大学毕业生的政治重组:从保守派到经济民粹主义者的演变 New York Times Podcasts 2026-06-11

大学毕业生的政治左转

娜塔莉: 来自**《纽约时报》(The New York Times),我是娜塔莉·基特罗夫**(Natalie Kitroeff)。这里是《每日新闻》(The Daily)。随着民主党人对党派发展方向的争论不休,新一批进步派候选人提出了一种观点,即政治的未来在于经济民粹主义。这一纲领最大的支持者群体中,包括了曾经在政治上偏向右翼的大学毕业生,但在过去的几十年里,他们越来越向左翼靠拢。今天,我的同事诺姆·谢伯(Noam Scheiber)将为我们解释,究竟是哪些经济力量导致了许多大学毕业生身负重债、收入微薄且充满愤怒,以及他们未被满足的期望是如何重塑美国阶级政治的。今天是 6 月 11 日,星期四。

诺姆,为了设定我们接下来这场对话的背景,你能描述一下大学毕业生在政治上的转变吗?你刚就这个主题写了一本书,而且你报道这个问题已经很多年了。

Original English

Natalie: From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroev. This is the Daily. As Democrats wrestle over the direction of their party, a new crop of progressive candidates has made the case that the political future is economic populism. Among the biggest supporters of that platform are college graduates who used to lean right politically, but over the last few decades have moved increasingly to the left. Today, my colleague Nom Shber explains the economic forces that have left many college grads deeply indebted, underpaid, and angry, and how their unmet expectations are reshaping class politics in America. It's Thursday, June 11th.

Gnome, to set the stakes of the conversation that we're about to have, can you describe the political transformation of college graduates that you've just written a book about and that you've been reporting on for years now?

诺姆: 是的。所以我认为我们有时会忘记,就在不久前的 1980 年代和 1990 年代,大学毕业生在政治上实际上是相当保守的。例如,在 1980 年代,他们倾向于以两位数的优势投票给共和党,至少在总统选举层面是这样的。他们过去常常青睐小政府、低税收、少监管等理念。我认为这在很大程度上是因为受过大学教育的劳动者倾向于将自己视为“管理层周边人员”。他们倾向于期望自己未来的生活会变得更加富裕。所以这与他们的世界观是非常一致的。如果你是一个富裕的人,你经营着一家企业或者你是一名高管,你往往希望政府不要干预你的工作。但如果你快进几十年,你真的会开始看到一幅截然不同的画面。如果你看看最近的选举,你会发现大学毕业生实际上向相反的方向发生了巨大的转变。他们最终以大约 15 个百分点的优势支持了卡玛拉·哈里斯而不是唐纳德·特朗普。对吧?

Original English

Noam: Yeah. So, I think we sometimes forget that as recently as the 1980s and 1990s, college grads were actually pretty conservative politically. In the 1980s, for example, they tended to vote Republican by double-digit margins, at least on the presidential level. They used to favor things like smaller government, lower taxes, fewer regulations. And a lot of this I think was driven by the fact that college educated workers tended to see themselves as kind of management adjacent. They tended to expect that their lives would become much more affluent in the future. So this is very consistent with their worldview. If you're an affluent person and you run a business or you're an executive, you tend to want the government to stay out of your way. But if you fast forward a few decades, you really start to get a different picture. And if you look at the most recent election, you see that college grads actually shift really far in the other direction. They end up supporting Kla Harris over Donald Trump by about a 15point margin. Right?

娜塔莉: 而且在政府、税收和监管这些具体的经济议题上,他们实际上已经进一步向左移动了,与那些没有学位的人相比,他们现在的立场比 1980 年代时要接近得多。那么是什么解释了这一点呢?是什么推动了这种转变?

Original English

Natalie: And on those specific economic issues like government and taxes and regulation, they've actually moved much further to the left, much closer to people without a degree than they were in the 1980s. And so what explains that? What is driving that transformation?

诺姆: 嗯,人们在试图解释这一点时会指出许多因素,但在我的书里,我首先关注的是经济因素。很多上了大学的人真的被灌输了这样一种观念:大学将是通向中上阶层成年生活的钥匙。然而事实证明,现实远远达不到那个标准。相反,他们在各个方面都受到了挤压。在这个领域,许多大学毕业生对现存的经济体系产生了一种怨恨和挫败感。

Original English

Noam: Well, there are a number of factors that people point to when trying to explain this, but in my book, I focus first and foremost on economics. A lot of people who went to college were really sold on this idea that it would be the key to an upper middle class adulthood. And it turned out that the reality fell far far short of that. And instead, they were squeezed in a whole variety of ways. in that field a sense of grievance and frustration among a lot of college grads with the economic system that exists today.

大学教育扩张与债务陷阱

娜塔莉: 好的。是哪些经济力量导致了这种深深的挫败感?

Original English

Natalie: Okay. What are the economic forces that led to this deep sense of frustration?

诺姆: 所以,这要从几十年前说起。在 1970 年,只有大约 10% 的美国人拥有四年制大学学位。绝大多数美国人没有上过大学,也没有学位。但我们看到在 80 年代和 90 年代,上大学的人数真的开始激增。

Original English

Noam: So, this starts several decades ago. In 1970, only about 10% of Americans had four-year college degrees. The vast majority of Americans did not go to college, did not have a degree. But we see that in the 80s and 90s, the number of people going to college really starts to explode.

新闻原声: 今晚 NBC 深度新闻:美国人的新不安全感。好工作、高工资,一种完整的生活方式永远地消失了。

Original English

News Clip: NBC News in depth tonight, America's new insecurity. Good jobs, good wages, a whole way of life disappearing forever.

诺姆: 我认为这在很大程度上与传统蓝领工作的减少有关。

Original English

Noam: And I think a lot of it has to do with the decline of traditional bluecollar jobs.

新闻原声: 仅在今年前六个月,美国就失去了 22.1 万个制造业工作岗位,而且情况还在恶化。

Original English

News Clip: In the first 6 months of this year alone, America lost 221,000 jobs in manufacturing and it's getting worse.

诺姆: 有一种感觉是,自动化、全球化以及工会的衰落,确实让那些只有高中学历的人越来越难以谋生。

Original English

Noam: There was a sense that automation and globalization and the decline of unions was really making it harder for people to make a living if they only had a high school degree.

新闻原声: 今年早些时候,人口普查局强化了这样一种观点:大学学位会对人一生的收入产生巨大影响,差距高达数十万美元。

Original English

News Clip: Earlier this year, the Census Bureau reinforced the view that a college degree makes a big difference in lifetime earnings, hundreds of thousands of dollars difference.

诺姆: 而在很多情况下,人们给出的解决方案是:好吧,我们应该送他们去上大学。

Original English

Noam: And the solution in a lot of cases was, well, we should send them to college.

新闻原声: 我有些话要对今晚听我们广播的每一个家庭说。你们的孩子可以继续上大学。

Original English

News Clip: I have something to say to every family listening to us tonight. Your children can go on to college.

诺姆: 这真的变成了一种全民执念。尤其是从比尔·克林顿(Bill Clinton)开始,历届总统都在谈论人们应该去上大学……

Original English

Noam: This really becomes a kind of national obsession. presidents beginning especially with Bill Clinton talk about how people should go to college...

