让米莱放手一搏：阿根廷中期选举爆冷

《经济学人》

The Economist.

你好，欢迎收听《经济学人》的‘情报’栏目。我是罗茜·布鲁尔。

Hello, and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor.

我是杰森·帕尔默。每个工作日，我们都会为您提供塑造世界事件的新视角。

And I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

德国总理弗里德里希·梅尔茨承诺要重振国家经济。但迄今为止未见起色。如今他又承诺将在秋季推行改革。

Germany's chancellor Friedrich Maerz has promised to get the country's economy moving again. So far, it hasn't budged. Now he's promised an autumn of reforms.

游戏玩家可能注意到近年来的一个趋势：在经历长期的平均难度下降后，许多游戏系列似乎又变得令人恼火地困难起来——有些甚至可能过于困难了。但首先，今晨阿根廷政局似乎比上周更为稳定。在中期选举中，总统哈维尔·米莱领导的自由前进党以41%得票率取得压倒性胜利。

And gamers may have noticed a trend in recent years. After a long stretch of getting easier on average, many franchises seem to be getting vexingly difficult again. In some cases, maybe a little too difficult. But first, This morning, Argentina looks to have a more stable government than it did last week. In midterm elections, Liberty advances, the party of president Javier Male, won a thumping victory, 41% of the vote.

得票率第二高的反对党仅获得24%支持。这一结果出乎意料，米莱先生宣告胜利：‘今天标志着建设伟大阿根廷的开端’。虽然他和阿根廷经济及比索尚未摆脱困境，但其执政基础已比此前稳固得多。

The next nearest opposition party won just 24. That is not what was expected, and mister Male was triumphant. Today marks the beginning of building a great Argentina, he said. He and the Argentine economy and the peso aren't out of the woods yet, but his project is on a far firmer footing than it was.

几周前我参加节目时，哈维尔·米莱的处境看起来还相当危险。

When I came on the show a few weeks ago, things looked pretty dicey for Javier Malay.

哈尔·霍德森是我们的美国版编辑。

Hal Hodson is our America's editor.

他当时正面临中期选举，脖子上挂着三起腐败丑闻。阿根廷比索每天都在或至少每周都在触及政府设定的汇率禁令上限，濒临失控的市场崩盘边缘。而且他刚刚在布宜诺斯艾利斯省的地方立法机构选举中输掉了一场看似微小、但所有人都认为至关重要的选举。我们当时正在严肃讨论这是否意味着米莱项目在阿根廷的终结。而就在过去几小时里，米莱取得了压倒性胜利，使他能够继续重塑阿根廷经济的工作，并给许多阿根廷人带来了希望——他们的经济或许不会长期处于崩溃状态。

He was facing into midterm elections with three corruption scandals hanging around his neck. The Argentine peso was bumping daily or at least weekly into the limit of its exchange rate ban set by the government on the verge of tipping into an uncontrolled market meltdown. And he had just lost a tiny, but in the scheme of things, everybody thought it was very important election in Buenos Aires province to the local legislature. And we were talking seriously about whether or not this was the end of the Melee project in Argentina. Now, in the last few hours, Melee has won a landslide victory and has put him in a position to continue his work reshaping the Argentine economy and given hope to a lot of Argentines that they may not have a basket case economy for too much longer.

那么请详细说说这个出人意料的选举结果。

So talk me through the surprise result here.

选前的民调显示双方势均力敌，米莱可能只会以微弱优势获胜，这种胜利实际上解决不了他的任何问题——特别是因为他无法在国会获得足够席位来维护总统否决权。这意味着左翼政党可以推动政府支出法案，米莱会否决，但国会只需说'不'，就能推翻他的否决，因为他没有达到维护否决权所需的三分之一席位。所以当时形势对他相当不利。

So polls in advance of the election indicated a fifty fifty looking result, maybe a marginal win for Malay, the kind of win that was gonna not really solve any of his problems, specifically because he wasn't going to get enough seats in congress to defend his presidential veto. That would mean that the left wing parties would be able to advance legislation to spend government money. Malay would veto it, and then congress would just say, nah. We're reject rejecting your veto because you don't have a third of seats required to defend your veto. So it was looking like he was in a pretty bad situation.

