单项选择题

Rich Man, Poor Man
Gluers and sawyers from the furniture factories in Galax near the mountains of Virginia lost their jobs last year when American retailers decided they could find a better supplier in China. At the other end of the furniture industry Robert Nardelli lost his job this month when Home Depot decided it could find a better chief executive in his deputy. But any likeness ends there. Mr. Nardelli’s exit was as extravagantly rewarded as his occupation of the corner office had been. Next to his $ 210 million severance pay, the redundant woodworkers packages were mean to the point of provocation (激怒).
That’s the way it goes all over the rich world. If you look back 20 years, the total pay of the typical top American manager has increased from roughly 40 times the average--the level for four decades -- to 110 times the average now. These are the glory days of global capitalism. The mix of technology and economic integration transforming the world has created unparalleled prosperity. In the past five years the world has seen faster growth than at any time since the early 1970s. Having joined the global labor force, hundreds of millions of people in developing countries have won the chance to escape squalor (肮脏) and poverty. Hundreds of millions more stand to join them.
That promises to improve the lot of humanity as a whole incalculably. But in the rich world labor’s share of GDP has fallen to historic lows, while profits are soaring. A clamor is abroad that Mr. Nardelli and his friends among the top hundredth -- or even the top thousandth -- of the population are seizing the lion’s share of globalization’s gains. Meanwhile everyone else -- not just blue-collar factory workers but also the wider office -- working middle class -- shuffles along, grimly waiting for the next round of cost-cuts.
Fear and clothing
Signs of a backlash abound. Stephen Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, has counted 27 pieces of anti-China legislation in Congress since early 2005. The German Marshall Fund found last year that, although most people still say they favor free trade, more than half of Americans want to protect domestic companies from foreign competition even if that slows economic growth. In a hint of labor’s possible resurgence, the House of Representatives has just voted to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade. Even Japan is alarmed about inequality, stagnant (不景气的) wages and jobs going to China. Europe has tied itself in knots trying to "manage" trade in Chinese textiles.
Should you blame your computer
The panic comes in part from a rush to lump all the blame on globalization. Technology -- an even less resistible force -- is also destroying white- and blue-collar tasks in a puff of automation and may play a bigger role in explaining rising wage inequality. The distinctions between technology and globalization count, if only because people tend to welcome computers but condemn foreigners (whether as competitors or immigrants). That makes technology easier to defend.
For economists, the debate about whether technology or globalization is responsible for capital’s rewards outpacing those of labor is crucial, complicated and unresolved. One school, which blames globalization, argues that the rocketing profits and sluggish middling wages of the past few years are the long-lasting results of trade, as all those new developing-country workers enter the labor market. This school says that technology helps workers by increasing their productivity and benefits them in other aspects. The opposing school retorts(反驳) that technology does not increase wages immediately as they blaming globalization say, and some sorts of information technology seem to boost the returns to capital instead.
The first rule is to avoid harming the very miracle that generates so much wealth. Take for instance the arguments about high executive pay. Some say this is simply a matter of governance -- and forcing company boards to work better. If only it were that simple. High pay is, by and large, the price needed to attract and motivate gifted managers, as our special report argues in this issue. The abuses of companies such as Home Depot obscure how most high pay has been caused not by powerful bosses fixing their own wages, but by the changing job of the chief executive, the growth of large companies and the competitive market for talent. Executive-pay restrictions would not put that horse back in its box, but they would harm companies.
If the winners are difficult to curb without doing damage to your economy, the losers are tough to help. Doling out aid for the victims of trade makes sense in theory; but in practice it is increasingly hard to do. When the jobs going abroad are not whole assembly lines, but bits of departments, how exactly do you pick out the person who has lost his job to globalization from the millions of people changing jobs for other reasons And, hardhearted though it may sound, most of the gains from trade and technology alike come from the way they redeploy investment and labor to activities that create more wealth. That, like all change, can be painful; but it is what makes a country richer. A policy locking people into jobs that could be better done elsewhere is self-defeating.
The limits of redistribution
If protectionism will not help the losers, what about using the tax system Some argue that redistributing more cash from the Nardellis to the Galaxians would not just make society less unequal; it would also buy middle-class support for globalization. In fact the two arguments should be kept separate.
This newspaper has long argued that a mobile society is better than an equal one: disparities are tolerable if combined with meritocracy and general economic advance. For decades America has shown how dynamic economies are better than equality-driven ones at generating overall prosperity. That still leaves plenty of room to debate how progressive to make taxation, or how lavish to make public services. But a society would want compelling evidence that the social contract had been torn up before flexing the tax system to offset what may turn out to be only temporary fluctuations in relative incomes. And it makes little sense for free-traders to use taxes to buy off people from voting for protectionism, when doing so would in any case be against their interests.
Active, not reactive
Instead, the way to ease globalization is the same as the way to ease other sorts of economic change, including the impact of technology. The aim is to help people to move jobs as comparative advantage shifts rapidly from one activity to the next. That means less friction in labor markets and regulatory systems that help investment. It means an education system that equips people with general skills that make them mobile. It means detaching health care and pensions from employment, so that every time you move your job, you are not risking an awful lot else besides. And for those who lose their jobs -- from whatever cause -- it means beefing up assistance: generous training and active policies to help them find work.
None of that comes cheap -- and much of it takes years to work. But an economy that gains from globalization can more easily find the money to pay for it all. The business people and politicians gathering on their Swiss Alp next week should certainly spend more time worrying about the citizens of Galax; but they also need to be far more courageous about defending a process that can do so much good even if its impact can sometimes appear so cruel. Compared with Mr. Nardelli’s severance pay, the woodworkers’ ______.