The way ahead America’s president writes for us about four crucial areas of unfinished business in economic policy that his successor will have to tackle
Oct 8th 2016
https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2016/10/08/the-way-ahead
WHEREVER I go these days, at home or abroad, people ask me the same question: what is happening in the American political system? How has a country that has benefited—perhaps more than any other—from immigration, trade and technological innovation suddenly developed a strain of anti-immigrant, anti-innovation protectionism? Why have some on the far left and even more on the far right embraced a crude populism that promises a return to a past that is not possible to restore—and that, for most Americans, never existed at all?
无论我现在走到哪里，无论是在国内还是国外，人们都向我提出同样的问题：美国政治体系发生了什么？一个从移民、贸易和技术创新中受益甚多的国家，怎么突然出现了反移民、反创新的保护主义倾向？为什么一些极左派，甚至更多的极右派，会拥抱一种粗糙的民粹主义，承诺恢复一个根本无法恢复的过去——而这个过去对于大多数美国人来说，根本就不存在？
It’s true that a certain anxiety over the forces of globalisation, immigration, technology, even change itself, has taken hold in America. It’s not new, nor is it dissimilar to a discontent spreading throughout the world, often manifested in scepticism towards international institutions, trade agreements and immigration. It can be seen in Britain’s recent vote to leave the European Union and the rise of populist parties around the world.
确实，对于全球化、移民、技术乃至变革本身的某种焦虑在美国已经形成。这并不是新现象，也与世界各地蔓延的不满情绪类似，这种不满情绪常常表现为对国际机构、贸易协议和移民的怀疑。这可以从英国最近投票脱离欧盟和全球范围内民粹主义政党的兴起中看出。
Much of this discontent is driven by fears that are not fundamentally economic. The anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican, anti-Muslim and anti-refugee sentiment expressed by some Americans today echoes nativist lurches of the past—the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the Know-Nothings of the mid-1800s, the anti-Asian sentiment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and any number of eras in which Americans were told they could restore past glory if they just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. We overcame those fears and we will again.
很多这样的不满是由并非基于经济的恐惧驱动的。一些美国人今天所表达的反移民、反墨西哥人、反穆斯林和反难民情绪，呼应了过去的本土主义冲动——1798年的《外籍人和叛国法案》、19世纪中叶的“无知党”、19世纪末和20世纪初的反亚洲情绪，以及任何一个时代，当时美国人被告知，只要控制住某个威胁美国的群体或观念，就能恢复过去的荣耀。我们克服了那些恐惧，将来也会再次克服。
But some of the discontent is rooted in legitimate concerns about long-term economic forces. Decades of declining productivity growth and rising inequality have resulted in slower income growth for low- and middle-income families. Globalisation and automation have weakened the position of workers and their ability to secure a decent wage. Too many potential physicists and engineers spend their careers shifting money around in the financial sector, instead of applying their talents to innovating in the real economy. And the financial crisis of 2008 only seemed to increase the isolation of corporations and elites, who often seem to live by a different set of rules to ordinary citizens.
但一些不满根源于对长期经济力量的合理担忧。几十年来，生产力增长的下降和不平等的上升导致低收入和中等收入家庭的收入增长放缓。全球化和自动化削弱了工人的地位及其获得体面工资的能力。太多有潜力的物理学家和工程师将他们的职业生涯花在金融领域的资金转移上，而不是将他们的才能用于实体经济的创新。而2008年的金融危机似乎只是增加了公司和精英的孤立，他们常常似乎按照与普通公民不同的一套规则生活。
So it’s no wonder that so many are receptive to the argument that the game is rigged. But amid this understandable frustration, much of it fanned by politicians who would actually make the problem worse rather than better, it is important to remember that capitalism has been the greatest driver of prosperity and opportunity the world has ever known.
