經濟轉型中的「社會不公平」

SOCIAL INEQUALITIES DURING ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION

在知識與創新經濟時代， 產品世代更迭極為快速， 經濟轉型往往不是輕、重工業類型的轉變， 而是經濟創新不斷取代或被取代的過程。包括臺灣在內的許多經濟體，過去十餘年逐漸形成「本地接單、海外生產」的便宜經濟型態，遂使企業怠忽了較為吃力的、成本較高的創新轉型。這樣的經濟架構容易產生本地薪資凍漲、所得分配惡化、土地房屋飆漲、教育進階不利、階級流動減緩等不同面向的社會不公平。本文用臺灣過去十幾年的資料， 解說上述五種社會不公平的形成及之間的關係。其背後的政策意涵與經驗， 應該值得許多其他類似經濟參考。

The product life cycle is extremely short in this newera of knowledge-based and innovation-driven economy. Economic transformation is no longer from light industry to heavy industry, but the self-replacement and self-destruction of old technologies. In the past decade, many economies including Taiwan, instead of exercising such painful and costly self-destruction, have chosen an easier way to survival, which is moving factories to nearby low-cost countries. Their business model is “taking orders locally and producing overseas”, which has caused five kinds of social inequality problems, which are specifically freezing the increment of localwages, unequal income distribution, risingmetro housing prices, decreasing social mobility and difficulty of moving upward through education. This paper analyzes the Taiwanese data over the past decades to explain how these five problems were formed and how they were linked to each other. The policy implications and experience behind them should be worthwhile for other similar economies to refer to.