Drew Greenblatt surveys the shop floor of his small factory in a down-at-heel district of Baltimore, Maryland, where two workers are using a large steel-bending robot.德鲁格林布拉特(Drew Greenblatt)的小工厂坐落于美国马里兰州巴尔的摩一个残破的地区，他正在巡视工厂车间，两名工人正在操作者一个大型的钢铁弯轧机器人。“This part used to be made in China,” he says. “But because of the robotics we stole this [manufacturing] from China and now make it in America.”“过去这个零部件在中国生产，”他称之为，“但是由于机器人技术，我们将这项（生产业务）从中国拿走了，如今在美国生产它。”The introduction of automation at Marlin Steel Wire Products has helped boost employee productivity fourfold since 1998, estimates Mr Greenblatt, whose customers include carmaker General Motors . The gains in efficiency are impressive but they are not being replicated across America.格林布拉特估算，自1998年以来，马林钢丝产品公司(Marlin Steel Wire Products)引进自动化技术早已协助将员工的生产率提升了3倍。

他的客户还包括汽车制造商通用汽车(General Motors)。该公司生产率的提高令人瞩目，但是这种模式未在美国获得普遍推广。Even as US manufacturers adopt automation as part of their fightback against offshoring to Asia, productivity growth across the economy is at a near-standstill. A similar picture is being played out across the globe, exposing the most pressing problem in the world economy today. Only India and sub-Saharan Africa seem to be immune from slowing productivity growth.即便美国制造商使用自动化作为反攻制造业岗位向亚洲外流的部分希望，但整个经济的生产率快速增长仍几近正处于衰退状态。类似于的景象正在全球各地首演，这曝露了当今世界经济面对的最严峻问题。

只有印度和撒哈拉以南非洲地区看起来未经常出现生产率快速增长上升。Economists are increasingly alarmed because slower improvements in efficiency will lead to a fall-off in living standards and less-solid public finances. In the medium term, productivity growth is the most important driver of prosperity. Its weakness in recent years lies at the heart of why advanced nations have remained in a low-growth rut since the financial crisis even as unemployment has fallen.由于生产率提升上升将造成生活水平上升以及公共财政稳定性减少，经济学家回应日益担忧。

从中期来看，生产率快速增长是兴旺最重要的推展因素。自金融危机以来，即便失业率早已下降，但发达国家仍没能挣脱较低增长率趋势，这其中的核心问题就是近年来生产率快速增长低迷。Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve chair, raised America’s “relatively weak” productivity in a speech last week and urged new measures to strengthen education, boost entrepreneurship and lift capital investment.上周，美联储主席珍妮特耶伦(Janet Yellen)在公开发表演讲时提及了美国“比较低迷”的生产率，呼吁发售新的措施以强化教育、增进创业以及提高资本投资。

New data from the Conference Board think-tank show that average labour productivity growth in mature economies slowed to 0.6 per cent in 2014 from 0.8 per cent in 2013, as a result of ebbing performances in the US, Japan and Europe. Productivity, which tracks how efficiently inputs such as labour and capital are used, tends to evolve over long periods. But the Conference Board readings confirm a longer-term trend of sagging growth that is setting off alarm bells around the world.智库机构世界大型企业联合会(Conference Board)的新数据表明，由于美国、日本和欧洲的展现出日益走下坡路，成熟期经济体的平均值劳动生产率增长速度由2013年的0.8%降到2014年的0.6%。跟踪劳动力、资本等投入使用效率的生产率，往往经过长年进化构成。

但是，世界大型企业联合会的数据证实了生产率快速增长下滑的长期趋势，这一趋势正在全世界范围敲响警钟。“In the past decade the US has had terrible productivity growth and other countries have been slipping relative to the US,” says John Fernald, an economist at the San Francisco Fed.“过去10年，美国生产率快速增长展现出差劲，而其他国家相对于美国的差距持续增大，”旧金山联邦储备银行(San Francisco Fed)的经济学家约翰弗纳尔德(John Fernald)称之为。In the UK, productivity has not improved in eight years, breaking a trend of roughly 2 per cent annual growth stretching back over a century. George Osborne, the chancellor, last week committed the new Conservative government to boosting productivity.英国的生产率早已8年未经常出现提高，超越了一个世纪以来每年快速增长大约两个百分点的趋势。上周，英国财政大臣乔治奥斯本(George Osborne)向新的保守党(Conservative)政府允诺将提升生产率。

Faced with rapidly ageing populations and slowing employment growth, mature economies need to boost productivity sharply if they are to escape stagnating living standards. To compensate fully for slower employment growth over the coming 50 years, productivity growth would need to be 80 per cent faster than over the past half-century, according to calculations from McKinsey, the consultancy.面临人口很快老龄化以及低收入快速增长上升，成熟期经济体如果想要挣脱生活水平停滞不前的问题，就必须大幅提高生产率。据咨询公司麦肯锡(McKinsey)估计，为了几乎填补未来50年低收入快速增长上升的影响，生产率增长速度将必须比过去半个世纪慢80%。Whether such an acceleration can be achieved depends in part on identifying why growth is slowing. To optimists, the poor numbers are a transitory legacy of the recession. The downturn in global demand has temporarily depressed companies’ willingness to invest in new equipment and ideas, and that more cautious outlook dented productivity.这种加快能否构建，部分各不相同能否确认生产率增长速度上升的原因。

