决战1010精英组Economist阅读汇——ZMSSGHH分贴

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先占上了  其实我比较喜欢读reason   所以可能从eco和reason中都选一些文章读哈

红色为好的词汇
蓝色为特定搭配
紫色勾中的句子是我认为比较好的句子
绿色是我的问题哈……希望大家回答一下 谢谢啦！！

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GREEN JOBS(PS:图片怎么发不上来  郁闷……)


number 1


The private sector—not the government—can and must be the main driver in creating green jobs. The scale of the transition to cleaner, lower-carbon energy sources is simply too large for public-sector resources and programmes to tackle alone（be simply too ** for ** to do sth）. Only a tidal wave of(就是用涨潮形容增多
我觉得很形象) private investment, innovation, invention and entrepreneurship can get the job done.

But that wave will never rise unless the government becomes a constructive partner in the effort. Therefore, it is perfectly sensible(明智的) for national governments to aspire to create policies that produce green jobs.

After all, John Doerr, a leading light of Silicon Valley who knows a thing or two about innovation and technology, having placed early bets on Sun Microsystems and a little company called Google, has gone so far as to（这句不太懂
各位麻烦解释一下哈……） call clean energy "the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century".

The benefits of moving toward clean energy are potentially sweeping: helping to restore infrastructure（基础设施）, rebuild neighbourhoods, retool factories and ignite innovation. Additionally, energy security, climate stabilisation, pollution reduction and expanded economic opportunity are all legitimate aims for policymakers to pursue.

Critics of green jobs recoil(退缩) at the notion that governments might somehow tamper with the natural energy market to promote renewables. They sniff and generate a host of objections to market-distorting mandates and wasteful subsidies. But energy markets are already the product of policy, mainly those that support incumbent（我查韦氏字典为什么没有“必须的”这个意思呀……这词当什么讲？） energy sources like coal, oil and nuclear power. These incumbent technologies benefit from subsidies, regulatory structures that shut out distributed generation of renewable power and pricing schemes that undervalue the economic contributions of energy efficiency.

The critics conveniently ignore the truth that all forms of energy are heavily regulated and often subsidised. This is because energy is the lifeblood of the economy. The precise mix of energy sources being developed and deployed within a country is never the result of pure market forces, but always a result of both private and public choices. It reflects a mix of innovation and investment on the one side, and of regulation, taxation and subsidy on the other.

Because we place no value on our atmosphere, the market acting alone cannot achieve the public interest in a stable climate and human health. Therefore, the question is not whether we will pursue policies to shape energy markets, but what sort of energy markets we want to achieve. It is sensible for governments to enact policies that will maximise the use of clean, renewable and low-carbon energy sources within and beyond their borders.（不太理解……）

Public policies are now necessary to correct existing market failures and put clean energy on an even playing field with（表公平竞争） fossil fuels; to establish the market certainty that businesses need to make long-term investment decisions; and to provide stable, long-term support for clean-energy research, development and deployment, just as they have done in the past for the medical（插入语我觉得用的挺好的）, aeronautical and information technology sectors.

Public investment is also required to bring the ageing electrical and transportation infrastructure that powers our industries and facilitates commerce into the 21st century, and to ramp up （提升）workforce and manufacturing infrastructure to meet the enormous new demands for goods and services that will result from new clean-energy markets.

Furthermore, governments will need to go beyond a simple cap-and-trade system for global warming pollution. Renewable energy standards and codes for energy efficiency will help build markets. Green banks and new financing tools will use public underwriting to help unleash private capital. And public investments in infrastructure will create a platform for innovative businesses to thrive and hire more workers.

In this context, policy is not a restraint on trade. It is a driver of innovation.

Fortunately, this approach has a proud and successful history. We can look to the history of the United States for good examples of what is possible. From the Tennessee Valley Authority and rural electrification（电气化）, to the interstate（洲际的） highway system, to the telecom revolution, new investments in transformative infrastructure have consistently opened up access and opportunity, and brought more people into the middle class. The internet didn't just create jobs for software engineers; it created work installing fibre optic cable（电缆）. It created new office jobs in information technology and new career ladders into skilled professions.

Given this aspect of American history, it is ironic that the United States is falling behind in the global race for clean energy. Doubly so（我感觉表示递进）, given that the United States invented many of the key technologies that will power future growth, from solar panels, to advanced lithium ion batteries, to the modern wind turbine.

America's economic competitors in Asia and Europe see the opportunity and are driving hard to secure competitive advantage. China by some estimates invested $400 billion of public and private capital in clean energy just last year.

Given the global competition to dominate clean energy production, one need not believe that green jobs are a panacea to believe that pursuing them is smart and sensible.

