Speakers

Joseph Stiglitz: 2001 Nobel Prize laureate in Economics, renowned for his critical analysis of globalization and inequality. He is a professor at Columbia University and a former Chief Economist of the World Bank.

Aaron Bastani: Co-founder of Novara Media and host of the "Downstream" show, known for his interviews with prominent figures on politics and economics.

Introduction: A Nobel Laureate on Globalization and Its Aftermath

Aaron Bastani: We've had some fantastic guests here on Downstream over the years, but today is the very first time that I'm speaking to a Nobel Prize winner. Joseph Stiglitz won the 2001 Nobel Prize for economics. He is however not just an amazing mathematician and economist. He is, I think, one of the best communicators in the English language on these issues in the last 30-40 years. Globalization and its Discontents made him a whistleblower from inside the establishment when it came to globalization and the likes of the IMF, the World Bank. Mr. Stiglitz, more than anyone else, turned those acronyms into household names, a shorthand for growing global inequality. And more recently in 2008, he was inside the room when some of the most profoundly important decisions were made about banking bailouts and what America does responding to the biggest financial crisis since 1929. So, lots to discuss over the last 30 years, over the last 15 years, and even more recently in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election last year. I hope you enjoy this interview. Professor Joseph Stiglitz, welcome to Downstream.

**亚伦·巴斯塔尼：**多年来，我们的“Downstream”节目邀请过一些非常出色的嘉宾，但今天是我第一次与一位诺贝尔奖得主对话。约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨荣获 2001 年诺贝尔经济学奖。然而，他不仅是一位杰出的数学家和经济学家，在我看来，他还是过去三四十年里，在这些议题上英语世界最优秀的沟通者之一。《全球化及其不满》一书使他成为了体制内部揭露全球化以及国际货币基金组织（IMF）、世界银行等机构问题的“吹哨人”。斯蒂格利茨先生比任何人都更成功地让这些缩写词成为家喻户晓的名字，成为全球不平等加剧的代名词。最近，在 2008 年，当美国应对自 1929 年以来最严重的金融危机，就银行救助等问题做出一些至关重要的决定时，他就在会议现场。因此，在过去 30 年、15 年，甚至在去年唐纳德·特朗普当选后，我们有很多话题可以讨论。希望您喜欢这次访谈。约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨教授，欢迎来到“Downstream”。

Joseph Stiglitz: Nice to be here.

**约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：**很高兴来到这里。

Aaron Bastani: We like to use formality here at Navara Media. It's great to have you on. Our first Nobel Prize winner.

**亚伦·巴斯塔尼：**在 Novara Media，我们习惯于保持正式。很高兴能邀请到您，我们的第一位诺贝尔奖得主。

Joseph Stiglitz: Oh, thank you. So, uh, quite the accolade.

**约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：**哦，谢谢。这真是个了不起的荣誉。

Globalization Revisited: Foreshadowing Today's Crises

Aaron Bastani: You are obviously best known for a book written a while back now, Globalization and its Discontents. We're talking about this though, The Road to Freedom, Economics, and the Good Society. I will of course want to talk about some of your previous work as well. And in fact, I'd like to start with that. You were the outstanding voice with regards to critiquing globalization at its high point, late 1990s, early 2000s. Are we now living in a moment where you kind of reflect on that moment almost with affection? You know, things were working a little bit. There was global growth, there were rising living standards for the West. Do you sort of think maybe I was a bit too harsh on globalization?

**亚伦·巴斯塔尼：**您显然以多年前写的一本书《全球化及其不满》而闻名。不过，我们今天讨论的是这本《通往自由之路：经济学与良善社会》。当然，我也想谈谈您以前的一些作品。实际上，我想就从那里开始。在 1990 年代末、2000 年代初全球化的鼎盛时期，您是批评全球化的杰出声音。我们现在所处的时代，您是否会带着些许怀念回顾那个时期？毕竟，当时情况似乎还在运转，全球经济在增长，西方的生活水平在提高。您是否会觉得，也许当年我对全球化的批评有点太苛刻了？

Joseph Stiglitz: No, I more... I don't like to say things like "I told you so," but I think what I said there was really a precursor to some of the political and economic problems we have today. I wrote the book after coming out of being chief economist of the World Bank, and I was looking at it through a particular lens of developing countries. And I was writing and saying, you know, those global arrangements were unfair to developing countries, emerging markets, they were unfair to workers in America. They were agreements that were based basically on corporate interest and financial interest in the advanced countries and particularly in the United States. And I worried that a lot of the economic analysis on which it was predicated, globalization, made no sense. There were ideas like trickle-down economics, just make sure the pie is bigger and everybody's going to be better off. No theory behind that. In fact, economic theory said that opening up trade could actually lead to lower wages of workers in advanced countries. They were predicated on notions that free movement of speculative capital would stabilize the global economy. And it seemed to me pretty evident if you looked at history that capital sloshes around in a very destabilizing way. And they were predicated on the idea that if you opened up free trade, yes, you would lose jobs, but new jobs would be created. It was a simplistic view about job creation, particularly in the context of developing countries. We all now know also in developed countries that creating jobs is much more difficult. And too often what I saw was that you moved workers from low-productivity import-competing sectors to zero-productivity unemployment. And that's not a way to create wealth and make people better off. So there's so many aspects of what was going on then that sort of foreshadowed the troubles, but the troubles not just in the developing countries and emerging markets, troubles in the advanced countries.

