决战1010精英组Economist阅读——Finn分贴

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New Labour






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★原文链接★ http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/169
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词汇 短语 句子 例证 观点 注释

Who killed New Labour?

The death throes of Britain’s ruling party suggest several possible culprits (罪犯，这里指问题的根或原因)

Jupiter Images
Sep 18th 2008 | From The Economist print edition

“WE MEET ina spirit of hope,” the new leader of theLabour Party (英国政党，过去与工会的联系促使其在创造国家经济繁荣和提供社会服务上扮演活跃的角色。) told its annual conference. “For the first time in a generation”, he declaimed, “it is the right wing that appears lost and disillusioned.” The speech ended with an incantation (咒语): “New Labour! New Britain! New Labour! New Britain!”

That was Tony Blair, in 1994. It was a speech that announced the birth of New Labour—the flexible social-democratic (社会民主党) movement that dominated British politics until very recently. Next week, at this year’s party conference, Gordon Brown—Mr Blair’ssuccessor (继任者) as Labour leader and prime minister—will also give a speech, conceivably his last big address in those offices. This one may come to be regarded as New Labour’selegy (挽歌).
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New Labour is dying. It has lost the three vital qualities that kept it alive and vibrant (充满活力的) (中心句). First, discipline. A shared purpose and scowling partyapparatchiks (执政党工作人员) once bound Labour MPs (国会议员) to a party line; now some are calling for Mr Brown to stand down (退休)—and he may yet have to, little more than a year after he moved into Number 10. The rumblings (general but unofficial talk or opinion often of dissatisfaction) about his leadership already constitute a crisis, and a humiliation, for him and his party.

Second, intellectual confidence: the party that once defined the intellectual terrain of politics has been reduced toaping (模仿) its opponents’ policies. Most important, New Labour has lost the habit of winning.

What has been one of the great election-winning forces in British political history has been routed in a run of parliamentary (议会) by-elections and local votes. Its poll ratings are so bad—a survey released on September 18th gave the Conservatives a 28-point lead—that recovery before the next general election, due by June 2010, looks almost impossible. On current form, the resulting defeat may be Labour’s worst since the second world war. In the aftermath (在此之后) of such a rout, some Labour supporters fear, the party may disintegrate, with a revived Old Labour faction, wedded to the ideals of punitive taxation and a monolithic (统一的) state, reasserting its anachronistic grip.

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Mr Brown, in the library

But if the demise (遗赠) is plain enough (足够清楚), the explanation is less so. Who killed New Labour? There are three possible solutions: murder, natural causes or political suicide. (中心句)

For some Labour MPs, the culprit is obvious: Mr Brown. He waited most of his life to fill the top job, scheming and manoeuvring during his long years as chancellor of the exchequer (财政部), destabilising (是不是打错了？ destabilizing) the government with his simmering (即将爆发，酝酿) ambition and rows with Mr Blair. In June 2007 he finally got his wish—and botched it. Under Mr Brown’s leadership, the party has haemorrhaged (hemorrhaged?) support and credibility. Unlike John Major—who also took over in mid-term from a long-serving and iconic predecessor, but whom the public mostly viewed as the decent if hapless leader of a disreputable rabble (乌合之众，暴民)—this prime minister is even more unpopular than his party.




Mr Brown’s fingerprints are all over the two most damaging mistakes of his brief premiership. (中心句) First, the calamitous (灾难的)episode last autumn, when he floated the idea of calling a general election, then pulled back. It was a tragicomedy (悲喜交加) in three acts: by vacillating and then “bottling” it, Mr Brown ruined his claim to strong leadership; by claiming that alarming opinion-poll results had not swayed his decision, he undermined his trustworthiness; by meekly (好句型)and hastily emulating a popular Tory (保守党) idea on reducing inheritance tax, he seemed plagiaristic and desperate.

The other main debacle (溃败，灾害)concerned the abolition of the 10% income-tax band, a change Mr Brown announced in 2007 in the last budget he delivered as chancellor. When it came into effect in April, several million low-income households were disadvantaged; the resulting furore (轰动，狂怒)

eventually led to an emergency tax cut. And worse than both these cock-ups (一团糟)has been Mr Brown’s personal and consistent failure to speak to the electorate in a language it understands—in other words, to discharge the key communications responsibility borne by all 21st-century democratic politicians. In place of (取代)vision and placating empathy, he seems to offer only droning iterations.

And if Mr Brown is the culprit, the remedy is plain: to get rid of him. That is the aim of the dozen or so Labour MPs—a couple of junior officials (promptly sacked), a gaggle of (一群)former ministers and a gang of backbenchers—who have publicly tried (公开审理), but so far failed, to force a party-leadership contest. Their stand has been touchingly unco-ordinated; more effective, it may transpire, for seeming heartfelt rather than conspiratorial. Their aim is to pressure members of the cabinet (内阁) to push Mr Brown out, using the threat of group resignations if he refuses. Ousting (驱逐) him would make Labour look chaotic (混乱), fractious and undemocratic. But the rebels (反叛者) calculate that short-term embarrassment is preferable to electoral obliteration.