After all, practically（几乎，简直） everything that is good for energy independence or the environment will create a job—a green job. Solar panels don't put themselves up. Wind turbines don't manufacture themselves. Homes don't retrofit or upgrade themselves. The smart grid won't install itself, nor will bullet trains lay their own tracks. In many places, trees don't even plant themselves any more.

To argue against green jobs is to argue for government inaction or abdication on some of the biggest challenges of our time. That is not acceptable.（我觉得这句话很有力度……）

Great and mighty
labours（劳动力） are required of humanity in the new century. To mitigate climate chaos and avoid economy-wrecking energy shortages, workers must repower, rewire and retrofit（翻新
改型） whole nations. As men and women step forward to achieve these ends and accomplish these tasks, their hard-hats—in many cases—will be green.

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NUMBER 2


Given the long-term and in some cases rather intangible benefits of environmental prudence, people arguing for measures that will reduce global warming and bring about other desirable but distant ends tend to look for near-term benefits, too. Unsurprisingly, in a recession and its aftermath, jobs have recently had pride of （不太理解什么意思……）place on that benefit list. As Nancy Pelosi put it when defending the cap-and-trade bill on greenhouse emissions which passed the House of Representatives last year, the American people should be glad of such legislation for four reasons: "jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs".（这个说法挺新颖哈……不知道可不可以在作文里用）

Leaving aside the possibility that some Americans might be glad of such legislation because it stands a chance of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions, how much of a real reason for joy are those green jobs?（这个语序我感觉模仿不来的）（那位大牛给分析一下这句话的成分？）

That government investment, subsidy and regulation can produce green jobs is not in any doubt. No one would have built a solar power industry in Germany on the basis of its sizzling noon-day sun. The fact that Germany now has such an industry, with tens of thousands of people employed in it, is an act of fiat. So is most, though not all, of the rest of Germany's renewable energy sector, which now employs more than a quarter of a million people. A similar story can be told about Spanish renewable energy. The American renewables energy lobby is endlessly keen to point out how many jobs rely on its turbines, ethanol refineries and the like.

此段是写GREEN HOUSE的正面评价

The question is whether those jobs represent a net benefit, or whether they are being created at the expense of other jobs elsewhere in the economy.（开始转折了……） Green jobs created by government intervention have opportunity costs, in that some part of the money used to provide or promote them might otherwise have created jobs in some other sector. There is also the risk of jobs being counted as created by government intervention（介入） when they would have been created anyway, thus inflating assessments of the effectiveness of the policy.

These problems should not lead to the conclusion that a green jobs policy is necessarily foolish. It is quite possible for policies to serve different ends at the same time: the creation of the US freeway system in the 1950s and 1960s was to some extent seen as a case in point（是不是佐证的意思？）, providing economic benefits and defence benefits—the ability to move equipment quickly and easily—at the same time (the programme is still known officially as the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways). Synergies（协同作用） and possibilities for leverage do exist in the world, and policymakers may be able to spot and use them. But those who claim to be doing so have an obligation to explain carefully the evidence for believing that their approach really will produce net benefits.

It is not for moderators to specify too closely the terms of the debate, but it may be useful to point out that the motion, and in particular its key word "sensible", can be read in a more economic context or a more political context. In terms of economics, the key issue is efficiency: do the policies increase net employment at justifiable costs? Politically, things may be a little less well defined.

Does green investment allow specific sorts of jobs to be created in a way that has social value, for example（注意运用插入语）, in a particular area? Is it right to allow employment outcomes to influence the choice between types of green policy? It would hardly be unreasonable if, given two policy options with equivalent environmental benefits, it might make political sense to go with the one that had clearly defined employment benefits too. But what about the risk that the green jobs associated with a programme might in time come to outweigh its actual greenery? In such cases you can end up with a non-green jobs programme benefiting from unjustified subsidies that are hard to get rid of.

These are some of the issues that I look forward to hearing our debaters, and you their audience, weigh in on over the next few days.

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number 3


topic:What is the right role for government in spurring innovation? The outlines of this age-old debate will be familiar to many. One side argues that governments inevitably get it wrong when they get too involved in innovation: picking the wrong technology winners, say, or ploughing subsidies into politically popular projects rather than the most deserving ones. The other rebuts that given the grave global challenges we face today—in the 1960s America thought it was the Soviet race into space, today many countries worry about climate change and pandemic threats—governments need to do much more to support innovation.


Innovation now attracts innumerable worshippers but their prayers are often quite narrow and sectarian（派系的）. Silicon Valley（硅谷） or possibly the Israeli high-tech industry is the promised land（希望之乡）: a wondrous（出色的） combination of private high-tech enterprise underpinned by government-financed universities and research labs.