因此，难怪有这么多人容易接受这样的观点，即游戏是被操纵的。但在这种可以理解的挫败感中，其中很多被那些实际上会使问题变得更糟而非变好的政治家所煽动，重要的是要记住，资本主义一直是世界上已知的繁荣和机会的最大推动力。
Over the past 25 years, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has fallen from nearly 40% to under 10%. Last year, American households enjoyed the largest income gains on record and the poverty rate fell faster than at any point since the 1960s. Wages have risen faster in real terms during this business cycle than in any since the 1970s. These gains would have been impossible without the globalisation and technological transformation that drives some of the anxiety behind our current political debate.
在过去的25年中，生活在极端贫困中的人口比例已经从近40%降至不到10%。去年，美国家庭享受到有记录以来最大的收入增长，贫困率的下降速度比自1960年代以来的任何时期都快。在这个商业周期中，工资实际增长速度比自1970年代以来的任何时期都快。如果没有推动我们当前政治辩论背后某些焦虑的全球化和技术转型，这些收益是不可能实现的。
This is the paradox that defines our world today. The world is more prosperous than ever before and yet our societies are marked by uncertainty and unease. So we have a choice—retreat into old, closed-off economies or press forward, acknowledging the inequality that can come with globalisation while committing ourselves to making the global economy work better for all people, not just those at the top.
这就是定义当今世界的悖论。世界比以往任何时候都更加繁荣，然而我们的社会却充满了不确定性和不安。因此，我们面临一个选择——是退回到封闭的旧经济体系，还是勇往直前，承认全球化可能带来的不平等，同时致力于让全球经济更好地造福所有人，而不仅仅是那些位于顶端的人。
A force for good
The profit motive can be a powerful force for the common good, driving businesses to create products that consumers rave about or motivating banks to lend to growing businesses. But, by itself, this will not lead to broadly shared prosperity and growth. Economists have long recognised that markets, left to their own devices, can fail. This can happen through the tendency towards monopoly and rent-seeking that this newspaper has documented, the failure of businesses to take into account the impact of their decisions on others through pollution, the ways in which disparities of information can leave consumers vulnerable to dangerous products or overly expensive health insurance.
利润动机可以是促进公共利益的强大力量，驱动企业创造消费者热衷的产品，或激励银行向成长中的企业提供贷款。但单凭这一动机，并不能带来广泛共享的繁荣和增长。经济学家们早已认识到，如果任其自行发展，市场可能会失败。这可能是由于本报所记录的垄断和寻租倾向，企业未考虑其决策对他人的影响，例如污染，以及信息不对称使消费者面临危险产品或过高的健康保险费用的风险。
More fundamentally, a capitalism shaped by the few and unaccountable to the many is a threat to all. Economies are more successful when we close the gap between rich and poor and growth is broadly based. A world in which 1% of humanity controls as much wealth as the other 99% will never be stable. Gaps between rich and poor are not new but just as the child in a slum can see the skyscraper nearby, technology allows anyone with a smartphone to see how the most privileged live. Expectations rise faster than governments can deliver and a pervasive sense of injustice undermines peoples’ faith in the system. Without trust, capitalism and markets cannot continue to deliver the gains they have delivered in the past centuries.
更根本的是，由少数人塑造、对多数人不负责任的资本主义对所有人都是一种威胁。当我们缩小富人和穷人之间的差距，实现广泛基础的增长时，经济体更加成功。一个1%的人控制着与其他99%人一样多的财富的世界，永远不会稳定。富人和穷人之间的差距并不是新现象，但就像贫民窟的孩子可以看到附近的摩天大楼一样，技术让任何拥有智能手机的人都能看到最有特权的人是如何生活的。人们的期望比政府能够提供的增长得更快，普遍存在的不公感觉削弱了人们对体系的信任。没有信任，资本主义和市场就无法继续带来它们过去几个世纪所取得的成就。
This paradox of progress and peril has been decades in the making. While I am proud of what my administration has accomplished these past eight years, I have always acknowledged that the work of perfecting our union would take far longer. The presidency is a relay race, requiring each of us to do our part to bring the country closer to its highest aspirations. So where does my successor go from here?