约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：不，我更倾向于……我不想说“我早就告诉过你了”之类的话，但我认为我当时所说的，确实是我们今天面临的一些政治和经济问题的预兆。我是在卸任世界银行首席经济学家后写的这本书，当时我是从发展中国家的特定视角来看待这个问题的。我当时写道，那些全球性的安排对发展中国家、新兴市场不公平，对美国的工人也不公平。那些协议基本上是基于发达国家，特别是美国的企业利益和金融利益。我担心的是，支撑全球化的许多经济分析毫无道理。比如涓滴经济学的观点，认为只要把蛋糕做大，每个人都会受益。这背后没有任何理论支撑。事实上，经济学理论表明，开放贸易实际上可能导致发达国家工人的工资下降。他们还基于一种观念，即投机性资本的自由流动会稳定全球经济。但在我看来，如果你回顾历史，资本的流动方式非常不稳定，这是显而易见的。他们还基于一种想法，即开放自由贸易，是的，你会失去一些工作，但新的工作会被创造出来。这是一种关于创造就业的过于简单的看法，尤其是在发展中国家的背景下。我们现在都知道，在发达国家创造就业也困难得多。我经常看到的情况是，工人从低生产率的进口竞争行业转移到了零生产率的失业状态。这不是创造财富、让人们过得更好的方式。所以，当时发生的很多事情，都预示了后来的麻烦——不仅是发展中国家和新兴市场的麻烦，也是发达国家的麻烦。

The Path to Trump: From the 2008 Crisis to Democratic Fragility

Aaron Bastani: So, it sounds like you see a straight line between that diagnosis you had of globalization at the turn of the century and political events in the United States and in this country as well subsequent to 2016. Did you think then 20 years ago, 25 years ago, that the United States would produce a Trump-like political figure or was, like you've said, the emphasis was more on global south developing countries? And if you didn't think it 25 years ago, when did it kind of click with you that actually American politics could be profoundly disrupted in a way that hadn't been the case in your lifetime as a result of this global economic settlement?

**亚伦·巴斯塔尼：**所以，听起来您认为，您在本世纪初对全球化的诊断与 2016 年之后在美国以及英国发生的政治事件之间存在一条直线关系。那么，在 20 年或 25 年前，您是否曾想过美国会出现像特朗普这样的政治人物？还是说，正如您所言，当时的重点更多地放在了全球南方和发展中国家？如果 25 年前您没有这样想，那么您是在什么时候意识到，由于这种全球经济格局，美国政治可能会受到您有生以来前所未有的深刻颠覆？

Joseph Stiglitz: The realization that we were in a moment of democratic fragility began to dawn on me in the 2008 financial crisis. And as I looked at the way we handled that, it was so clear that what we were doing in the United States was reflecting the interest of the financial markets and alienating everybody else in our society. I was engaged in that moment in a number of political discussions. For instance, I was on a phone call at the very beginning when before Obama had gotten elected. It was during the final stages of the campaign and the question was how should the Democrats respond to the crisis that began in September of 2008? And there were all these people from the big banks and financial markets on the conference call and I was one of the lonely voices saying, you know, you ought to be also worrying about American workers and American homeowners who are about to lose their homes. And if we just focus on the banks, it won't be a good recovery and it will be politically disastrous. And they laughed at me, you know, they said, "Oh, you know, let's be serious. We have to save the banks, and unfortunately Obama executed that kind of a strategy." And by the time I came a little bit later, 2011, I wrote this article in Vanity Fair called "Of the 1% for the 1% and by the 1%," echoing Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address "of the people, for the people, and by the people," where it seemed to me that we were having a government that was reflecting that top 1%. And that led to my book, The Price of Inequality. And by the time I finished that book, The Price of Inequality, in 2012, it was clear to me that we were sowing a fertile field for a demagogue. And I actually said that in the book, a demagogue like Trump. At that moment I don't think I had any picture of somebody as dangerous as Trump. You know it was outside our vision, but that there would be a demagogue seemed to me a very high risk.

约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：我是在 2008 年金融危机时，开始意识到我们正处在一个民主脆弱的时刻。当我回顾我们处理那场危机的方式时，很明显，我们在美国所做的一切都反映了金融市场的利益，而疏远了社会中的其他所有人。当时我参与了许多政治讨论。例如，在奥巴马当选前的竞选最后阶段，我参加了一个电话会议。当时的问题是，民主党应该如何应对 2008 年 9 月开始的危机？电话会议上全都是来自大银行和金融市场的人，而我是少数几个孤独的声音之一，我说：“你们也应该关心一下即将失去家园的美国工人和房主。如果我们只关注银行，复苏就不会是好的，而且在政治上将是灾难性的。”他们嘲笑我，说：“哦，拜托，严肃点。我们必须拯救银行。”不幸的是，奥巴马执行的就是这种策略。到了 2011 年，我为《名利场》写了一篇文章，题为《民有、民治、民享的 1%》，模仿了亚伯拉罕·林肯的葛底斯堡演说中“民有、民治、民享”的说法。在我看来，我们的政府正在反映那顶层 1%的利益。这促使我写了《不平等的代价》这本书。到 2012 年我完成这本书时，我很清楚，我们正在为煽动家的出现播下肥沃的土壤。我实际上在书里就说了，会出现像特朗普这样的煽动家。当时我并没有想到会出现像特朗普这样危险的人物，这超出了我们的想象，但出现一个煽动家，在我看来风险非常高。