对于乐观主义者来说，差劲的数据只是衰落的暂时性后遗症。全球市场需求下降暂时性地抨击了公司投资新的设备和新的点子的意愿，人们更为慎重的观点拉低了生产率。But the slowdown predated the financial crisis; Conference Board data reveal a longstanding fall in growth across mature economies. In Europe and Japan it started in the 1990s, and is related to slower adoption of technology, it says.但是，生产率快速增长上升迟至金融危机；世界大型企业联合会的数据表明，成熟期经济体长期以来普遍存在生产率快速增长上升的情况。

该机构回应，欧洲和日本生产率快速增长上升始自上世纪90年代，与之互为联系的是技术应用于减慢。Marco Annunziata, the chief economist at General Electric, worries there is a structural problem in Europe due to a lack of risk-taking, low RD spending and inflexible labour markets.通用电气(General Electric)的首席经济学家马可安农齐亚塔(Marco Annunziata)担忧，由于缺少冒险活动、研发开支较低以及劳动市场缺乏灵活性，欧洲有可能不存在结构性问题。In the US, the most efficient of the major economies, productivity growth began to ebb in 2005. According to Mr Fernald, this was a result of the lapsing of temporary growth dividends from the 1990s IT revolution.在美国这个生产率最低的主要经济体中，生产率快速增长从2005年开始上升。

弗纳尔德回应，这是上世纪90年代信息技术革命带给的暂时性快速增长红利消失所造成的。This raises the possibility that the recent, dreary productivity growth in the US is actually a return to an older and weaker trend. Even in emerging economies, where efficiency is catching up, the rate of growth has slowed.这带给了一种可能性，即美国近期生产率快速增长下滑实质上是对一种更加杨家、更加不振趋势的重返。

即使在生产率于是以迎头赶上的新兴经济体，生产率快速增长也早已上升。This has major implications in terms of a prolonged shortfall in tax revenues and increased public debt. It was just such a scenario — the fall in productivity growth between 2010 and 2015 — that stretched a planned four-year period of austerity in the UK into a decade of public-sector misery.这不会导致根本性影响——税收严重不足的状况缩短、公共债务减少。正是这种情况，即2010年至2015年英国生产率增长速度上升，造成了英国规划的4年削减期缩短为公共部门十年艰难期。

Optimists counter that it is just a matter of time before we see an upsurge in productivity, pointing to innovation in American IT hubs such as Silicon Valley.乐观主义者驳斥称之为，生产率经常出现很快提高只是时间的问题，并把期望竭尽在硅谷(Silicon Valley)等美国IT中心的创意上。Researchers at Blue River Technology, a California-based agricultural robotics company, envisage farms of the future being surveyed by flocks of drones, and tended by fleets of robots and self-driving tractors. It is already operating teams of “lettuce bots”, which are being dragged across fields in Arizona and California to identify 1.5m individual plants an hour and make decisions on how to fertilise them.坐落于加州的农业机器人公司Blue River Technology的研究员刻画了未来农场的样子——成群无人机在空中视察，大批机器人以及无人驾驶拖拉机照料着生产。该公司的“生菜机器人”队伍早已在工作，它们产于在亚利桑那州和加州的田地间，每小时辨识150万株植物并要求如何播种。Some argue that the easiest targets for technological progress have already been met. But others say the world is on the cusp of a machine-driven growth spurt, where driverless cars and robots will replace people, and cite companies such as Blue River as evidence.一些人指出，科技进步最更容易的目标早已构建。

其他人则指出，世界已步入机器驱动的快速增长井喷时代，无人驾驶汽车和机器人将代替人类，Blue River之类的公司就是毫无疑问。Another more bullish outlook suggests that the concept of productivity as a measure of living standards is now outdated because quality is difficult to measure in public services such as education, and progress is hard to capture in many consumer technologies. Equivalents to Skype, for instance, were prohibitively expensive a decade ago but now are free, giving people higher standards of living without troubling the statisticians compiling gross domestic product data.另一种更为悲观的观点指出，将生产率作为生活水平取决于指标的观点如今已过时，因为在教育等公共服务中，质量很难取决于，而在许多消费者技术中，变革也很难捕猎。例如，10年前与Skype充分发挥某种程度功效的产品喜得离谱，而如今毕竟免费的，这提升了人们的生活水平，而无须困难统计师编撰国内生产总值(GDP)数据。

“This takes you into uncharted territory about what progress means in advanced economies,” says Professor Diane Coyle of Manchester university. “There has clearly been an increase in consumers’ welfare, probably extremely large, and we don’t know how it is linked to GDP.”“这将你带进一个关于变革在繁盛经济体中意味著什么的未知领域，”曼彻斯特大学(Manchester University)的教授黛安娜科伊尔(Diane Coyle)称之为，“消费者福利显著有所增加，增幅很有可能还很大，而我们不告诉这与GDP有何关联。”Mismeasurement might explain how many consumers are better off without appearing to have higher incomes in real terms. But statistical arguments cannot raise incomes or tax revenues, nor do they return sectors with previously high productivity growth back to former levels of success.许多消费者看起来实际收入未提升，日子却更佳过了，原因也许就在于统计资料失灵。但是，统计学说明无法提升收益或税收，也无法让之前生产率增长速度较高的行业取得之前那种水平的顺利。

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