A few days ago Walmart, America’s largest employer, announced that it will raise wages for half a million workers. For many of those workers the gains will be small, but the announcement is nonetheless a very big deal, for two reasons. First, there will be spillovers: Walmart is so big that its action will probably lead to raises for millions of workers employed by other companies. Second, and arguably far more important, is what Walmart’s move tells us — namely, that low wages are a political choice, and we can and should choose differently.

几天前，美国最大的雇主沃尔玛(Walmart)宣布将为50万名员工加薪。对其中许多员工来说，涨幅是很小的，但并不妨碍此事的重要性，原因有两个。首先是会有溢出效应：以沃尔玛的规模之大，这一举动可能引致数以百万计的其他公司员工得到加薪。第二点，应该说也是更为重要的一点，沃尔玛的举动在告诉我们，低薪是一个政治选择，我们可以，也应该做出别的选择。

Some background: Conservatives — with the backing, I have to admit, of many economists¹ — normally argue that the market for labor² is like the market for anything else. The law of supply and demand, they say, determines the level of wages, and the invisible hand of the market will punish anyone who tries to defy this law.

提供一些背景：保守派——不得不承认，他们的背后有一些经济学家的支持——通常会说，劳动力市场跟任何其他东西的市场是一样的。他们说，供求法则决定薪资水平，任何人要想违背这一法则，都会遭到市场无形之手的惩罚。

Specifically, this view implies that any attempt to push up wages will either fail or have bad consequences. Setting a minimum wage, it’s claimed, will reduce employment and create a labor surplus, the same way attempts to put floors under the prices of agricultural commodities used to lead to butter mountains, wine lakes and so on. Pressuring employers to pay more, or encouraging workers to organize into unions, will have the same effect.

这种观念尤其在暗示，任何推高工资的企图都是徒劳的，或者会有糟糕的后果。它认为设定最低工资会减少就业，造成劳动力过剩，就好比给农产品设定价格下限曾经导致黄油成山、红酒成湖等等。强迫雇主增加工资，或鼓励工人组成工会，也会有同样的效果。

But labor economists have long questioned this view. Soylent Green — I mean, the labor force — is people. And because workers are people, wages are not, in fact, like the price of butter, and how much workers are paid depends as much on social forces and political power as it does on simple supply and demand.

但劳动经济学家对这种看法一直存在质疑。大扁豆绿饼（Soylent Green，同名电影中用死人制成的一种食物。——译注）——我的意思是，劳动力——是人。由于工人是人，工资实际上和黄油的价格不是一回事，工人的薪水多寡，取决于简单的供求关系，同样也取决于社会中的力量和政治权力。

What’s the evidence? First, there is what actually happens when minimum wages are increased. Many states set minimum wages above the federal level, and we can look at what happens when a state raises its minimum while neighboring states do not. Does the wage-hiking state lose a large number of jobs? No — the overwhelming conclusion from studying these natural experiments is that moderate increases in the minimum wage have little or no negative effect on employment.

有什么证据？首先，看看提高最低工资标准后实际会怎样。许多州的最低工资是高于联邦水平的，我们可以比较一下，当一个州提高最低工资，毗邻的州不提时会出现什么情况。加薪州会失去大量就业机会吗？不会——通过研究这些自然实验可以得出毋庸置疑的结论，最低工资的适度提高对就业的负面影响微乎其微。

Then there’s history. It turns out that the middle-class society we used to have didn’t evolve as a result of impersonal³ market forces — it was created by political action, and in a brief period of time. America was still a very unequal society in 1940, but by 1950 it had been transformed by a dramatic reduction in income disparities, which the economists Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo labeled the Great Compression. How did that happen?