On September 16th David Cairns, a minister in the Scottish office, resigned, citing doubts about Mr Brown’s leadership. There are many others in government who sympathise (and some with scores to settle from the decade-long hostilities between Mr Brown’s acolytes(追随者，侍僧) and Mr Blair’s). For the moment, however, the insurgents lack a high-profile champion. They also lack an agreed successor. David Miliband, the clever young foreign secretary and a supposed candidate, professes his loyalty. Ditto two of his plausible rivals, Alan Johnson, the personable health secretary, and Jack Straw, the wily(使用计谋的, 狡猾的, 有诡计的)justice secretary.

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Quietly in its bed

That may change if the rebellion mounts at or soon after next week’s conference; some members of the cabinet (内阁) have been less than full-throated (声音宏亮的)
in their support of Mr Brown. But if they think deposing him will revive New Labour at a regicidal stroke, the rebels are mistaken. New Labour is also suffering from a separate and incurable condition: old age.

Before 1997, no Labour government had served two full parliamentary (议会的, 国会的) terms in office. New Labour has managed three, winning two landslide (竞选中压倒多数的选票) victories in the general elections of 1997 and 2001 and a comfortable parliamentary majority in 2005. It has outlived the other governments of the centre-left that were once its peers—in France, Germany, America and elsewhere. But it has not—could not—defy political gravity indefinitely. It had to fall in the end.

Look at the evidence closely and it is clear that the decline precedes Mr Brown’s move to Number 10. Between 1997 and 2005 the party lost 4m voters. It won its last general election with just 35.2% of the popular vote, the lowest winning share ever. The grand coalition of working- and middle-class voters that swept Mr Blair to power in 1997—enabling him, with hubris (傲慢) but some justification, to describe his party as “the political wing of the British people”—has crumbled. Disappointments have mounted (增加), as they must; the public craves (渴望) new faces; antagonism to the Tories has faded. New Labour understands that natural process, which is partly why it replaced Mr Blair, just as the Tories confected an impression of change by installing Mr Major in place of Margaret Thatcher (撒切尔夫人).

(转折)Yet change and attrition in personnel—a natural consequence of the government’s longevity—has weakened New Labour too. Several of its most talented and determined campaigners—some of the people who created New Labour—have, one way or another, departed. (本篇用了很多“—”既不会使人看晕也会增加句子的复杂性)Peter Mandelson and David Blunkett were obliged to leave the government twice each. Robin Cook resigned over Iraq.Jaundiced as his relationship with the country became (not least because of Iraq), Mr Blair was by light years the party’s biggest star.

The other natural cause that has caught up with New Labour is the economic cycle—exacerbated (恶化; 激怒; 增剧) and accelerated, in this case, by the credit crunch and rises in commodities prices. Inflation in Britain has crept up (攀升) and growth stalled; recession, albeit(尽管, 虽然) perhaps a short one, is imminent if not already happening. The hardship may so far be mild compared with previous downturns in the 1970s and 1980s. But those are now distant memories, and for young voters scarcely a memory at all.

For a prime minister who built his reputation, and his claim to the premiership, on economic management, the political consequences are especially acute. When he was chancellor, Mr Brown claimed, rashly(轻率地) and repeatedly, to have led Britain out of the old pattern of “boom and bust”. He sucked up credit for economic success, for which New Labour was only marginally responsible. He ought not to be surprised that the public blames him now.



PA Bushy-tailed Blair and Brown in 1994

Among some Labour MPs, these twin conditions—a sense of superannuation (老年退休; 陈旧, 过时), and the gathering economic gloom—have induced a kind of fatalism (宿命论): a belief that, disappointing as Mr Brown may be, no other leader could resist the forces that are driving Labour to defeat. This despair may constitute the prime minister’s best hope of avoiding a coup (政变). And in their way these implacable but impersonal（客观的） elements offer a consoling explanation of Labour’s woes（悲哀, 苦痛, 悲痛）, especially for Mr Brown himself.

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By its own hand

But they are not the whole solution of the New Labour mystery either. It is true that time kills all governments and that economic troubles often make them unpopular. (It is true that… and that… 并列成分)But the Tories won an election during a downturn in 1992. And it was not inevitable that three parliamentary terms would be New Labour’s limit (Mr Blair used to talk about bequeathing (遗赠, 遗留) a “progressive century”). There is another factor, one which few Labour MPs wish to confront.

“It is not this or that minister that is to blame,” Mr Blair said of the Tories in that 1994 speech: it was, he said, a whole ideology that had failed. Something similar might be said of New Labour today. Its approach to government increasingly looks expensive, exhausted and outmoded.

New Labour emerged in the 1990s from a double epiphany on the part of Mr Blair, Mr Brown and others: an intellectual acknowledgment that deregulation and free markets were, after all, the best way to maximise prosperity; and a political recognition that(并列), with the shrinkage of its traditional working-class base, Labour would never win power again unless it courted and reassured the middle classes.

