马凯硕  美国不再是民主国家，而是富权国家

美国不再是民主国家，而是富权国家！马凯硕在牛津辩论解析：美国民主已经不再起作用，普通人民的收入在降低，寿命也比很多发展中国家低，

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtHM1BRHJy8

让我们明确一点：美国是一个伟大的国家。令人惊奇的是，50多年前美国就将人类送上了月球，至今无人复制。令人惊奇的是，美国在各个领域获得的诺贝尔奖比任何其他国家都多。所以，争论的焦点不在于美国是否是一个伟大的国家，而在于它的民主制度是??否正在走向衰败。

作为一个在70年代和80年代访问过美国超过50年的人，我可以告诉你，我对美国非常了解，我在美国结过两次婚，所以我很了解这个国家。我可以告诉你，它曾经是一个幸福的国家。
但正如你从今天的辩论中看到的，它不再是一个幸福的国家。所以我想尝试解释并回答三个问题，以支持“美国是一个正在衰败的民主国家”这一论断：首先，它是如何衰败的；其次，它为什么衰败；第三，有没有解决办法？我想谈谈解决办法，因为我们希望美国成功，我们不希望美国失败。所以，首先要回答的问题是：问题是为什么它会失败？从最基本的意义上来说，它确实失败了。记住民主的目标是什么？民主是民有、民治、民享的政府。判断一个民主国家成功与否的标准，是它是否成功地提升了人民的生活水平。长期以来，美国一直在提升人民的生活水平，但后来却停止了。数据令人震惊。让我引用托马斯·皮克蒂在2018年发表的一篇重要论文。他说，美国底层50%人口的收入停滞不前，而顶层1%人口的收入却在飙升，形成了鲜明的对比。对于美国底层50%人口来说，他们的税前收入份额从1970年的21%下降到2014年的13%，而顶层1%人口的收入份额在同一时期从9%上升到20%。看看差距吧。就家庭财富而言，顶层家庭持有的家庭财富份额。 1% 的 0.1% 从 8.9% 上升到 13.6% 6%，而底层 50% 的人口所占比例从 3.8% 下降到 2.5%。因此，你可以看到，人们并没有从民主中受益。我希望我能用幻灯片的形式向你们展示这一点。
幻灯片显示，1970 年，中等收入人群，也就是大多数美国人，占总收入的 62%，到 2020 年，这一比例从 62% 下降到 42%，而高收入人群的比例从 29% 上升到 50%。显然，根本上出了问题。顺便说一句，其结果是，人们正在遭受苦难。
你甚至可以在昨天马丁·沃尔夫在《金融时报》的专栏中看到，他谈到了美国经济的非凡活力和美国人民的苦难。你知道令人震惊的是，美国是唯一一个预期寿命正在下降的主要发达国家。相信我，领先指标
之一一个社会福祉的领先指标是预期寿命。世界上大多数国家，包括贫穷的发展中国家，预期寿命都在上升，而美国却在下降。我可以告诉你，就连非常保守的英裔美国历史学家尼尔·弗格森也发表了一篇文章，说：“嘿，如果你看看美国的社会指标，它就像旧苏联一样。”这难道不令人惊讶吗？这表明民主正在失败。数据是不可否认的。最大的问题是，它为什么会失败。正如你所知，美国人民每天都在大声疾呼，他们去投票站投票，发表意见，做所有的事情，但什么都没有改变。为什么现在没有改变呢？这是一个非常重要的观点，我要在这里强调，当你看到民主国家不关注人们走到投票箱前填表并说“我投票给我的政府，我做出我的选择”的仪式时。深入研究，你会发现，尽管有所有这些民主仪式和活动，但一切都没有改变，因为政府已经被控制了。它是如何被控制的？让我引用普林斯顿大学两位经济学家马丁·吉兰斯和本杰明·佩奇的话。顺便说一句，他们提供了大量数据，你可以在我的书《中国一号》中找到很多这样的数据。我花了很多时间来解释这是怎么发生的。他们说，当经济精英的偏好和有组织的利益集团的立场被控制在普通美国人的偏好范围内时，普通美国人的偏好似乎对公共政策的影响微乎其微，几乎为零，在统计上不显著。此外，经济精英的偏好（用我们的代理变量衡量）——富裕公民的偏好——对政策变化的影响远比普通公民的偏好更独立。在美国，我们的研究结果表明，多数人
并不能统治政策，至少在大多数公民不同意的情况下，多数人不能真正决定政策结果。经济精英或有组织的利益集团通常会失败。“听听美国的情况，我们的调查结果表明，多数人并不统治，当多数人的偏好对政府决策没有影响时，你怎么能称自己为民主国家？但令人惊讶的是，大多数人并没有意识到这一点，因为它以一种非常谨慎的、隐秘的方式发生着，你永远不会在头条新闻中看到它，你也不会在一些报纸上看到它，但它是真实存在的，因此，正如美国有史以来最受尊敬的美联储主席、我的好朋友保罗·沃尔卡所说：“实际上，美国已经变成了一个富豪统治的国家。” 让我明确一点，富豪统治从定义上来说不是民主国家，所以，当你谈论一个失败的民主国家时，你面临的是一个非常严峻的挑战。现在我们能解决这个问题吗？我真的相信它可以解决，但因为它是如此深刻和结构性，你必须找到它的结构性根源。我会很快讲完，因为我时间不够了，我只想提一下，你必须在某种程度上回顾美国伟大哲学家的智慧，我深入研究过约翰·RWS和约翰·RS。他们在《正义论》一书中指出，只有当底层10%的人也看到自己受益时，你才能证明增加富人收入的合理性。所以，如果你想给富人更多，那就去做吧，但要确保底层的收入也能增加。这意味着，当你谈论你最重要的理想时，这一点至关重要。不要只关注自由，因为18、19世纪来到牛津的伟大哲学家们总是谈论自由和平等，但每个人都忘记了“平等”这个词。如果你想创建一个让大多数公民，尤其是底层50%的人真正感受到幸福的社会，让他们觉得自己也是社会的共同所有者，那么就应该创造对大多数人有利的安排，这就是民主应该做的。通过投票支持这项提案，你知道你在做什么。你正在帮助美国说“醒醒吧，是时候改变了。