然后再来看历史。你会发现，我们曾经拥有的中产阶级社会，并不是非人的市场力量促成的——它是政治行动的成果，只用了不长的一段时间。1940年的时候，美国还是非常不平等的社会，但到了1950年，贫富差距的缩小带来社会剧变，也就是被经济学家克劳迪亚·戈尔丁(Claudia Goldin)和罗伯特·马戈(Robert Margo)称为“大压缩”(Great Compression)的时期。这是怎么回事？

Part of the answer is direct government intervention⁴, especially during World War II, when government wage-setting authority was used to narrow gaps between the best paid and the worst paid. Part of it, surely, was a sharp increase in unionization. Part of it was the full-employment economy of the war years, which created very strong demand for workers and empowered them to seek higher pay.

政府的直接干预是一部分原因，尤其是在二战期间，政府动用薪资设定权力来缩小最高薪和最低薪之间的差距。当然，工会数量的急剧增加起到了一定作用。还有就是战时的充分就业经济营造了极其强劲的劳力需求，让工人有了寻求更高工资的余地。

The important thing, however, is that the Great Compression didn’t go away as soon as the war was over. Instead, full employment and pro-worker politics changed pay norms, and a strong middle class endured for more than a generation. Oh, and the decades after the war were also marked by unprecedented⁵ economic growth.

然而最重要的是，战争结束后“大压缩”并没有马上停止。 事实上，充分就业和支持工人的政治改变了薪资规制，一个强劲的中产阶级延续到了下一代。噢对了，战后几十年还出现了空前的经济大增长。

Which brings me back to Walmart.

这就让我想到了沃尔玛的事。

The retailer’s wage hike seems to reflect the same forces that led to the Great Compression, albeit⁶ in a much weaker form. Walmart is under political pressure over wages so low that a substantial number of employees are on food stamps and Medicaid. Meanwhile, workers are gaining clout⁷ thanks to an improving labor market, reflected in increasing willingness to quit bad jobs.

这家零售商的加薪，似乎是有一股力量在起作用，同样是这种力量当年促成了“大压缩”，只不过这次的力量要小很多。沃尔玛是承受着政治压力的，它的薪资太低，以至于相当一部分员工要靠食物券和联邦医疗补助(Medicaid)过活。与此同时，随着劳动力市场的改善，工人的势力在增加，这体现为辞去烂工作的意愿有所增强。

What’s interesting, however, is that these pressures don’t seem all that severe, at least so far — yet Walmart is ready to raise wages anyway. And its justification⁸ for the move echoes what critics of its low-wage policy have been saying for years: Paying workers better will lead to reduced turnover⁹, better morale¹⁰ and higher productivity.

然而有意思的是，这些压力看起来不算特别大，至少目前是这样——但沃尔玛还是打算加薪了。它提出的理由，和多年来一直在批评其低薪策略的人看法一致：给工人更高的报酬会降低雇员流失率，提升士气和生产力。

What this means, in turn, is that engineering a significant pay raise for tens of millions of Americans would almost surely be much easier than conventional wisdom suggests. Raise minimum wages by a substantial amount; make it easier for workers to organize, increasing their bargaining power; direct monetary¹¹ and fiscal¹² policy toward full employment, as opposed to keeping the economy depressed¹³ out of fear that we’ll suddenly turn into Weimar Germany. It’s not a hard list to implement¹⁴ — and if we did these things we could make major strides back toward the kind of society most of us want to live in.

进而我们看到，为成千上万的美国人策划一场大幅度的加薪，几乎可以肯定没有通常认为的那么难。将最低工资标准充分上调；为工人组成工会提供便利，增加他们的议价权；以充分就业为目标制定直接的货币和财政政策，不要因为担心我们会一夜之间变成魏玛德国，就去把经济保持在萧条的状态。这些举措要实施起来并不难——如果我们去做，我们就能大踏步地向前迈进，实现我们理想中的社会。

The point is that extreme inequality and the falling fortunes of America’s workers are a choice, not a destiny imposed by the gods of the market. And we can change that choice if we want to.

我想说，极端的不平等和美国工人的财富流失是一个选择，不是市场诸神强加给我们的命运。选择可以改变，只要我们愿意。