These realizations(realization(美)) were honed—partly in wonkathons with Bill Clinton and other New Democrats—into a rough-and-ready political philosophy. It purported to offer a new path between socialism and neoliberalism(新自由主义), promising a utopia(乌托邦, 理想国) of “ands”: competitive tax rates and quality public services, which would be blessed with both investment and reform; patriotism and internationalism (as Mr Blair wrote in a 1998 pamphlet on the “third way”) and rights and responsibilities; tough on (对 ... 严厉的) crime and tough on the causes of crime; a free market and a robust social safety net; have cake and eat it (有鱼和熊掌兼得). The Old Labour fixation on equality of outcomes was replaced by a new notion of “equal worth”. The state was to be an “enabler” and guarantor. The poor would be “levelled up” rather than the rich squeezed down. Mr Blair famously did not have “a burning ambition…to make sure David Beckham earns less.”

The rhetoric(修辞, 修辞学, 华丽虚饰的语言) was excoriated (剥皮, 严厉的责难) by some as vapid (乏味的, 无生气的, 走了气味的) marketing, and by others as thinly disguised neo-Thatcherism(新撒切尔主义). But New Labour did, in fact, have corresponding policies. It demonstrated its commitment to macroeconomic stability by giving the Bank of England autonomy in the setting of interest rates; just as the New Democrats fetishised budget-balancing, so Mr Brown, as chancellor, bound government expenditure with his fiscal “golden rules” (which he now looks set to break). But there was also a minimum wage, assorted welfare-to-work schemes and covert redistribution of wealth through a fiddly(要求高精度的，需要手巧的) system of tax credits. There was lots of cash for public services, combined, albeit(尽管, 虽然) belatedly(延迟地, 延续地), with some market-based reform; the introduction of tuition fees for universities; more freedom for some hospitals and schools; the encouragement of competition among providers, including private ones.

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Cameron, the grave-robber

Many of these policies were initially opposed by the Conservatives, but most have now been adopted by David Cameron, their leader since 2005. Mr Cameron has also accepted New Labour’s social liberalism, updating his party’s official views on sexuality, and evinced(表明, 表示) (or simulated) a concern for the poor. New Labour has succeeded in making compassion compulsory. And Mr Cameron has embraced New Labour’s public-service reform agenda—while indicating that Britain’s universal, tax-funded health service will remain politically sacrosanct(极神圣的) under a Tory government. Just as New Labour swallowed deregulation and free markets, so Mr Cameron has incorporated many of New Labour’s central tenets(原则，宗旨). He, too, has helped to kill New Labour—but also, arguably(雄辩地; 可以认为地), to ensure some of its ideas endure, reincarnated as Tory policy.

Unfortunately(过渡段),for the party and the country, New Labour was also undermined from its inception by internal weaknesses and contradictions. These have always been visible, but now look terminal.

One of the problems is that having and eating the cake is possible only if the cake is big enough. New Labour spent lavishly(浪费地; 丰富地) on the public services, at first as a substitute for proper reform and then as lubrication(润滑; 加油) for it. With the economy growing steadily, healthy government receipts paid for the generous benefits and tax credits. Now, perforce(必然地), the splurge(卖弄, 夸示, 炫耀) is over—and tougher times require choices that New Labour hoped, and for a long time managed, to avoid. It has come to look rather like a fair-weather creed.

The pressure on the budget has also revealed fissures(裂缝, 裂隙) within the Labour Party, cracks that have opened periodically but are now gaping. New Labour, like most political parties, has always been a precarious(不稳定的, 危险的, 不安的) coalition of parliamentarians and interests, from trade unionists who submitted to the “third way” reluctantly, to sharp-suited “modernisers”. Economic hardship and tightening spending constraints have brought the resulting tensions into the open: witness the recent row over whether the government should impose a windfall tax on energy companies and use the money to help poor families meet their rising fuel bills (it didn’t).

Those disagreements may also help to save Mr Brown, since his critics have no coherent view on the changes that ought to follow. It isn’t only the money that has run out. So have the ideas.

Although he was one of New Labour’s architects, as chancellor Mr Brown cultivated a reputation as less New and more straightforwardly Labour than Mr Blair, perhaps because this stance strengthened his hand in internal party politics. As prime minister, he at first seemed unenthusiastic about Mr Blair’s efforts to inject choice and competition into the public services. But he has recently seemed more committed, appreciating, perhaps, that simply pledging improvements, without a credible theory of how they might be achieved(介词), wouldn’t wash.In fact, many of his biggest troubles as prime minister have derived from an excess of New Labour orthodoxy. His government’s indecision over how to handle the collapse of Northern Rock, the bank that was an early victim of the credit crunch(咬碎; 扎扎地踏; 咬碎声), was partly born of a violent allergy to the term “nationalisation”, with its whiff(一吹, 一阵香气, 一吸) of Old Labour shibboleths(口令，陈腔滥调，术语). His quixotic (堂吉诃德式的; 不能实现的; 狂想的)determination to enact illiberal anti-terror laws reflects a deep New Labour conviction that it must never be out-toughed on crime and security.