新闻原声: 我们可以让大学教育在 21 世纪变得像今天的高中教育一样普及。

Original English

News Clip: We can make college as universal in the 21st century as high school is today.

诺姆: ……为了让他们能够在现代全球经济中竞争。我们看到乔治·W·布什(George W. Bush)推动他的教育改革倡议《不让一个孩子掉队》。

Original English

Noam: ...so that they can compete in the modern global economy. We see George W. Bush when he pushes his education reform initiative, No Child Left Behind.

新闻原声: 《不让一个孩子掉队》法案需要被重新授权和加强。我提出这个法案的原因是,为了确保我们有更多的孩子为上大学做好准备。

Original English

News Clip: The No Child Left Behind Act needs to be reauthorized and strengthened. And the reason I bring it up is in order to make sure we've got more children ready for college.

诺姆: 他强调我们需要更好地让人们为上大学做好准备。当然,巴拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)也真正将这一点提升到了新的高度。

Original English

Noam: Emphasizes that we need to prepare people better to go to college. And of course, Barack Obama really elevates this as well.

新闻原声: 良好的教育不再仅仅是通向机会的路径。它是一个先决条件。我们将为所有年轻的美国人提供必要的支持,让他们完成大学学业并实现一个新的目标。到 2020 年,美国将再次成为世界上大学毕业生比例最高的国家。这是我们可以实现的目标。这是我们可以实现的目标。

Original English

News Clip: A good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity. It is a prerequisite. We will provide the support necessary for all young Americans to complete college and meet a new goal. By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. That is a goal we can meet. That's a goal we can meet.

诺姆: 这种变化甚至也在政治领域之外真实地发生着。甚至在公立学校系统、特许学校中,我们作为一个国家真正开始强调上大学的重要性。比如全国最大的特许学校网络之一,叫做 KIPP

Original English

Noam: And this change really happens even outside of the political realm, too. Even in the public school system, in charter schools, we really as a nation start emphasizing the importance of going to college. one of the largest charter school networks in the country called Kip.

新闻原声: 早上好,老师。我们在 KIPP 学院小学正在做的,不仅仅是让我们的孩子为优异的学术成绩做准备,更是为大学做准备。尽管他们现在才四五岁,还在上幼儿园,但他们将在 2000 年从大学毕业。去上大学。去上大学。去上大学。

Original English

News Clip: Good morning, Miss. What we're doing here at Kip Academy Elementary is preparing our kids not only for academic excellence, but for college. Even though they are four and 5 years old right now and in kindergarten, they'll be graduating from college in the year 2000. and go to college. Go to college. Go to college.

诺姆: 他们在 90 年代初就开始强调大学始于幼儿园。每个人从走进教室的那一刻起,就必须开始全神贯注于上大学这件事。

Original English

Noam: Really starts emphasizing in the early '90s that college begins in kindergarten. That everyone must start obsessing about college from the very moment that they enter a classroom

娜塔莉: 好的,同学们。你的意思是,实质上出现了一场关于上大学的全国公关运动。

Original English

Natalie: Okay, class. What you're saying is there's essentially a national PR campaign for college.

诺姆: 毫无疑问。从你的朋友、家人,到美国总统,每个人都在告诉你这绝对是必不可少的。因此,人们很自然地开始听从这个建议。到 2010 年,我们看到 30% 的美国人拥有四年制大学学位。而且这个数字还在快速上升。

Original English

Noam: No question. Everyone from your friends and family members to the president of the United States is telling you that this is an absolute necessity. And so naturally, people start to follow that advice. And by 2010, we see that 30% of Americans have four-year college degrees. And it's rising rapidly.

娜塔莉: 30%,相比于你说的 1970 年的 10%。所以基本上这个比例在 40 年里翻了三倍。

Original English

Natalie: 30% which is compared to what you said 10% in 1970. So basically the rate tripled in 40 years.

诺姆: 是的。为了满足所有这些需求,我们开始看到一大批新的参与者敞开大门或扩充队伍。我们看到营利性大学真正开始登场,进入营利性大学就读的人数大幅增加。我们看到的另一件事是那些被称为“非竞争性公立大学”的出现。那不是像德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校(University of Texas at Austin)这样显然非常有声望的公立大学,也不是像德克萨斯大学达拉斯分校(University of Texas at Dallas)这样极具竞争力的州立大学,而是像德克萨斯大学里奥格兰德河谷分校(University of Texas at Rio Grand Valley)这样几乎录取所有申请者的大学。

我们观察到的是,如果你去德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校,你往往会发展得非常好。如果你去德克萨斯大学达拉斯分校,通常结果也不错。但是,对于一个从几乎免试入学的公立大学毕业的人来说,情况要复杂得多,在这类大学里,成本是否能带来相应的收益完全是个未知数。

Original English

Noam: Yeah. And to meet all that demand we start to see a whole bunch of new players open their doors or expand their ranks. So we see for-profit colleges really start to enter the scene and we have a huge increase in the number of people who are attending forprofit universities. And another thing that we see is what are known as non-competitive public universities. So that's like not the University of Texas at Austin, which is obviously a very prestigious public university, or even the University of Texas at Dallas, which is a pretty competitive state university, but something like the University of Texas at Rio Grand Valley, which admits almost everyone who applies to the university.

And what we've seen is that if you go to the University of Texas at Austin, you tend to do very well. If you go to the University of Texas at Dallas, often it works out pretty well. But for someone who graduates from an essentially open admission public university, it's a much more complicated picture and it's not at all clear that the cost is worth the benefit to you at a university like that.

娜塔莉: 简要总结一下,意向学生的数量出现了巨大的增长,为了适应这种情况,教育的格局开始发生变化。你有了这些新大学,既有营利性的,也有非竞争性的。听起来这些变化开始稀释大学学位的价值了。

Original English

Natalie: Just to summarize quickly, you have this huge increase in the number of prospective students and as a result, the landscape of education starts to change in order to accommodate them. You get these new colleges, both for-profit and these non-competitive ones. And it sounds like those changes, they start to dilute the value of a college degree.

诺姆: 完全正确。我的意思是,在某些方面,在 1980 年代和 1990 年代,大学学位确实是一项稳赚不赔的资产。我们发现这些学位的价值几乎在同步增长。显然,如果你去哈佛大学(Harvard)学习工程学,你可能会比去了州立大学学习艺术史的人做得更好。但总的来说,这是一项不断增值的资产。但是到了 2000 年代和 2010 年代,我们看到了一幅更加复杂的画面:对一些人来说上大学是有意义的,但对许多其他人来说,这并没有太大意义。与此同时发生的事情是,国会让人们借钱上大学变得更加容易。国会在 90 年代初提高了学生债务的上限,然后在 2007 年到 2009 年期间又提高了好几次。

Original English

Noam: That's exactly right. I mean, in some ways, in the 1980s and 1990s, a college degree really was a can't lose asset. We find that the value of these degrees were increasing pretty much in lock step. Obviously, if you went to Harvard and studied engineering, you might do better than someone who went to their state university and studied art history. But in general, this was a appreciating asset. But by the 2000 and 2010s, we see a much more mixed picture, which in some cases makes sense for people, but in a lot of other cases doesn't make that much sense for people. And what's happening around the same time is that Congress is making it easier for people to borrow to go to college. So, Congress raises the limit on student debt in the early '90s and then it raises it again a few times in the kind of 2007209 period.