这种进步与危险的悖论已经酝酿了几十年。虽然我为过去八年我的政府所取得的成就感到自豪，但我始终承认，使我们的联邦更加完善的工作需要更长的时间。总统职位就像接力赛，要求我们每个人都尽自己的一份力量，使国家更接近其最高的愿景。那么，我的继任者接下来该怎么做呢？
Further progress requires recognising that America’s economy is an enormously complicated mechanism. As appealing as some more radical reforms can sound in the abstract—breaking up all the biggest banks or erecting prohibitively steep tariffs on imports—the economy is not an abstraction. It cannot simply be redesigned wholesale and put back together again without real consequences for real people.
要取得进一步的进展，需要认识到美国经济是一个极其复杂的机制。尽管某些更激进的改革在抽象意义上听起来很吸引人——比如拆分所有大银行或对进口商品征收高额关税——但经济并非抽象概念。它不能简单地被整体重新设计然后再重新组合起来，而不对真实的人产生真实的后果。
Instead, fully restoring faith in an economy where hardworking Americans can get ahead requires addressing four major structural challenges: boosting productivity growth, combating rising inequality, ensuring that everyone who wants a job can get one and building a resilient economy that’s primed for future growth.
相反，要完全恢复对一个能让勤奋的美国人取得成功的经济的信心，需要解决四个主要的结构性挑战：提高生产力增长，对抗日益增长的不平等，确保每个想要工作的人都能得到工作，以及建设一个为未来增长做好准备的弹性经济。
Restoring economic dynamism
First, in recent years, we have seen incredible technological advances through the internet, mobile broadband and devices, artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced materials, improvements in energy efficiency and personalised medicine. But while these innovations have changed lives, they have not yet substantially boosted measured productivity growth. Over the past decade, America has enjoyed the fastest productivity growth in the G7, but it has slowed across nearly all advanced economies (see chart 1). Without a faster-growing economy, we will not be able to generate the wage gains people want, regardless of how we divide up the pie.
首先，在近年来，我们通过互联网、移动宽带和设备、人工智能、机器人技术、先进材料、能源效率的提高以及个性化医疗等方面见证了令人难以置信的技术进步。但尽管这些创新改变了人们的生活，它们尚未在很大程度上提升可测量的生产力增长。在过去的十年里，美国享受了G7国家中最快的生产力增长，但这种增长几乎在所有先进经济体中都有所放缓（见图表1）。没有更快增长的经济，我们将无法产生人们希望的工资增长，无论我们如何分配财富。
A major source of the recent productivity slowdown has been a shortfall of public and private investment caused, in part, by a hangover from the financial crisis. But it has also been caused by self-imposed constraints: an anti-tax ideology that rejects virtually all sources of new public funding; a fixation on deficits at the expense of the deferred maintenance bills we are passing to our children, particularly for infrastructure; and a political system so partisan that previously bipartisan ideas like bridge and airport upgrades are nonstarters.
近期生产力增长放缓的一个主要原因是公共和私人投资的不足，部分原因是金融危机的余波造成的。但它也是由自我设限造成的：一种反税收的意识形态，几乎拒绝了所有新的公共资金来源；过分关注赤字，而忽视了我们传给子孙的基础设施维护账单；以及一个如此党派化的政治体系，以至于像桥梁和机场升级这样以前的两党想法都无法启动。
We could also help private investment and innovation with business-tax reform that lowers statutory rates and closes loopholes, and with public investments in basic research and development. Policies focused on education are critical both for increasing economic growth and for ensuring that it is shared broadly. These include everything from boosting funding for early childhood education to improving high schools, making college more affordable and expanding high-quality job training.
我们还可以通过商业税改革来帮助私人投资和创新，降低法定税率并关闭漏洞，并通过公共投资于基础研究和发展。针对教育的政策对于提高经济增长和确保广泛共享至关重要。这包括从增加幼儿教育资金到改善高中教育，使大学更加负担得起以及扩大高质量的职业培训等方面。
Lifting productivity and wages also depends on creating a global race to the top in rules for trade. While some communities have suffered from foreign competition, trade has helped our economy much more than it has hurt. Exports helped lead us out of the recession. American firms that export pay their workers up to 18% more on average than companies that do not, according to a report by my Council of Economic Advisers. So, I will keep pushing for Congress to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to conclude a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the EU. These agreements, and stepped-up trade enforcement, will level the playing field for workers and businesses alike.