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A thousand cuts

All the same, the intellectual momentum(动力; 要素) that gathered under Mr. Blair has dissipated( 散失, 浪费, 驱散; 消散, 放荡). Mr. Brown may not have unraveled( 阐明, 解开, 解释; 散开) existing policies, but there is little sign of a new phase of reform: in primary schools, for example, or in the powers and structure of local government. New Labour’s push to decentralise


( decentralize 分散，疏散，划分，配置) power and decision-making—to create a new kind of state—has always been retarded(延迟, 阻止, 使减速; 减慢; 受到阻滞) by a countervailing (补偿; 抵销; 对抗; 抵消) instinct, one that combines the retentive neurosis that British governments of all stripes have shared with a residual old-fashioned statism(国家统制，中央集权制). The haphazard (偶然的，随意的，杂乱无章的)
effort now seems to have stalled.

Finally, during New Labour’s long spell in office, the world has changed. The new worries of terrorism and immigration favour parties of the right across Europe. New Labour, meanwhile, has yet to hit upon a distinct and persuasive approach to the new, strategic problem of climate change or the more immediate one of mayhem
(重伤罪，故意的伤害罪，有意的破坏或暴行) in the global economy. A deficit of imagination is a problem for any administration, but a crippling one for governments of the centre-left, which tend to live and die by their ideas.

“Their time is up.” Mr Blair said of the Tories in 1994: “Their philosophy is done. Their experiment is over.” New Labour seems, at the moment, to have reached that point too. Old age, penury(贫困, 贫穷), Mr Cameron, Mr Brown: they are all incriminated. But, in the end, New Labour killed itself.

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词汇 短语 句子 例证 观点 注释

Ties that bind

Andrew Rawnsley's political vivisection
Mar 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition




Foes and friends

The End of the Party: the Rise and Fall of New Labour. By Andrew Rawnsley. Viking; 802 pages; £25. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

LABOUR under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown has ruled Britain for longer than any non-Conservative (非保守) government in the past 100 years. With an election due in the next three months, there is a real chance that the last days of Pompeii (庞贝城的最后一日(1834年),爱德华·乔治·厄尔·利顿1803-1873英国作家,以其颇受欢迎的历史小说而闻名) are upon us. How will history judge New Labour—as an idealistic attempt to improve lives through a blend of free-market economics and social justice, or a cynical sucking of power from longstanding and broadly functioning institutions to a small group of media-hungry, manipulative politicians?

This engrossing (引人入胜的) book by Andrew Rawnsley, like its predecessor a decade ago, “Servants of the People”, has pulled together a lot of clues. Less than a week old, it already has Westminster (英国议会) agog (渴望的; 激动的; 极兴奋的) with its well-sourced but roundly (严厉地, 露骨地) denied allegations ( 断言; 辩解), serialised (serialize(美)) in the Observer weekly newspaper for which Mr Rawnsley writes. Chief among these is the idea that the prime minister is a bully who shouts and throws things. But there is much more in this detailed account of the years since Labour’s second victory, in 2001.

We see Mr Blair change from a warmly communicative, consensus-seeking Peter Pan (《彼得·潘》是英国著名作家杰·姆·巴里（1860—1937）的童话剧和童话故事，出版于1904年。) to a grey and embattled conviction politician, as the war in Iraq hijacks his agenda for social change and a role “at the heart of Europe”. Then there is Mr Brown, the clunking brainbox impatient for his turn, who bragged (吹牛, 自夸, 自吹) as chancellor that he had commanded boom and bust to cease (停止, 结束; 停止, 终止) and was caught behind the knees as prime minister when the economy collapsed. Around them flutters a Greek chorus (合唱; 齐声; 合唱队) of advisers, civil servants, old friends and new spinmasters, whose aggrieved (使 ... 受屈) or gloating (得意扬扬的; 幸灾乐祸的) comments bring these pages to life.

Mr Rawnsley’s book is essentially about relationships, and three in particular. The central one is, of course, that between Mr Blair and Mr Brown. Once friends as well as allies, the two modernised the Labour Party in the early 1990s, dragging it from its industrial, collectivist roots to the sunlit uplands of middle-class aspiration. Then Mr Blair bagged the party leadership, promising Mr Brown his turn in time. From this alliance, poisoned by frustrated ambition, sprang (弹起, 反弹, 弹开; 突然出现) both the good and the increasingly dysfunctional bad of New Labour in power. In one encounter in 2006, Mr Brown “kept shouting at me that I’d ruined his life”, Mr Blair allegedly (据传说, 据宣称) told his friends. The chancellor made his own arrangements for ousting the party’s most successful election-winner (or so Mr Rawnsley claims).