This is, alas, a dubious conception of paradise. For all the high-tech prowess of Silicon Valley, the economy of California is on the edge of disaster. Unemployment in eight counties now tops 20% and the government pays its bills in IOUs. And in spite of its extraordinary concentration of scientific and engineering talent and entrepreneurship, Israel's GDP per head in 2009 was lower than of Cyprus, Greece and Slovenia.

Or remember Japan's omnipotent, visionary MITI working hand and glove with the likes of NEC, Hitachi and Fujitsu? Put aside fiascos（惨败） such as the ten-year Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project, by standard measures the overall level of Japanese engineering and scientific performance, either because of or in spite of government subsidies, is impressive. More tellingly, Hong Kong's GNP per head is nearly 30% higher than Japan's, 24% higher than Germany's and 505% higher than Israel's. Yet Hong Kong's government and private businesses pay scant attention to cutting-edge（前沿的） scientific and technological research.

The techno-fetishist view of innovation and the kind of government support it demands fails to appreciate the enormous variety of innovations that we need.

The measure of a good economy lies in the satisfaction it provides to the many, not a few, not in the wealth or accomplishment of a few individuals or organisations. And these satisfactions go beyond the material or pecuniary（金钱上的） rewards earned: they include, for instance, the exhilaration（愉快的心情） of overcoming challenges. Indeed they go hand in hand: a good economy cannot provide widespread prosperity without harnessing the creativity and enterprise of the many. All must have the opportunity to innovate, to try out new things: not just scientists and engineers but also graphic artists, shopfloor workers, salespersons and advertising agencies; not just the developers of new products but their venturesome（好冒险的 大胆的） consumers. The exceptional performance of a few high-tech businesses, as the Silicon Valley and Israeli examples show, is just not enough.

This widely diffused, multifaceted（多方面的） form of innovation entails a circumscribed role for governments: they should not to put their finger on the scale bribing people to do basic research instead of, say, the kind of graphics design that has made Apple such an iconic company. Mandating more math and science in high schools when most of us never use trigonometry（三角学） or calculus in our working lives takes away time from learning skills that are crucial in an innovative economy: how to listen and persuade, think independently and work collaboratively, for instance.（这种安排句子的形式可以学习一下）

Yes, there is a problem with global warming, but that is best solved by innumerable tinkerers taking their chances with renewable energy and resourceful conservation, not by throwing money at projects that a few savants（学者 专家） have determined to be the most promising. The apparent duplication of autonomous initiative isn't a waste: no one can foretell what is going to work. Even the most successful venture-capital companies have more misses than hits（失败比成功多）. Therefore putting many independent experiments in play raises the odds（可能性） that one will work. When government gets into the game of placing bets, for instance（这种插入语怎么用的就这么自然呢……不解）, on new battery technologies, innovators who don't have the savvy, credentials （资质证书）and connections with politicians or the scientific establishment are at a severe disadvantage. Yet history shows that it is often the nonconformist outsiders who play a pivotal（中枢的 关键的） role. Would Ed Roberts have been able to secure a government grant to build the world's first personal computer, a virtually useless toy when it was introduced in 1974?（发现ISSUE里偶尔用几个问句可以使句式丰富且论证有力）

Of course a government doing the least doesn't mean a government doing nothing at all. Moreover, the least is a moving and ever expanding target. The invention of the automobile, for example, necessitated（需要） driving rules and a system of vehicle inspections. The growth of air travel required a system to control traffic and certify the airworthiness of aircraft. Similarly, radio and television required a system to regulate the use of the airwaves.

Modern technology created new forms of pollution that did not exist in agrarian economies. Governments had to step in, in one way or the other, to make it unrewarding to pollute. Likewise, antitrust（反垄断） laws to control commercial interactions and conduct emerged after new technologies created opportunities to realise economies of scale and scope—and realise oligopoly or monopoly profits. These opportunities were largely absent in pre-industrial economies.

But the principle of the least is best remains a true compass. New technologies not only create the need for desirable new rules, they but also generate more opportunities for unwarranted meddling and a cover for rent-seeking. It is one thing for the Federal Aviation Administration to manage the air traffic control system, quite another for the Civil Aeronautics Board (b. 1938, d. 1985) to regulate airfares, routes and schedules. The construction of the interstate highway system may have been a great boon to the US economy, for example, but it did not take long for Congress to start appropriating funds for bridges to nowhere.