新闻原声: 今天,我站在这里对 1991 年的高等教育修正案表示衷心的支持。该法案的条款大大增加了学生可以通过借款来资助其教育的金额。通过通过这项法案,我们将在未来五年内让成千上万的额外学生有可能接受大学教育。

Original English

News Clip: I rise today to give my heartfelt support for the higher education amendments of 1991. the provisions of this bill vastly expand the amount students may borrow to help them finance their education. By passing this bill, we will make a college education possible for hundreds of thousands of additional students over the next five years.

诺姆: 这恰好与人们为了上大学而背负的债务的急剧增加相吻合。我们看到,从 90 年代初到 2020 年,债务总额大约翻了一番。

Original English

Noam: And this coincides with a really rapid increase in the debt that people are taking on to go to college. We see it roughly double between the early '90s and 2020,

娜塔莉: 这意义重大,对吧?债务数量翻倍绝不是一件小事。

Original English

Natalie: which is significant, right? Twice the amount of debt is no small matter.

诺姆: 绝不是小事。实际上,我们看到,当人们自己的债务达到上限时,甚至他们的父母都会介入来填补差额。所以在某些方面,这种增长甚至比翻倍还要大。

Original English

Noam: It's no small matter. And actually, we see that when people max out on their own debt, their parents even step in to pick up the difference. So, it's even larger than that doubling in some respects.

娜塔莉: 总体而言,这听起来是一个相当糟糕的局面。你有一代人被告知上大学是绝对必要的,被不断灌输大学的重要性,然后他们进入了那些可能都没存在多久的大学,毕业时背负着沉重的债务。这就是他们进入就业市场时所面临的处境。

Original English

Natalie: Overall, this sounds like a pretty bad situation. You have a generation of people who are being told that college is absolutely necessary, being hyped up on the importance of it, who then go to colleges that may not have even existed for very long, and then graduating from those schools with loads of debt. And that is how they enter the job market.

大衰退与占领华尔街

诺姆: 没错。然后整个局面在 2008 年左右彻底崩溃了。在那个时期,大衰退(The Great Recession)和金融危机爆发了。数百万人失去了工作或很难找到工作。从某种意义上说,这对这些年轻的大学毕业生来说,是一个独特且沉重的打击。

Original English

Noam: That's right. And then the whole thing kind of falls apart around 2008. The Great Recession and financial crisis hits during this time. Millions of people lose their jobs or have trouble finding work, right? But in a way, this is kind of a uniquely sharp blow to these young college grads.

娜塔莉: 为什么?

Original English

Natalie: Why?

诺姆: 因为你要记住,这些人可能是有史以来被最强硬推销“为什么需要上大学”观念的一代人。他们怀揣着极高的期望。他们真的把大学看作是你应该尽一切努力去实现的目标。然而,当他们离开大学,带着巨额债务进入就业市场时,他们突然发现自己不得不拼命寻找与他们所学专业相符的工作。我们看到应届大学毕业生的失业率飙升至几十年来的最高水平。如果你回想一下 2008 年和 2009 年发生的事情,债务成了一个巨大的问题。整个金融机构都在沉重的债务下崩溃。

Original English

Noam: Well, because remember these were the folks who were probably given the hardest cell about why they need to go to college of any generation in history. They had these sky-high expectations. They really thought of college as something that you should pretty much do everything you can to attain. And yet, when they leave college and they enter the job market with this huge amount of debt, suddenly they're scrambling to find jobs that are in line with what they've studied. We see the unemployment rate for recent college grads jump to its highest level in decades. And if you recall what's going on in 2008 in 2009, debt is just this huge problem. We have whole financial institutions that are collapsing under the weight of it.

新闻原声: 众议院通过了一项耗资 7000 亿美元的政府援助金融业的庞大计划。

Original English

News Clip: The House passes a sprawling $700 billion government rescue of the financial industry.

诺姆: 接着发生的事情是,政府进行了极其激进的干预,以救助这些大型金融机构。

Original English

Noam: And what happens is that the government intervenes very aggressively to bail out these large financial institutions.

新闻原声: 总统表示,救助华尔街是拯救大众的唯一途径。

Original English

News Clip: Bailing out Wall Street is the only way to save Main Street. So says the president.

诺姆: 但对于那些上了大学,做了所有他们认为应该做的事情,却被突然压垮他们的债务困住的人来说……似乎并没有针对他们的救助。

Original English

Noam: But for the people who went to college and who did everything that they thought they were supposed to do and are stuck with this debt that's suddenly weighing them down. There doesn't appear to be a bailout for them, right?

新闻原声: 你知道,对于我们普通公民来说,没有人来救助我们,也没有人来帮助我们。

Original English

News Clip: You know, for us private citizens, nobody's bailing us out and nobody's helping us.

娜塔莉: 这一时刻放大了这样一种感觉:美国社会分成了两个阶层。一个是华尔街,是超级富豪,另一个是其他所有人。你指出了这段历史中的一个时刻,在这个时刻,我们一直在讨论的经济力量开始产生非常明显的政治后果。

Original English

Natalie: This moment amplifies this sense that there are just two tiers of society in America. There's Wall Street, there's the ultra wealthy, and everyone else. You're pointing to a moment in this history where the economic forces we've been discussing start to have very visible political consequences.

诺姆: 是的,在这个时刻,整个国家真的朝着一种民粹主义的方向转变。在右翼,你看到了茶党运动的兴起,人们看到政府干预并救助大银行,于是真正开始反对政府。而在左翼,你会觉得政府在救助那些脑满肠肥的资本家,华尔街的亿万富翁过得很好,但这个国家的其他地区却在苦苦挣扎,政府没有为他们做多少事情。这种情绪在 2011 年的占领华尔街(Occupy Wall Street)运动中达到了顶点。这是一群人开始在纽约市的祖科蒂公园(Zuccotti Park)抗议。

Original English

Noam: Yeah, this is a moment where the country really shifts in a kind of populist direction. On the right, you had the rise of the Tea Party movement, people who saw the government intervene and bail out the big banks and really start to turn against government. And then on the left, you have this sense that the government is bailing out the fat cats and the Wall Street billionaires are doing great, but the rest of the country is really struggling and the government isn't doing much for them. And this really starts to crest with the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. This was a group of folks who start to protest in Zucati Park in New York City.

新闻原声: 现在,在我们的生活水平下降了 30 年之后,而最富有的 1% 的人却过得比以往任何时候都好,我认为是时候,我不知道,也许我们该参与一下我们的民主进程了。占领华尔街。

Original English

News Clip: Right now, after 30 years of having our living standards decrease, while the wealthiest 1% have had it better than ever, I think it's time for maybe, I don't know, some participation in our democracy. Occupy wall street.

诺姆: 他们真的开始将 1% 的人认定为国家的吸血鬼,而另外 99% 的美国人做着正确的事情,却被经济发展抛在后面。结果证明,年轻的大学毕业生是这场运动的重要组成部分。有研究表明,参与占领运动的人中约有四分之三是大学毕业生。

Original English

Noam: they really start to identify the 1% as the kind of baits of the country and it's the other 99% of Americans who are doing the right thing but getting left behind by the economy. And it turns out that young college grads are a huge part of this movement. There have been studies showing that about threearters of the people involved in Occupy were college grads.