Mr Blair’s ability to sway people was the key to his success. Yet he was fatally weak when dealing with strong men, says Mr Rawnsley. Just as he could not control his chancellor (he was, for instance, totally “boxed in” by Mr Brown on sterling and the euro), he found it next to impossible to stand up (站得住脚的，经久耐用) to George Bush. Time after time Mr Blair vows (立誓, 起誓要; 起誓, 承认, 发誓; 公开宣布) to his intimates that he will tackle the American president on the Middle East peace process, or reconstructing Iraq after the war, but fails to nail (使牢固，抓住) it.

The other important relationship is that between Mr Brown and Peter Mandelson, the third architect of New Labour. Lord Mandelson backed Mr Blair over Mr Brown early on and incurred (招致, 带来, 惹起; 遭受) the latter’s hurt and resentful enmity. But in the depths of despair a year into a yearned-for (盼望已久的，渴望的) premiership that had misfired on most fronts, Mr Brown turned again to his former friend. The return to government in 2008 of Lord Mandelson, with his fine Machiavellian (马基雅弗利的, 权谋术的) hand, was one of the few genuine surprises of recent political life.

Against this background of loyalties and betrayals, triumphs and gagging (使窒息, 压制言论自由) disasters, what are New Labour’s real achievements? Bringing peace to Northern Ireland, incontrovertibly; improving (though at excessive cost) health care and education; perhaps promoting a more tolerant Britain. Now New Labour has grown old in office: not only the notoriously tongue-tied Mr Brown but even that smoothie, Mr Blair, have struggled to preserve the alliance of working and middle-class voters who once supported it.

Yet Mr Rawnsley may have been too quick to write off New Labour, as his book’s title suggests he has. The Tories’ once-commanding lead in the polls has narrowed in recent weeks and there is now a real contest for power. As has been said in another melodramatic (通俗剧风格的，戏剧似的，感情夸张的) context, “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” (鹿死谁手尚未可知)

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Innovation



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★原文链接★ http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/168
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About this debate

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.

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      ★Background Reading A★

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词汇 短语 句子 例证 观点 注释

Private-sector space flight: Moon dreams

The Americans may still go to the moon before the Chinese
Feb 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition


Can you direct me to reception, please?

WHEN America’s space agency, NASA (国家航空和航天局), announced its spending plans in February, some people worried that its cancellation of the Constellation (星座) moon programme had ended any hopes of Americans returning to the Earth’s rocky satellite. The next footprints on the lunar regolith (表土，风化层) were therefore thought likely to be Chinese. Now, though, the private sector is arguing that the new spending plan actually makes it more likely America will return to the moon.

The new plan encourages firms to compete to provide transport to low Earth orbit (LEO). The budget proposes $6 billion over five years to spur (促进，刺激) the development of commercial crew and cargo services to the international space station. This money will be spent on “man-rating” existing rockets, such as Boeing’s Atlas V, and on developing new spacecraft that could be launched on many different rockets. The point of all this activity is to create healthy private-sector competition for transport to the space station—and in doing so to drive down (压低) the cost of getting into space.

Eric Anderson, the boss of a space-travel company called Space Adventures, is optimistic about the changes. They will, he says, build “railroads into space”. Space Adventures has already sent seven people to the space station, using Russian rockets. It would certainly benefit from a new generation of cheap launchers.

Another potential beneficiary (受惠者，受益人)—and advocate of private-sector transport—is Robert Bigelow, a wealthy entrepreneur who founded a hotel chain called Budget Suites of America. Mr Bigelow has so far spent $180m of his own money on space development—probably more than any other individual in history. He has been developing so-called expandable space habitats, a technology he bought from NASA a number of years ago.

These habitats, which are folded up (折叠起来) for launch and then inflated (使膨胀，使得意)
in space, were designed as interplanetary vehicles for a trip to Mars, but they are also likely to be useful general-purpose accommodation. The company already has two scaled-down (按比例缩减) versions in orbit.

Mr Bigelow is preparing to build a space station that will offer cheap access to space to other governments—something he believes will generate a lot of interest. The current plan is to launch the first full-scale habitat (called Sundancer) in 2014. Further modules will be added to this over the course of a year, and the result will be a space station with more usable volume than the existing international one. Mr Bigelow’s price is just under $23m per astronaut. That is about half what Russia charges for a trip to the international station, a price that is likely to go up after the space shuttle retires later this year. He says he will be able to offer this price by bulk-buying (大宗购买) launches on newly man-rated rockets. Since most of the cost of space travel is the launch, the price might come down even more if the private sector can lower the costs of getting into orbit.

The ultimate aim of all his investment, Mr Bigelow says, is to get to the moon. LEO is merely his proving ground. He says that if the technology does work in orbit, the habitats will be ideal for building bases on the moon. To go there, however, he will have to prove that the expandable habitat does indeed work, and also generate substantial returns on his investment in LEO, to provide the necessary cash.

If all goes well, the next target will be L1, the point 85% of the way to the moon where the gravitational pulls of moon and Earth balance. “It’s a terrific dumping off (倾销) point,” he says. “We could transport a completed lunar base [to L1] and put it down on the lunar surface intact (完好无缺的).”

