From Blinkist

• Economists can help us solve the world’s gravest problems – but they first have to gain our trust.
• Politicians mislead voters with lies about immigration.
• Immigration helps to boost the local economy and provides new opportunities for native workers.
• Goods move freely in global trade agreements, but people and money don’t.
• Trade agreements can harm local workers, but protectionist tariffs won’t solve the problem.
• The fight against climate change can’t be separated from the fight against economic inequality.
• AI is evolving to take over more complex human tasks, negatively affecting the job market
• Economic inequality long preceded intelligent robots.
• Proper taxing can help to solve economic inequality.
• There is no one-size-fits-all way to alleviate poverty, but foregrounding the dignity of the poor is essential.
• To fix the political polarization and prejudice eroding democracy, we have to listen to each other.
• Final summary

from 豆瓣 左其盛
作者們的重要觀點(diǎn)如下：

1：移民：

1.1：大規(guī)模的低技術(shù)移民不會對移民輸入地的工資和就業(yè)產(chǎn)生負(fù)面影響，原因是移民會在當(dāng)?shù)叵M(fèi)，導(dǎo)致當(dāng)?shù)毓ぷ鲘徫辉黾樱蟛糠忠泼駴]法去跟本地人競爭，做的是本地人不愿意做的工作；

1.2：技術(shù)移民的引入會提高本地居民的福利，但是會導(dǎo)致本地同行的就業(yè)前景惡化；

1.3：除非發(fā)生天災(zāi)人禍，大部分窮人寧愿呆在家里而不是去移民，這是人性中普遍的損失厭惡的習(xí)性導(dǎo)致的，畢竟去移民可能面臨比較大的風(fēng)險；

1.4：美國和法國的移民史，都是移民初期被排斥后期逐步融入社會；

2：貿(mào)易：

2.1：1991年印度急劇降低關(guān)稅后，經(jīng)濟(jì)沒有崩潰，也沒有高速起飛；

2.2：跟大部分經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家的預(yù)測相反，貿(mào)易開放后，發(fā)展中國家和發(fā)達(dá)國家的的不平等程度都加重了；

2.3：貿(mào)易讓不平等加劇的原因，是許多發(fā)展中國家的生產(chǎn)資料（包括人、資本、土地等）都有粘性，不會輕易流動；發(fā)達(dá)國家的底層工人也有粘性，不太愿意離開家鄉(xiāng)去往更發(fā)達(dá)地區(qū)；

2.4：貿(mào)易導(dǎo)致的失敗者遠(yuǎn)高于于施托爾珀-薩繆爾森理論給出的數(shù)量；

3：經(jīng)濟(jì)增長：

3.1：持續(xù)的經(jīng)濟(jì)增長不是常態(tài)；

3.2：經(jīng)濟(jì)為什么增長，為什么陷入困境，如何讓發(fā)達(dá)國家保持增長，如何讓窮國經(jīng)濟(jì)實(shí)現(xiàn)增長，經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家們都不知道；

3.3：主要經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展要素的特征接近的國家，最終的經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展會趨同；

3.4：減稅并不能促進(jìn)經(jīng)濟(jì)增長，長期來看，里根、布什的減稅，克林頓的增稅，都對經(jīng)濟(jì)增長沒有影響；

3.5：對高收入人群減稅不一定能促進(jìn)經(jīng)濟(jì)增長，但是對最高收入10%以外的人群減稅，可以顯著增加就業(yè)和收入；

4：全球變暖：

4.1：為了應(yīng)對全球變暖，大致每年需要花費(fèi)全球GDP的1%；也許技術(shù)進(jìn)步解決不了根本問題，人們需要適度降級消費(fèi)比如開更清潔的更小的汽車甚至不開車；

4.2：碳稅是應(yīng)對全球變暖最合理的辦法；

4.3：富國的富裕人口適度為窮國的環(huán)保升級買單，是相對合理的方案；

5：貧富分化：

5.1：工業(yè)革命在爆發(fā)后的70年內(nèi)導(dǎo)致了工人階級收入下降生活變差；20世紀(jì)80年代以來機(jī)器人搶走了越來越多的中等技能職位；這種機(jī)器取代人工的趨勢目前看無法阻擋，會從富國蔓延到世界；

5.2：里根經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)的涓滴理論被證明是錯的，1980年以來的經(jīng)濟(jì)增長果實(shí)，大部分被富人摘取，窮人收獲很少；里根撒切爾執(zhí)政以來英美的貧富分化加劇了；