新闻原声: 你知道,我上过学,这里很多人都上过学,现在我们要么放暑假,要么完全毕业了,但却没有工作。我们还不起那些学生贷款,而我们从债权人那里一直听到的就是:我们很懒。为什么其他人都能得到救助,而我却被大学贷款困住了?为什么我找不到一份既能带来成就感,我又真正喜欢做的工作?

Original English

News Clip: You know, I went to school a lot of these people went to school and now that we're out for the summer or out completely, there's no jobs. We can't pay those student loans back and all we keep hearing from the creditors is we're lazy. Why are other people getting bailed out and I'm stuck with college loans? Why can't I get a job that's actually fulfilling that I like to do?

诺姆: 他们实际上最终把学生债务和学生贷款提升为占领运动的一个主要关注点。就是在这个时候,你开始听到各种在人们听来可能很耳熟的民粹主义口号。

Original English

Noam: And they actually end up elevating student debt and student loans as a major concern of the Occupy movement. And this is a moment where you start to hear a whole variety of populist chants that are probably familiar to a lot of people.

新闻原声: 吃掉富人(Eat the rich)。

Original English

News Clip: Eat the rich.

娜塔莉: 在经济问题上,出现了一整套我们以前从未见过的全新词汇。是的。我是 2011 年大学毕业的,对占领运动记忆犹新。它在政治上极大地激发了大学毕业生的热情,不仅在纽约,在全国各地都是如此。我记得在很多城市都有类似占领的抗议活动。感觉好像这就是一个关键节点,人们对不平等的愤怒开始固化为一种更坚实的政治认同。

Original English

Natalie: There's just a whole new vocabulary that we hadn't really seen when it came to economic issues before. Yeah. I graduated college in 2011 and remember Occupy so well. It was this thing that really activated college graduates politically, not just in New York, but all across the country. There were Occupy style protests, I remember, in many cities. And it felt as though this was the critical juncture at which the rage that had been bubbling over inequality, it became more of a solidified political identity.

诺姆: 我认为是对的。我认为在这个时刻,你会看到他们意识发生了真正的转变。所以他们不再把自己看作是处于顶层或很快就会到达顶层的人,他们开始认同所有人。他们开始对那些被高层剥削的人产生共鸣。当然,占领运动最终还是偃旗息鼓了。人们离开祖科蒂公园,回到了他们的家庭和工作岗位。但这被证明是一场在未来 15 年内上演的戏剧性转变的开场戏。这是美国政治中这种重新调整的开始,它真正改变了受过大学教育的人对自己效忠对象所在位置的想法。

Original English

Noam: I think that's right. I think this is a moment where you have a real shift in their consciousness. So instead of seeing themselves as the people who were either at the top or who were going to be at the top pretty soon, they start to identify with everyone else. They start to identify with people who have been exploited by the people at the top. And of course, the Occupy movement eventually fizzles out. People leave Zugatti Park and they go back to their homes and their jobs. But this turns out to be the opening act of a pretty dramatic shift that will play out across the next 15 years. It's the beginning of this realignment in American politics that really changes the way people who went to college thought about where their allegiances lie.

企业合并与专业人士的异化

娜塔莉: 诺姆,你说占领运动真的是这场政治重组的开场戏。那么在 2011 年占领运动平息之后,又发生了什么呢?

Original English

Natalie: So, Nome, you said the Occupy movement was really the opening act for this political realignment. So, what happens after Occupy after it fizzles out in 2011?

诺姆: 就在经济方面而言,情况确实在很长一段时间内都很糟糕,一直持续到这个十年末。年轻大学毕业生的就业率仍然相当低。工资也从未真正恢复。我们有一种叫做“疤痕效应”的现象,这表明如果你在经济衰退时期毕业,你的收入可能会在接下来的 10 到 15 年内受到影响。然后就业市场上还有另一股强大的力量,它真正强化了年轻大学毕业生正在经历的所有事情。那就是各个行业(如科技、零售、医疗保健)的合并与垄断(Consolidation)。我们看到公司变得越来越庞大。

Original English

Noam: So, when it comes to the economy, things really did stay bad for a really long time all the way through the end of the decade. Employment rates for young college grads are still pretty low. Wages never really recover. We have this thing called scarring which shows that if you graduate into a recession, your earnings can be impacted for 10, 15 years later. And then there's this other big force that's happening out there in the job market that's really reinforcing all the things that young college grads are experiencing. And that's the consolidation across a whole bunch of different industries in tech, in retail, healthcare. We're seeing companies get bigger and bigger.

娜塔莉: 你能稍微慢一点,解释一下你说的合并是什么意思吗?

Original English

Natalie: Can you just slow down and explain what you mean by consolidation?

诺姆: 好的。所以在很多情况下,你会看到公司合并在一起。一家公司收购了与其存在某种竞争关系的另一家公司。比如回想 2010 年代初,你会看到 Facebook 收购了 Instagram 或 WhatsApp。也许这对消费者来说可能是件好事。也许 Facebook 投入大量资金建设基础设施和消费者非常喜欢的新功能,但对员工来说,这确实会减少你选择在哪里工作的机会。这实际上也会让人感到非常沮丧和疏离。就像如果你想想一个电脑程序员,也许他们以前在一家较小的初创公司工作,他们觉得自己对产品的开发有真正的影响力,甚至对公司的使命也有一份责任感。但是突然之间,他们为这家巨大的公司工作了。这里变得更加官僚。它让人们觉得他们在自己所做的事情上掌握的自主权变少了。

Original English

Noam: Yeah. So, in a lot of cases, you see companies merging together. One company buys another company that it competes with in some way. If you think back to the early 2010s, for example, you have Facebook buying Instagram or WhatsApp. And maybe that could be a good thing for consumers. Maybe Facebook invests a lot of money in building out infrastructure and new features that consumers really like, but for workers that can really reduce the options that you have about where to work. And it can actually also be really frustrating and alienating. Like if you think of a computer programmer, maybe they were at a smaller startup and they felt like they had a real impact on the development of the product or even a role in the mission of the company. But then suddenly they're working for this giant company. It's much more bureaucratic. It makes people feel like they just have a lot less agency in what they're doing.

娜塔莉: 你的意思是企业合并有时会让工人的处境更糟,因为作为一名工人,你现在拥有的选择更少了,权力也更小了。

Original English

Natalie: You're saying consolidation sometimes leaves workers worse off because as a worker, you now have fewer options and less power.

诺姆: 没错。而能最好地看到这一点的领域,实际上是医疗保健行业,那里的企业合并在 2010 年代真的开始加速。

Original English

Noam: That's right. And one of the best places to see this is actually the healthcare industry where consolidation really starts to ramp up in the 2010s.

娜塔莉: 为什么?发生了什么事?

Original English

Natalie: Why? What happened?

诺姆: 嗯,医疗保健行业几十年来一直在合并。但如果你还记得的话,奥巴马政府在 2009 年上台时的一个重要优先事项,就是让医疗保健行业变得更有效率。他们通过像“奥巴马医改”(Obamacare)这样的大型计划,以及一系列真正加速该行业合并的监管政策做到了这一点。

Original English

Noam: Well, the healthcare industry had been consolidating for a few decades. But if you remember, one of the big priorities of the Obama administration when it came to power in 2009 was to make the healthcare industry a lot more efficient. And they did that through big initiatives like Obamacare and through a series of regulations that really accelerated consolidation in the industry.