The Failure of Elites and the Rise of Neoliberalism

Aaron Bastani: So you have this crisis of capitalism in 2008, the most extraordinary crisis since 1929, certainly in the United States, and you have this response, which that's an incredible sort of insight. You're on the same call, I presume, as people like Tim Geithner and, you know, Bob Rubin and all the big shots. And of course, Tim Geithner, he ends up being the Treasury Secretary for Obama. So you're on that call, you hear what these guys are saying and their response is not remotely interested in the sort of the political externalities, the political risks that would entail from their choices. Here's a question because you know, you've been around a long time. You've seen so many different characters and personalities in politics. There's an argument which is that the statesmen in this country that had the shared experience of the Second World War and across Europe actually were terrified of going back to something like that. And there was just a shared understanding that politics can get really nasty really quickly and we need to avoid that kind of volatility. And as societies on both sides of the Atlantic, we've lost that inheritance, that kind of collective knowledge. Do you buy that? That our sort of commercial and political elites simply don't think about the possibility of political chaos, collapse, regimes falling, demagogues.

亚伦·巴斯塔尼：所以，2008 年出现了自 1929 年以来最不寻常的资本主义危机，尤其是在美国，而你所描述的应对方式，真是一个惊人的洞见。我猜想，你参加的那个电话会议上，有像蒂姆·盖特纳、鲍勃·鲁宾这样的大人物。当然，盖特纳最终成为了奥巴马的财政部长。你在那个电话会议上，听到这些人所说的，他们的回应完全没有兴趣去考虑他们的选择所带来的政治外部性或政治风险。这里有个问题，因为您阅历丰富，见证了政坛上许多不同的人物和个性。有一种观点认为，在英国和整个欧洲，那些经历过二战的政治家们，实际上非常害怕重蹈覆辙。他们有一种共识，即政治可以很快变得非常肮脏，我们必须避免那种动荡。而大西洋两岸的社会，似乎已经失去了这种传承和集体知识。您同意这种说法吗？即我们的商业和政治精英们，根本不去考虑政治混乱、崩溃、政权更迭和煽动家出现的可能性。

Joseph Stiglitz: I think to a large extent, I think that's true. You know, we've had so much political stability, particularly after World War II. We had decades of shared prosperity, where every group in the population grew, but those at the bottom grew more. And so there was almost out of that period a belief in the American middle class. This is the world that I grew up in. But then I think we didn't fully appreciate what began to happen in the mid-1970s and the really strikingly with 1980, Ronald Reagan, neoliberalism. And that was really a major departure from that post-World War II quarter-century of social solidarity, high taxes on the rich but a kind of solidarity of our society on the whole. And that neoliberalism brought down the taxes at the top, deregulated, you might say let the market rip and it did. And the result we had growing inequality, we had financial crisis after financial crisis. It wasn't the pretty picture that they had promised. It was really quite the contrary, slower growth, more instability, more inequality. But we didn't notice it. They bought the Kool-Aid so strongly that even as the data was coming in and said this experiment is not going well, like any religious cult, they said give it more time. Give it more time. And as time went on, we had another crisis in 2008. The economic divide got greater, life expectancy in the United States started to decline, and finally the vision that I had seen of a demagogue arising out of this fertile field of despair became a reality.

约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：我想在很大程度上，这是对的。你知道，我们经历了很长一段时间的政治稳定，尤其是在二战之后。我们有几十年的共同繁荣，社会中每个群体的收入都在增长，而底层群体的增长更多。因此，那个时期几乎产生了一种对美国中产阶级的信念。这就是我成长的世界。但后来，我想我们没有完全意识到从 1970 年代中期开始发生的变化，尤其是在 1980 年，罗纳德·里根和新自由主义的出现，这是一个引人注目的转折点。这与二战后四分之一个世纪的社会团结、对富人征收高税、但社会整体上存在一种团结的时代，是一个重大的背离。那种新自由主义降低了顶层的税收，放松了管制，可以说让市场“自由驰骋”，它确实做到了。结果是不平等加剧，金融危机接踵而至。这并不是他们所承诺的美好画面。恰恰相反，是增长放缓、更不稳定、更不平等。但我们没有注意到。他们对那套说辞深信不疑，以至于即使数据表明这个实验并不顺利，他们也像任何宗教狂热团体一样说：“再给它点时间，再给它点时间。”随着时间的推移，2008 年我们又经历了一次危机。经济鸿沟变得更大，美国的预期寿命开始下降，最终，我所预见到的，一个从绝望的沃土中崛起的煽动家的景象，成为了现实。

Obama's Legacy: A Crisis Wasted?

Aaron Bastani: Do you blame the Obama administration for Trump then? Because it sounds like they took certain choices which kind of made this somewhat inevitable.

**亚伦·巴斯塔尼：**那么，您是否将特朗普的出现归咎于奥巴马政府？因为听起来，他们做出的一些选择似乎让这一结果在某种程度上变得不可避免。

Joseph Stiglitz: I think the problem started earlier than Obama. I have to say I think the problem started in some sense even under Carter where the deregulation began. Clinton continued that, big financial deregulation, lowered the taxes on capital gains which is the major source of income for the very very wealthy. So, the tax policy that increased inequality was part of Clinton's agenda, but by the time of Obama, it was clear where we were going. No excuse. So, yes, in the end, I do blame Obama in a couple ways. First, he did have one achievement and that was Obamacare, which is the healthcare for the large numbers of Americans who didn't have health insurance. That was an achievement. It had in the design there were a number of mistakes. One of the things I had advocated was what was called the public option. So if the private sector didn't give what people wanted and needed, there would be a public option. That was thrown out under the influence of the health insurance companies that didn't want competition. And the fact that they didn't want competition should have told us something, that they were afraid of the public option. But that was an important success overall. But the way he handled the bank bailouts, the failures in helping individuals with mortgages, the insufficiency of the recovery packages, the failure to do anything about climate change, and politically, the failure to strengthen our state parties, our local parties, and meanwhile the Republican party was shoring up what was going on at state and local level. And so it left the political system more vulnerable and it left our economic system more vulnerable.