现在他显然已获得足够席位来维护否决权。这非常重要，因为米莱向市场和阿根廷选民承诺的核心是财政纪律——即在不挥霍巨额资金的前提下治理国家。不过投票率只有68%，在这个实行强制投票的国家，这是自1983年以来的最低水平。这预示着未来存在隐患：许多阿根廷选民显然对米莱仍缺乏热情。尽管他拥有维护否决权的足够席位，但还不足以仅凭自己政党就完全独立推进改革立法。

He now definitely has enough seats to defend his veto. And that's really important because the core of Malay's proposition to markets and to Argentinian voters is fiscal rectitude, the ability to not spend loads and loads of money and still run the country. Having said that, the turnout was only 68%, and that's in a country that has compulsory voting, and that's the lowest level since 1983. So this is one of the sort of red flags going forward is that a lot of voters in Argentina clearly remain unenthusiastic about Malay. And even though he has enough seats to defend his veto, he doesn't have enough seats to pass legislation to do reforms entirely on his own, just with his own party.

他将需要与其他政治团体合作，才能解决诸如税收制度、劳工改革、养老金改革等重大问题。

He is going to need to work with other political groups in order to solve big problems like the tax system, labor reform, pension reform.

那么这对米莱先生的经济项目近期意味着什么？

So what does this mean then in the near term for mister Malay's economic project?

首要意义在于，所有曾让马来生活陷入困境的金融经济指标将停止亮起红灯。阿根廷资产价格将上涨，比索至少暂时会停止贬值，这将使他治理阿根廷变得轻松许多，几乎是立竿见影的效果。这也意味着特朗普政府对比索和马来带引号的'押注'至少在短期内看似会获得回报。美国财政部在此次选举前购入了约20亿比索的资产。

The very first thing it means is that all of the financial and economic indicators that were making Malay's life hell are going to stop flashing red. Argentine asset prices are going to go up. The peso is going to stop sliding, at least for the moment, and it is going to make running Argentina much, much easier for him pretty much immediately. It also means that the Trump administration's bet in inverted commas on Malay and on the peso looks like it will pay off at least in the short term. The US treasury bought somewhere in the region of $2,000,000,000 worth of pesos in the lead up to this election.

由于几小时后市场开盘时比索将走强，如果财政部迅速行动并抛售所有购入的比索，甚至可能从这场诡异的混战交易中获利。因此本质上压力已解除，马来现在可以将注意力转回重建阿根廷经济的计划，这次他总算有了实际弹药。在他总统任期最初几年，仅凭民众支持力度推进改革。而这次选举中赢得的国会席位——此前他几乎没有任何席位——他通过让国会其他成员感到难以反对来推动议程。

And because the peso is going to strengthen when markets open in a couple of hours, if the treasury moved quickly and sold all of the pesos that it's bought, it might even make a profit off of this weird melee trade that it has been doing. So essentially, the pressure is off and now Malay's attention can turn back in a way to his project of rebuilding the Argentine economy with some actual ammunition this time. For the first couple of years of his presidency, he's been doing this just with the strength of popular support alone. These seats that he's won in congress in this election, he didn't have almost any seats before. He was doing things just by making it seem really unpalatable for other people in congress to stand in his way.

如今他拥有了自己的火力，理论上应该能取得更多进展。

Now he has some firepower of his own, and so in theory, he should be able to get quite a lot more done.

但阿根廷的马来先生作为经济学家对比索异常关注。中期来看比索将面临什么情况？

But Argentina has mister Male has the economist has quite a preoccupation with the peso. What happens with the peso now in the in the medium term?

确实。如果还要用不同说法描述'支撑比索'而不重复，我真该加薪了。选举结果绝非永久解决了阿根廷货币问题，虽短期缓解压力，但几大隐患仍在。

Yeah. If I have to come up with more ways of saying propping up the peso without repeating myself, I I will be earning my paycheck. The problem with Argentina's currency is definitely not resolved for good by this result. It absolutely helps. It eases pressure in the short term, but a few big issues loom.

