Economics in One Lesson校译之6. Credit Diverts Production (3-2,3)

第6章 政府信贷扭曲生产

(接前面部分)

2

The case becomes even clearer if we turn from farming to other forms of business. The proposal is frequently made that the government ought to assume the risks that are “too great for private industry.” This means that bureaucrats should be permitted to take risks with the taxpayers’ money that no one is willing to take with his own.

要是我们不谈农业,而是谈其他的商业形式,上述道理还会更加明显。时常有人倡议政府应该承担起”私人产业承担不起”的那些风险。这意味着应该准许政府官僚拿纳税人的钱去冒险,做那些没有人会用自己的钱去冒险的投资。

Such a policy would lead to evils of many different kinds. It would lead to favoritism: to the making of loans to friends, or in return for bribes. It would inevitably lead to scandals. It would lead to recriminations whenever the taxpayers’ money was thrown away on enterprises that failed. It would increase the demand for socialism: for, it would properly be asked, if the government is going to bear the risks, why should it not also get the profits? What justification could there possibly be, in fact, for asking the taxpayers to take the risks while permitting private capitalists to keep the profits? (This is precisely, however, as we shall later see, what we already do in the case of “nonrecourse” government loans to farmers.)

这种政策会带来诸多弊端。它会导致徇私舞弊:借钱给亲朋好友,或者贷给贿赂者;它将不可避免地导致种种丑闻;只要投资项目运作失败,令纳税人的钱有去无回,必将导致互相指责推诿。它还会增加对社会主义的要求,因为,人们会很自然地问道:既然政府承担了风险,那为什么不应该取得所有的利润呢?让纳税人承担风险而事实上只有私人资本来获利,哪里有这样的道理?(然而,后面会谈到,政府对农民提供的”限抵无追偿”贷款,正是属于这种情况。)【Nonrecourse Loans,限抵无追偿贷款,指贷款追讨局限于抵押品价值,不额外向借贷者追讨超出抵押品价值的余额——译者注】

But we shall pass over all these evils for the moment, and concentrate on just one consequence of loans of this type. This is that they will waste capital and reduce production. They will throw the available capital into bad or at best dubious projects. They will throw it into the hands of persons who are less competent or less trustworthy than those who would otherwise have got it. For the amount of real capital at any moment (as distinguished from monetary tokens run off on a printing press) is limited. What is put into the hands of B cannot be put into the hands of A.

让我们暂且略过上述弊端,只关注政府贷款的一种后果。这就是,它会浪费资本和减少生产。政府信贷会把现有资本丢进糟糕,充其量也是效益不明的项目中。相对于没有此类信贷而将获得这样的资本的人,政府信贷会把资本交给能力更差、或者更不可靠的人,因为在任何时候,实体资本的数量都是有限的(有别于印钞机吐出来的货币数量),交到乙手中的东西,就不可能再交给甲。

People want to invest their own capital. But they are cautious. They want to get it back. Most lenders, therefore, investigate any proposal carefully before they risk their own money in it. They weigh the prospect of profits against the chances of loss. They may sometimes make mistakes. But for several reasons they are likely to make fewer mistakes than government lenders. In the first place, the money is either their own or has been voluntarily entrusted to them. In the case of government-lending the money is that of other people, and it has been taken from them, regardless of their personal wish, in taxes. The private money will be invested only where repayment with interest or profit is definitely expected. This is a sign that the persons to whom the money has been lent will be expected to produce things for the market that people actually want. The government money, on the other hand, is likely to be lent for some vague general purpose like “creating employment”; and the more inefficient the work—that is, the greater the volume of employment it requires in relation to the value of the product— the more highly thought of the investment is likely to be.