Entrepreneurial leaps into the dark are best sustained by great caution in expanding the scope of government intervention; the private virtue of daring can be a public vice（恶习）. The US chief justice has often repeated the maxim: "If it is not necessary to decide an issue to resolve a case, then it is necessary not to decide that issue." Similarly, if it is not necessary to intervene to promote innovation, it should be considered necessary not to intervene. The government should focus on things that private enterprise simply cannot provide and stay away from promoting activities that would allegedly be undersupplied. If nothing, this maxim frees up resources for crucial public goods. So traffic police, emission rules and carbon taxes: absolutely. Subsidising networks of hydrogen pumps and new engine or battery technologies: no thanks.（句式挺新奇的 不过好像不怎么实用）

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第二周

NUMBER 1  

Governments spur innovation. Governments shape innovation. Many of the most important innovations in recent decades grew from the work of governments.

In 1965, a US government employee named Bob Taylor had an idea about how computers could communicate. He took the idea to his boss Charles Herzfeld, head of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), who invested government funds in exploring it. That investment led to the ARPAnet and, in turn, to the internet, without which so many things (including this online debate) would not be possible.

An isolated example? Hardly. Among the innovations that grew directly from government funding are the Google search engine, GPS devices, DNA mapping, inexpensive mass data storage and even Teflon.

Why is government important to innovation?

First, because the private sector underinvests（应该是投资不足的意思吧……） in fundamental research. That is natural. Time horizons in many businesses are short. Few companies are in a position to capture benefits from fundamental research they might fund on their own. In many fields, fundamental research requires resources available only to governments and the largest companies. As Professor Henry Chesbrough documents in his book "Open Innovation", the big corporate research labs of decades past have given way to more distributed approaches to innovation. That gets many technologies to market faster, but at the expense of fundamental research. Without government support for such research, the seed corn for future generations would be at risk.（比喻）

Second, because innovation depends on an educated workforce, which is a job for governments. Biomedical research requires medical technicians. Energy research requires engineers. Computer research requires programmers. Although private companies often provide specialised training, an educated workforce is the essential starting point. Primary and secondary education is a vital precursor to much innovation. That is a job for governments everywhere. And universities play a central role, with training of promising young innovators often made possible by government funding.

Third, because market failures stifle innovative technologies. The recent financial crisis choked off （中止）capital（资本） for innovators. Without governments stepping in to provide backstop support, thousands of promising innovations would have been lost due to the unrelated vagaries of failing financial markets. There are many other examples. Lack of capital and information prevents homeowners from investing in energy-saving technologies with very short payback periods. Split incentives between architects, builders, landlords and tenants prevent widespread adoption of similar technologies in commercial buildings. Governments have a central role in overcoming these barriers, and more.

Fourth, because government policies and standards can lay a strong foundation for innovation. Last century, the United States benefited from government policies requiring near universal access to electricity and telephone services, laying the groundwork for a vibrant consumer electronics industry. This century, Finland and Korea (among others) are benefiting from government policies to promote broadband access, helping position each country for global leadership in a vast global market. New technologies require standards that allow them to operate within larger systems. The NTSC television broadcast standard, 110V AC current and FHA housing loans, to pick just three examples, each helped market actors coordinate, encouraging innovation. Or consider Israel, which has a teeming（丰富的） innovation culture in which the Israeli government plays a central role, providing the foundation for startups that commercialise civilian uses of military technologies in materials, semiconductors, medical devices and communications.

Finally, because governments help make sure innovation delivers public benefits. Not all innovation is good. Collateralised debt obligations were an important financial innovation. Yet as the recent financial crisis demonstrated, financial markets cannot be relied upon to self-regulate innovation. As government encourages and promotes innovation, it also has a role in guiding it.

In the academic literature on innovation, the number of patents issued in a country is often used as a proxy（代表） for the rate of innovation. Patents are, of course, issued by governments. As this suggests, governments play a central role in innovation.

In his inaugural address, President Obama said, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works…" That should guide us in thinking about this motion. The notion that "Innovation works best when government does least" is simplistic and wrong. There may be instances in which government meddling chokes off innovation. (Past US government restrictions on stem cell research come to mind.) Yet governments can and do play a central role in spurring innovation and making sure innovation delivers benefits. We should embrace government's role in innovation, always seeking to refine and improve it, not diminish it with broad generalities.

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This house believes that the German economy is too dependent on exports for growth.


NO.2:


Is Germany a euro-saint or a euro-sinner? Amid the wreckage（碎片） of the global financial crisis the German economy is looking pretty good. To be sure（可以肯定的是）, last year's 5% plunge in GDP was even bigger than average among rich countries. But unemployment has not risen much and, though Germany turned on the fiscal taps to douse the crisis, its budget deficit looks less horrific than many（两个是并列结构）. With world trade now picking up（回升）, Germany's twin virtues of competitiveness and a commitment to fiscal discipline look like a good formula for a sustainable economic recovery. If only Greece were as saintly, the euro would not be in such trouble today. So runs the case for Germany's economic canonisation.