其一是阿根廷政府需积累外汇储备（主要是美元）以偿还2026年到期的约180亿美元债务。而抛售比索购入美元的行为本身就会削弱比索，这会侵蚀比索价值。另一个问题在于多数经济学家认为比索相对于阿根廷经济基本面被高估。

One is that Argentina's government needs to build up foreign currency reserves, that means dollar reserves, to pay back some $18,000,000,000 of debt that is due next year in 2026. The very act of doing that, of selling pesos to buy dollars, is not good for strengthening the peso. Right? That is going to eat into the value of the peso. Another part of the problem with the peso is that most economists think that it is overvalued relative to the fundamental performance of Argentina's economy.

当前货币过于强势，政府一直在人为维持。马来刚赢得意外强势的选举胜利，这本是放开比索汇率管制、让市场自由决定其价值，并改用常规货币政策（而非他近期极力依赖的汇率挂钩）应对通胀的良机。但选前政府反复强调不会改变汇率制度，即不会放开比索汇率。马来是否会调整策略，或将此视为原有策略的胜利，仍有待观察。

The currency is too strong and the government has been doing things to keep it strong. So right now, Malay has just won a surprisingly strong victory in election. That would seem to be a pretty good time to float the peso, allow the market to decide unencumbered what the value of the peso is and to start dealing with inflation using normal monetary policy rather than this currency peg that he has been relying on pretty intensely, especially over the last few months. However, in the lead up to the election, the government insisted over and over again that it was not gonna change the exchange rate regime, meaning that it was not going to float the peso essentially. And so whether or not Malay does that or whether he takes this as vindication of his strategy, that's up for debate.

目前尚不清楚他们将采取何种行动。从经济角度看，他们应尽快让比索自由浮动。但可能还存在其他影响因素，比如政治因素或马来本人的个人倾向会阻止他们这样做。最后还有美国支持的问题——正是这种支持帮助马来在选举中毫发无损并取得压倒性胜利。200亿美元的货币互换协议可能会继续生效，关键问题在于美国财政部长斯科特·贝松是否会要求马来改变其政策方向。

It's not clear what they're gonna do. Economically, they should float the peso as soon as they possibly can. There may be other factors in play, political factors, Malay's own personal preferences that'll stop them doing that. And then finally, there's the question of what happens to this US support that has helped Malay get to this election unscathed and then win a thumping victory. There's a $20,000,000,000 swap line that will likely stay in place, and the big question really is whether Scott Besson, the US treasury secretary, is going to ask Malay to change his approach.

比如贝松会要求马来实行货币自由浮动吗？或者他可能会在贸易协议中要求某些让步？很难想象具体内容。但有一点很明确：特朗普曾表示马来必须胜选才能继续获得美国支持，而马来确实以显著优势获胜了。

Will Besson ask Malay to float the currency, for instance? Or will he maybe ask for some kind of concession in a trade deal? Hard to imagine what that might be. But one thing is clear, which is that Trump said Malay had to win in order to continue to receive American support, and Malay won handsomely.

暂且不谈比索问题，他上任初期提出的那套'挥舞电锯'的改革方案其他部分进展如何？

And what about away from the peso for a moment, the rest of the chainsaw wielding program he had in mind when he first took office?

没错。如果马来想成功实现阿根廷转型，就不能只停留在应对货币动荡，必须着手整顿实体经济。他的改革清单包括：清理阿根廷复杂混乱的拜占庭式税收体系、大幅放开劳动力市场，可能还要改革成本高昂的养老金制度。所有这些改革都需要通过立法实现，而要通过法律，必须让国会两院多数议员投赞成票。

Yeah. Well, he has to move away from just handling currency ructions into cleaning up the real economy if he is going to succeed in this transformation of Argentina. And the things on his list are cleaning up Argentina's absolutely Byzantine chaotic tax system, big liberalization of the labor market, and potentially also overhauling the pension system, which is very expensive. And all of these, in order to do them, you've got to pass laws. And to pass laws, you need to have majority of politicians in the two houses of congress vote for those laws.

