The possible closure of Tata Steel’s operations in Port Talbot casts a deep shadow over the area. There’s something familiar about this depressing story. The shipyards of the Clyde and the cotton mills of Manchester have faded. The coalfields of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire were all around me as I grew up in Chesterfield during the miners’ strike of 1984-85. Now the mining jobs are gone. Further afield, there are the job losses in the automobile production lines of Detroit, for the shoemakers of Kobe in Japan, or at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York.

塔塔钢铁公司(Tata Steel)可能关停塔尔博特港钢厂的消息，给这一地区蒙上了厚厚的阴影。这个令人沮丧的故事似曾相识。克莱德(Clyde)的造船厂、曼彻斯特的纺织厂都已衰败。我在切斯特菲尔德(Chesterfield)长大，周围有德比郡、诺丁汉郡以及南约克郡的煤田。1984-85年矿工罢工的时候我还是个孩子。如今，采煤工作早已消失。在世界其他地方，底特律的汽车生产线工人、日本神户的制鞋工人以及纽约州罗切斯特(Rochester)的伊士曼柯达公司(Eastman Kodak)员工，也都失去了工作。

So what should be done when communities are wounded by such blows? One tempting answer is “everything”; that the government should nationalise troubled operations or adopt similar big-bazooka tactics, such as high trade barriers or large subsidies. It’s easy enough to make the emotional case for this but the practical case isn’t so plausible. Would nationalisation have saved Kodak’s film business? Is Manchester the place for a 21st-century Cottonopolis?

那么，当社区受到此类打击的伤害时，应该做些什么呢？一个诱人的答案是，“极尽所能采取一切措施”：政府应将陷入困境的企业收归国有，或采取类似的大动干戈的策略，如设置高贸易壁垒或提供巨额补贴。从情感角度而言，我们很容易找到应该这样做的理由，但从现实角度来看，这样做的理由并不充分。国有化当初有可能拯救柯达的胶卷业务吗？曼彻斯特能成为21世纪的棉都吗？

Sometimes, government can help restructure a troubled business — as with the Obama administration’s interventions in the case of General Motors, or the long but ultimately successful nationalisation of Rolls-Royce in the 1970s.

有时候，政府能够协助重组陷入困境的企业——正如奥巴马(Obama)政府对通用汽车(General Motors)的干预，或是上世纪70年代罗尔斯•罗伊斯(Rolls-Royce)漫长但最终成功的国有化那样。

However, taxpayers are always at risk of being saddled with the role of supporting industries in inescapable structural decline. The political economy of these cases is skewed towards preservation rather than creative destruction. Old industries under stress have much to gain from government support, and can point to people who need help. There is no constituency for jobs that have not yet been created.

然而，纳税人总是可能被迫承担起这样的角色：为一些处于不可摆脱的结构性衰退中的产业提供支持。这些案例背后的政治经济学状况偏向于维持这些产业，而非毁掉旧的、创造新的。处于困境之中的旧产业可从政府支持中获得大量好处，这些产业可能会拿那些需要帮助的人说事。政客只对现有选民负责，还没有创造出来的工作岗位上没有需要他们负责的选民。

So a different answer is that we should do nothing. This laissez-faire reasoning points out that economic change inevitably creates losers but, ultimately, society is better off. We cannot resist change, only adjust. Former autoworkers, steelworkers, and coalminers need to pick themselves up and move to where fresh jobs are available, or retrain.

所以，另一个答案是，我们应什么都不做。这种主张自由放任的理论认为，经济转型不可避免地会造就输家，但整个社会最终会变得更富裕。我们无法抵挡转型，只能适应。昔日的汽车工人、钢铁工人、煤矿工人需要振作精神，搬到可以获得新工作的地方，或者接受再培训。

There is a logic to this argument but it glosses over the deep wounds of a large industrial closure. It isn’t just that workers lose jobs. The entire economic ecosystem of an area can collapse. Newly jobless workers find that their homes are worthless, their pensions too sometimes.

这种观点有一定道理，但它对一场大规模工厂倒闭造成的沉重创伤避而不提。不只是工人失业，整个地区的经济生态系统都可能崩溃。刚刚失业的工人们会发现，自己的住宅变得一文不值，养老金有时也打水漂了。

And workers with the kind of skills that are under pressure from technology or trade may find that they move from one sinking lifeboat to another, with their new jobs under threat from the same forces that destroyed the old ones. More radically, retraining — maybe as a neurosurgeon or data scientist — would solve that problem, but then so would discovering a Rembrandt in the attic.

一些工作技能面临来自技术或贸易的压力，怀有这些工作技能的人们或许会发现，自己从一艘漏水的救生艇转移至另一艘，新找的工作依旧面临威胁，造成威胁的正是摧毁自己原先工作的那些因素。极端一点说，接受再培训（或许转行成为一名神经外科医生或数据科学家）倒是可以解决上一个问题，不过在阁楼上发现一幅伦勃朗(Rembrandt)的画也可以。

Between the ideologically pure answers of “do everything” and “do nothing”, we have the current consensus, “do something”. But what?