Or you could say that the paragon（模范） is in fact a fraud. Germany's apparent success consists of piling up current-account surpluses that cannot last. They have come about largely because employers and the government have beaten down German wage-earners, making exports more competitive and suppressing imports. The consequence is offsetting current-account deficits for countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy, which are threatening to bring Europe's 11-year experiment with a single currency to a premature and traumatic（造成精神创伤的） end. Far from doing its bit to correct the imbalances, Germany proposes to worsen them by tightening fiscal policy, which will depress domestic demand and thus imports, making the strains within the euro group still worse. On this view Germany is accessorised not with a halo（光环） but with a pitchfork（甘草叉）比喻的挺形象的.

To argue this out The Economist has invited two economists who are as learned and thoughtful as they are pugilistic. Heiner Flassbeck, the motion's defender, is one of Germany's leading Keynesian economists. As a top official in the German finance ministry under Oskar Lafontaine, he pushed for（奋力争取） a co-ordinated Europe-wide economic and fiscal policy. After Mr Lafontaine quit in 1999, Mr Flassbeck became chief economist of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva. He is the author of “Gescheitert: Warum die Politik vor der Wirtschaft kapituliert”, which contends that politicians brought about economic disaster by surrendering to narrow commercial interests.

Michael Hüther, it is safe to say, has a friendlier take on the influence of business. He is director of the business-financed Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft Köln, which provides much of the intellectual firepower for the advocacy（支持拥护）
of pro-market policies in Germany. Through articles, speeches and the torrent of research over which he presides, Mr Hüther is one of the leading explicators of Germany's astonishing resilience（令人震惊的还原能力） as a top exporter of manufactures and a champion of the German business model.

Their clash（碰撞） is not just about the wisdom of Germany's economic policies but about the fate of the single currency and, indeed, the evolution of the world economy as a whole. Relish it, learn from it and by all means take part in it（排比）.

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NO.3:

The proposer's opening remarks:

Among the deluge(涌现) of comments on the crisis of European Monetary Union (EMU), few focus the most crucial point: the external imbalance inside EMU. Greece's budget problems and those of other southern members of EMU are important, but they are closely related to external deficits. In contrast, Germany's sound（看似表达了感情色彩，实际上是一个让步逻辑） budget position is to a large extent the result of the huge external stimulus it has received in the past decade. The key to the future of EMU is to be found in external adjustment in all countries and not in lopsided（不平等的）
governments' belt-tightening around the Mediterranean Sea. It is the external imbalances that will force the dissolution of EMU if strong corrective action is not taken soon. And if it comes to make or break in the currency union, only external adjustment will provide the basis for a proper judgment on misdoings, wrongdoers and those who have to take the first step. Germany has to move definitively because it has misunderstood EMU more than any other country.

The drama of EMU is not Hellenic. Greece is only the tip of a large iceberg（冰山一角）. But a comparison of Greece and Germany reveals the core of the problem. Greece's current account deficit had reached nearly 15% of GDP in 2007 and has recently come down slightly as a result of falling imports. Between 2000 and 2010 Greece's exports were sluggish（行动迟缓的） at 1.8% in real terms, but domestic demand rose at a healthy 2.3%. (All figures are from the Statistical Annex of European Economy.) Real compensation to labour increased at 1.9% per employee annually, a little less than productivity and solid indeed. But nominal compensation grew by 4.9% and the ratio of nominal compensation to productivity (unit labour costs), the most important measure of international competitiveness in a currency union, advanced at a rate of 2.7% per year and reached a level of 130 in 2010 if 2000 is 100.

The biggest country in the EU, Germany, accumulated a huge current account surplus in the same period, culminating at 8% in 2007. Between 2003 and 2007 Germany's real exports exploded but domestic demand stagnated. Nominal compensation and unit labour costs in Germany also rose only marginally（最低限度的） over the decade, the latter reaching a level of 105.5 in 2010 (0.5% annual rate). Stagnant real compensation explains the sluggish domestic demand given that employment creation did not follow the wage restraint. Flat unit labour costs explain the explosion of exports, in particular before the crisis and against EMU members; the share of intra-EU exports of goods in Germany's GDP rose from 16.6% in 1999 to 25.7% in 2007.

The gap in unit labour costs means that a comparable basket of goods and services produced at the same cost in 2000 in all the EU member states now costs 25% more if it comes from Greece than if it comes from Germany. The difference is similar for Spain, Portugal and Italy. But the difference is also 13% for France, although France was the only country where unit labour costs followed strictly the inflation target of 2% set by the European Central Bank.