人们希望把自己资本用于投资增值,但投资一定要谨慎,放出去的贷款一定是想收回来。因此,大部分放贷者把钱投下去之前,都会预先仔细审查投资计划,仔细衡量获利的预期和亏损的几率。他们有时也会犯错误,但基于诸多原因,他们犯错的可能性小于政府放贷者。理由如下:首先,借出去的钱是他们自己的,或是别人自愿托付给他们的。而政府借出去的钱却是从纳税人那里强制征收来的,不需要顾及纳税人的个人意愿。私人放贷,只会放给明确地期望在将来能偿还本金与利息或红利的借方。这标志着他们期望借款人能生产市场上有需求的东西。反观政府投钱,则围绕着诸如”创造就业”之类的模糊目的,并且,项目效益越低越好——也就是说,相对于产出所雇用的人数越多,越有可能获得较高评价。

The private lenders, moreover, are selected by a cruel market test. If they make bad mistakes they lose their money and have no more money to lend. It is only if they have been successful in the past that they have more money to lend in the future. Thus private lenders (except the relatively small proportion that have got their funds through inheritance) are rigidly selected by a process of survival of the fittest. The government lenders, on the other hand, are either those who have passed civil service examinations, and know how to answer hypothetical questions hypothetically, or they are those who can give the most plausible reasons for making loans and the most plausible explanations of why it wasn’t their fault that the loans failed. But the net result remains: private loans will utilize existing resources and capital far better than government loans. Government loans will waste far more capital and resources than private loans. Government loans, in short, as compared with private loans, will reduce production, not increase it.

其次,私人放贷者是经过严酷的市场筛选胜出的。经营不善就会赔钱,再也拿不出钱借给别人。他们只有经营得很成功,才可能有更多的钱借出去。因此,私人放贷者(除去通过继承遗产获得资金的一小部分人)经过了优胜劣汰的考验。反观政府贷款业务人员,不少只通过公务员考试,只知道如何用假设的方式回答假设性的问题,或者只是善于找来最动听的理由把钱贷出去,以及在贷款出问题时,找来最合适的借口以推脱责任。不过最终结果却不会因此改变:私人贷款比政府贷款更能充分运用现有的资源和资本,政府贷款与私人贷款相比会浪费更多的资本和资源。简单说,与私人贷款比较来看,政府贷款会减少生产,而不是增进生产。

The proposal for government loans to private individuals or projects, in brief sees B and forgets A. It sees the people into whose hands the capital is put; it forgets those who would otherwise have had it. It sees the project to which capital is granted; it forgets the projects from which capital is thereby withheld. It sees the immediate benefit to one group; it overlooks the losses to other groups, and the net loss to the community as a whole.

总之,主张由政府向私人个体或是项目提供贷款的提案,只看到了乙而忘记了甲。它只关注从中获得资本的人,而忘记了那些本来应该得到而没有得到此项资本的人。它只看得到有政府贷款注入的项目,而遗忘了无法获得资本的其他项目。它只关心某个群体的眼前利益,而不管其他群体的损失,以及整个社会的净损失。

The case against government-guaranteed loans and mortgages to private businesses and persons is almost as strong as, though less obvious than, the case against direct government loans and mortgages. The advocates of government-guaranteed mortgages also forget that what is being lent is ultimately real capital, which is limited in supply, and that they are helping identified B at the expense of some unidentified A. Government-guaranteed home mortgages, especially when a negligible down payment or no down payment whatever is required, inevitably mean more bad loans than otherwise. They force the general taxpayer to subsidize the bad risks and to defray the losses. They encourage people to “buy” houses that they cannot really afford. They tend eventually to bring about an oversupply of houses as compared with other things. They temporarily overstimulate building, raise the cost of building for everybody (including the buyers of the homes with the guaranteed mortgages), and may mislead the building industry into an eventually costly overexpansion. In brief in the long run they do not increase overall national production but encourage malinvestment.

反对为私人企业或个人提供政府担保的贷款和政府担保的抵押贷款的理由差不多同政府直接贷款和提供抵押贷款一样强烈,尽管此类干预更加不明显。主张政府担保抵押贷款的人,同样忘记了实际借出的终究是有限的实体资本,如果扶助了看得到的乙,必然会牺牲看不到的甲。政府担保的住房抵押贷款(尤其是免首付款或首付款很少的住房抵押贷款)不可避免会发生更多的坏账。政府强迫全体纳税人去承担恶性风险与补偿损失。鼓励人们去“购买”自己其实负担不起的房子,最终造成住房供给相对于其它物品过剩。暂时过度刺激楼市,会使得每个人(包括以政府担保抵押贷款购买房子的人)负担的房价升高,甚至可能最终误导建筑业高成本地过度扩张。总的来说,从长期来看,政府信贷并没有提高国家整体的生产,却鼓励了不当的投资。