尽管马来政党在此次选举中取得不错成绩，但仍未获得绝对多数席位。这意味着马来需要组建联盟，必须找到足够席位的小党派来推动改革方案在国会通过。但这种联盟建设并非马来所长——他更擅长站在人群前慷慨激昂地宣称要粉碎精英阶层。

Malay's party still does not have a majority outright even though it has had a good victory in this election. That means that Malay needs to build coalitions. He needs to find other small parties that have enough seats to get his reforms over the line to pass legislation in congress. And that kind of coalition building isn't really Malay's strong suit. Malay's strong suit is standing out in front of crowds tub thumping and saying he's gonna smash the elite.

他并不擅长与可能憎恶他的人进行微妙的政治幕后交易，而这正是未来两年他必须做的事。有个积极迹象是他似乎已意识到这点：最近几个月他的言辞明显不再华而不实，似乎明白了寻求合作伙伴的必要性。看来一切重回正轨，阿根廷人或许终于能摆脱数十年来经济管理不善的困境。但别忘了自2009年以来，赢得中期选举的政党都没能让自己候选人赢得总统大选——我想这个历史阴影将会在未来几周一直萦绕在哈维尔·梅莱心头，伴随他继续重建阿根廷的计划。

His strong suit is not quiet politically sensitive backroom deals with people who potentially hate him, which is the kind of thing he's going to have to do over the next two years. One encouraging thing is that he seems to have understood this. In the last few months, his use of language has become significantly less flowery, and he seems to understand this need for partners. So it looks like everything is back on track. The Argentines potentially still on course for relief from decades and decades of economic mismanagement, but they should probably remember that since 2009 no party who has won the midterms has gone on to have their candidate win the presidential election and I imagine that'll be looming large in the mind of Javier Mele as he goes into the next few weeks and continues his project to rebuild Argentina.

哈尔，非常感谢你抽出时间。

Hal, thanks very much for your time.

谢谢你邀请我，杰森。

Thank you for having me, Jason.

六年来，德国经济一直停滞不前。

For six years, Germany's economy has been stagnating.

今年第二季度产出萎缩了0.1%。

Output shrank by 0.1% in the second quarter of this year.

德国经济陷入停滞已有一段时间，这是

The German economy has been stuck in stagnation for some time, and this is

过时的工业模式、无尽的官僚主义和中国产能过剩都难辞其咎。唐纳德·特朗普的关税政策也于事无补。弗里德里希·梅尔茨五月份上台时承诺进行一系列全面改革。如今德国人正逐渐失去耐心。

An outdated industrial model, endless bureaucracy, and Chinese oversupply are all responsible. Donald Trump's tariffs haven't helped either. When Friedrich Mertz came to power in May, he promised a sweeping array of reforms. Now Germans are getting frustrated.

弗里德里希·梅尔茨于今年五月就任德国总理。

Friedrich Mertz took office as Germany's chancellor back in May.

汤姆·纳托尔是我们柏林分社的主任。

Tom Nuttall is our Berlin bureau chief.

他首先着手恢复德国在国际上的声誉，弥补外交、对外政策及安全事务方面的损失。随后他将重心转向国内，毫不含糊地告诉德国人他们生活入不敷出，经济产业模式已失效，福利国家制度亟需改革。在此背景下，他向德国民众承诺将迎来一个改革的秋天。

The first thing he did was set about restoring Germany's international reputation, loss of diplomacy, of foreign policy and security stuff. Then he sort of pivoted to the domestic stage and told Germans in no uncertain terms that they were living beyond their means, that the economic and industrial model wasn't working anymore, and that the welfare state needed to be reformed. And in that context, he promised Germans an autumn of reforms.

他具体承诺了什么？

And what's he actually promising?

很多方面。包括福利国家制度、产业模式、养老金、医疗保健、长期老年护理以及社会国家架构等。在一系列演讲中，他让德国人做好心理准备，将面临某些激进甚至具有颠覆性的变革。这与他的两位前任总理形成鲜明对比——那两位奉行稳健路线，主张维持现状。因此他的论调显得相当激进。

Lots of things. It's stuff on the welfare state, on the industrial model, on pensions, on health care, long term elderly care, the way that the social state is structured. And in a series of speeches, he sort of primed the Germans to expect some radical and, in some cases, pretty disruptive changes. There's a huge contrast to his two predecessors at chancellors who were very much steady as she goes, don't rock the boat. So the rhetoric has been quite radical.

