唐納德·特朗普的目光開始越過他的重大勝利。在周一晚上發布的一段YouTube短視頻中，這位當選總統概述了自己的執政議程。特朗普表示，他的首要行政重點是啟動增長，改善網絡和邊境安全，撤出《跨太平洋伙伴關系協議》(TPP)，改善政治操守，以及“恢復我們的法律，并帶回屬于我們的工作機會。”

從Twitter移師YouTube是一個良好的開端。接下來，他需要提供詳細信息，對人們不安全感的源頭進行更細致的分析，并闡述周密的政策和立法議程來推動其執政議程。

這是一個歷史性時刻；其利害關系不可能更高。棲居在象牙塔內，依靠自身貌似精心，自我加強的民調引領議事日程的領導方式，現已壽終正寢。現在，經由一種熱烈且即時的反饋循環，社交媒體讓所有人，公民和流氓都成為“影響者”。如果癥狀被誤診，處方無效，一種重大風險就很可能涌現：到下一次總統選舉，我們可能面臨的不僅僅是直言不諱，而是一種真正具有破壞性的不確定性、不安全感、焦慮感，乃至社會動蕩。可以肯定地說，未來幾個星期的決定或許將給后代帶來嚴重后果。

讓我們關注經濟。無需贅言，美國的經濟狀況并不理想。就連華府領導階層也應該深知這一點——當他們看到大學畢業的子女仍然住在家里的時候。盡管失業率低于美聯儲的總體目標（5%），但真實失業率仍接近10%。

政府的基建支出將創造新的就業機會，但社保體系和國家安全預算方面的需要也非常緊迫。我們不可能樣樣俱得。鑒于特朗普將他的基礎設施倡議集中在刺激私人投資上，他似乎承認這一點。

雖然稅收和監管改革可能會起到微弱的幫助作用，但這些舉措仍然沒有抓住我們的工作所面臨的長期挑戰。正如特朗普毫無疑問意識到的那樣，把美國的失業問題歸咎于中國、墨西哥和其他貿易伙伴亦是如此。幾十年前，這些工作從美國流向中國和墨西哥；這種傷害已然造成。我們沒有必要爭辯自由貿易相對于重商主義的好處；甚至在工作開始遷移到海外之前，那場戰爭就已經打響了。

這種問題是結構性的。工作不是被其他地方的廉價勞動力取代，而是被微芯片和智能軟件吞噬了——這些微芯片和智能軟件能夠執行更復雜的任務，而無需人為干預。它不只是藍領機器人：最新的“深度學習”人工智能軟件能夠充分預期和執行復雜的任務，比如駕駛、大學作業分級、自主飛行無人機、調試新的微處理器，甚至能夠從云端運行整個電信網絡。從工廠到博士實驗室，應用人工智能軟件擁有同等的機會來毀滅各行各業、各種能力等級的工作。

工作吞噬者沒有國界。就在上周，蘋果宣布，該公司可能會將其高度自動化的iPhone生產線從中國遷回美國。（蘋果僅有區區10萬名員工，其人均利潤額已經高達200萬美元。）對于中國的機器人監工來說，這是最后一個破壞階段，但不要指望此舉會給美國工人帶來多大好處：使用技術來減少勞動力和其他成本對于企業利潤、股東和那些穿著連帽衫的年輕創新者有利，但對于數百人即將被替代的工人來說，這并不是好消息。

人類工作的虛擬化一直是“大衰退”以來經濟不景氣的真正原因；它與更容易的靶子—— “貪婪的華爾街投機者”——沒有聯系。金融科技的迅速發展也在破壞工作機會。技術創造的效率確實有麻醉通脹的好處。但即使美元購買力增強，那些沒有工作，特別是沒有儲蓄，負責任的消費者也不會把錢花在非必需品上。低消費意味著低增速，進而轉動這個周期，而新增的虛擬化財富總是令少數人受益。