Indeed, the inflation target is crucial for the judgment on wrongdoers. EMU was not meant to be a zero inflation union but a 2% inflation union. Measured against this scale the conclusion is obvious: a 2% inflation target is compatible with a 2% unit labour cost increase. An increase of 2.7%, as in Greece, has meant that the country is living beyond its means but has violated the rule to a lesser degree than Germany, living at 0.4% below its means Germany has explicitly agreed to the target of close to 2% because it was its own target before EMU. Given this target and the overriding importance of unit labour costs for inflation, Germany headed towards a clear violation of the common target once its government started to put enormous pressure on wage negotiations to improve the country's competitiveness inside and outside EMU.

Some people believe that the difference is not relevant as Germany had absolute disadvantages before the beginning of EMU, mainly because of the burden of German unification. However, logic says otherwise.（是论证显得客观，避免了主观） If your belt-tightening makes up for absolute disadvantages, you will not end up with absolute advantages. But this is exactly the German case. Germany is the only big country in Europe that was able to stabilise its global market share in the first decade of this century—all the others, including France, lost dramatically.

That leads to the final line of Germany's defence, namely that high unemployment has justified German wage dumping. Wrong again—unemployment is a feature in most EMU member states and German wage restraint did not remove it because the domestic demand gap has compensated for the external demand boom. Between 2000 and 2010 overall German growth performance was a meagre 0.6% annually—only half of France's. Gross fixed capital formation fell by 0.2%, compared with an increase of 1.4% in France. Moreover, countries seeking to depress wages for domestic or other reasons should not join currency unions and agree to pursue a 2% inflation target. It was obvious; with open borders and permanent transfers excluded no country could survive economically a huge absolute disadvantage triggered by its biggest trading partner.

European politicians are wrong if they believe that there will be national solutions. If Germany continues with belt-tightening, and there is every（这个every的用法值得学习）
indication that it will, the countries with absolute disadvantages will need to cut wages. The result will be protracted（长时间的） deflation and depression for EMU as a whole but with no Phoenix rising from the ashes as long as no one opts for exit. But the crisis is more a German tragedy than a Greek one. If Germany cannot agree to concerted action with explicit decisions about wage adjustment paths for many years, indeed for decades, to rebalance its trade, it could still save Europe by leaving EMU and allowing a strong revaluation of its new currency.

本周完成！

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第三周

NO.1:


For different reasons, Germany is expected to reduce its dependence on exports. There are two arguments for this reduction, and they must be assessed separately. The first is put forward by German Keynesians and the trade unions. Domestic demand, they say, should be boosted by a targeted promotion of private consumption, to be made possible by an expansionary course in both wage and fiscal policies. In those sectors with predominantly domestic customers and little international competition, a minimum wage level should be set to raise overall domestic demand even further. This argument focuses mainly on social equity within Germany. It has been around for some time but has been given added impetus by the global economic crisis.

The second argument is propounded（提出） on a European level. A European debate on German exports has recently been triggered by the fiscal debacle in Greece. The argument is as follows. The low competitiveness of the Greek economy is worsened by the extraordinary efficiency and strength of German companies. Germany, as an economy with huge export surpluses, forces other countries—like Greece—into a deficit position, and is therefore at least partly responsible for their difficulties. This reasoning leads to calls for lower German competitiveness, especially in export sectors, to be achieved through higher wages, which would make it easier for other economies to sell their products. The Greek crisis may be recent, but this line of reasoning is old. In the 1980s and 1990s, when the European Monetary System had fixed—but not immutable—exchange rates, some European governments used similar arguments. A devaluation of their currencies against the Deutschemark was considered an embarrassment. To avoid this, they tried to nudge Germany towards a lax（松懈的） monetary and fiscal policy, hoping thus to spare themselves the necessity of a desirable but difficult reorganisation of government finances and moderation in wage policies.

Thus it becomes clear: the demand for a weakening of the German export position is based exclusively on distributive arguments—at both national and international levels.

Take a look at the facts. Has German economic growth been lopsided（不平等的）? Looking at the data for 2005-08, which constituted a recent strong cyclical upswing（提升） in Germany, net exports contributed an average 0.7 percentage points to GDP growth. Domestic demand, however, contributed more: 1.2 percentage points. These numbers indicate that Germany need not be overly worried about its dependence on exports. On the contrary, Germany is in the desirable position of having its economic growth sustained by both national and international demand. In France things looked completely different, as French economic growth was exclusively driven by domestic demand, which grew by 2.2 percentage points on average, while the country's net exports fell by an average of 0.5 percentage points. In Britain, the average economic growth of 2% per year was driven almost entirely by domestic demand.

