经济学人下载:找呀找呀找工作

This mess will not be fixed quickly. Even if growth accelerates, unemployment will remain worryingly high for several years. Many remedies, such as retraining workers, take time. But that only makes it all the more shocking that politicians have done so little. America is stuck in a sterile debate, with the left claiming that the government is not spending enough, while the right insists that big government is destroying jobs. An increasingly unpopular Barack Obama was due to address Congress on the subject just after The Economist went to press (see article (http://www.economist.com/node/21528659) ). Across the Atlantic many of the responses to the euro crisis (see article (http://www.economist.com/node/21528629)) seem designed to drive up joblessness. The West’s leaders can and must do better.

这种杂乱无章的局面不会立即得到解决。即使经济增长加速，失业率在未来几年内仍会居高不下，令人堪忧。许多像再次培训工人这样的解决方案非常耗时。然而那样做只会使情况更加糟糕，而政客们做的非常少。美国依然沉浸在毫无结果的争论中，“左”派分子宣称政府花钱不够，而“右”派分子坚持声称庞大的政府计划正在损坏工作。就在本期《经济学家》出版后，越来越不受欢迎的美国总统巴拉克奥巴马就这一主题向国会发表演讲。为了抬高失业情形，环大西洋的许多国家对欧元危机的反应似乎是故意的。西方国家领导人能够也必须做得更加出色。

Go for growth
一切为了增长

The immediate priority should be supporting demand—or at least not doing harm to it. The left is right on one thing: the main cause of the current high joblessness is the severity of the last recession and the weakness of the subsequent recovery. Yet the West’s economies have embarked on contractionary policies. In some cases the fault lies with monetary policy: the European Central Bank should reverse its recent rate rises. But the main culprit is a collective, premature shift to fiscal austerity by governments.

眼下应该将重点放在支持需求上—或至少不能做不利于需求增长的事。“左”派的观点在此是正确的。当前企高不下的失业率应主要归结为上次经济衰退的严重性和随之而来疲软的经济复苏。然而西方经济体却实施收缩银根的政策。在一些情况下，错误就产生于货币政策：欧洲央行应该扭转它最近上扬的汇率。但是最主要的罪魁祸首是各国政府实施集体的不成熟的向财政紧缩的转变。

As this newspaper has repeatedly argued, politicians need to strike a bargain with the bond markets: combine policies that cushion growth now with measures that will bring deficits under control in the medium term. Raise the retirement age, for instance, and that leaves more room to stimulate growth in the short term. A minimal test of Mr Obama’s jobs agenda will be whether it is big enough to counter the fiscal tightening, equivalent to 2% of GDP, that is slated for next year.

由于信息被不断的争论，政客们需要和债券市场达成协议：将缓解增长的政策与控制财政赤字在中期内相结合。例如，提高退休年龄及在短期内腾出更多“空间”以刺激增长。对奥巴马工作日程变最低的测试便是它是否大到足以抵抗财政紧缩的程度，那相当于国内生产总值的2%，明年将会实施。

Where should the short-term money go? Some forms of stimulus are better than others at supporting employment. Germany’s subsidies for shortened working hours helped dissuade firms from firing workers; Mr Obama’s subsidies for green technology fattened the bottom line of a few chosen firms but did very little to spur jobs. Governments should prioritise policies that do. Some infrastructure spending, such as building roads and repairing schools, falls into that category. So do tax incentives that cut the cost of hiring, particularly for extra new workers—which is why it makes sense for America to extend, and even expand, its payroll-tax cut. And so, in America’s case, does federal aid to the states, since the main way states cut their budgets is by firing workers.

短期内的资金应该流向何处？一些刺激方案在提高就业方面要比其他其他方案好得多。德国采取对工作时间的缩短进行补贴以有效阻止公司解雇工人。奥巴马总统虽然资助绿色科技，扩大了一些被选中公司的底线，但是对刺激工作却做得少之甚少。各国政府应将所要做的事情按顺序优先排列。一些基础设施花费，例如修建公路和修复学校，应该归于某一类。税收减让措施也应该这样做以减少雇佣成本，特别是对新进来的额外工人—这就是为什么对于美国来说扩大甚至扩张减少工资薪金税有意义。这样做的话，就美国的情况而言，也有利于联邦政府对各州的资助，因为各州减少预算的主要方式是解雇工人。