5.3：英美的收入不平等顯著高于歐洲國家，部分原因是英美金融發(fā)達(dá)，吸收了更多的資本和優(yōu)秀人才；

5.4：針對超高收入的高邊際所得稅率，是限制最高收入不平等現(xiàn)象激增的極其明智的做法，不會損傷任何人的工作態(tài)度；

5.5：針對高收入人群的財富稅，是降低不平等的好方法；富人們可能最終會為了真正的繁榮而接受，也可能被動接受；

5.6：因此，當(dāng)增長停滯，或無法使普通人受益時，就需要找到替罪羊。在美國尤其如此，但歐洲的情況差不多。最自然的指責(zé)對象是移民和貿(mào)易；

5.7：美國政府想要幫助更多的失業(yè)工人，就需要向富豪和中產(chǎn)征更多的稅；

5.8：經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家和許多政策制定者喜歡丹麥的彈性保障制度。這個制度賦予勞動力市場完全的靈活性。企業(yè)可以很輕易地解雇員工，而這些失業(yè)者會得到豐厚的失業(yè)補(bǔ)貼；

5.9：歐洲補(bǔ)貼農(nóng)業(yè)留住青山綠水的做法，可以擴(kuò)展到其他領(lǐng)域，讓失業(yè)者獲得有尊嚴(yán)的工作；

6：偏見：

6.1：互聯(lián)網(wǎng)讓美國人更不容易接受不同觀點(diǎn)、更排斥黑人；在學(xué)校保持多樣化能緩解這類偏見；

6.2：美國的選民也越來越偏激，有效的方法是深入探討跟選民自身利益相關(guān)的話題而不討論黨派；

• migration
  • Trump's argument: “People want more money and therefore will all go wherever wages are highest (supply goes up). As the demand curve for labor slopes down, the rise in the labor supply will lower wages for everyone. ”
  • ^ wrong. “First, wage differences between countries (or locations, more generally) actually have relatively little to do with whether or not people migrate. ”“Second, there is no credible evidence that even relatively large inflows of low-skilled migrants hurt the local population, including members of the local population most like the migrants in terms of skills.”
  • who are the immigrants? “Those trying to get out of such places probably don’t face the grinding extreme poverty the average Liberian or Mozambique resident faces. It is more that they find life intolerable because of the collapse of everyday normality”“fewer people left in bad years because they could not afford the trip out. ”“They were running from the mouth of the shark. And when that happens, it is almost impossible to stop them, because in their minds there is no home to return to.”
    • “Who migrates typically depends on the barriers migrants have to overcome. ”“a lot of them bring exceptional talents—skills, ambition, patience, and stamina—that help them become job creators, or raise children who will be job creators. ”
    • “So one very big problem with the supply-demand analysis applied to immigration is that an influx of migrants increases the demand for labor at the same time it increases the supply of laborers. This is one reason why wages do not go down when there are more migrants. ”
    • “This logic says that the wage the firm must pay to get workers to work typically has to be high enough that being fired actually hurts. This is what economists call the efficiency wage. As a result, the wage difference between what firms pay their established workers and what they would need to pay a newcomer may not be very large, because they cannot risk the consequences of paying a newcomer too little.”
    • “the immigration of skilled workers is more of a mixed bag from the point of view of its impact on the domestic population. It helps low-skilled natives, who benefit from cheaper services (most doctors who serve the poorest corners of the United States are migrants from the developing world) at the cost of worsening the labor market prospects of the domestic population with similar skills (nurses, doctors, engineers, and college teachers).”
    • “why so many people prefer not to try?”“One possible reason is they overestimate the risks. ”“ a single death of someone from a particular district (a small area) in Nepal significantly reduces migration flows from that district to the country where the death happened”
    • “Migration, after all, is leaving the familiar to embrace the unknown, and the unknown is more than just a list of different potential outcomes with associated probabilities”“Most people don’t like dealing with the unknown unknowns, and will go to great lengths to avoid making decisions in cases where they do not know the exact contours of the problem.”
    • “ loss aversion makes us extremely worried about any risk, even small, that is a consequence of our active choice. Migration, unless everyone else is doing it, is one of these active choices, and a big one; it is easy to imagine many will be chary of trying.”
    • “The fear of failure is a substantial disincentive for embarking on a risky adventure.”“It takes an ability to dream (Albert, Esther’s grandfather, was seeking adventure rather than escaping from a bad situation), or a substantial dose of overconfidence, to overcome this tendency to persist with the status quo. This is perhaps why migrants, at least those not pushed out by desperation, tend to be not the richest or the most educated, but those who have some special drive, which is why we find so many successful entrepreneurs among them.”
    • “America as a model of what a free society could be. For him, restlessness was one of the things that made America special: people moved all the time, both across sectors and across occupations.”
    • “encouraging migration, both internal and external, should indeed be a policy priority, but that the right way to do it should be not by forcing people or distorting economic incentives, as has been done in the past, but by removing some of the key obstacles.”