It is true that the German export surplus has its counterpart in other countries' import surpluses. Nevertheless, the view that Germany has provoked the difficulties of countries like Spain or Greece is at best inaccurate, at worst malign. A quick look at the statistics for trade between Greece and Germany shows that the German share of all Greek imports increased from 13.1% in 2000 to 13.5% in 2008—hardly a life-draining stranglehold on the Greek economy. Many other countries have benefited as much or more from soaring Greek imports. To make the point even clearer: if Germany had not exported any goods at all to Greece, the Greek balance of trade deficit would have decreased by only 20% in 2008.
过度我觉得很自然，有的时候不一定非要用连接词，可能会显得重复
One fact often ignored in the debate is that the balance of payments current account is the inverse of the capital account. If Germany saves, it then exports capital and thus creates a potential for investment in other countries, so that opportunities for more growth and employment occur there. Similar opportunities arise from unilateral（单方面的） transfers, such as those provided by the EU Structural Fund and the EU Cohesion Fund, into which Germany—as the largest net contributor to the EU—pays considerable sums. What matters is how capital imports or unilateral transfers are used in the recipient countries. On the whole, in Greece, Spain and Portugal this capital has not been put to productive use. Additionally, on the path to European Monetary Union, these countries did not primarily use the economic stimulus of decreasing real interest rates, caused by real interest rate convergence, for investment.

What, then, are the reasons behind Germany's export strength? France's finance minister, Christine Lagarde, has pointed to a German competitive advantage based on the development of wages. In fact, in 2008, industrial labour costs per hour worked in Germany (

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No 2
This house believes that GDP growth is a poor measure of improving living standards.



"A … key message, and unifying theme of the report, is that the time is ripe for our measurement system to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people's well-being."
(Executive Summary: Stiglitz Commission Report)

GDP is a gravely dated pursuit. It is time to listen to the Stiglitz Report.

The first reason is the evidence known as the Easterlin Paradox (the empirical（以观察或实验为依据的） finding that countries do not become happier as they grow wealthier). The second reason is that global warming means it is necessary for Homo sapiens to make fewer things rather than more, to travel less except on their feet, to lean on the direct energy of the sun and water rather than on the smashed fuel of buried trees, to value tranquil beauty more and 160mph motor cars less.（几个排比  我觉得不错）

These arguments are key parts of the recent Stiglitz Report.

Life is now more complex and services dominate ("The time has come to adapt our system of measurement … to better reflect the structural changes which have characterised the evolution of modern economies.")
We, as a society, need to measure well-being per se. ("A … unifying theme of the report is that the time is ripe for our measurement system to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people's well-being.")
Official government statistics should blend objective and subjective well-being data. ("Statistical offices should incorporate questions to capture people's life evaluations, hedonic（享乐的） experiences and priorities in their own survey.")
Sustainability must be a criterion. ("Sustainability assessment requires a well-identified dashboard of indicators … the components of this dashboard should be … interpretable as variations of some underlying "stocks".)
I am optimistic. Eventually the green movement will discover the data of the Easterlin Paradox, named after Richard Easterlin, a famous Californian economist, and also become aware of the statistical evidence on declining emotional prosperity that I describe below. Although fine young scholars like Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers doubt the veracity of it, they are heavily outnumbered（寡不敌众的）: the weight of published evidence is in line with Mr Easterlin's paradox. Moreover, Ms Stevenson and Mr Wolfers themselves agree that America, perhaps the iconic GDP-chasing nation, is not becoming happier through time.

If we look at broader measures of psychological well-being, the newest longitudinal（纵向的）
research suggests there are reasons to be more pessimistic than Easterlin. Although further research evidence needs to be collected, this is what we currently know.

Worryingly, emotional prosperity and mental health appear from the latest data to be getting worse through time. This disturbing conclusion emerges from these seven studies:

Sacker and Wiggins (2002)
Hodiamont et al. (2005)
Verhaak et al. (2005)
Green and Tsitsianis (2005)
Wauterickx and Bracke (2005)
Oswald and Powdthavee (2007)
Sweeting et al. (2009)
Why? We are not yet certain. But, first, humans are animals of comparison (some of the newest evidence, from brain scans, is reported in Fliessbach et al., 2007). What I want subconsciously（潜意识的） is to have three zoomy BMWs and for my colleagues in the office corridor at work to have mere rusting, spluttering Fords. Unfortunately, the tide of economic growth lifts all boats, so where having three glamorous cars was unusual, eventually it becomes the norm, and any relative gains are thereby neutralised. Second, people choose things—such as high-pressure kinds of work and long commutes away from their families and their dogs and their fishing buddies—that, despite what they think, will often not make them happier. Economists have ignored the research on "affective forecasting mistakes" by psychologists like Daniel Gilbert; they need to wake up to it.（我觉得是“意识到”的意思）

Unsurprisingly, the citizens of the rich nations find it difficult to grasp that higher gross domestic product from this point onwards will not make society happier. Like people in earlier times who could not conceive of themselves as creatures glued by gravity onto a spherical planet, they trust their intuitions (because as individuals they like to become richer and assume whole countries must be the same). One cannot blame them. But the evidence shows they are wrong.

