The Minimum-Wage Muddle 最低工资之惑 作者：David Brooks @ 2015-7-24

译者：乘风（@你在何地-sxy）

校对：迈爸（@麦田的字留地），小册子（@昵称被抢的小册子）

来源：The New York Times， http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/opinion/david-brooks-the-minimum-wage-muddle.html Once upon a time there was a near consensus among economists that raising the minimum wage was a bad idea. The market is really good at setting prices on things, whether it is apples or labor. If you raise the price on a worker, employers will hire fewer and you’ll end up hurting the people you meant to help.

从前，经济学家们几乎普遍一致地认为提高最低工资是个馊主意。市场着实善于为各种东西定价，无论是苹果还是劳动力。假如你提高工人的价格，雇主就会减少招聘，最终你会伤害你本想要帮助的人。

Then in 1993 the economists David Card and Alan Krueger looked at fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and found that raising the minimum wage gave people more income without hurting employment. A series of studies in Britain buttressed these findings.

然后经济学家David Card和Alan Krueger在1993年考察了新泽西州和宾夕法尼亚州的快餐店之后，发现最低工资的提高增加了人们的收入，同时并未减少就业职位。英国的一系列研究也支持这一发现。

Today, raising the minimum wage is the central piece of the progressive economic agenda. President Obama and Hillary Clinton champion it. Cities and states across the country have been moving to raise minimum wages to as high as $15 an hour —including New York State just this week.

当前，提高最低工资是进步派经济议程的核心内容。奥巴马总统和希拉里·克林顿都拥护它。全国各地的许多州和城市纷纷把最低工资提到高达每小时15美元——纽约州本周就这么干了。

Some of my Democratic friends are arguing that forcing businesses to raise their minimum wage will not only help low-wage workers; it will actually boost profits, because companies will better retain workers. Some economists have reported that there is no longer any evidence that raising wages will cost jobs.

我的一些民主党朋友争辩说，强迫企业提高最低工资不仅能帮助低薪工人，而且实际上还会增加企业利润，因为公司将能够更好地留住工人。一些经济学家还提出，现在已经没有证据表明提高工资会造成职位减少。

Unfortunately, that last claim is inaccurate. There are in fact many studies on each side of the issue. David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve have done their own studies and point to dozens of others showing significant job losses.

遗憾地是，最后这一断言并不准确。实际上，这个问题的研究结果正反两方都有很多。加州大学尔湾分校的David Neumark和美联储的William Wascher也对此做了研究，并举出了其他数十项研究，表明（提高最低工资会带来）严重的岗位流失。

Recently, Michael Wither and Jeffrey Clemens of the University of California, San Diego looked at data from the 2007 federal minimum-wage hike and found that it reduced the national employment-to-population ratio by 0.7 percentage points (which is actually a lot), and led to a six percentage point decrease in the likelihood that a low-wage worker would have a job.

最近，加州大学圣迭戈分校的Michael Wither 和Jeffrey Clemens检视了2007年联邦最低工资上涨的数据，发现这一上涨使得全国适龄劳动人口就业率下降了0.7个百分点（这一下降幅度其实已经很大了），并使得低薪工人找到工作的可能性下降了6个百分点。

Because low-wage workers get less work experience under a higher minimum-wage regime, they are less likely to transition to higher-wage jobs down the road. Wither and Clemens found that two years later, workers’chances of making $1,500 a month was reduced by five percentage points.

在一个最低工资较高的体制下，低薪工人得到的工作经验较少，于是他们未来就更加难以转型以求得薪资较高的职位。Wither 和Clemens发现，两年以后，工人们月薪达到1500美元的机会下降了5个百分点。

Many economists have pointed out that as a poverty-fighting measure the minimum wage is horribly targeted. A 2010 study by Joseph Sabia and Richard Burkhauser found that only 11.3 percent of workers who would benefit from raising the wage to $9.50 an hour would come from poor households. An earlier study by Sabia found that single mothers’employment dropped 6 percent for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage.