如此長時間以來，我們任由這些壓力不斷累積。

處方？到目前為止，美國的頂級經濟學家或多或少地忽略了這種吞噬工作的病毒，只是假設新的工作崗位會像過去幾輪“科技驅動的經濟轉型”（從農場到工廠，從生產到服務）那樣不斷涌現。果真如此嗎？有足夠多的服務類工作嗎？整整5年前，在堪薩斯州奧薩瓦提市一場思慮周祥的演講中，奧巴馬總統談到這個巨大的問題。但我們并未看到任何跟進措施。對奧巴馬猶如教授般精彩的分析進行回應，是他留給新總司令的一項遺產。

于唐納德·特朗普而言，這是一次劃時代的經濟機會：制定政策以重新配置智能系統，使它們從危及人們福祉的病毒轉換為賦能者，幫助人們從不那么有趣的工作中解放出來，從而為他們的家庭和社區做出更有目的性的貢獻。這也很可能成為新總統面臨的主要經濟挑戰。原因是，盡管一些人正在失去工作，但其他人，特別是創造效率的創新者及其客戶和投資者，正在贏得收益豐厚的機會，對于建制派來說，最直接、最懶惰的修復路徑可能是羅賓漢式的“殺富濟貧”。

沒有這么快。美國文化與其他文化的區別在于，我們欽佩成功，希望自己也獲得成功的機會，而不是從其他人的口袋掏錢。在某種程度上，選民似乎很欣賞特朗普自我吹噓的成功和膽識，許多人想成為他那樣的成功者。他們也希望他“抽干沼澤”(drain the swamp)，清除那些自私自利的建制派政客為他們的機會設置的種種障礙。此處正是STEM學科（即科學、技術、工程和數學）和創業教育、為小企業減稅，以及對基層倡議實施稅收減免，可以大顯身手的地方。

對新總統“百日新政”的另一個建議是，委任一個公共/私人工作組研究就業的未來，它不是那種常見的紙面研究，而是一種非正式的創新思想孵化器，并且能夠包容廣泛的思想家群體。新總統應該授權工作組提供一些具體的答案，途徑有二：其一，充分研究建制派經濟學家假設將在虛擬化經濟中浮現的新型工作；其二，為人們從事有目的性的工作，以及把錢放在他們的口袋開發適當的選項——沒有不公平的政府再分配。一些可能舉措包括對破壞性技術征稅，依靠增值稅資助的普遍基本收入，或者在主流經濟學討論之外提出的類似措施。

如今恰逢人類歷史上一個極其不確定的時刻。這位新當選總統肩負的責任甚至可能比他本人所意識到的還要大。在一個如此重要，利害關系不可能更大的歷史階段，特朗普有機會成為幾代人中最偉大的“交易撮合者”。現在，讓我們忘卻他身上的標簽吧，一起祝福他獲得成功——為我們自己的繁榮和安全。（財富中文網）

譯者：Kevin

本文作者是一位投資人和政府分析師，投資公司Xerion Investments首席執行官，No Labels公司聯合創始人。

Donald Trump started looking past his big win and outlining his governing agenda in a short YouTube video released Monday night. He stated that his first executive priorities are to kick-start growth, improve cyber and border security, pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, improve government ethics, and “restore our laws and bring back our jobs.”

Moving from Twitter to YouTube is a good start. Next he’ll need to provide details, with a more nuanced analysis of what’s causing people’s insecurity, and a thoughtful policy and legislative agenda to move the needle.

This is a historic moment; the stakes couldn’t be higher. Ivory tower leadership, navigated by its own meticulously self-reinforcing polls, is done. Social media enfranchises everyone, citizens and rogues, as “influencers” now, with an intense and immediate feedback loop. If the symptoms are misdiagnosed and prescriptions ineffective, there’s a material risk that by the next presidential election, we may be facing a lot more than blunt talk—a truly disruptive strain of uncertainty, insecurity, anxiety, and possibly social unrest. Safe to say, the decisions of the next few weeks might have consequences for generations to come.

Let’s focus on the economy: It’s not in good shape. Even the Beltway leadership class should know better when they see their own college-educated kids still living at home. While the unemployment rate is below the Fed’s 5% headline target, real unemployment is still nearly 10%.

Government spending on infrastructure would create new jobs, but there are also pressing social safety net and national security budgetary needs—and we can’t have it all. Trump seems to acknowledge this by focusing his infrastructure initiative on stimulating private investment.