约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：我认为问题在奥巴马之前就开始了。我必须说，问题在某种意义上甚至始于卡特时期，那时放松管制就开始了。克林顿延续了这一做法，进行了大规模的金融放松管制，降低了资本利得税，而这是超级富豪的主要收入来源。所以，加剧不平等的税收政策是克林顿议程的一部分。但到了奥巴马时期，我们的走向已经很清楚了，没有任何借口。所以，是的，最终我确实在几个方面责备奥巴马。首先，他确实有一个成就，那就是奥巴马医改，为大量没有医疗保险的美国人提供了医疗保健。这是一个成就。但在设计上存在一些错误。我曾主张的一个方案是所谓的“公共选项”，即如果私营部门不能提供人们想要和需要的东西，就应该有一个公共选项。但在医疗保险公司的影响下，这个方案被否决了，因为它们不希望有竞争。它们不希望竞争这个事实，本应告诉我们一些事情——它们害怕公共选项。但总的来说，那仍然是一个重要的成功。然而，他处理银行救助的方式，在帮助个人抵押贷款方面的失败，复苏计划的不足，以及在气候变化问题上的无所作为，都留下了问题。在政治上，他未能加强我们州和地方的政党力量，而与此同时，共和党却在巩固其在州和地方层面的基础。因此，这使得我们的政治体系和经济体系都变得更加脆弱。

Aaron Bastani: Yeah. So for people watching and listening to this in the UK, as I understand it, by 2012, obviously Obama gets reelected but you already start to see down-ballot races, Democrats really suffering, their vote not turning out. And there's one of these great ironies of the last 15 years, which is that the right has taken more lessons from the radical left of the 20th century in organizing, building the party, than the center and center-left has.

亚伦·巴斯塔尼：是的。对于在英国观看和收听这个节目的观众来说，据我所知，到 2012 年，奥巴马虽然再次当选，但你已经开始看到在次级选举中，民主党遭受重创，他们的选民投票率不高。这是过去 15 年里一个巨大的讽刺：在组织和建设政党方面，右翼从 20 世纪的激进左翼那里学到的教训，比中间派和中左翼要多得多。

Encounters with Ideologues: Milton Friedman and Adam Smith

Aaron Bastani: One final question on history, because I want to talk about the substance of this book. You met Milton Friedman. I think you sort of explicitly say that in the book many years ago. What was he like as a person?

**亚伦·巴斯塔尼：**关于历史的最后一个问题，因为我想谈谈这本书的实质内容。您见过米尔顿·弗里德曼。我记得您在书中明确提到过。他作为一个人，是怎样的？

Joseph Stiglitz: Yeah, actually we had many, many encounters over the years. I was a token liberal at the Hoover Institution, which is a think tank located on the Stanford University campus, which is where all the right-wing go to be trained, indoctrinated. I welcomed this as a chance to get to know the whole political landscape, and we had many conversations. But I'll relate one particular conversation. Back in the late 60s, early 70s, I wrote a paper explaining why firms maximizing their stock market value would not lead to the general well-being of society. At about the same time, Milton Friedman was writing a very influential article which was published in the New York Times magazine on why firms should maximize the stock market value. I got invited to the University of Chicago to give a talk on my paper. And I gave a seminar and after the seminar, we were standing outside the seminar room and he said, "Joe, you're wrong." I said, "Milton, tell me what an assumption that I made that you don't like or where I made a mistake in my analysis." He said, "Joe, you're wrong. I know shareholder maximization is optimal. It's good for society." I said, "Look, I've worked very hard to show that you're wrong and that you know, here, just explain to me where in my analysis I went wrong." He said, "Joe, you're wrong." And it was very clear at that point he had become an ideologue. He had strong beliefs. He couldn't engage in an analytic exercise. He was very bright, very congenial, a really very nice guy, very committed to his ideology. There's a little bit I've always felt a little dissemblance, because one of his arguments in *Capitalism and Freedom* is that economic freedom is very important for political freedom. And yet he seemed perfectly at ease going down and becoming an adviser to Pinochet right after he had disappeared tens of thousands of people and using that as a form of imposing on the Chilean people his economic ideology. So he was using political authoritarianism to impose his idea of quote "economic freedom."