很多经济学家已经指出，作为一项扶贫措施，最低工资简直是南辕北辙。Joseph Sabia和Richard Burkhauser于2010年所做的一项研究发现，最低工资提升至时薪9.5美元时，受益者中只有11.3%来自贫困家庭。Sabia更早的一项研究则发现，最低工资每提升10%，单身母亲的就业率就下降6%。

A study by Thomas MaCurdy of Stanford built on the fact that there are as many individuals in high-income families making the minimum wage (teenagers) as in low-income families.

斯坦福大学Thomas MaCurdy的一项研究基于这样一个事实：就赚取最低工资而言，来自高收入家庭的个体（青少年）和来自低收入家庭的一样多。

MaCurdy found that the costs of raising the wage are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Minimum-wage workers often work at places that disproportionately serve people down the income scale. So raising the minimum wage is like a regressive consumption tax paid for by the poor to subsidize the wages of workers who are often middle class.

MaCurdy还发现，提高工资带来的成本，会以加价的形式转嫁到消费者头上。由于拿最低工资的工人其服务对象大都处于收入底层，所以提高最低工资就像是征收了一种按收入递减的消费税，由穷人来补贴那些时常来自中产阶级的工人的工资。

What we have, in sum, is a very complicated situation. If we do raise the minimum wage a lot of people will clearly benefit and a lot of people will clearly be hurt. The most objective and broadest bits of evidence provoke ambivalence.

总之，我们面对的是一个非常复杂的情况。如果我们提高最低工资，很多人明显会受益，也有很多人明显会受损。最广泛且客观的证据引致了相互矛盾的观点。

One survey of economists by the University of Chicago found that 59 percent believed that a rise to $9 an hour would make it “noticeably harder”for poor people to find work. But a slight majority also thought the hike would be worthwhile for those in jobs.

芝加哥大学所做的一份针对经济学家的调查显示，59%的经济学家相信最低工资提高到时薪9美元会使穷人找工作“显著变难”。不过，也有微弱多数认为最低工资上涨对那些已经有工作的人是有利的。

A study by the Congressional Budget Office found that a hike to $10.10 might lift 900,000 out of poverty but cost roughly 500,000 jobs.

国会预算办公室的一项研究发现，时薪上涨到10.10美元可能会使90万人脱贫，但代价是牺牲大约50万个工作岗位。

My own guess is the economists will never be able to give us a dispositive answer about who is hurt or helped. Economists have their biases and reality is too granular. It depends on what region a worker is in, whether a particular job can be easily done by a machine, what the mind-set of his or her employer is.

我自己的猜测是，经济学家永远不可能给我们一个最终定论，告诉我们谁受损谁受益。经济学家有其偏见，而现实则纷繁复杂。结果取决于工人的工作所在地，其工作是否容易被机器取代，其雇主的思想观念如何。

The best reasonable guess is that a gradual hike in high-cost cities like Seattle or New York will probably not produce massive dislocation. But raising the wage to $15 in rural New York will cause large disruptions and job losses.

最合理的猜测是，在西雅图或纽约等物价高昂的城市，最低工资的逐步提高不太可能会造成严重混乱。但在纽约的乡下地区将时薪提高至15美元，则会导致巨大的破坏和岗位流失。

The key intellectual upshot is that, despite what some people want you to believe, the laws of economic gravity have not been suspended. You can’t impose costs on some without trade-offs for others. You can’t intervene in the market without unintended consequences.

关键的知识要点是，不管别人想要你相信什么，经济学的牛顿定律并没有失效。你在这边厢强加成本，就得在那边厢做出交换，你不能指望干涉市场而不产生意料之外的后果。

And here’s a haunting fact that seems to make sense: Raising the minimum wage will produce winners among job holders from all backgrounds, but it will disproportionately punish those with the lowest skills, who are least likely to be able to justify higher employment costs.

一个挥之不去的事实看来很说明问题：提高最低工资的赢家会包括来自所有不同背景的受雇劳动力，但它所损害的，更多的是劳动技能最低的人群，他们最缺乏能力去证明，自己值得拿更高的工资。

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