娜塔莉: 实际上这里有点讽刺,因为从某种层面上说,奥巴马医改是一项更加民粹主义的经济政策。它极大地扩大了医疗保健的覆盖范围,让数百万没有医疗保险的美国人受益。但另一方面,它似乎让医疗保健成为一个对在其中工作的人来说更糟糕的行业。你是怎么理解的?

Original English

Natalie: And there's actually kind of an irony here because on one level Obamacare was a more populist economic policy. It really expands healthcare coverage to millions of Americans who didn't have it. But on the other hand, it kind of makes healthare an industry that's worse for the people who are working in it. How do you mean?

诺姆: 嗯,奥巴马医改和这些规定的其中一个复杂之处在于,它们实际上迫使个体医院和医疗保健系统承担了更多的风险。例如,如果患者在接受手术后恢复得不是很好,政府给医院的报销可能就没有他们预期的那么多。所以医院认定,保护自己免受这种风险的唯一方法就是变得越来越大。你知道,如果你是一家小医院,突然之间政府因为你的病人恢复不如预期而减少对各种手术的报销,这会在财务上对你造成严重打击。但是,如果你经营着几十家甚至更多的医院,你抵御那种风险的能力就会强得多。

Original English

Noam: Well, one of the wrinkles of Obamacare and these regulations is that they actually forced more risk onto individual hospitals and health care systems. So, for example, if patients got a procedure and didn't do that well after the procedure, the government might not reimburse the hospitals as much as they were expecting. And so the hospitals decide that the way to protect themselves against this risk is to get bigger and bigger. You know, if you're a small hospital and suddenly the administration isn't reimbursing you as much as you thought for different procedures because your patients aren't doing as well as you'd hoped, that can really hurt you financially. But if you operate dozens and dozens of hospitals, you're much more insulated against that risk.

娜塔莉: 有道理。

Original English

Natalie: Makes sense.

诺姆: 当这些医疗保健系统变得非常庞大时,发生的情况是他们开始在不同的城市和州收购越来越多的医院。这实际上减少了人们找工作的地方。这产生了两种效果。首先,如果你是一名护士、药剂师或者在医院后勤部门工作的人,那确实会影响你的工资,因为竞标你劳动的潜在雇主变少了,对吧?然后还有第二类员工,比如医生。这些人通常没有看到他们的工资下降,但他们在其他方面仍受到了影响,这使得他们非常讨厌这种为越来越大的医疗保健系统工作的新安排。

例如,我曾在 2015 年报道过俄勒冈州一个大型医疗系统中正在组建工会的一群医生。我从他们那里一遍又一遍地听到这样一句话:“我们感觉自己就像某种庞大医疗工业综合体中的齿轮。我们几乎等同于工厂里的工人。”他们受命于那些突然之间跑来告诉他们可以在每个病人身上花多少时间、能让病人在医院住多久的 MBA(工商管理硕士)和精打细算的会计。规定他们和病人交谈时必须问什么。而这些医生往往是接受了多年专业训练的人。他们引以为傲的是他们的专业判断力——评估情况、应用最佳治疗方案的能力。但突然之间,他们感觉自己被一群毫无医学专业知识可言的人微观管理着。所以,这让人感到难以置信的疏远和异化。

Original English

Noam: And what happened when these health care systems got really big is they started buying up more and more hospitals in different cities and states. And that actually created fewer places for people to work. And this kind of had two effects. First, if you were a nurse or a pharmacist or someone who worked in the back office of a hospital, that really could have an impact on your wages because you had fewer potential employers bidding up the price of your labor, right? And then there was a second set of employees like doctors. And these folks generally didn't see their wages go down, but they were still affected in other ways that made them really hate this new arrangement of working for bigger and bigger health care systems.

So, for example, I first covered a group of doctors who were unionizing at a big health care system in Oregon in 2015. And one thing that I heard from them over and over again is, "We feel like cogs in some giant medical industrial complex. We might as well be factory workers." They are governed by MBAs and bean counters who are suddenly telling them how much time they can spend with their patients, how long they can keep patients in the hospital. What they have to ask them when they talk to them. And these are people who've often trained for years and years. The thing that they pride themselves on is their professional judgment. The ability to evaluate a situation, to apply the best treatment, and suddenly they feel like they're being micromanaged by people who have no medical expertise to speak of. So, it's incredibly alienating.

娜塔莉: 是的。我的意思是,听起来你基本上是让社会上受教育程度最高的一群人——几乎是医生阶层——开始感觉自己更像是纯粹的劳工。他们没有那种控制权。他们没有获得当他们拿到医学博士学位时以为自己会获得的那种地位。

Original English

Natalie: Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you basically have the most educated people in society, almost doctors, starting to feel more like laborers. They don't have that control. They don't have the stature that they thought they were getting when they got that MD.

诺姆: 是的。你开始看到的是,许多受过高度培训的白领工人,曾经把自己视为管理层周围的成员,在很多情况下,开始认同自己不过是被管理层呼来喝去的普通基层员工。

Original English

Noam: Yeah. And what you start to see is that a lot of highly trained white collar workers who at one point had thought of themselves as management adjacent, they start to in a lot of cases identify as just kind of rank and file employees who were bossed around by management.

左翼民粹主义与桑德斯的崛起

娜塔莉: 嗯。

Original English

Natalie: Hm.

新闻原声 (伯尼·桑德斯): 今天,我很自豪地宣布我竞选美利坚合众国总统。

Original English

News Clip: today I am proud to announce my candidacy for president of the United States of America.

诺姆: 正是在 2016 年的这个节骨眼上,所有这些不满情绪开始汇聚到一个主流政治人物身上。至少在左翼,这个人物就是伯尼·桑德斯(Bernie Sanders)。

Original English

Noam: It's at this point in 2016 that all these grievances start to coales into a mainstream political figure. And that figure at least on the left is Bernie Sanders.

新闻原声: 财富和收入不平等问题是我们这个时代重大的道德问题。它是我们这个时代重大的经济问题。它是我们这个时代重大的政治问题,我们将解决它。成千上万聪慧的年轻人负担不起大学学费,还有数百万人带着堆积如山、会成为他们数十年负担的债务离开学校,这不仅是疯狂的,而且违背了我们国家的最佳利益。我们别无选择,只能将劳动人民从经济边缘化中解放出来,并确保这个国家的每个人都能获得足以维持生计的工资,并把医疗保健作为一项权利。

Original English

News Clip: The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time. It is the great economic issue of our time. It is the great political issue of our time and we will address it. It is insane. It is counterproductive to the best interest of our country that hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college and that millions of others leave school with a mountain of debt that burdens them for decades and we have no choice but to liberate working people from economic marginalization and make sure that every person in this country gets a living wage and healthcare as a right.

诺姆: 来自佛蒙特州的独立参议员桑德斯出现了,并可以说登上了舞台,大谈特谈 99% 与 1% 的对立,以及老板和亿万富翁是如何以不符合普通工人利益的方式主导政治体系的。这在几十年前可能是难以想象的。许多大学毕业生,尤其是年轻的大学毕业生,真的开始认同这种话语,以及这种经济并没有为他们服务的感觉。

Original English

Noam: Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, comes along and sort of enters the stage talking about the 99% versus the 1% and how the bosses and the billionaires are dominating the political system in ways that are not aligned with the interests of ordinary workers. in ways that might not have been imaginable a few decades earlier. A lot of college grads and especially younger college grads really start to identify with that language. this sense that the economy just isn't working for them.