提高生产力和工资也依赖于在贸易规则上创造一场全球性的竞争。尽管一些社区因外国竞争而受苦，但贸易对我们的经济帮助远大于其带来的伤害。出口帮助我们走出了衰退。根据我的经济顾问委员会的报告，出口的美国公司支付给员工的工资平均比不出口的公司高出18%。因此，我将继续推动国会通过《跨太平洋伙伴关系协定》，并与欧盟达成《跨大西洋贸易和投资伙伴关系协定》。这些协议和加强的贸易执法将为工人和企业创造公平的竞争环境。
Second, alongside slowing productivity, inequality has risen in most advanced economies, with that increase most pronounced in the United States. In 1979, the top 1% of American families received 7% of all after-tax income. By 2007, that share had more than doubled to 17%. This challenges the very essence of who Americans are as a people. We don’t begrudge success, we aspire to it and admire those who achieve it. In fact, we’ve often accepted more inequality than many other nations because we are convinced that with hard work, we can improve our own station and watch our children do even better.
其次，随着生产力的放缓，不平等在大多数先进经济体中都有所上升，而在美国这种增加最为显著。1979年，美国前1%的家庭获得了所有税后收入的7%。到2007年，这一比例已经翻了一番多，达到17%。这挑战了美国人作为一个民族的本质。我们不嫉妒成功，我们渴望成功，并钦佩那些取得成功的人。事实上，我们通常接受的不平等比许多其他国家都要多，因为我们相信，通过努力工作，我们可以改善自己的处境，并希望看到我们的孩子做得更好。
As Abraham Lincoln said, “while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.” That’s the problem with increased inequality—it diminishes upward mobility. It makes the top and bottom rungs of the ladder “stickier”—harder to move up and harder to lose your place at the top.
正如亚伯拉罕·林肯所说，“我们不提议对资本发动任何战争，但我们确实希望让最卑微的人也有平等的机会与其他人一起致富。”这就是不平等增加的问题——它减少了向上流动的可能性。它使得阶梯的顶端和底端变得“更难以攀登”——更难向上爬升，也更难从顶端失去位置。
Economists have listed many causes for the rise of inequality: technology, education, globalisation, declining unions and a falling minimum wage. There is something to all of these and we’ve made real progress on all these fronts. But I believe that changes in culture and values have also played a major role. In the past, differences in pay between corporate executives and their workers were constrained by a greater degree of social interaction between employees at all levels—at church, at their children’s schools, in civic organisations. That’s why CEOs took home about 20- to 30-times as much as their average worker. The reduction or elimination of this constraining factor is one reason why today’s CEO is now paid over 250-times more.
经济学家们列举了不平等上升的许多原因：技术、教育、全球化、工会衰落和最低工资下降。这些因素都有一定的道理，我们在这些方面也取得了实际进展。但我相信，文化和价值观的变化也起了重要作用。过去，企业高管与员工之间的薪酬差距受到更多层面社交互动的限制——在教堂、在孩子的学校、在市民组织中。这就是为什么首席执行官的收入大约是普通员工的20到30倍。这种限制因素的减少或消除是现今首席执行官的薪酬超过普通员工250倍的原因之一。
Economies are more successful when we close the gap between rich and poor and growth is broadly based. This is not just a moral argument. Research shows that growth is more fragile and recessions more frequent in countries with greater inequality. Concentrated wealth at the top means less of the broad-based consumer spending that drives market economies.
