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2024考研英语同源外刊7月:工资涨了,还感觉钱不够花?

A wage-price spiral is the stuff of inflationary nightmares. It refers to a situation when prices gallop higher—perhaps because of a sudden shock or policy missteps, or both—and wages race upward to keep pace with them, in turn feeding through to yet more price rises and yet more wage increases, and so on in a vicious circle.

工资-物价螺旋上涨是通货膨胀的噩梦。它指的是物价飞涨(可能是因为突然的冲击或政策失误，或者两者兼而有之)，工资也随之上涨，进而导致物价继续飞涨、工资继续上涨，以此类推，形成恶性循环。

It can seem as if the world’s economies have been living this horror: in America hourly earnings rose by about 6% last year, the biggest annual increase in four decades. In Britain wages excluding bonuses are rising at an annual clip of about 7%.

世界经济似乎一直被这种噩梦所笼罩：去年美国的时薪增长约6%，达到近40年来的较大年增幅。在英国，不包括奖金在内的工资正以每年7%的速度增长。

On June 14th, when the Federal Reserve elected to leave interest rates unchanged after ten consecutive increases, Jerome Powell, its chairman, warned that he was watching wage trends as one test of whether the central bank might resume raising rates in July.

6月14日，当美联储在连续十次加息后决定维持利率不变时，其主席杰罗姆·鲍威尔警告称，他正在关注工资趋势，以作为央行是否会在7月再次加息的一个指标。

But the dangers that appear in nightmares usually bear little resemblance to the threats worth worrying about in reality. The world’s uncomfortable ride with inflation over the past two years seems to point to a similar conclusion about wage-price spirals: they are a caricature of what happens to an economy with an inflation problem.

但噩梦中出现的危险通常与现实中值得担心的威胁没有多少相似之处。过去两年，全球通胀形势令人不安，这似乎指向了一个关于工资-物价螺旋的类似结论：这是对存在通货膨胀问题的经济体所发生情况的讽刺。

The historical parallel often trotted out in discussing wage-price spirals is the 1970s. Price and wage inflation seemed to interact throughout that decade, much as the spiral framework suggests. Each surge in general price inflation was followed by a surge in wage inflation, which was followed by more price inflation—and on it went.

在讨论工资-物价螺旋上涨时，20世纪70年代是经常被提到的具有相似情况的历史时间段。物价和工资通胀似乎在20世纪70年代的整个十年中相互作用，就像螺旋框架所显示的那样。每一次物价上涨都伴随着工资上涨，接着又是物价上涨，如此循环往复。

But the 1970s are flawed as evidence for the existence of spirals. The repeated waves of inflation stemmed more from successive oil-price shocks (in 1973 and 1978) than from prior wage gains. To the extent that wages and prices moved in lockstep, this reflected trade unions’ practice back then of pegging salaries to the cost of living, guaranteeing a ratchet effect. Spirals were a feature of contracts rather than proof of an economic concept.

但20世纪70年代作为螺旋存在的证据是有缺陷的。这一波又一波的通货膨胀更多是源于连续的油价冲击(1973年和1978年)，而不是之前的工资上涨。从某种程度上说，工资和物价的变动是同步的，这反映了当时工会将工资与生活成本挂钩的做法，从而保证了棘轮效应。螺旋是契约的一个特征，而不是经济概念的证明。

Late last year a group of economists at the IMF interrogated the historical record, creating a database of wage-price spirals in advanced economies dating back to the 1960s. Applying a fairly low bar—they looked for accelerating consumer prices and rising nominal wages in at least three out of four consecutive quarters—they identified 79 such episodes.

去年年底，国际货币基金组织(IMF)的一组经济学家对历史记录进行了研究，创建了一个自上世纪60年代以来发达经济体工资-物价螺旋的数据库。采用一个相当低的标准——他们寻找连续四个季度中至少有三个季度的消费价格加速上涨，同时名义工资也上涨的时期——后来发现了79个这样的时期。

But a few quarters of high inflation is not all that scary. A few years is far more frightening. Judged by this longer standard, the IMF economists offered a more upbeat conclusion: the “great majority” (they omitted the exact percentage) of short-term spirals were not followed by a sustained acceleration in wages and prices.

但几个季度的通胀并不那么可怕。持续数年才是真的可怕。根据这一更长期的标准判断，IMF的经济学家们给出了一个更为乐观的结论：“绝大多数”(他们省略了确切的百分比)短期螺旋上升之后，工资和物价并没有持续加速上涨。

In a note in March, Gadi Barlevy and Luojia Hu, economists with the Fed’s Chicago branch, took a closer look at the role of wages in the current episode of inflation. They focused on “non-housing services”, a category that covers everything from car washes to medical check-ups and which Mr Powell regularly cites as a useful indicator because of its tight association with wages.

在今年3月的一份报告中，美联储芝加哥分行的经济学家加迪·巴列维和胡洛佳仔细研究了工资在当前通胀中的作用。他们关注的是“非住房服务”，这一类别涵盖了从洗车到体检的所有服务，鲍威尔经常将其作为一个有用的指标，因为它与工资密切相关。

Mr Barlevy and Ms Hu concluded that wages do help to explain this segment of inflation: nominal wage gains have outstripped productivity growth by a sizeable margin over the past year. Facing that cost squeeze, service providers would naturally want to raise prices.

巴列维和胡洛佳得出结论，工资确实有助于解释这部分通胀：在过去的一年里，名义工资的增长已经大大超过了生产率的增长。面对成本紧缩，服务提供商自然希望抬价格。

 

重难点词汇：

gallop [ˈɡæləp] n./v. 飞跑;疾驰

caricature [ˈkærɪkətʃər] n. 漫画;夸张的表现风格

trot out 炫耀;展示;揭露

ratchet effect 棘轮效应

interrogate [ɪnˈterəɡeɪt] v. 讯问;审问;质问

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