娜塔莉: 那么,伯尼·桑德斯的崛起以及他在这个你一直在研究的受过高等教育的人群中的政治吸引力,就是你所讨论的这种转变的一种体现。这看起来好像伯尼既反映了大学毕业生中这种日益增长的左翼民粹主义,同时他也可能在推动它——就像占领运动一样,帮助巩固了这种身份认同。

Original English

Natalie: So, the rise of Bernie Sanders and his political appeal within this class of highly educated people that you've been looking at, that is a manifestation of the shift that you've been talking about. It seems as though Bernie both reflects this growing left-wing populism among college grads, but he also may be driving it just like Occupy did, helping to solidify that identity.

诺姆: 我认为是对的。当然,我们都知道希拉里·克林顿随后赢得了民主党总统候选人提名,但你会看到桑德斯在年轻人中,尤其是在年轻大学毕业生中表现得非常出色。总的来说,他在大学毕业生中以微弱劣势输给了希拉里·克林顿,但在 30 岁以下的年轻大学毕业生中,他以 2 比 1 的巨大优势击败了她。从更广泛的意义上看,你看到桑德斯所做的,真的就是在国家政治舞台上为这种不满情绪发声。

在伯尼之后不久,我们就看到亚历山德里娅·奥卡西奥-科尔特斯(Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,简称AOC)在纽约市赢得了一个国会席位。

Original English

Noam: I think that's right. Of course, we all know that Hillary Clinton goes on to win the Democratic presidential nomination, but you see Sanders really outperform with young young people and especially with young college graduates. Overall, he loses to Hillary Clinton by a small margin among college grads, but among young college grads, college grads under 30, he crushes her by a 2 to1 margin. And more broadly, what you see Sanders doing is really giving voice to the sense of grievance on the national political stage. It's not too long after Bernie that we see Alexandria Okasiocortez win a congressional seat in New York City.

新闻原声 (AOC): 是的。对我来说,成为美国历史上当选国会议员的最年轻女性,简直比还清我的学生贷款还要容易。

Original English

News Clip: Yep. And it was literally easier for me to become the youngest woman in American history elected to Congress than it is to pay off my student loan debt.

诺姆: 而她很大程度上就属于这个人口群体,并受到了这个人口群体的支持。我们看到加入“美国民主社会主义者”(Democratic Socialists of America,简称DSA)的年轻大学毕业生人数大幅增加。该组织在美国的成员数从 2016 年之前的约 5,000 人,猛增到这个十年末的近 100,000 人。其中绝大多数是受过大学教育的年轻人。我们看到受过大学教育的人群,特别是年轻的大学毕业生,对社会主义的支持度真的在上升,从 2010 年到 2020 年,支持率基本上翻了一番,从大约 20% 增长到了 40% 左右。

Original English

Noam: And she's very much of this demographic and supported by this demographic. We see a huge increase in the number of young college grads who are joining the Democratic Socialists of America, which goes from about 5,000 members in the United States before 2016 to nearly 100,000 members by the end of the decade. A majority of them young collegeed educated people. we see support for socialism really rise among college educated folks and especially young college educated folks. basically doubling support between 2010 and 2020 from about 20% to about 40%.

新闻原声: 红色的社会主义旗帜被高傲地举起,因为“美国民主社会主义者”(DSA)正在挨家挨户地宣传。我们在成长过程中没有经历过那种“红色恐慌”,所以这个词对我们来说并没有那么可怕。

Original English

News Clip: The red socialist flag is held proudly as the Democratic Socialists of America or DSA are going doortodoor. We didn't grow up sort of with the red scare um and so the word doesn't scare us as much. Um

诺姆: 当然,在去年的纽约市,我们看到佐兰·曼达尼(Zohran Mamdani)在年轻大学毕业生的巨大支持下,在竞选中遥遥领先。如果你看看纽约市 30 岁以下的大学毕业生,有 84% 的人支持佐兰·曼达尼。

Original English

Noam: And of course, last year in New York City, We saw Zoran Mani run away with the mayor's race with a huge burst of support from young college grads. If you look at college grads under 30 in New York City, 84% of them supported Zoran Mam Dani.

新闻原声 (佐兰·曼达尼): 在我们的记忆中,富有且人脉广泛的人一直告诉纽约的劳动人民:权力不掌握在他们手中。尽管我尽了最大的努力去变老,但我依然年轻。我是穆斯林。我是一名民主社会主义者。最要命的是,我拒绝为这一切中的任何一项道歉。

Original English

News Clip: for as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands. I am young despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am A DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.

诺姆: 所以我们真正看到的是,大学毕业生几十年来一直在应对的所有这些经济剧变的“长尾效应”,在这个时刻结出了果实,并为那些在金融危机和大衰退之前几乎令人难以置信的候选人和理念创造了如此强大的势头。

Original English

Noam: And so what we really see is the long tale of all this economic upheaval that college grads have been dealing with for decades come to fruition at this moment and create all this momentum behind candidates in ideas that would have almost been unthinkable before the financial crisis and great recession.

文化与身份的交织

娜塔莉: 好的。你知道,在对话开始时,你说经济力量并不是推动这一群体左翼民粹主义的唯一因素,所以我们能花点时间谈谈其他一些力量吗?意识形态的、文化方面的。我看到过一种理论,这也是你曾经探讨过的一个理论,即美国受过大学教育的人口向左转移的原因是,这个群体的人口结构发生了根本性的变化。这是 Vox 网站的埃里克·莱维茨(Eric Levitz)在为你的书写的书评中提出的一个观点。他说:“大学毕业生群体越来越趋于女性化和非白人化。因为女性和非白人选民倾向于在观点上更偏向进步派,这就是为什么我们看到了这种向左的转变。”你怎么看待这个论点?

Original English

Natalie: Okay. know at the beginning of this conversation you said economic forces weren't the only thing driving this populism on the left among this cohort so can we turn to some of the other forces for a minute ideological cultural one theory that I've seen which I know you've also engaged with for why America's college educated population has moved to the left is that the demographics of this group have just fundamentally changed this is an argument that Eric Levitz of Vox made in his review of your book. He says, "Increasingly the population of college grads is more female and less white. And because women and non-white voters tend to be more progressive in their views, that's why we're seeing this leftward shift." What do you make of that argument?

诺姆: 这个观点肯定有一定道理。我们确实看到更多的女性和有色人种获得了大学学位,而从历史上看,我们知道他们往往比白人和男性更自由派。但实际上,如果你在这段时期只看白人男性大学毕业生,你也会发现他们相当急剧地向左转。所以这不仅仅是人口结构变化的问题。同类画像的人实际上也在向左转移。

Original English

Noam: There's definitely something to this. We've seen more women and more people of color get college degrees and we know historically they tend to be more liberal than white people and men. But actually if you only look at white male college grads during this period, you also see them move pretty sharply to the left too. So it's not just a matter of the changing demographics. The same profile of person is actually moving to the left.