约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：是的，实际上我们多年来有过很多次接触。我曾是胡佛研究所的“象征性自由派”。胡佛研究所是斯坦福大学校园内的一个智库，是所有右翼人士接受培训和思想灌输的地方。我把这看作是一个了解整个政治版图的机会，我们有过很多次对话。但我想讲一次特别的对话。在 60 年代末、70 年代初，我写了一篇论文，解释了为什么企业最大化其股票市场价值并不会带来社会的普遍福祉。大约在同一时间，米尔顿·弗里德曼正在为《纽约时报》杂志写一篇非常有影响力的文章，论述为什么企业应该最大化其股票市场价值。我被邀请到芝加哥大学就我的论文发表演讲。我做了一个研讨会，会后我们站在研讨室外，他说：“乔，你错了。”我说：“米尔顿，告诉我我哪个假设你不喜欢，或者我的分析哪里出了错。”他说：“乔，你错了。我知道股东价值最大化是最优的，对社会有益。”我说：“看，我花了很大功夫来证明你是错的，请你解释一下我的分析哪里出了问题。”他说：“乔，你错了。”那一刻，很明显他已经成了一个意识形态家。他有强烈的信念，无法进行分析性的探讨。他非常聪明，非常和蔼，是个非常好的人，非常忠于他的意识形态。但我总感觉有点虚伪，因为他在《资本主义与自由》中的一个论点是，经济自由对政治自由非常重要。然而，他似乎很自在地跑到智利，在皮诺切特让成千上万的人失踪后，成为他的顾问，并以此作为一种手段，将他的经济意识形态强加给智利人民。所以，他是在利用政治威权主义来强加他所谓的“经济自由”。

The Misuse of Adam Smith and the Battle of Ideas

Aaron Bastani: You talk about Adam Smith in the book a lot. What do you think Adam Smith would make of free market liberals who use his name to justify the policies they like?

**亚伦·巴斯塔尼：**您在书中经常谈到亚当·斯密。您认为，对于那些用他的名字来为自己喜欢的政策辩护的自由市场派，亚当·斯密会作何感想？

Joseph Stiglitz: Oh, he'd be rolling over in his grave. If you read the totality of Adam Smith, yes, he talks about the invisible hand, the pursuit of self-interest leading as if by the invisible hand to the well-being of society. But that's just one idea. He then went on also to say things like, "Businessmen seldom get together, whether for merriment or whatever, without a conspiracy against the public." So he didn't think businessmen were out there to increase people's well-being and he really worried about what we would call today anti-competitive behavior. He writes at another point that when regulation is in the favor of workers, it is almost always for the good, but not so when it's in the interest of corporations. He's very much aware how corporations capture the state and advance regulations to pursue their interest to give them what we would today call rents. But he also realizes how important it is for workers for well-being that the state regulate in behalf of workers. Then he goes on at another point and talks about how firms get together, as he said, almost always in secrecy, to conspire to push down the wages of workers. And I often quote that passage when talking about some of the conspiracies that went on 200 years later in Hollywood and Silicon Valley to suppress the wages of workers in some of the highest profit-making firms. They were working together to lower the wages of those who were generating their profits. I mean, quite unbelievable. So there was a kind of foresight that he had. Maybe it was about the basic nature of human nature and the striving for profits, but clearly he did not believe in unfettered capitalism.

**约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：**哦，他会在坟墓里气得打滚。如果你完整地阅读亚当·斯密，是的，他谈到了“看不见的手”，即追求自身利益如同被一只看不见的手引导，最终促进了社会福祉。但这只是一个观点。他还说过，“商人很少聚集在一起，无论是为了娱乐还是别的什么，而不搞一个反对公众的阴谋。”所以他并不认为商人是为了增进人民的福祉，他非常担心我们今天所说的反竞争行为。他在另一处写道，当监管有利于工人时，几乎总是有益的；但当它符合公司利益时，则不然。他非常清楚公司如何俘获国家，并推动监管来追求自身利益，以获得我们今天所说的“寻租”利润。但他也意识到，为了工人的福祉，国家代表工人进行监管是多么重要。接着，他又在另一处谈到，公司如何像他说的那样，几乎总是在秘密中联合起来，合谋压低工人的工资。我经常在谈论 200 年后在好莱坞和硅谷发生的一些压制工人薪资的阴谋时引用这段话，那些利润最高的公司，竟然联手压低为他们创造利润的工人的工资。这真是令人难以置信。所以，他有一种远见。也许这关乎人性的基本本质和对利润的追求，但很明显，他并不相信不受约束的资本主义。

The Need for a New FDR and the Failures of the Obama Era

Aaron Bastani: Does the United States need another FDR?

**亚伦·巴斯塔尼：**美国需要另一位罗斯福（FDR）吗？

Joseph Stiglitz: Yes. You know, FDR responded to the Great Depression. But in responding to the Great Depression, he not only said we have to stimulate the economy, to use today's words, he also said we have some deep problems in our society, we don't have systems of social protection. And so he put forth Social Security. He said, you know, the bargaining power of workers isn't there and they're being left behind. So we passed what we call the Wagner Act that gave workers bargaining rights. These were transformative. He also said there's a role for government in investment. United States was arguably one of the richest countries at the time. Large fractions of the country did not have electricity. And he said, "Well, the market hasn't done this. We will provide electricity across the country." And he said, you know, "People shouldn't live in a life of fear." And he said, "Yes, we have our civil rights, our freedom of speech, freedom of religion, all those, but we also have economic rights: freedom from hunger, freedom from fear." So it was a really a reconception of the role of the state. And he said, "This is not going to be easy. There are going to be people who want a small government, people who want more inequality, and they're going to oppose me." But he had a vision of a different society, and he pushed and he pushed, and he achieved an awful lot. Today, almost a hundred years later, we're in need of that kind of vision, a visionary, but also a politician who is able to translate that vision into practice.