当我们缩小富人和穷人之间的差距，实现广泛基础的增长时，经济体更加成功。这不仅仅是一个道德论点。研究表明，在不平等程度较大的国家，增长更脆弱，经济衰退更频繁。财富在顶层的集中意味着更少的广泛基础消费支出，这是推动市场经济的动力。
America has shown that progress is possible. Last year, income gains were larger for households at the bottom and middle of the income distribution than for those at the top (see chart 2). Under my administration, we will have boosted incomes for families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution by 18% by 2017, while raising the average tax rates on households projected to earn over $8m per year—the top 0.1%—by nearly 7 percentage points, based on calculations by the Department of the Treasury. While the top 1% of households now pay more of their fair share, tax changes enacted during my administration have increased the share of income received by all other families by more than the tax changes in any previous administration since at least 1960.
美国已经表明，进步是可能的。去年，收入增长对于收入分配底部和中间的家庭来说，比顶部的家庭更大（见图表2）。在我的政府领导下，到2017年，我们将会将收入分配底部五分之一家庭的收入提高18%，同时将预计年收入超过800万美元的家庭——即顶部0.1%的平均税率提高近7个百分点，这是根据财政部的计算。虽然现在顶部1%的家庭支付了更多他们应分担的税收，但在我任内实施的税收变革使得所有其他家庭收到的收入份额增加了，这超过了自1960年以来任何一届政府的税收变革。
Even these efforts fall well short. In the future, we need to be even more aggressive in enacting measures to reverse the decades-long rise in inequality. Unions should play a critical role. They help workers get a bigger slice of the pie but they need to be flexible enough to adapt to global competition. Raising the Federal minimum wage, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for workers without dependent children, limiting tax breaks for high-income households, preventing colleges from pricing out hardworking students, and ensuring men and women get equal pay for equal work would help to move us in the right direction too.
即便如此，这些努力仍然远远不够。未来，我们需要采取更积极的措施来扭转数十年来不平等的上升趋势。工会应发挥关键作用。它们帮助工人获得更大的收入份额，但它们需要足够灵活，以适应全球竞争。提高联邦最低工资、扩大无子女依赖工人的所得税减免、限制高收入家庭的税收优惠、防止大学将勤奋的学生排除在外，以及确保男性和女性同工同酬，也有助于我们朝着正确的方向前进。
Third, a successful economy also depends on meaningful opportunities for work for everyone who wants a job. However, America has faced a long-term decline in participation among prime-age workers (see chart 3). In 1953, just 3% of men between 25 and 54 years old were out of the labour force. Today, it is 12%. In 1999, 23% of prime-age women were out of the labour force. Today, it is 26%. People joining or rejoining the workforce in a strengthening economy have offset ageing and retiring baby-boomers since the end of 2013, stabilising the participation rate but not reversing the longer-term adverse trend.
第三，一个成功的经济体也依赖于为所有希望工作的人提供有意义的就业机会。然而，美国长期以来一直面临适龄劳动力参与率下降的问题（见图表3）。1953年，只有3%的25至54岁男性处于劳动力之外。今天，这一比例已经上升到12%。1999年，23%的适龄女性不在劳动力中。今天，这一数字为26%。自2013年底以来，加入或重新加入劳动力的人弥补了老龄化和退休的婴儿潮一代，稳定了参与率，但并未扭转长期不利趋势。
Involuntary joblessness takes a toll on life satisfaction, self-esteem, physical health and mortality. It is related to a devastating rise of opioid abuse and an associated increase in overdose deaths and suicides among non-college-educated Americans—the group where labour-force participation has fallen most precipitously.
非自愿的失业对生活满意度、自尊、身体健康和死亡率都有影响。它与美国非大学教育群体中，即劳动力参与率下降最为剧烈的群体，鸦片类药物滥用和相关药物过量死亡及自杀率的惊人上升有关。
There are many ways to keep more Americans in the labour market when they fall on hard times. These include providing wage insurance for workers who cannot get a new job that pays as much as their old one. Increasing access to high-quality community colleges, proven job-training models and help finding new jobs would assist. So would making unemployment insurance available to more workers. Paid leave and guaranteed sick days, as well as greater access to high-quality child care and early learning, would add flexibility for employees and employers. Reforms to our criminal-justice system and improvements to re-entry into the workforce that have won bipartisan support would also improve participation, if enacted.