3

We remarked at the beginning of this chapter that government “aid” to business is sometimes as much to be feared as government hostility. This applies as much to government subsidies as to government loans. The government never lends or gives anything to business that it does not take away from business. One often hears New Dealers and other statists boast about the way government “bailed business out” with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Home Owners Loan Corporation and other government agencies in 1932 and later. But the government can give no financial help to business that it does not first or finally take from business. The government’s funds all come from taxes. Even the much vaunted “government credit” rests on the assumption that its loans will ultimately be repaid out of the proceeds of taxes. When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business. Under certain emergency circumstances there may be a plausible argument for this, the merits of which we need not examine here. But in the long run it does not sound like a paying proposition from the standpoint of the country as a whole. And experience has shown that it isn’t.

本章开篇处提到,政府拿钱“扶持”企业,有时跟政府征敛民财一样可怕。这个说法,除了适用于政府贷款,也同样适用于政府补贴。政府从来不会贷给或是赠予企业任何不是从企业拿走的东西。人们时常听得到,罗斯福新政的执行者和主张政府干涉经济体制的人吹嘘,在1932年及其后一段时间,政府通过复兴金融公司、住房业主贷款公司及其他政府机构,如何”帮助经济走出困境”。然而,倘若政府不是在事先或事后征敛民财的话,它没有钱给企业资金上的帮助。政府的全部资金都来自税收。即便是倍受吹捧的”政府信用贷款”,也是基于最终要由赋税支付其贷款这样一个前提。当政府向企业提供贷款或补贴的时候,它所做的就是向成功的私人企业征税,然后拿钱去扶持不成功的私人企业。在某些紧急状况下,或许有理由实行这样的政策,我们不准备在这里去考察其合理性。但是,长期这么下去,从国家整体的角度考虑,这似乎不是一个合算的机制,而且经验已经表明,这种做法的确得不偿失。

Economics in One Lesson校译之6. Credit Diverts Production (3-1)

Credit Diverts Production

第6章 政府信贷扭曲生产

Government “encouragement” to business is sometimes as much to be feared as government hostility. This supposed encouragement often takes the form of a direct grant of government credit or a guarantee of private loans.

政府拿钱出来”扶持”企业,有时和政府征敛民财一样可怕。扶持的形式通常是政府直接贷款,以及对私人贷款提供政府担保。

The question of government credit can often be complicated, because it involves the possibility of inflation. We shall defer analysis of the effects of inflation of various kinds until a later chapter. Here, for the sake of simplicity, we shall assume that the credit we are discussing is noninflationary. Inflation, as we shall later see, while it complicates the analysis, does not at bottom change the consequences of the policies discussed.

政府信贷的问题往往是很复杂的,因为它涉及到通货膨胀的可能性。对于通货膨胀造成的各种影响,我们留待后面的章节再去分析。在这里,为了简单起见,我们假设所讨论的政府信贷不引起通货膨胀。我们以后会进一步讨论,通货膨胀虽然会使问题的分析过程复杂化,但不会从根本上改变这里讨论的政府信贷政策的后果。

A frequent proposal of this sort in Congress is for more credit to farmers. In the eyes of most congressmen the farmers simply cannot get enough credit. The credit supplied by private mortgage companies, insurance companies or country banks is never “adequate.” Congress is always finding new gaps that are not filled by the existing lending institutions, no matter how many of these it has itself already brought into existence. The farmers may have enough long-term credit or enough short-term credit but, it turns out, they have not enough “intermediate” credit; or the interest rate is too high; or the complaint is that private loans are made only to rich and well-established farmers. So new lending institutions and new types of farm loans are piled on top of each other by the legislature.

国会中最常见的政府信贷提案是增加对农民的贷款。在大多数国会议员的眼中,农民根本得不到足够的贷款,私人抵押贷款公司、保险公司或乡村银行提供的贷款从来谈不上“充足”。不管有多少的贷款机构就是国会刺激建立起来的,国会总是能不断挖掘出现有的贷款机构还没有满足的新缺口。农民可能获得的长期贷款和短期贷款已经够多了,而议员们又发现,”中期”贷款还不够多,或者利率太高,或者抱怨私人贷款只贷给了家道殷实及有可靠经验的农民。于是,这个立法机关中关于设立面向农民的新贷款机构和新贷款类别的提案层出不穷。
 
The faith in all these policies, it will be found, springs from two acts of shortsightedness. One is to look at the matter only from the standpoint of the farmers that borrow. The other is to think only of the first half of the transaction.

