2023年12月六级第1套仔细阅读 Passage 1 原文翻译及答案解析

One of the great successes of the Republican Party in recent decades is the relentless propagation of a simple formula for economic growth: tax cuts.

共和党近几十年来的一个重大成功，是持续传播一个简单的经济增长公式：减税。

The formula doesn't work, but that has not affected its popularity. And while the cult of tax cuts has attracted many critics, it lacks for obvious rivals.

这个公式并不奏效，但并未影响其受欢迎程度。尽管减税崇拜吸引了许多批评者，但它缺乏明显的竞争对手。

Democratic politicians have tended to campaign on helping people left behind by economic growth. When Democrats do talk about encouraging economic growth, they often sound like Republicans.

民主党政治家倾向于以帮助那些被经济增长抛在后面的人为竞选主题。当民主党人确实谈论鼓励经济增长时，他们听起来往往像共和党人。

This is not just a political problem for Democrats; it is an economic problem for the United States. The nation needs a better story about the drivers of economic growth. The painful lessons of recent decades point to a promising candidate: higher wages.

这不仅是民主党面临的政治问题；也是美国的经济问题。国家需要一个关于经济增长驱动力的更好说法。近几十年的痛苦教训指向一个有希望的候选者：更高的工资。

Raising the wages of American workers ought to be the priority of economic policymakers. We'd all be better off paying less attention to quarterly updates on the growth of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) and focusing instead on the growth of workers' paychecks.

提高美国工人的工资应该是经济政策制定者的首要任务。我们都不必过于关注国家国内生产总值（GDP）增长的季度更新，而应专注于工人薪水的增长。

Set aside, for the moment, the familiar argument for higher wages: fairness. The argument here is that higher wages can fuel the engine of economic growth.

暂时把关于更高工资的熟悉论点——公平性——放在一边。这里的论点是，更高的工资可以推动经济增长的引擎。

Perhaps the most famous illustration of the benefits is the story of Henry Ford's decision in 1914 to pay $5 a day to workers on his Model T assembly lines. He did it to increase production—he was paying a premium to maintain a reliable workforce. The unexpected benefit was that Ford's factory workers became Ford customers, too.

也许最著名的受益例子是亨利·福特在1914年决定每天向他的T型车装配线工人支付5美元的故事。他这样做是为了增加生产——他支付溢价以维持可靠的劳动力。意想不到的收获是，福特的工厂工人也成了福特的客户。

The same logic still holds: Consumption drives the American economy, and workers who are paid more can spend more.

同样的逻辑仍然成立：消费驱动美国经济，收入更高的工人可以花更多钱。

Mainstream economists insist that it is impossible to order up a sustainable increase in wages because compensation levels reflect the unerring judgment of market forces.

主流经济学家坚称，不可能强制实现可持续的工资增长，因为薪酬水平反映了市场力量的准确判断。

The conventional wisdom held that productivity growth was the only route to higher wages. Through that lens, efforts to negotiate higher wages were counterproductive. Minimum-wage laws would raise unemployment because there was only so much money in the wage pool, and if some people got more, others would get none.

传统观点认为，生产率增长是提高工资的唯一途径。从这个角度看，争取更高工资的努力适得其反。最低工资法会提高失业率，因为工资池中的资金有限，如果一些人得到更多，其他人就什么也得不到。

It was in the context of this worldview that it became popular to argue that tax cuts would drive prosperity. Rich people would invest, productivity would increase, wages would rise.

正是在这种世界观背景下，主张减税将推动繁荣的观点变得流行。富人会投资，生产率会提高，工资会上涨。

In the real world, things are more complicated. Wages are influenced by a tug of war between employers and workers, and employers have been winning. One clear piece of evidence is the widening gap between productivity growth and wage growth since roughly 1970. Productivity has more than doubled; wages have lagged far behind.

在现实世界中，事情更为复杂。工资受到雇主和工人之间拉锯战的影响，而雇主一直占上风。一个明显的证据是，自大约1970年以来，生产率增长和工资增长之间的差距不断扩大。生产率已经翻了一倍多；工资却远远落后。

A focus on wage growth would provide an antidote (矫正方法) to the attractive simplicity of the belief in the magical power of tax cuts.

关注工资增长将为减税魔力的诱人简单信念提供一种矫正方法（矫正方法）。