在艰难时期保持更多美国人留在劳动市场有很多方法。这些包括为无法找到与旧工作薪酬相当的新工作的员工提供工资保险。增加对高质量社区学院、经过验证的职业培训模式的接入以及帮助寻找新工作将会有所帮助。同样有效的还包括让更多工人能够获得失业保险。提供带薪休假和保障病假，以及提高高质量儿童保育和早期教育的可获得性，将为雇员和雇主增加灵活性。如果实施，对我们刑事司法系统的改革和改善重新进入劳动力市场的措施，这些已获得两党支持的措施也将提高参与率。
Building a sturdier foundation
Finally, the financial crisis painfully underscored the need for a more resilient economy, one that grows sustainably without plundering the future at the service of the present. There should no longer be any doubt that a free market only thrives when there are rules to guard against systemic failure and ensure fair competition.
最后，金融危机痛切地凸显了对一个更有韧性的经济体的需求，这样的经济体能够持续增长，而不是为了当前的利益而掠夺未来。应该不再有任何疑问，自由市场只有在有规则防止系统性失败和确保公平竞争的情况下才能繁荣发展。
Post-crisis reforms to Wall Street have made our financial system more stable and supportive of long-term growth, including more capital for American banks, less reliance on short-term funding, and better oversight for a range of institutions and markets. Big American financial institutions no longer get the type of easier funding they got before—evidence that the market increasingly understands that they are no longer “too big to fail”. And we created a first-of-its-kind watchdog—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—to hold financial institutions accountable, so their customers get loans they can repay with clear terms up-front.
危机后对华尔街的改革使我们的金融体系更加稳定，支持长期增长，包括为美国银行提供更多的资本、减少对短期融资的依赖，以及对一系列机构和市场实施更好的监督。大型美国金融机构不再获得之前那种更容易的融资——这证明市场日益认识到它们不再是“太大而不能失败”。我们还创立了首个此类监管机构——消费者金融保护局，以确保金融机构负责任，使其客户能够以明确的条件获得可偿还的贷款。
But even with all the progress, segments of the shadow banking system still present vulnerabilities and the housing-finance system has not been reformed. That should be an argument for building on what we have already done, not undoing it. And those who should be rising in defence of further reform too often ignore the progress we have made, instead choosing to condemn the system as a whole. Americans should debate how best to build on these rules, but denying that progress leaves us more vulnerable, not less so.
但即使取得了所有这些进展，影子银行系统的某些部分仍存在脆弱性，且住房金融体系尚未进行改革。这应该是在我们已经做的基础上进一步建设的理由，而不是取消它。而那些本应为进一步改革辩护的人往往忽视了我们已经取得的进展，而选择全盘否定该体系。美国人应该讨论如何最好地在这些规则上做文章，但否认进步只会让我们更加脆弱，而不是更安全。
America should also do more to prepare for negative shocks before they occur. With today’s low interest rates, fiscal policy must play a bigger role in combating future downturns; monetary policy should not bear the full burden of stabilising our economy. Unfortunately, good economics can be overridden by bad politics. My administration secured much more fiscal expansion than many appreciated in recovering from our crisis—more than a dozen bills provided $1.4 trillion in economic support from 2009 to 2012—but fighting Congress for each commonsense measure expended substantial energy. I did not get some of the expansions I sought and Congress forced austerity on the economy prematurely by threatening a historic debt default. My successors should not have to fight for emergency measures in a time of need. Instead, support for the hardest-hit families and the economy, like unemployment insurance, should rise automatically.