There are others with lunar ambitions, too. Some 20 teams are competing for the Google Lunar X Prize, a purse of $30m that will be given to the first private mission which lands a robot on the moon, travels across the surface and sends pictures back to Earth. Space Adventures, meanwhile, is in discussions with almost a dozen potential clients about a circumlunar (绕月球的) mission, costing $100m a head.

The original Apollo project was mainly a race to prove the superiority (优越性) of American capitalism over Soviet communism (苏联共产主义). Capitalism won—but at the cost of creating, in NASA, one of the largest bureaucracies in American history. If the United States is to return to the moon, it needs to do so in a way that is demonstrably superior to the first trip—for example, being led by business rather than government. Engaging in another government-driven (政府为主导) spending battle, this time with the Chinese, will do nothing more than (仅仅，只是) show that America has missed the point.

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词汇 短语 句子 例证 观点 注释

Climate-change politics: Cap-and-trade's last hurrah

The decline of a once wildly popular idea

Mar 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Gaia lent an unhelpful hand

IN THE 1990s cap-and-trade(“总量管制与交易制度”)—the idea of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions by auctioning off (拍卖) a set number of pollution permits, which could then be traded in a market—was the darling of the green policy circuit. A similar approach to sulphur dioxide emissions, introduced under the 1990 Clean Air Act, was credited with having helped solve acid-rain problems quickly and cheaply. And its great advantage was that it hardly looked like a tax at all, though it would bring in a lot of money.

The cap-and-trade provision expected in the climate legislation that Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham have been working on, which may be unveiled (使公诸于众, 揭幕, 揭开; 显露, 除去面纱)shortly, will be a poor shadow of that once alluring (诱惑, 引诱) idea. Cap-and-trade will not be the centerpiece (中心装饰品) of the legislation (as it was of last year’s House climate bill, Waxman-Markey), but is instead likely to apply only to electrical utilities, at least for the time being. Transport fuels will probably be approached with some sort of tax or fee; industrial emissions will be tackled with regulation and possibly, later on, carbon trading. The hope will be to cobble (修补, 补缀) together cuts in emissions similar in scope to those foreseen under the House bill, in which the vast majority of domestic cuts in emissions came from utilities.

This composite (混合成的) approach is necessary because the charms of economy-wide (经济性) cap-and-trade have faded badly. The ability to raise money from industry is not so attractive in a downturn (低迷时期). Market mechanisms have lost their appeal as a result of the financial crisis. More generally, climate is not something the public seems to feel strongly about at the moment, in part because of that recession, in part perhaps because they have worries about the science (see article), in part, it appears, because the winter has been a snowy one.

The public is, though, quite keen on new initiatives on energy, which any Senate bill (参议院的法案) will shower with incentives and subsidies whether the energy in question be renewable, nuclear, pumped out (抽出)from beneath the seabed or still confined to research laboratories. So the bill will need to raise money, which is why cap-and-trade is likely to remain for the utilities, and revenues will be raised from transport fuels. A complex way of doing this, called a linked fee, would tie the revenues to the value of carbon in the utility market; a straightforward carbon tax may actually have a better chance of passing.

Energy bills have in the past garnered (储存, 贮藏) bipartisan (两党连立的) support, and this one also needs to. That is why Senator Graham matters. He could bring on board both Democrats and Republicans. Mr Graham’s contribution has been to focus the rhetoric ( 修辞, 修辞学, 华丽虚饰的语言) not just on near-term (目前的，短暂的) jobs, but also on longer-term competitiveness. Every day America does not have climate legislation, he argues, is a day that China’s grip on (控制;握在) the global green economy gets tighter.

He also thinks action on the issue would be good for his party. While short-term Republican interests call for opposition, the party’s long-term interests must include broadening its support. Among young people, for example, polling (投票; 民意测验) suggests that the environment, and the climate, matter a great deal.

Unfortunately for this argument, tactics (战略, 策略) matter, and young voters are unlikely to play a great role in the mid-term election. Other Republicans may think it better to wait before re-establishing the party’s green credentials. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, for example, is happy to talk about climate as a problem, and talks about the desirability of some sort of carbon restriction—perhaps a tax, or some version of Maria Cantwell’s “cap-and-dividend” scheme. But she expresses no great urgency about the subject. And she has introduced one of two measures intended to curtail (缩减, 简略) the power the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now has to regulate carbon, on the ground that (其理由是) that is a matter for legislation sometime in the future.

The EPA’s new powers undoubtedly make the charms of legislation greater. Some industrial lobbies (游说议员)
may decide that the bill will provide the certainty they need to decide about future investment, and get behind it. The White House has been supportive of late, inviting senators over to talk. But it remains an uphill (向上的，费力的) struggle, and the use of reconciliation (和解, 顺从, 调和) to pass health care could greatly increase the gradient of the hill, as Mr Graham has made abundantly clear.

