in when industry has already reached the point that it can supply consumer demand, the question of what to do with the surplus people who are the expendables of automation becomes more and more critical every day.... ...As automation spreads, it will intensify the crises of capitalism and sharpen the conflicts among the various sections of the population, particularly between those working and those not working, those paying taxes and those not paying taxes. Out of this conflict will grow a counter-revolutionary movement made up of those from all social layers who resent the continued cost to them of maintaining these expendables but who are determined to maintain the system that creates and multiplies the number of expendables. This in turn will mobilize those who begin by recognizing the right of these displaced persons to live, and from there are forced to struggle for a society in which there are no displaced persons. // James Boggs, _The American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Worker's Notebook_, 1962(!!) http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/amreboggs.html
质疑论文自承劳动份额下降早于垄断力，工会、自动化、全球化等替代解释很重要。
论文自己承认：1980年代的低劳动份额与其余结果不符，但这与工资增长和劳动份额在1970年代初已开始下降相容，原因是本研究未纳入的因素——削弱工会的法律、自动化、外包和全球化——在1980年代垄断力上升前已起作用。所以等垄断力登场时，工资和劳动份额已经很低；除垄断力上升外，还有其他未考察因素影响工资和劳动份额。比较不同工业化国家也可看到，工会更强的国家尽管自动化上升，不平等似乎更低。IMF报告称，传统解释是技能偏向技术变迁和全球化，它们提高了对有技能工人的相对需求；但各国受技术和全球化影响相似，不平等上升的速度和幅度却不同。
xiler查看英文原文
> The low labor share in the 1980's is then out of line with the rest of our results. However, it is compatible with the fact that wage growth and labor share started to fall early in the 1970's, caused by factors not present in our study. Political factors such as laws to weaken unions, automation, outsourcing, and globalization were operative even before the rise of monopoly power in the 1980's. Hence, by the time monopoly power came into play, wages and labor share were already low. Hence, apart from rising monopoly power, other factors had an impact on the dynamics of wages and labor share which are not examined here. Indeed when we compare the inequality present in different industrialized nations with varying degrees of unionization, nations with stronger unions seem to have lower inequality despite experiencing an increase in automation. As stated in an IMF report [1]: Traditional explanations for the rise of inequality in advanced economies are skill-biased technological change and globalization, which have increased the relative demand for skilled workers, benefiting top earners relative to average earners. But technology and globalization foster economic growth, and there is little policymakers can or are willing to do to reverse these trends. Moreover, while high-income countries have been similarly affected by technological change and globalization, inequality in these economies has risen at different speeds and magnitudes. So perhaps the combination of automation together with weakened unions is responsible for inequality in industrialized nations? [1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2015/03/pdf/jaumotte.pdf
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