Those who know their history will recognize that Summers is reviving an argument advanced by the American economist Alvin Hansen in 1938. Owing to a slowdown in population growth, and thus lower “demand for capital,” the world, Hansen claimed, faced a problem of “secular, or structural, unemployment…in the decades before us.”
熟悉历史的人能够看出，萨默斯是在重申美国经济学家阿尔文·汉森（Alvin Hansen）1938年提出的观点。汉森指出，随着“资本需求”因人口增长下降而下降，“在我们之后几十年……”世界面临着“长期或机构性的失业”的问题。