在“极尽所能”与“什么都不做”这两个从意识形态角度而言都很纯粹的答案之间，我们有了当前的共识——“做一些事情”。但做哪些事情呢？

There are three broad approaches to looking after the losers from economic change: try to bring new jobs to people; try to help the people change to find new jobs; just send money.

照顾经济转型造成的输家，大致有三种方式：设法为人们创造新的就业机会；设法帮助人们改变自己，找到新工作；直接给钱。

Bringing new jobs to people is the most natural idea, but regional regeneration is difficult. Depressed communities often stay depressed. A Sheffield Hallam University study from 2014, The State of the Coalfields, found that 30 years after the miners’ strike, coalfield communities have lower employment rates and higher reliance on disability benefits. The track record of place-based regeneration policies is patchy and sobering.

为人们创造新的就业机会是最自然的想法，但区域复兴很困难。萧条的社区通常会萧条下去。谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学(Sheffield Hallam University)自2014年开始的一项“煤田现状”(The State of the Coalfields)研究发现，那场矿工罢工爆发30年后，煤田社区的就业率变得更低，对伤残抚恤金的依赖度更高。针对某个区域的振兴政策很少实施，效果也不好。

If the jobs won’t move, perhaps the workers can? An influential 1992 study by economists Olivier Blanchard and Lawrence Katz found that the US labour market once worked this way. While a shock could have a lasting effect on a local economy, the unemployment rate itself would subside, “not because employment picks up, but because workers leave the state”.

如果引不来工作机会，或许劳动者可以搬走？经济学家奥利维耶•布朗夏尔(Olivier Blanchard)与劳伦斯•卡茨(Lawrence Katz)在1992年做的一项有影响力的研究发现，这种方式曾在美国劳动力市场奏效。虽然产业没落的冲击会对当地经济造成持久影响，但失业率本身会下降，“不是因为就业回升，而是因为工人们离开了这个州”。

But new research from Mai Dao, Davide Furceri and Prakash Loungani at the IMF finds that US workers move less than they did back in the 1980s. Instead of moving, they are more likely to stay put and stay jobless. (Mobility has improved in the European Union, albeit from much lower levels.)

但国际货币基金组织(IMF)的Mai Dao、达维德•富尔切里(Davide Furceri)以及普拉卡什•隆加尼(Prakash Loungani)的新研究发现，比起上世纪80年代，美国劳动者如今更少迁移。他们更可能留在原地、保持失业状态，而不是搬走。（欧盟(EU)内部的劳动者流动水平有所改善，尽管起始水平低得多。）

We don’t really know why mobility is falling in the US. Maybe because dual-income households find it harder to move — but then the same pattern is seen for single people. Housing costs increasingly prevent poor people from moving to booming areas such as New York and London in search of work.

我们其实并不知道为什么美国劳动者的流动水平在下降。也许是因为双职工家庭觉得更难以迁居别处——但是单身劳动者的流动水平也在下降。住房成本使穷人越来越难以搬至纽约、伦敦等繁荣地区寻找工作。

“My guess is that there’s no one reason for the fall in mobility,” says Betsey Stevenson of the University of Michigan, also formerly chief economist at the US labour department. Stevenson, like many economists, argues that education must be a huge part of the answer to economic shocks. The jobs have changed, and so must we.

美国劳动部前首席经济学家、密歇根大学(University of Michigan)的贝齐•史蒂文森(Betsey Stevenson)表示：“我的猜想是，并非单一原因导致了劳动者流动水平的下降。”和许多经济学家一样，史蒂文森认为，教育必须是应对经济冲击策略的主要部分。工作机会已经变了，我们也必须改变。

Education is, indeed, a remarkable thing. Lawrence Katz has observed that between 1979 and 2012, the wage gap between a US household of two college graduates and a household of two high school graduates grew by around $30,000 — a sum that dwarfs most shifts in the economic landscape. But it is easy to be glib about retraining: governments are tempted to use training programmes as a way to make work and shift people off the welfare rolls.

教育确实是件了不起的事情。卡茨发现，1979年至2012年间，两个大学毕业生组成的美国家庭与两个高中毕业生组成的家庭之间的工资差距增加了约3万美元——这一数字足以使经济图景中多数变化相形见绌。但再培训很容易被草草对待：政府有动机把培训项目当做创造就业和减少失业救济金领取人数的方式。

So a final answer as to how to compensate the losers is the simplest: give them money. That is a strategy that offers both more, and less, than it might seem at first glance. But that is a topic for next week.

所以，如何来补偿输家的最终答案其实最简单：给他们钱。比起乍看上去，这一策略提供的既多又少。但这将是下次的题目。