娜塔莉: 既然如此,有没有可能是大学教育本身在促使学生向左翼靠拢?我们知道大学作为机构,近年来一直在向左转。这似乎很有可能对学生政治身份的塑造产生影响。

Original English

Natalie: So given that, is it possible that it's the college education itself that's helping drive students to the left? We know that colleges as institutions have been moving to the left in recent years. It seems plausible that has an effect on how students political identities are shaped.

诺姆: 我觉得这是一个非常中肯的观点。从很多数据,包括耶鲁大学(Yale University)最近的一份报告中我们了解到,过去一两代人中,教职员工的意识形态构成确实发生了转变。在 80 年代末,只有不到一半的教职员工自认为是自由派,而一代人之后,在 2010 年代中期,这一比例远远超过了一半,达到 60% 左右。如果你看看如今的党派构成,在大学教职员工中,民主党人与共和党人的比例往往是 10 比 1,这是一个令人难以置信的巨大差异。所以我认为,这其中肯定有一定的原因。但这可能不是故事的全部。

Original English

Noam: I think that's a really fair point. We know from a lot of data including a recent report by Yale University that the ideological composition of faculty members has really shifted over the past generation or two. So in the late 80s less than half of faculty members identified as liberal and a generation later in the mid 2010s it was well over half around 60%. And if you look at the partisan composition these days, Democrats tend to outnumber Republicans among college faculty members by about 10 to1, which is an incredibly stark difference. And so I think there's there's something going on there. It's probably not the whole story, though.

娜塔莉: 好的,明白了。还有一件事我也在思考,诺姆,那就是大学毕业生在经济问题上向左翼倾斜,有没有可能并非完全是因为他们的经济状况,而是因为他们在一些对他们来说真正重要的问题上——比如堕胎或种族政治——认同左翼?然后,一旦他们加入了这个“部落”,他们也就自然而然地接受了经济纲领。

Original English

Natalie: Okay, got it. There's another thing that I've been thinking about, Noom, which is couldn't college graduates be moving to the left on economic issues, not actually purely because of their economic circumstances, but rather because they're identifying with the left on a range of issues that really matter to them, things like abortion or race politics. And then once they're in that tribe, they're also adopting the economic platform.

诺姆: 我确实认为这里面有一些道理。如果你研究一下大学毕业生是从什么时候开始向左移动的,那确实是在 2004 年左右开始的,比大衰退早了几年。但实际上,你会看到在大衰退之后,向左倾斜的趋势要剧烈得多、急剧得多。所以我认为对这些研究最直观的解读是:确实有某种文化政治在推动大学毕业生向左倾斜,但真正的剧变发生在 2008 年经济彻底探底之后。大衰退对美国政治的破坏性影响怎么强调都不为过。

还有一点值得承认,那就是尽管大学毕业生在经济层面上可能感觉自己更像工人阶级,但讽刺的是,他们的投票倾向与美国那些没上过大学的工人阶级截然不同,因为那些人实际上已经向右转了。在过去三次总统选举中,他们中的大多数人都把票投给了特朗普。当然,在那些选举中,民主党人并没有推出一个经济民粹主义者来与特朗普竞争。但是,当面对他们所拥有的选项时,工人阶级选择了竞选中的共和党人。

Original English

Noam: I do think there's some truth to that. If you look at research on when college grads started moving to the left, it does start to happen around 2004, a few years before the Great Recession. But you actually see a much much sharper movement to the left after the Great Recession. So I think the most intuitive reading of the research is that there was some kind of cultural politics that was pushing college grads to the left, but that the real shift happens after the bottom falls out of the economy in 2008. It's just hard to overstate how destabilizing the Great Recession was for American politics.

It's also just worth acknowledging that even if a college grad may feel more like the workingclass economically speaking, they aren't, ironically, voting more like workingclass people who didn't go to college in America because those people have actually moved to the right. Most of them voted for Trump in the past three presidential elections. Of course, in those elections, Democrats didn't put forward an economic populace to contend with Trump. But when faced with the options they had, the working class chose the Republican in the race.

娜塔莉: 绝对是这样的,自大约 2012 年以来,我们看到了这种所谓的“文凭鸿沟”的出现,即大学毕业生倾向于投票给民主党,而没有学位的人倾向于投票给共和党。自那以后,这一差距越来越大。

Original English

Natalie: It is absolutely the case that since about 2012, we've seen this so-called diploma divide open up where college grads tend to vote for the Democrat and people without a degree tend to vote for the Republican. That gap has gotten larger since then.

诺姆: 但你必须记住的一点是,实际上在经济问题上——关于你是否想向富人征税,或者你是否支持工会,或者你是否认为政府应该在医疗保健或监管其他行业中发挥巨大作用——在过去的 20 年里,大学毕业生和没上过大学的人其实越来越接近。我们真正看到的是,这些选举压根儿就没有在这些经济议题上展开角逐。它们在很大程度上是在文化议题上展开较量的。诸如多样性、LGBTQ 权利、移民和种族等议题。在这些问题上,你会看到大学毕业生和非毕业生之间存在巨大的分歧。

有趣的是,即使在这一小部分议题上,大学毕业生和非毕业生也不是生活在两个完全不同的宇宙中。所以我们看到,比如在拜登执政期间,大学毕业生在移民问题上实际上更加接近非毕业生了。他们对移民变得更加怀疑,更加主张限制,他们的投票偏好真的开始更接近那些没有学位的人。在犯罪问题上我们也看到了类似的情况:在 2010 年代,有学位的人对犯罪问题并不怎么关心,而没学位的人非常关心。但到了 2024 年的大选,他们已经非常接近没有学位的人的立场了。所以,即使在这些所谓的文化问题、非经济问题上,我们实际上也看到了一些融合,这表明这两群人并没有少到连话都说不到一块儿的共同点。

Original English

Noam: But one thing that you have to keep in mind is that actually on economic issues on whether you want to tax the rich or whether you support unions or if you think the government should have a big role in healthcare or in regulating other industries. People who graduated from college and people who didn't have actually been moving closer and closer together over the past 20 years. What we really see is that these elections just haven't been fought on those issues. They've largely been fought on cultural issues. Issues like diversity or LGBTQ rights or immigration and race. And on those issues, you tend to see this big divide between college grads and non-grads.

What's interesting is that even on this subset of issues, college grads and non-grads are not living in two completely different universes. So we saw that during the Biden years, for example, college grads actually moved closer to non-grads on immigration. They became much more skeptical of immigration, much more restrictionist, and their voting preferences really started to come closer to people without a degree. We saw something similar with crime, where in the 2010s, people with degrees were not very concerned about crime while people with degrees were very concerned. But by the 2024 election, they had moved much more closely toward where people without a degree were. So even on these so-called cultural issues, these non-economic issues, we've actually seen some convergence that suggest that these two groups of people don't have so little in common that they can't even talk to one another.

AI与白领的无力感

娜塔莉: 仅仅为了引出一个我们还没讨论过的话题。我想问一下关于 AI 的问题,这是一股我们还没有完全看到其发挥作用的经济力量,但我可以想象它也会产生影响,也许已经对受过大学教育的人,尤其是应届毕业生及其政治身份认同产生了影响。AI 革命最终给大学毕业生带来的伤害,可能比对工人阶级的伤害更大。那么,你是如何看待这场大规模的技术转变及其可能对你一直在研究的政治重组产生的影响的?