但实际落实可能是另一回事。

The delivery has perhaps been something else.

你这话提醒我了，汤姆。政府目前取得任何进展了吗？

So you've prompted me there, Tom. Has the government made any headway so far?

进展不大。执政联盟内部达成的一项改革是调整名为'公民收入'的失业救济计划。核心内容是：对于拒绝参加就业中心面谈、不接受工作机会或消极配合的受助者，将加快削减其福利。该计划仅占福利总支出的3%到4%，规模并不大。

I mean, not a lot. One thing that they have done inside the coalition is to agree a change to an income support programme called BUURGEGUILD, Citizens Income. Essentially what they have agreed to do is to withdraw benefits a little bit more quickly from recipients of this programme who don't attend interviews at job centres or refuse to accept job offers who were otherwise uncooperative. This programme accounts for about three or 4% of overall welfare spending. It's not a very big programme.

但对保守派而言，这项改革具有图腾意义——它象征着政府不再容忍那些逃避责任、依赖国家救济的行为。虽然实际影响有限，但政治象征意义重大。

But for the conservatives in particular, it's acquired this totemic importance as this notion that people had been shirking and sponging off the state, and here's one way to show that the government is not going to put up with it anymore. Though a substance of it is not particularly significant, but the political symbolism is quite meaningful.

欧洲各地政治家的老生常谈似乎都是改革复杂的福利计划。他们实际可能采取的其他措施还有哪些？

It feels like the refrain of European politicians everywhere is to reform complex welfare programs. What else is in their sights that they might actually do?

待办事项清单上有很多内容。整顿更广泛的福利国家体系必须排在首位。它复杂得令人难以置信，几乎到了滑稽的地步。因此成立了一个委员会，负责简化和统一部分福利。他们希望这能改善人们延长工作时间的动力。

So there's a lot of stuff on the to do list. Tidying up the broader welfare state has got to be close to the top. It's unbelievably, almost comically complex. So there's a commission that has been asked to streamline and unify some of these benefits. And one thing that they hope that that will do is improve the incentives to work more hours.

然后是全职工作者都必须缴纳的医疗和长期护理保险计划。他们需要设法阻止缴费率持续攀升。目前有两个委员会正在研究各种解决方案。接下来是重头戏——养老金制度。德国采用这种略显特殊的现收现付制养老金体系，退休人员的养老金基本来自在职人员的缴费。

Then there are the health and long term care insurance programs that everybody in full time work has to contribute to. So they need to figure out a way to stop those contribution rates from climbing. And there are two more commissions that are looking into various ways to do that. Then there's the big one, which is pensions. Germany has this slightly unusual so called pay as you go pension system where basically payments to retirees come out of contributions made by current workers.

这种制度目前还算可行。德国已实施包括将退休年龄提高到67岁在内的改革（该政策二十年前就已推行）。德国的特殊问题在于，随着婴儿潮一代达到退休年龄并开始领取养老金，未来十到十五年的人口结构曲线将异常陡峭。我向德国经济部长凯瑟琳·莱歇尔提出了一些问题。她表示德国当前面临的挑战与过去截然不同。

And that's sort of fine as far as it goes. And Germany has made reforms including lifting the retirement age to 67, which it did twenty years ago. The particular problem in Germany is that the demographic curve over the next ten to fifteen years or so is really, really steep as the baby boomer generation hits retirement age and starts claiming pensions. I put some questions to Katharine Reicher, Germany's economy minister. She said the challenges confronting Germany today are rather different from what they were in the past.

政府必须采取行动。如今由于人口结构变化，每年有40万人退出劳动力市场。从诸多方面来看，当前观察到的人口结构变化对我们经济和整体财富的威胁，比过去的失业问题更为严重。人们的寿命更长了。

On government to take action. Today, due to a changing demographic setup, 400,000 people exit the workforce each year. Demographic changes, as observed today, is in a lot of ways more dangerous for our economy and our wealth overall than unemployment was in the past. People live longer.