不难发现,有两类短视行为导致人们对这些政策充满信任。一类是只从借钱的农民的立场来考虑问题,另一类则是只关心交易的前半部分。

Now all loans, in the eyes of honest borrowers, must eventually be repaid. All credit is debt. Proposals for an increased volume of credit, therefore, are merely another name for proposals for an increased burden of debt. They would seem considerably less inviting if they were habitually referred to by the second name instead of by the first.

要知道,在诚信的借款人眼里,所有的贷款最终都是要偿还的,所有的信贷都是债务。国会提高信贷额度的提案不过是加重债务负担的提案的代称。要是我们习惯使用第二个名称,而不用第一个名称,那些提案就不会再那么受欢迎。

We need not discuss here the normal loans that are made to farmers through private sources. They consist of mortgages, of installment credits for the purchase of automobiles, refrigerators, TV sets, tractors and other farm machinery, and of bank loans made to carry the farmer along until he is able to harvest and market his crop and get paid for it. Here we need concern ourselves only with loans to farmers either made directly by some government bureau or guaranteed by it.

我们不必在这里讨论私营机构提供给农民的常规贷款,其中包括抵押贷款,让农民用于购买汽车、电冰箱、电视机、拖拉机和其他农用机械的分期付款贷款,以及供农民在收获和销售谷物前用于资金周转的银行贷款。我们这里要讨论的只是政府机构提供给农民的直接贷款,以及由政府担保的贷款。

These loans are of two main types. One is a loan to enable the farmer to hold his crop off the market. This is an especially harmful type, but it will be more convenient to consider it later when we come to the question of government commodity controls. The other is a loan to provide capital—often to set the farmer up in business by enabling him to buy the farm itself or a mule or tractor, or all three.

这些政府贷款往往有两类用途。一类用以帮助农民把谷物囤积下来,暂不上市销售。这是一类特别有害的贷款,让我们留待后面讨论政府实施商品管制问题时再做具体分析。另一类贷款是为农民立业提供资金——让他们买得起农场本身、或者一部小拖拉机、或者一辆大牵引车、或者所有这些东西。

At first glance the case for this type of loan may seem a strong one. Here is a poor family, it will be said, with no means of livelihood. It is cruel and wasteful to put them on relief. Buy a farm for them; set them up in business; make productive and self-respecting citizens of them; let them add to the total national product and pay the loan off out of what they produce. Or here is a farmer struggling along with primitive methods of production because he has not the capital to buy himself a tractor. Lend him the money for one; let him increase productivity; he can repay the loan out of the proceeds of his increased crops. In that way you not only enrich him and put him on his feet; you enrich the whole community by that much added output. And the loan, concludes the argument, costs the government and the taxpayers less than nothing, because it is “self-liquidating.”

乍一看,这类政府贷款似乎很有必要。有人会站出来说,这里有个贫困家庭,缺乏谋生手段。让他们靠领取救济金生活是一种冷酷和浪费的解决办法。给他们买座农场、使其自力更生、让他们成为有自尊与自食其力的公民,让他们为国家的GDP尽一分力,并用自己的产出来偿还贷款。要不这里有位农民 生活艰难,买不起拖拉机,还在使用原始落后的方式耕种土地。借钱给他买部拖拉机吧,让他提高生产力,他能够靠增产所赚来的钱还本付息。这样一来,既能让他靠劳动致富,又能增加产出,使整个社会更加富有。况且,这类贷款是“自偿性”的贷款,根本不需要政府和纳税人来负担成本。

Now as a matter of fact that is what happens every day under the institution of private credit. If a man wishes to buy a farm, and has, let us say, only half or a third as much money as the farm costs, a neighbor or a savings bank will lend him the rest in the form of a mortgage on the farm. If he wishes to buy a tractor, the tractor company itself or a finance company, will allow him to buy it for one-third of the purchase price with the rest to be paid off in installments out of earnings that the tractor itself will help to provide.