If the bill does not pass, it will change environmental politics in America and beyond. The large, comparatively business-friendly environmental groups that have been proponents of trading schemes will lose ground (退却，落后，让步), with organisations closer to the grassroots (基层的, 一般民众的), and perhaps with a taste for civil disobedience, gaining power. Carbon-trading schemes elsewhere in the world have already been deprived of a vast new market—Waxman-Markey, now dead, would have seen a great many carbon credits bought in from overseas—and if America turned away from cap-and-trade altogether they would look even less transformative than they do today. And as market-based approaches lose relevance, what climate action continues may come to lean more heavily on (依靠) the command-and-control techniques they were intended to replace.

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Attack of the really quite likeable tomatoes

The success of genetically modified crops provides opportunities to win over their critics
Feb 25th 2010 | From The Economist print edition



IN THE 14 years since the first genetically modified crops (转基因作物) were planted commercially, their descendants, relatives and remixes(使再混合, 再搅拌) have gone forth and multiplied like profitable, high-tech pondweed. A new report (see article) shows that 25 countries now grow GM crops, with the total area under cultivation now larger than Peru (秘鲁). Three-quarters of the farmland used to grow soya (大豆, 黄豆) is now sown (播; 散布, 传播; 播种于; 使密布; 播种) with a genetically modified variant, and the figures for cotton are not that far behind, thanks to its success in India. China recently gave the safety go-ahead to its first GM rice variety and a new GM maize (玉米) that should make better pig feed. More and more plants are having their genomes sequenced: a full sequence for maize was published late last year, the soya genome in January. Techniques for altering genomes are moving ahead (前进) almost as fast as the genomes themselves are stacking up (堆积), and new crops with more than one added trait are coming to market.

Such stories of success will strike fear into some hearts, and not only in GM-averse Europe; a GM backlash (反冲, 反撞; 强烈反对) is under way in India, focused on insect-resistant aubergines (茄子).Some of these fears are understandable, but lacking supporting evidence they have never been compelling. On safety, the fear which cuts closest to home, the record continues to look good. Governments need to keep testing and monitoring, but that may be becoming easier. More precise modifications, and better technologies for monitoring stray DNA both within plants and in the environment around them, mean that it is getting easier to be sure that nothing untoward is going on.

Then there is the worry that GM crops are a way for big companies to take over the livelihoods (生计, 生活, 营生) of small farmers and, in the end, a chunk of nature itself. Seen in this light the fact that 90% of the farmers growing GM crops are comparatively poor and in developing countries is sinister (不吉利的, 左边的, 凶恶的), not salutary (有益的, 有益健康的, 有用的); given Monsanto’s dominance in America’s soyabean market, it seems to suggest incipient (有益的, 有益健康的, 有用的)world domination. It is certainly true that big firms make a lot of money selling GM seeds: the GM seed market was worth $10.5 billion in 2009, and the crops that grew from that seed were worth over $130 billion. But multinationals are not the only game in town. The governments of China (which has increased agricultural research across the board), India and Brazil are also developing new GM crops. In 2009 a GM version of an Indian cotton variety, developed in the public sector, came to market, and a variety engineered by a private Indian firm has been approved for commercialisation. Charities, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are also funding efforts in various countries to make crops more hardy or nutritious. GM seeds that come from government research bodies, or from local firms, may not arouse quite so much opposition as those from large foreign companies, especially when they provide characteristics that make crops better, not just easier to farm.

Moreover, where the seeds come from is a separate question from who should pay for them, as Mr Gates points out. As with drugs and vaccines, it is possible to get products that were developed with profit in mind to the people who need them using donor money and clever pricing and licensing deals. In the longer term, if the seeds deliver what the farmers require, the need for such special measures should diminish. After all, the whole idea is not that poor farmers should go on being poor. It is that poor farmers should get a bit richer, be able to invest a bit more, and thus increase the food available to a growing and predominantly urban population.

More than strange fruits

There is another worry about GM technology, though, that should be taken seriously. It is that its success and appeal to technophiles may, in the minds of those who pay for agricultural research, crowd out other approaches to improving farming. Because it depends on intellectual property that can be protected, GM is ripe for private investment. There is a lot of other agricultural research that is less amenable (顺从的; 对...负有义务的; 经得起检验的) to corporate ownership but still needs doing. From soil management to weather forecasts to the preservation, study and use of agricultural biodiversity, there are many ways to improve the agricultural systems on which the world’s food supply depends, and make them more resilient as well as more profitable. A farm is not a just a clever crop: it is an ecosystem managed with intelligence. GM crops have a great role to play in that development, but they are only a part of the whole.

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The moderator's opening remarks

What is the right role for government in spurring (鼓舞) innovation? The outlines of this age-old (古老的) 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 (辩驳, 揭露) that given the grave global challenges we face today—in the 1960s America thought it was the Soviet (苏维埃的) race into space, today many countries worry about climate change and pandemic (全国流行的) threats—governments need to do much more to support innovation.