因此若不对该体系进行实质性改革，相关成本将直线上升。这不仅会影响承担缴费的在职员工，更将广泛波及纳税人——因为联邦预算中有相当大比例用于养老金体系，且这个比重还在持续攀升。

And so without a meaningful reform to that system, the cost of that are just going to spiral. And that's going to hit both workers who have to fund those payments, but also taxpayers more broadly because a very substantial chunk of the federal budget funds that pension system and that share is just going up and up and up.

想法很多啊汤姆，但你说进展甚微。为什么改革如此缓慢？

So lots of ideas Tom but you say that there's been little headway. Why have things been so slow?

我认为我们需要保持一点耐心。这届政府才成立五个月，而我们讨论的是一些相当激进的议题。凯瑟琳·雷切尔表示，尽管存在政治困难，他们仍想推进这些改革。

I think we have to be a little bit patient. This government is only five months old, and we're talking about some fairly radical stuff here. Katharine Recher said they want to take this on despite the political difficulties.

合理的改革方案已摆在桌面上。我们现在最需要的是落实的勇气。

Suggestions for reasonable reforms are on the table. What we need most is the courage to implement them.

而落实过程可能会特别困难。如你所知，罗茜，这是一个靠联盟运作的国家。我们有一个由弗里吉德·曼策尔的保守党与社会民主党组成的联盟。社会民主党自视为工人政党，也在一定程度上代表弱势群体，他们不愿看到福利国家被大幅削减。因此我认为一个后果是，他们几个月前选举后协商联盟协议时，没有彻底解决这些问题，而是基本同意把所有事项都交给委员会去研究和提出建议。

And it's that implementation that may prove especially difficult. As you know, Rosie, this is a country that runs on coalitions. We have a coalition of Frigid Mantzer's conservatives with the Social Democrats. The Social Democrats regard themselves as the party of the worker, but also to a degree as the party of the downtrodden, and they are reluctant to see the hatchet swing at the welfare state. And so I think one consequence of that is rather than having thrashed these things out when they were negotiating their coalition deal a few months ago after the election, they basically agreed to boot all of this stuff to commissions to figure out and to come up with proposals.

当你咨询专家时，他们都会说：听着，我们知道该怎么做。解决方案就在桌上。现在需要的是政治意愿来推动这些事。而这正是我们迄今未从这届政府看到的迹象。

And you talk to experts about this and they all say, look, we know what to do. The solutions are on the table. It now requires political will to get these things done. That's what we haven't yet seen any sign of from this government.

汤姆，当梅茨当选时，我们讨论过德国面临的经济停滞。如果他成功推动所有这些改革，是否足以让德国摆脱困境？

Tom, when Metz was elected, we talked about the economic stagnation that Germany was facing. If he managed to get all of these reforms through, would it be enough to pull Germany out of the mess?

简而言之，不能。说到养老金问题，这是下一代要面对的难题。德国现在正处于经济停滞中。实际经济六年来没有增长，这在七国集团中表现最差，非常反常。

I mean, in a word, no. I mean, when you're talking about pensions here, this is a problem for the next generation. Germany is in the midst of economic stagnation now. It hasn't grown in real terms for six years. It's absolutely extraordinary, by far the worst performance in the g seven.

前面还有更紧迫的问题。如果说有什么好消息的话，那就是德国已启动大规模财政计划——大量国防支出，特别是基础设施投资——几乎机械性地，我们可能会从明年开始看到GDP的真正提升。但他们几乎还没开始应对一系列问题：德国工业面临的威胁（尤其是中国产能过剩和倾销出口）、任何想在德国办事的人都必须应对的繁文缛节，以及某些行业持续严重的劳动力短缺。

There are much more pressing issues ahead. The good news, if you can call it that, is that because Germany has now embarked on a huge programme of fiscal lots of spending on defense, but in particular on infrastructure, almost mechanically we're going to see a lift to the GDP probably starting in earnest next year. But then there's a whole host of problems that they've barely begun to deal with, the threat to German industry, especially from Chinese overproduction and export dumping. The tangle of red tape that anybody who wants to get anything done in Germany has to deal with. Huge and enduring labor shortages in some sectors in particular.