美国还应该在负面冲击发生之前做更多的准备。在今天的低利率环境下，财政政策在应对未来衰退中必须发挥更大的作用；货币政策不应承担稳定我们经济的全部负担。不幸的是，良好的经济学常常被糟糕的政治所取代。我的政府在从危机中恢复过程中获得了比许多人认识到的更多的财政扩张——2009年至2012年，超过十几个法案提供了1.4万亿美元的经济支持——但为每一个常识性措施与国会斗争消耗了大量精力。我没有获得一些我寻求的扩张，国会通过威胁历史性的债务违约过早地强加了紧缩政策。我的继任者不应该在需要时为紧急措施而战。相反，像失业保险这样对受影响最严重的家庭和经济的支持应该自动增加。
Maintaining fiscal discipline in good times to expand support for the economy when needed and to meet our long-term obligations to our citizens is vital. Curbs to entitlement growth that build on the Affordable Care Act’s progress in reducing health-care costs and limiting tax breaks for the most fortunate can address long-term fiscal challenges without sacrificing investments in growth and opportunity.
在好时期保持财政纪律，以在需要时扩大对经济的支持，并满足我们对公民的长期义务至关重要。基于《平价医疗法案》在降低医疗成本和限制最幸运者的税收优惠方面所取得的进步，控制权利增长可以解决长期财政挑战，而不牺牲增长和机会的投资。
Finally, sustainable economic growth requires addressing climate change. Over the past five years, the notion of a trade-off between increasing growth and reducing emissions has been put to rest. America has cut energy-sector emissions by 6%, even as our economy has grown by 11% (see chart 4). Progress in America also helped catalyse the historic Paris climate agreement, which presents the best opportunity to save the planet for future generations.
最后，可持续的经济增长需要解决气候变化问题。在过去五年中，增长与减排之间的权衡观念已被打破。即使我们的经济增长了11%，美国已经将能源部门的排放量削减了6%（见图表4）。美国在这方面的进展也有助于推动历史性的《巴黎气候协定》，这为拯救未来几代人的地球提供了最佳机会。
A hope for the future
America’s political system can be frustrating. Believe me, I know. But it has been the source of more than two centuries of economic and social progress. The progress of the past eight years should also give the world some measure of hope. Despite all manner of division and discord, a second Great Depression was prevented. The financial system was stabilised without costing taxpayers a dime and the auto industry rescued. I enacted a larger and more front-loaded fiscal stimulus than even President Roosevelt’s New Deal and oversaw the most comprehensive rewriting of the rules of the financial system since the 1930s, as well as reforming health care and introducing new rules cutting emissions from vehicles and power plants.
美国的政治体系可能令人沮丧。相信我，我知道。但它已经是两个多世纪以来经济和社会进步的源泉。过去八年的进步也应该给世界带来一些希望。尽管存在各种分歧和不和，第二次大萧条被阻止了。金融体系在不增加纳税人负担的情况下稳定下来，汽车工业得到了拯救。我实施了比罗斯福总统的新政还要大规模且更加前瞻性的财政刺激措施，并监督了自1930年代以来金融体系规则最全面的重写，同时改革了医疗保健并引入了新的规则，减少了汽车和发电厂的排放。
The results are clear: a more durable, growing economy; 15m new private-sector jobs since early 2010; rising wages, falling poverty, and the beginnings of a reversal in inequality; 20m more Americans with health insurance, while health-care costs grow at the slowest rate in 50 years; annual deficits cut by nearly three-quarters; and declining carbon emissions.
成果显而易见：一个更加持久、增长的经济；自2010年初以来新增1500万个私营部门工作岗位；工资上涨，贫困下降，不平等开始逆转；多2000万美国人拥有健康保险，同时医疗成本增长率为50年来最低；年度赤字减少了近四分之三；并且碳排放量在下降。
For all the work that remains, a new foundation is laid. A new future is ours to write. It must be one of economic growth that’s not only sustainable but shared. To achieve it America must stay committed to working with all nations to build stronger and more prosperous economies for all our citizens for generations to come.
尽管还有许多工作要做，一个新的基础已经奠定。一个新的未来由我们来书写。它必须是一种不仅可持续而且共享的经济增长。为了实现这一目标，美国必须继续致力于与所有国家合作，为我们所有公民建设更强大、更繁荣的经济，造福子孙后代。