While tax and regulatory reform would also help at the margins, they still miss what’s chronically challenging our jobs. So does blaming American job losses on China, Mexico, and other trading partners, as Trump no doubt realizes. The jobs left America for China and Mexico decades ago; that damage is done. And there’s no need to debate the benefits of free trade versus mercantilism; that war was fought even before jobs started migrating abroad.

The problem is structural. Jobs aren’t being replaced by cheaper ones somewhere else; they’re being eaten by microchips and smart software executing ever more sophisticated tasks without human intervention. And it’s not just blue collar robots: The latest “deep learning” artificial intelligence software fully anticipates and executes complex tasks, like driving, grading college assignments, autonomously flying drones, debugging new microprocessors, and even running entire telecommunications networks from the cloud. Applied artificial intelligence software is an equal opportunity consumer of jobs, across the spectrum of industries and abilities, from the factory floor to PhD labs.

The job-eater knows no borders. Just last week, Apple (already earning $2 million for every one of its mere 100,000 employees) announced that it may be about to relocate its highly automated iPhone production from China back home to the U.S. It’s the last stage of disruption for China’s robot supervisors, but don’t expect it to do much good for American workers: Using technology to reduce labor and other costs is great for corporate profits, shareholders, and hoodie-wearing young innovators, but not so much for millions of workers on the road to displacement.

Virtualization of human jobs has been the real cause of economic malaise since the Great Recession; it has no connection with the easier target: “greedy Wall Street speculators.” They’re being disrupted too, by the rapid advance of FinTech. Tech-created efficiencies do have the benefit of anesthetizing inflation. But even if a consumer dollar buys more, responsible people without jobs, and especially those without savings, don’t spend on nonessentials. Lower consumption means lower growth and thus turns the cycle, while the new real wealth of virtualization by definition benefits fewer people all the time. These pressures can be left to build for only so long.

The prescription? So far, our nation’s leading economists have more or less ignored the job-eating virus, just assuming that new jobs will simply appear, as they actually did in the last “technology-driven economic transitions,” from farms-to-factories and production-to-services. Really? Will there be enough service jobs to go around? President Obama talked about this huge question in a thoughtful speech at Osawatomie, Kansas five full years ago. Nothing much was done, though; responding to the professor-president’s brilliant analysis is a legacy left to our new commander-in-chief.

This is Donald Trump’s epochal economic opportunity: developing policies that reconfigure smart systems from viruses that threaten people’s well-being to enablers that liberate them from less interesting work routines to make more purposeful contributions to their families and communities. This is also likely to constitute the new president’s defining economic challenge, because while some people are losing, others (the efficiency-creating innovators and their clients and investors) are winning big, and the straightest, laziest establishment path for fixing that would probably have been Robin Hood’s—just take from the rich to help the poor.

Not so fast. What distinguishes America’s culture from pretty much everyone else’s is that we admire success and want the chance to get there ourselves, instead of taking it from someone else’s pocket. Voters seemed at some level to even embrace Trump’s boastful success and chutzpah, bluntness and all; many want to be like him. They also want him to “drain the swamp” of the barriers that a selfish political establishment has placed in front of their opportunities. Here’s where science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and entrepreneurship education, tax relief for small businesses, and tax breaks for grassroots initiatives can make a big difference.

Another idea for the new president’s first hundred days would be to commission a public/private task force on the future of employment—not the usual paper and study–fest, but an informal incubator of innovative ideas that includes a broad range of thinkers. He should give it a mandate to come up with some concrete answers, either by thinking through exactly what new types of jobs establishment economists assume will materialize in the virtualized economy or by developing appropriate options for keeping people purposefully occupied and putting money in their pockets—without unfair government redistribution. Some of the possibilities might include taxes narrowly targeting disruptive technologies, a VAT-funded universal basic income, or similar measures that have been raised at the edges of mainstream economic discussions.

The new president-elect has earned perhaps a larger responsibility at a more precarious moment in human history than even he might have realized. Donald Trump has the chance to be greatest dealmaker, on the most important stage, with the highest stakes, in generations. Let’s forget the hashtags now, and hope for his success—and our own prosperity and security.