待办事项清单很长。从某种程度上说，福利和津贴方面的许多内容，其实就是为了让德国重新步入正轨。而真正让经济复苏则是另一回事。

The to do list is long. In a way, lot of this stuff on welfare and benefits is kind of just about making the German stake fit for purpose again. Actually getting the economy humming is another story.

这个联盟到底有多脆弱？我是说，如果经济无法复苏会有什么危险？

And just how fragile is this coalition? I mean, what's the danger if it doesn't get the economy humming?

开局确实很艰难。这届政府非常不受欢迎，成立还不到六个月。但现在断言它为时尚早。我认为关键在于，联盟中的两党都明白，如果他们搞砸了，极端分子就会伺机而动。

It's certainly been a rocky start. The government is very unpopular. It's not even six months old. But it's far too early to call time on it. And I think the bottom line is that both of the parties in this coalition understand that if they get this wrong, then there are extremists waiting in the wings.

弗里德里希·梅茨称这届政府是让德国重回正轨的最后机会。虽然目前还没有迹象表明他在践行这一信念，但让我们多给些时间，看看他们能否真正开始解决德国面临的实际问题。

Friedrich Metz has called this government the last chance to get Germany back on track. It is true that there aren't yet signs that he is acting according to that belief, but let's give them a bit more time and see if they can actually start to confront some of the genuine problems that are confronting Germany.

汤姆，很高兴和你交谈。非常感谢。

Tom, great to talk to you. Thank you so much.

谢谢，乔西。

Thanks, Josie.

电子游戏《哈迪斯2》在每次痛苦死亡后都会嘲讽道：时间无法停止。

Time cannot be stopped taunts the video game Hades two after every torturous death.

威廉·沃伦是我们的资深创意制作人。

William Warren is our senior creative producer.

受希腊神话启发，玩家需要穿越冥界击败时间泰坦克罗诺斯。这款高难度游戏堪称现代西西弗斯之役——虽然玩家按的是手柄而非推巨石，但失败仍是核心体验。近期热门游戏《空洞骑士：丝之歌》同样以高难度著称，某YouTube教程视频中演示如何熬过一场残酷战斗时，甚至有评论者留言'我在牙医诊所都比这开心'。电子游戏的独特之处在于：没有其他艺术形式会因受众能力不足而封锁内容。任何有耐心的读者都能读完《战争与和平》，托尔斯泰巨著的终章并非专为文学素养最高者保留——但电子游戏却非如此。

Inspired by Greek mythology, players are tasked with journeying through the underworld to dispel Kronos, the titan of time. The challenging game is aptly Sisyphean, although players are pushing buttons instead of pushing boulders failure is a core part of the experience another recent hit, Hollow Knight Silksong is also extremely punishing in a tutorial published on YouTube laying out how to survive a particularly grueling fight one commenter even posted I've had more fun at the dentist video games are unique No other art form gates off content to people not good enough to experience it. Any patient reader can experience the lengthy novel War and Peace. The final chapters of Tolstoy's masterpiece aren't reserved for only the most literate. But that's not the case with video games.

若技艺不精，便无法体验完整内容。例如仅有不到20%的玩家能通关高难度游戏《茶杯头》。任何尝试过此类挑战的玩家都会思考：游戏是否正变得愈发困难？为寻找答案，我们《经济学人》分析了游戏问答网站的评级数据。该网站允许用户用1-5分评价游戏难度，1分代表简单，5分代表残酷。

If you're not good enough, you don't get to play the whole thing. Less than 20% of players are skilled enough to have beaten the video game Cuphead, for example. Anyone who has attempted such challenging missions may reasonably wonder, are video games getting harder? To find out, we at The Economist analyzed rankings from a website called game FAQs. On the web site, users can rate the difficulty of games from one, meaning simple, to five, unforgiving.

我们调研了过去四十年的游戏作品，发现两个有趣现象：其一，上世纪八九十年代的游戏难度明显更高。这在某些方面并不意外——当时许多游戏源自街机厅。

And we looked at titles released in the past forty years. Our findings show two really interesting things. The first is that games were a lot tougher back in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. In some ways, that's unsurprising. Back then, many games originated in the arcades.