约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：是的。你知道，富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福（FDR）应对了大萧条。但在应对大萧条时，他不仅用今天的话说要刺激经济，他还说我们的社会存在一些深层次问题，我们没有社会保障体系。于是他推出了社会保障制度。他说，工人的议价能力不足，他们被落下了。所以我们通过了所谓的《瓦格纳法案》，赋予了工人集体谈判的权利。这些都是变革性的。他还说，政府在投资方面应扮演角色。当时美国可以说是最富裕的国家之一，但大部分地区没有电力。他说：“好吧，市场没能做到这一点，我们将为全国提供电力。”他还说：“人们不应该生活在恐惧之中。”他说：“是的，我们有我们的公民权利，言论自由、宗教自由等等，但我们也有经济权利：免于饥饿的自由，免于恐惧的自由。”所以，这确实是对国家角色的一次重新构想。他说：“这不会容易。会有人想要一个小政府，有人想要更多的不平等，他们会反对我。”但他对一个不同的社会有远见，他不断地推动，并取得了巨大的成就。今天，将近一百年后，我们需要那种远见——一个有远见的人，也是一个能够将这种远见付诸实践的政治家。

Joseph Stiglitz: You know, Obama's chief of staff famously said, "We should not let a crisis go to waste." But Obama did let it go to waste. It was a patchwork, resuscitating the role of the banks, not really reforming our society in any significant way. He let that moment pass. We are now in another moment where I think what is at stake is much, much more because Trump has trampled on our democracy, on our rule of law, and we now realize the fragility of our political system, of our democracy. We realize that our systems of checks and balances, they may hold. We hope they hold, but they're too fragile. We shouldn't be relying on prayer at this point. But that's what we are relying on right now.

约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：你知道，奥巴马的幕僚长有句名言：“我们不应浪费任何一场危机。”但奥巴马确实浪费了那场危机。那只是一个缝缝补补的方案，复活了银行的角色，但并未对我们的社会进行任何实质性的改革。他让那个时刻溜走了。我们现在又处在另一个时刻，我认为这次的赌注要大得多，因为特朗普践踏了我们的民主和法治，我们现在才意识到我们的政治体系和民主是多么脆弱。我们意识到，我们的三权分立体系，或许能撑住，我们希望它们能撑住，但它们太脆弱了。在这一点上，我们不应该依赖祈祷，但我们现在依赖的正是祈祷。

Progressive Politics in the 21st Century: Constraints and Opportunities

Aaron Bastani: Why do you think progressive parties are so incapable of producing another politician like FDR? It's not just a question for the United States. It's the same in the UK and it's not a recent phenomenon. Like you say, Obama has the crisis. He wins this huge mandate, like extraordinary number of votes. Probably the most charismatic American politician, I would say, since Kennedy. And yet he doesn't deliver on a holistic political project. And you see something similar with Starmer right now in this country. Again, you use the word "patchwork." That's precisely it. So why don't progressive parties across the anglophone world so far pursue the kind of agenda you're talking about with FDR? What's stopping them?

**亚伦·巴斯塔尼：**您认为为什么进步派政党如此无力再产生像罗斯福那样的政治家？这不仅是美国的问题，英国也是如此，而且这并非近期现象。正如您所说，奥巴马面临危机，赢得了巨大的授权，获得了非凡的票数。他可能是自肯尼迪以来最具魅力的美国政治家。然而，他并没有实现一个整体性的政治项目。现在，你在英国的斯塔默身上也看到了类似的情况。您再次用了“缝缝补补”这个词，正是如此。那么，为什么整个英语世界的进步派政党，至今都未能推行您所说的那种罗斯福式的议程呢？是什么在阻止他们？

Joseph Stiglitz: I think one way of thinking about it goes back to the 1980s, 1990s. We went through a period of the Great Moderation. You might say it was a period of mellowness, of everybody trying to get together. We were saying, "Oh, FDR was too strident. We're all middle class now. Let's not talk about 'class warfare.' That's a thing of the past. That's old communist language." We're one big happy family. Well, of course, we're not one big happy family. And there are a very large fraction of Americans who are very, very deeply unhappy. And the same thing is true in many other advanced countries. But that belief, that ideology, that hope that we were one happy family, circumscribed what the politicians felt comfortable doing. They didn't want to be strident. And FDR looked at that moment and he said, "I have no choice. If I am not strident, we won't solve the Great Depression." And he realized that, and so he had to make a choice. And it takes somebody of some gumption, but we do have leaders. AOC in the United States, Bernie Sanders, there are some of the state governors who I think are able to put forward a new agenda, a progressive agenda. Different from the kind of, you know, we're in the 21st century. We're in a digital green transition. It's a very different world. So it's not replicating the 19th-century battles. It's new. But it requires a kind of forcefulness that recognizes that we are at a moment of upheaval and that will take strong collective action and that unfortunately where we are today, not everybody is going to be happy.

约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：我想，一种思考方式可以追溯到 1980 年代和 1990 年代。我们经历了一个“大缓和”时期。你可以说那是一个温和的时期，每个人都试图和睦相处。我们当时会说：“哦，罗斯福太激进了。我们现在都是中产阶级，别再谈什么‘阶级斗争’了，那是过去的事，是老掉牙的共产主义语言。”我们是一个幸福的大家庭。当然，我们并非一个幸福的大家庭。有很大一部分美国人非常、非常不开心。在许多其他发达国家也是如此。但那种信念、那种意识形态、那种我们是一个幸福家庭的希望，限制了政治家们觉得可以放手去做的事情。他们不想表现得激进。而罗斯福在那个时刻说：“我别无选择。如果我不激进，我们就无法解决大萧条。”他意识到了这一点，所以他必须做出选择。这需要有胆识的人。但我们确实有这样的领导者，美国的 AOC、伯尼·桑德斯，还有一些州长，我认为他们能够提出一个新的、进步的议程。这与 19 世纪的斗争不同，我们身处 21 世纪，正在经历数字化和绿色转型，这是一个非常不同的世界。所以这不是复制过去的战斗，而是新的。但这需要一种力量，一种认识到我们正处于一个剧变时刻的力量，这需要强有力的集体行动，而不幸的是，在我们今天所处的境地，并非每个人都会感到满意。