let's be clear about one point the United States of America is a great country what's amazing is that over five decades ago the United States sent a man to the moon and no one else has copied it amazing the United States has won more Nobel prizes in every field than any other country has so the debate is not about whether or not America is a great country it is a great country the debate is about whether or not it democracy is failing
and I can tell you as someone who's been visiting the US for over five decades now the 70s 80s I got to know it very well i got married there twice so I know the country well and I can tell you that it used to be a happy country
but as you can tell from today's debate it is no longer a happy country so what I what I'll try to do is to try and explain answer three questions in support of the proposition that America is a failing democracy first how is it failing two why is it failing and three is there a solution and I want to talk about the solution because we want America to succeed we don't want America to fail so the question first question is why is it failing and it's failing in the most basic sense remember what is the goal of a democracy a democracy is a government of the people by the people for the people and the way you judge whether or not a democracy has succeeded or failed is whether or not it has succeeded in lifting up its people and for a long time the United States kept lifting up its people and then it stopped doing so and the data is quite stunning let me quote one important paper by
Thomas Pikerty in 2018 and he says that the stagnation of the bottom 50% of America's population contrasts sharply with the upurge of income of the top 1% for the bottom 50% of America's population their share of pre-tax income declined from 21% to 13% in from 1970 21% to 13% 2014 and the share the income the top 1% increased from 9% to 20% in the same period see the disparity and in terms of household wealth the share of household wealth held by the top one was 1% 0.1% went from 8.9% to 13.6% 6% while the share held by the bottom 50% went down from 3.8% to 2.5% you can see therefore that the people are not benefiting from democracy i wish I could show you this in the form of SL
in on a form of a slide where it shows that in 1970 the middle income population the majority of Americans
held 62% of the uh income went down from 62 to 42% in 2020 while the upper income went up from 29% to 50% so clearly something fundamentally has gone wrong and the result of this by the way is that people are suffering
and you can see even in yesterday's column by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times where he talks by the way about the extraordinary dynamism of the American economy and the suffering of the American people and you know what's shocking the United States of America is the only major developed country where life expectancy is going down trust me the leading indicators
one of the leading indicators of the well-being of a society is life expectancy and in most countries in the world including the poor developing countries life expectancy is going up in United States is going down and I can tell you even the very conservative British American historian Nile Ferguson came out with an article saying "Hey if you look at the social indicators of the United States it's like the old Soviet Union." Isn't that amazing that shows you therefore that democracy is failing the data is undeniable big question is why is it failing and here as you know the American people are speaking out every day they go to the election booths they vote they speak they do everything and nothing changes why not now this is a very important point I'm going to emphasize here when you watch and see democracies do not pay attention to the rituals of people going to the ballot box stuffing it and saying "I am voting my government i'm making my choice." Look deeper because you will find as you look deeper that despite all these rituals and activities of democracy nothing changes because the government has been captured how is it captured let me quote to you
two Princeton University economists
Martin Gillans and Benjamin Page and by
the way they give extensive data you can get a lot of this data in in my book Has China One i devoted a lot of time to explaining how this happened and they say when the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule near zero statistically non-significant impact
upon public policy furthermore the preferences of economic elites as measured by our proxy the preferences of affluent citizens have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do and listen to this in the United States our findings indicate the majority
does not rule at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes when a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests they generally lose." Listen to this in the United States our findings indicate the majority does not rule how can you call yourself a democracy when the preferences of the majority have no impact on the decisions of the government but what's amazing is most people are
not aware of this because it has happened in a very
careful subterranean fashion you never see it in the headlines you don't see it in the some in the papers too but it's real and therefore the result of this is as probably the most respected ever head of the Fed of the United States was a good friend of mine Paul Vulkar and he said "Effectively functionally the US has become a plutoaucracy." And let me make it very clear a plutoaucracy is by definition not a democracy so therefore you're dealing when you talk about a failing democracy here you're dealing with a very serious challenge now can we solve this problem i actually believe it can be solved but because it is so deep and structural you have to find the structural roots of
it and I'm going to rush since I'm out of time i just going to mention you have to go back to in some ways the wisdom of the great philosophers that United States had and one whom I studied a lot was John RWS and John RS said in his book theory of justice that you can justify increasing income for the more affluent only if the bottom 10% also see a benefit for them so if you want to give more to the affluent go ahead but make sure the bottom rise but that means this is very fundamental when you talk about your most important ideals focus not just on freedom because the great philosophers the great philosophers who came to Oxford in the 18th 19th century always spoke about freedom and equality everybody forgets the word equality that's so fundamental if you want to create a society where the majority of citizens especially the bottom 50% feel a real sense of well-being feel that they are also co-owners of the society create arrangements that work for the majority that's what democracy is
supposed to do and by voting for the proposition
you you know what you're doing you're helping America to say "Wake up it's time for a change