Original English

Natalie: Just to raise something that we haven't discussed yet. I want to ask about AI, which is an economic force that we haven't yet seen fully play out, but which I could imagine would also have an impact and perhaps is already having an impact on college educated people, especially recent grads, and their political identity. The AI revolution may ultimately hurt college grads more than the working class. So, how do you think about this massive technological shift and its potential effect on the political realignment that you've studied?

诺姆: 是的,我真的认为它会加深这样一种感觉,即大学毕业生就像那些没有学位的人一样,也是受制于高管和强大公司的普通工人。我认为我们在 AI 上看到的一点是,它把这种无力感蔓延到了以前从未真正受此影响的各种白领工人身上。所以无论你谈论的是律师,还是银行、金融、咨询、营销或销售人员,突然之间,所有这些人都必须应对 AI,应对 AI 赋予他们雇主的那些筹码,以及他们突然发现自己在工作中丧失了议价能力——当他们看到机器几乎可以做得和他们一样好,甚至更好时。

Original English

Noam: Yeah, I really think it's going to add to this sense that college grads are workers just like people without a degree who are at the mercy of executives and big powerful companies. I think one thing that we're seeing with AI is that it's spreading that sense of powerlessness to a whole variety of white collar workers that hadn't really been affected by this before. So whether you're talking about lawyers or people in banking, in finance or consulting or marketing or sales, suddenly all these folks are now having to contend with AI and with the leverage that that gives their employers and with the lack of leverage that they suddenly have in their own jobs when they can see that a machine can do their work almost as well, if not better than they can.

娜塔莉: 那么这会带来什么样的政治后果呢?

Original English

Natalie: And what are the political consequences of that?

诺姆: 我觉得目前还很难说未来 5 到 10 年会产生怎样的政治后果,但我可以确定地说,我确实在自己的报道中看到了这种转变可能会让人变得多么激进。我报道过很多关于科技行业工作者以及他们与公司、老板之间关系的内容。就在过去几年里,随着 AI 的兴起,我简直看到了这种难以置信的愤怒在互联网上,在他们通常聚集的渠道里四处蔓延。过去,这些人真的认为他们的公司把他们的最大利益放在心上。他们认为自己和老板关系很好。他们甚至想成为他们的老板。

然而,随着这些大型科技公司纷纷裁员,并且开始讲述 AI 是如何改变他们的工作方式以及他们还需要多少工人的各种情况时,这些人们真的以前所未见的姿态爆发了。我认为,随着我们看到这些价值数千亿甚至数万亿美元的公司以上市的方式,将财富仅仅聚集在极小一部分极其富裕的创始人与拥有者手中,同时却将在过去一两年里由于 AI 崛起而被裁掉的成千上万的员工抛诸脑后,这种愤怒只会被进一步加剧。

因此,我们不知道这究竟会在何时产生政治效应,也不知道这种政治效应会有多大,但我认为我们可以肯定地说,这道划分 1% 和 99% 的界限,比以往任何时候都要鲜明。我猜测未来只会变得更加界限分明。

Original English

Noam: I think it's a little hard to say what the political consequences are going to be over the next five or 10 years, but one thing that I can say with certainty is that I've really seen in my own reporting how radicalizing the shift can be. I report a lot on tech workers and their relationship to their companies and their bosses. And just over the past few years, amid the rise of AI, I've just seen this incredible anger kind of ricocheting across the internet and in channels where they typically congregate. It used to be that these folks really thought that their companies had their best interest at heart. They thought that they had good relationships with their bosses. They wanted to be their bosses. And as these big tech companies have laid people off and have cited all the ways that AI is changing their jobs and how many workers they need, these folks, they're really lashing out in ways that I've never seen. And I think that's only going to be exacerbated as we see these companies worth hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars go public in a way that's really acrewing to just a small portion of very affluent, very rich owners and founders of these companies and leaving behind tens of thousands of people who've been laid off just in the last year or two amid the rise of AI. So, we don't know when exactly this will have a political effect or how large that political effect will be, but I think we can say that this dividing line between the 1% and the 99% is as stark as it's ever been. And I would guess that it's only going to get starker going forward.

娜塔莉: 好的,诺姆,非常感谢你。

Original English

Natalie: Well, no, thank you so much.

诺姆: 感谢邀请。

Original English

Noam: Thanks for having me.

娜塔莉: 诺姆的书名叫《叛乱:受过大学教育的工人阶级的崛起与反抗》(Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College Educated Working Class)。我们马上回来。以下是您还需要了解的其他信息。

今天,美国对伊朗发动了新一波空袭。数小时前,特朗普总统誓言要保持对德黑兰的军事压力,因为他认为伊朗领导人在谈判上拖延了“太长时间”。周三早些时候,美国的空袭摧毁了位于霍尔木兹海峡附近伊朗南部海岸的一个疑似饮用水设施。据《纽约时报》的一项分析显示,一名当地官员称,这导致附近一个城镇及村庄的 2 万多名居民断水。本周该地区的气温已达到 100 华氏度以上。目前尚不清楚美国是否故意袭击了该供水设施。根据国际法,蓄意将民用基础设施作为打击目标可能构成战争罪。

今天的节目由斯黛拉·谭(Stella Tan)、里奇·诺维茨基(Ricky Novetsky)和奥利维亚·纳特(Olivia Nat)制作。编辑是丽莎·周(Lisa Chow),由威尔·皮尔(Will Pyel)进行事实核查,并由玛丽安·洛扎诺(Marian Lozano)、丹·帕尔(Dan Pal)、黛安·王(Diane Wong)、罗文·尼莫托(Rowan Nemoto)和艾丽西亚·巴(Alicia Ba)配乐。我们的主题曲由 Wonderly 创作。本期节目由克里斯·伍德(Chris Wood)担任录音工程。特别鸣谢乔·兰斯基(Joe Lensky)、罗珀公共舆论研究中心(Roper Center for Public Opinion Research)、约翰·德拉·沃尔普(John Dela Vulpe)和马克·卡诺维茨(Mark Canowitz)。这就是《每日新闻》的全部内容。我是娜塔莉·基特罗夫。明天见。

Original English

Natalie: Nomesh's book is called Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College Educated Working Class. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know. Today, the US launched a new wave of air strikes on Iran hours after President Trump vowed to keep up military pressure on Thran because Iranian leaders were taking quote too long to negotiate. Earlier US strikes on Wednesday destroyed what appears to be a drinking water facility on Iran's southern coast near the straight of Hormuz. According to an analysis by the New York Times, a local official said that water was cut off to more than 20,000 people living in a town and villages nearby. Temperatures in the area have reached above 100° F this week. It's unclear if the US intentionally struck the water facility. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime under international law. Today's episode was produced by Stella Tan, Ricky Novetsky, and Olivia Nat. It was edited by Lisa Chow, fact checked by Will Pyel, and contains music by Marian Lozano, Dan Pal, Diane Wong, Rowan Nemoto, and Alicia Ba. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Joe Lensky, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, John Dela Vulpe, and Mark Canowitz. That's it for the Daily. I'm Natalie Ketro. See you tomorrow.

📌 文中提及的人物和组织

关键字: political-realignment economic-populism student-debt class-politics corporate-consolidation