Economic Realities: Debt, Growth, and the Path Forward

Aaron Bastani: Sticking with this for a moment, I'm going to come at this with a skeptic's eye. Somebody watching this who watches Fox News or in this country GB News, they would say, "Mr. Stiglitz, Professor Stiglitz, this is all a reasonable analysis on FDR. But we live in a different world now. Personal debt is much higher. Sovereign debt is much higher. We've had no real growth for a really long time. We've had debt-leveraged growth really since the global financial crisis. We haven't had a growth model in the US or the UK. People talk about growth under Trump. Look at the deficits as well. It's not creating private sector-led prosperity in that country. Same in this country, certainly not if you take out big tech. So this is not the same as the 30s. What would you say to them between the debt, zero growth, even the demographics? We're much older societies. So the constraints are higher, the costs are higher with regards to elderly care, healthcare, etc. What would you say to them?

**亚伦·巴斯塔尼：**我暂时以怀疑者的眼光来看待这个问题。一个观看福克斯新闻或英国 GB 新闻的观众可能会说：“斯蒂格利茨先生，斯蒂格利茨教授，您对罗斯福的分析很有道理。但我们现在生活在一个不同的世界。个人债务高得多，主权债务也高得多。我们已经很长时间没有真正的增长了。自全球金融危机以来，我们经历的基本上是债务驱动的增长。美国或英国都没有一个真正的增长模式。人们谈论特朗普时期的增长，但也看看赤字。那并没有创造出由私营部门主导的繁荣。英国也是如此，尤其是在剔除大型科技公司之后。所以，这和 30 年代不一样。面对债务、零增长，甚至人口结构（我们是老龄化社会，老年护理、医疗保健等方面的约束和成本更高），您会对他们说些什么？”

Joseph Stiglitz: Well, first I would say look, we are a more innovative society. There have been enormous advances in science. What is the basis of why our standard of living today is so much higher than 250 years ago? It's basically science and figuring out how to work together collectively, new forms of social organization, large corporations, and within the broader sense of society, checks and balances, rule of law, how to make democracies work. And we've learned a lot about when things don't work, what are the principles of good governance and what are principles of bad governance. So I would say in terms of fundamentals, we're actually in a much better position than we were 100 years ago. The question is how do we use all that knowledge and channel that knowledge to make a more prosperous society, and prosperous for not just a few but for most members of our society. And in the end, I think we've been caught in a 45-year failed experiment. And to me, the answer is to break out of the experiment. Recognize the failure. The experiment of course is the neoliberal experiment. The idea that free markets are going to lead to higher growth that will be shared by everybody through trickle-down economics and markets are on their own stable. I mean all those hypotheses, we've given them a good try and they failed not just in one country but in country after country. So to me, with all that knowledge, we are on a better footing to begin to create an alternative economic system. I don't think it's going to be easy because in a democracy you have to convince a lot of people and I hate to use the word but they've been brainwashed for decades that this particular system, if you only gave it a chance, this system, neoliberal capitalism, would work. But eventually they're becoming disillusioned and this disillusionment is leading them to go to authoritarian populism. And the good news in this very dark hour is that Trump is showing them that authoritarian populism may not be a good answer for anybody.

约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：嗯，首先我会说，我们是一个更具创新性的社会。科学取得了巨大的进步。我们今天的生活水平比 250 年前高出如此之多的基础是什么？基本上是科学，以及弄清楚如何集体合作，新的社会组织形式，大型公司，以及在更广泛的社会意义上，三权分立、法治，如何让民主制度运作。我们已经学到了很多关于什么行不通，什么是良好治理的原则，什么是糟糕治理的原则。所以，我会说，从基本面来看，我们实际上比 100 年前处于一个好得多的位置。问题是我们如何利用所有这些知识，并引导这些知识来创造一个更繁荣的社会——不仅是为少数人，而是为我们社会的大多数成员。最终，我认为我们陷入了一个长达 45 年的失败实验。对我来说，答案是跳出这个实验，承认失败。这个实验当然是新自由主义实验——即自由市场会带来更高的增长，通过涓滴经济学惠及所有人，并且市场自身是稳定的。我的意思是，所有这些假设，我们都给过它们很好的尝试，但它们失败了，不仅在一个国家，而是在一个又一个国家。所以对我来说，有了所有这些知识，我们处于一个更好的基础上，可以开始创造一个替代性的经济体系。我不认为这会容易，因为在民主国家，你必须说服很多人，而我不想用这个词，但他们已经被洗脑了几十年，认为这个特定的体系——新自由主义资本主义——只要你给它一个机会，就会奏效。但最终他们开始幻灭，而这种幻灭正导致他们走向威权民粹主义。而在这个非常黑暗的时刻，好消息是，特朗普正在向他们展示，威权民粹主义对任何人来说都可能不是一个好答案。

The China Model: Lessons for the West?

Aaron Bastani: So you talk about China in the book. I want to fold two questions into one really. Is China a socialist economy or a capitalist economy? And what lessons can the West learn from how China has administered its economy over the last 35 years?