As an undergraduate, I was taught that economics is a social science concerned with the efficient allocation of scarce resources. In 2010, a better definition is needed. Economics is a social science concerned with the way to allocate plentiful resources to maximize a society's emotional prosperity and mental health.（我觉得真个定义可以学一下）

A gravely dated pursuit.

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NO.3


Gross domestic product (GDP) is a key measure of a country's economic activity—the purpose for which it was designed. It was not designed to be, nor should be regarded as, a comprehensive measure of society's well-being. Nonetheless（虽然如此）, it has also proven useful as a gauge of an economy's capacity to improve living standards. It was a catastrophic decline in living standards that prompted the development of national, or GDP, accounts. Trying to design policies in the 1930s to combat the Great Depression, President Roosevelt had only such sketchy data as stock prices, freight car loadings and incomplete indices of industrial production on which to rely. In response, the US Department of Commerce developed a set of national economic accounts that for the first time provided a comprehensive framework to guide policy decisions to assist the millions of people who were out of work.（ 提出论点  举了个小例子证明了一下）

GDP, and the broader set of national income, product and wealth accounts, has stood the test time and no other measure has proven a worthy alternative. Simon Kuznets, one of the early architects of the accounts, in 1941 recognised the limitations of focusing on market activities and excluding household production and a broad range of other non-market activities and assets that have productive value or yield satisfaction. Yet 75 years and lots of research later, there is no broader social measurement tool that officials would agree is valid and useful.

It would, therefore, seem irresponsible to abandon the most comprehensive and reliable system currently available to tell us how a society is faring economically. GDP may not be a complete measure of improving living standards, but that does not make it a poor one, especially when considering what could possibly replace it today.（二三段提到GDP不完善 ， 但是确是当今最valid的评判标准，  这个角度也许可以学习一下）

There is, of course, room to improve GDP through better measuring of the distribution of the gains from economic growth and the sustainability of that growth, and selected measures of non-market activities that affect the economy—and these concepts have merit. Rather than replacing GDP, the goal might be extending and supplementing GDP and the national accounts, rather than their replacement.

Over time the national accounts have been constantly updated and extended to address changes in the economy and to keep them relevant, and many of the measurement issues raised in the current debate can be addressed within the context of these accounts. Yet extensions of the national accounts cannot be allowed to subject a critical tool for economic policy to uncertainty. Past efforts to expand conventional GDP have foundered on the inevitable problems of subjectivity and uncertainty inherent in measuring happiness, household work and other non-market activities. Critics rightly fear that the inclusion of such uncertain and subjective values in GDP will seriously diminish the essential role of the national accounts to financial markets, central banks, tax authorities and governments worldwide in measuring and managing the market economy.

Much work has focused on how to successfully broaden the utility of GDP, while preserving its core integrity. Several National Academy of Sciences studies on accounting for the environment (Nordhaus and Kokkelenberg, eds, 1999) and non-market production (Abraham and Mackie, eds, 2005), as well as the System of National Accounts (1993) guidelines for compiling GDP, have concluded that an expansion of the GDP accounts should take place in supplemental, or satellite, accounts that extend their scope without reducing the usefulness of the core GDP accounts. They also conclude that such an expansion should focus on economic aspects of non-market and near-market activities—such as energy and the economy's use of natural resources, the impact of investments in research and development (R&D), health care, or education—and not attempt to measure the welfare effect of such interactions.

Recognizing the concerns of subjectivity and uncertainty, the focus should remain on creating "new" estimates within the framework of the existing accounts. For example, the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission (2009), which explored expanded welfare measures, has suggested a number of ways that "classical GDP issues" can be addressed within existing GDP accounts or through an extension and improvement of measures included in existing（现存的） accounts.

The US Bureau of Economic Analysis focuses on just such improvements, and President Obama this year proposed extensions within the scope of the existing accounts that would provide new measures of:
how growth in income is distributed across households, other sectors and regions;
the sustainability of trends in saving, investment, asset prices and other key variables important to understanding business cycles, economic growth and living standards.

There are, however, limits to what can reasonably be included in GDP. For many years the problem has not been with GDP, but rather the singular focus on GDP alone as a measure of society's welfare. Many non-market measures of welfare may be better included in such measures as the newly authorized US National Academies Key National Indicators System.

These and other efforts in the coming years will lead to a more inclusive set of measurement tools that will enhance our understanding of countries' standards of living. This progress is inevitable, but it does not render current GDP data inadequate. GDP will continue to play a crucial role in measuring social progress in and among countries.