Happily for us, gentle reader, the two sides in the Economist's latest debate are moving beyond such platitudes (单调, 陈腐, 平凡) to novel arguments. Arguing in favour of (赞成，支持) the motion that innovation works best when government does least is Amar Bhide, a professor at Harvard and author of "The Venturesome Economy". His opening statement roundly denounces the visions of home-grown (本国产的；自产的) Silicon Valleys that dance in the heads of bureaucrats worldwide as "a dubious conception of paradise". California's bloated (发胀的，浮肿的，傲慢的) government is bankrupt and Japan's once formidable (强大的, 艰难的, 可怕的) MITI agency is in tatters (破布条; 破衣服; 碎片), he observes, but market-minded Hong Kong is flourishing (and its hyper-commercial denizens (居民, 外来语, 外籍居民) far richer than their coddled Japanese counterparts).

He adds for good measure that the "techno-fetishist(盲目崇拜者)" view of innovation represented by the top-heavy Japanese model pales in comparison with a robust, bottom-up version of innovation that harnesses the creativity and enterprise of the many, including the "venturesome consumers". He does acknowledge that governments have a role to play: "Doing the least doesn't mean doing nothing at all." However, his advocacy of a least is best policy, though conceptually elegant (文雅的; 雅致的; 端庄的), seems a bit slippery and is probably unhelpful in practice. In future postings, perhaps he will explain how exactly governments should decide whether they are doing too little or too much to help innovation.

David Sandalow, author of "Freedom from Oil" and a senior official in America's Department of Energy, presents a robust defence of government. He does make the familiar points about the need for governments to invest in education and fundamental research. He also adds slightly more controversial arguments about why government policies are required to overcome market failures (such as the recent financial crisis, which unfairly sapped (破坏...的基础; 削弱) innovators of credit) and misaligned incentives that hold back the adoption of worthwhile innovations (like energy-saving technologies with speedy paybacks).

More striking is Mr Sandalow's linkage of the global trend towards open innovation, which means companies increasingly rely on ideas from outside their own research laboratories, with the need for greater government spending on innovation. He argues that open innovation will get technologies faster to market, but at the expense of fundamental research of the sort that AT&T Bell Labs or Xerox Parc used to do. He insists that "without government support for such research, the seed corn for future generations would be at risk". That is a clever point, but it does not answer the obvious rebuttal that governments would inevitably invest in the wrong sorts of research (think, to stick with his analogy, of the money spent by the American government subsidising corn ethanol, an environmentally questionable but politically popular fuel).

Are you waiting for further rounds of jousting to decide which side to support? Don't be a mugwump (超然派; 中立者; 骑墙派), sitting on the fence with your mug in one hand and your wump on the other. Cast your vote now.

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词汇 短语 句子 例证 观点 注释

The proposer's opening remarks

Innovation now attracts innumerable worshippers but their prayers are often quite narrow and sectarian. Silicon Valley or possibly the Israeli high-tech industry is the promised land: a wondrous (令人惊奇的, 非常的) combination of private high-tech enterprise underpinned(从下头支持, 支持, 支撑)by government-financed universities and research labs.

This is, alas (唉，哎呀(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等)), 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 (全能的, 无所不能的), visionary MITI working hand and glove with the likes of NEC, Hitachi and Fujitsu? Put aside fiascos (惨败, 大失败) 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 (有效地; 显著地), 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 (尖端) 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 organizations. And these satisfactions go beyond the material or pecuniary (金钱的, 课罚款的, 金钱上的) rewards earned: they include, for instance, the exhilaration 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 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 (多层面的) form of innovation entails (使必需; 使承担; 使蒙受) 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 (图像的) company. Mandating (命令, 要求, 指令) more math and science in high schools when most of us never use trigonometry 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.

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 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. Therefore putting many independent experiments in play raises the odds that one will work. When government gets into the game of placing bets, for instance, on new battery technologies, innovators who don't have the savvy, credentials 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 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?

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 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 (土地的; 农业的) economies. Governments had to step in, in one way or the other, to make it unrewarding to pollute. Likewise, antitrust (反垄断的; 反对垄断) laws to control commercial interactions and conduct emerged after new technologies created opportunities to realize economies of scale and scope—and realize oligopoly (寡头垄断) 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. The US chief justice has often repeated the maxim (格言; 座右铭): "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. Subsidizing networks of hydrogen pumps and new engine or battery technologies: no thanks.

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词汇 短语 句子 例证 观点 注释

The opposition's opening remarks

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(美国杜邦公司).


Why is government important to innovation?

First, because the private sector underinvests (未能投资足够的钱，投资不足) 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.

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 (先驱者, 先进者, 前导) 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 (受抑止, 受阻止) innovative technologies. The recent financial crisis choked off (使放弃(劝阻，结束，严厉责备)) capital for innovators. Without governments stepping in to provide backstop support, thousands of promising innovations would have been lost due to the unrelated vagaries (奇特行为, 反复无常的行为, 奇想) 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，充满的) 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 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 (就职典礼的，创始的) 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 (干涉) chokes off (阻断) 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.