**亚伦·巴斯塔尼：**您在书中谈到了中国。我想把两个问题合二为一。中国是社会主义经济还是资本主义经济？西方可以从中国过去 35 年管理经济的方式中学到什么教训？

Joseph Stiglitz: China is sui generis. It describes itself as a market socialist economy with Chinese characteristics. So you put together that string of words and it says we're different from any other economy. Some people describe it as state capitalism. But there is also a thriving small business sector. The government has a much more pervasive role overall in the economy than in any of the Western economies. So it does play a very big role. I think there are several things that we can learn from China's success as an economy. This is not talking about democracy or any of the other aspects, but from successes in economy. First, it had some vision. We want to modernize. There's no reason why we should have a lower standard of living than the most advanced country. How do we get there? That's a question that most countries didn't pose to themselves. And you know, there was a sort of pride that they're saying, "No reason that we can't have as high a standard of living as any other country." And that opened up the window to try to understand what makes for economic success. And they talked to everybody on the left and the right. My first meeting with them was in 1980. My first visit was in 1981. And you know, continuing discussions. They wanted to learn from any source they could find and they listened to different views and then integrated it within their own framework. Out of that came a lot of novel ideas, innovative ideas. Investment in people, human capital, and they sent hundreds of thousands of people to the United States and to Europe, to Australia to learn, to higher education, to be engineers. And you see the fruits of that. A few weeks ago, I was in China. I saw one of their new car factories. Robots putting together cars. Very few humans in it. Just amazing. And most of the employees are not production workers, they're engineers. And they've gone from having, you might say, a comparative advantage in unskilled labor to having a comparative advantage in engineering and skilled labor. Remarkable change in 45 years. And that's a third aspect of, they did some planning, some thinking ahead. How do you achieve this vision? And part of that is industrial policy. Now the United States finally is beginning to embrace some industrial policies in the Chips Act, which recognized we didn't have the capacity to produce an essential ingredient in modern economy, which is chips. The IRA, which recognized that we aren't prepared to make the green transition. But we don't have a broader industrial policy. What Trump is doing is using trade as an industrial policy. He wants to bring jobs back to America. That's exactly what industrial policy does. But the way he's doing it is so thoughtless, so uninformed, so destructive both to the United States but to the global economic order that it's questionable whether he'll achieve much and the cost in terms of the global economy is going to be enormous and in terms of the American economy is going to be enormous. So those are at least three aspects that I think any country can learn, study from China. Now China has some advantages that other countries don't have: scale. You know if you have 1.3 billion people, you have a big market. Having a big market gives you some advantages. So they are now in terms of purchasing power parity, which is the way economists compare economies with different relative prices. They are now the world's largest economy and that gives them an enormous opportunity to continue their development strategy.

约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨：中国是独一无二的。它自称为具有中国特色的市场社会主义经济。所以，你把这些词组合在一起，意思就是我们不同于任何其他经济体。有人将其描述为国家资本主义。但同时，它也有一个繁荣的小企业部门。总体而言，政府在经济中的作用比任何西方经济体都更为普遍。因此，它确实扮演着非常重要的角色。我认为，我们可以从中国作为经济体的成功中学到几点。这里不谈民主或任何其他方面，只谈经济上的成功。首先，它有远见。我们想要现代化，没有理由我们的生活水平应该低于最发达的国家。我们如何实现这一目标？这是大多数国家没有向自己提出的问题。你知道，他们有一种自豪感，说：“没有理由我们不能拥有和任何其他国家一样高的生活水平。”这为理解经济成功的要素打开了一扇窗。他们与左右两派的每个人都进行了交谈。我与他们的第一次会面是在 1980 年，我的第一次访问是在 1981 年。你知道，持续的讨论。他们希望从任何能找到的来源学习，他们听取了不同的观点，然后将其整合到自己的框架中。由此产生了很多新颖的、创新的想法。投资于人，即人力资本，他们派遣了成千上万的人到美国、欧洲、澳大利亚学习，接受高等教育，成为工程师。你可以看到这其中的成果。几周前，我在中国，参观了他们的一家新汽车工厂。机器人组装汽车，里面几乎没有人类。真是令人惊叹。大多数员工不是生产工人，而是工程师。他们已经从可以说在非熟练劳动力方面拥有比较优势，转变为在工程和熟练劳动力方面拥有比较优势。45 年来的巨大变化。这是第三个方面，他们做了一些规划，一些前瞻性的思考。如何实现这一愿景？其中一部分是产业政策。现在，美国终于开始在《芯片法案》中采纳一些产业政策，该法案承认我们没有能力生产现代经济中的一个重要组成部分——芯片。还有《通胀削减法案》（IRA），它承认我们没有为绿色转型做好准备。但是，我们没有一个更广泛的产业政策。特朗普正在做的，是把贸易当作一种产业政策。他想把工作带回美国。这正是产业政策的作用。但他做事的方式如此欠考虑、如此无知、如此具有破坏性，不仅对美国，也对全球经济秩序，以至于他能否取得多大成就都值得怀疑，而对全球经济和美国经济造成的成本将是巨大的。所以，这些至少是我认为任何国家都可以从中国学习、研究的三个方面。当然，中国有一些其他国家所不具备的优势：规模。你知道，如果你有 13 亿人口，你就拥有一个巨大的市场。拥有一个巨大的市场会给你带来一些优势。所以，按照购买力平价（这是经济学家比较不同相对价格经济体的方式），他们现在是世界上最大的经济体，这给了他们一个继续其发展战略的巨大机会。