设计师故意提高难度，既为赚取追求高分荣耀玩家的硬币，也为延长游戏时间。贪婪的运营商甚至能通过开关减少每枚代币提供的生命数。当家用游戏机普及时，盈利模式转为销售游戏卡带而非单次游玩机会。为吸引更广泛受众，开发商降低了难度。例如任天堂就因认为《超级马里奥兄弟2》难度过高而未在日本以外地区发行，西方玩家玩到的是改编自《梦工厂悸动恐慌》的简易版本。

Designers made games difficult intentionally to try and coax coins from players who were chasing high school glory or just wanted to continue playing. Greedy operators could even flip a switch to reduce the number of lives offered to a player per credit. When video games moved into homes on home consoles, money was made by selling the cartridge containing the game rather than an individual go at it. In a bid to appeal to a wider audience, developers made games easier. Nintendo, for example, didn't release the sequel to Super Mario Brothers outside of Japan because they deemed that it was too difficult.

多数现代游戏允许选择难度等级，部分甚至运用人工智能动态调整——若玩家频繁死亡或命中率过低，任务会自动简化。少数自称硬核玩家的群体抱怨这类创新让游戏变得过于简单。

Western players instead got a repackaged version of Doki Doki Panic, which is only slightly easier game. Many games allow players to select their preferred level of difficulty. Some modern ones even use artificial intelligence to adjust the game to suit people's skills. If players are killed too soon or miss too many shots, tasks become easier. A vocal minority of so called hardcore gamers gripe that innovations like these make games too easy.

网络社区里他们嘲讽技术欠佳的玩家'练好技术再来'。但我们的分析还显示第二个趋势：游戏难度已开始轻微回升。《黑暗之魂》《FTL超光速》等硬核作品获得极高评价，使高难度游戏再度流行起来。

Online, they taunt less accomplished players to get good. The second thing our analysis shows however is that games have started to become slightly more difficult again. Gnarly titles such as Dark Souls and FTL Faster Than Light got rave reviews and made difficult games popular again.

FTL是文化思潮转向高难度游戏浪潮中的早期代表作之一。

FTL was one of those early games in the shifting of the cultural zeitgeist towards more difficult games.

J Ma是《FTL：超越光速》的开发者之一。

J Ma is one of the developers of FTL, Faster Than Light.

我们当时只是出于兴趣做着玩。正因如此，我们设计的是自己真正想玩的游戏。在那个时代的整体背景下，大多数游戏都在向所谓的'保姆式'玩法转变。比如《生化奇兵》，角色死亡后可以立即复活，基本上没有惩罚，你可以不断尝试直到通关。

We were just working on something for fun on the side. And so because of that, we were designing something that we ourselves would want to play. In the full context of that time, during that era, most of the games had been making a sort of shift towards what was called more handhold y style gameplay. Like Bioshock, you could die and respawn and basically nothing happened. You just keep trying until you win.

因此我觉得我们是在对这种趋势做出回应。我们渴望重现旧日校园时代那种我们真正热爱的残酷体验。所以FTL最初的原型根本没有胜利设定，就是场注定失败的自杀任务，所有船员都会阵亡。玩家要做的只是看自己能坚持多远。

And so I feel like we are responding to that. And we were just kind of wanting a brutal experience that we actually liked from the old school days. So the initial prototype of FTL did not have any win state. It was just a suicide mission that you're going to lose and everyone's going to die. And so it's just seeing how far you can get.

后来是因为Kickstarter上的支持者说服我们，认为应该加入某种胜利条件，免得游戏全程都是绝望氛围。

And it was only because of our backers on Kickstarter convincing us that, yeah, we should probably have some sort of victory state just so it's not all doom and gloom.

休闲玩家如何看待这些艰巨的挑战？《空洞骑士》的市场反响表明，刺激与恼火之间只有一线之隔。根据初期反馈，开发者对游戏进行了调整，略微降低了难度。毕竟游戏体验总该比做根管治疗有趣些。

How do casual players feel about these daunting quests? Well, the reception to Hollow Knight suggests that there is a fine line between thrilling and infuriating. Given the initial feedback to the game, the developers updated it to make it ever so slightly easier. Gaming should be more fun than a root canal after all.

本期《情报》节目到此结束，我们明天再见。

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.