事实上,这正是私人信贷机构每天都在做的事情。倘若某人想买农场,手头的积蓄只够农场售价的一半或三分之一,储蓄银行或邻居们会以抵押贷款的方式借钱给他凑够买价。倘若某人想买拖拉机,农机公司或金融机构可以允许他首付三分之一的货款,其余的欠款靠产出的增加分期偿还即可。

But there is a decisive difference between the loans supplied by private lenders and the loans supplied by a government agency. Each private lender risks his own funds. (A banker, it is true, risks the funds of others that have been entrusted to him; but if money is lost he must either make good out of his own funds or be forced out of business.) When people risk their own funds they are usually careful in their investigations to determine the adequacy of the assets pledged and the business acumen and honesty of the borrower.

然而,在私人提供贷款与政府提供贷款之间存在着一个根本性的区别。每个私人放贷者都是在用自己的资金承担风险。(确实,银行家是利用别人委托给他的钱去冒险,但一旦有损失,也必须拿自己的钱去赔付,否则只有破产出局。)当人们拿自己的钱去冒险时,通常会严格审查借款人是否有足够的资产做抵押,审查其经营能力和诚信如何。

If the government operated by the same strict standards, there would be no good argument for its entering the field at all. Why do precisely what private agencies already do? But the government almost invariably operates by different standards. The whole argument for its entering the lending business, in fact, is that it will make loans to people who could not get them from private lenders. This is only another way of saying that the government lenders will take risks with other people’s money (the taxpayers’) that private lenders will not take with their own money. Sometimes, in fact, apologists will freely acknowledge that the percentage of losses will be higher on these government loans than on private loans. But they contend that this will be more than offset by the added production brought into existence by the borrowers who pay back, and even by most of the borrowers who do not pay back.

倘若政府依照同样严格的标准来经营贷款业务,那政府根本没有必要涉足这一行。为什么要去做私人机构已经在做的事呢?不过,政府一向是以不同的标准来从事经营的。政府之所以涉足贷款业,就是要向那些从私人机构借不到钱的人提供资金。这其实是说,私人放贷者不肯拿自己的钱去冒的风险,政府放贷者却愿意拿别人(纳税人)的钱去冒险。事实上有时这种措施的辩护者也明确地承认政府放贷的坏账率高于民间放贷,但他们坚持认为,此种损失由增加的产出可以弥补,且有盈余,增加的产出来自那些有借有还的人,甚至大部分借了不还的人。

This argument will seem plausible only as long as we concentrate our attention on the particular borrowers whom the government supplies with funds, and overlook the people whom its plan deprives of funds. For what is really being lent is not money, which is merely the medium of exchange, but capital. (I have already put the reader on notice that we shall postpone to a later point the complications introduced by an inflationary expansion of credit.) What is really being lent, say, is the farm or the tractor itself. Now the number of farms in existence is limited, and so is the production of tractors (assuming, especially, that an economic surplus of tractors is not produced simply at the expense of other things). The farm or tractor that is lent to A cannot be lent to B. The real question is, therefore, whether A or B shall get the farm.

我们若只注意那些拿到政府贷款的生产者,而忽略掉那些由于政府贷款计划而丧失了获得生产资本的人的时候,上述辩护才会显得有些道理。因为,政府真正借出去的并不是钱,而是资本,钱不过是交易的媒介。(前面已经提醒过,我们稍候再谈通货膨胀性信贷扩张而引发的复杂性问题)。政府真正借出去的是农场或拖拉机本身。农场的数目有限,拖拉机的产量也有限(只要不是牺牲其他产品去生产过剩的拖拉机),那么政府把农场或拖拉机借给某乙,就没办法再借给某甲。因此,真正的问题在于:到底是甲,还是乙,应该得到农场?

This brings us to the respective merits ofA and B, and what each contributes, or is capable of contributing, to production. A, let us say, is the man who would get the farm if the government did not intervene. The local banker or his neighbors know him and know his record. They want to find employment for their funds. They know that he is a good farmer and an honest man who keeps his word. They consider him a good risk. He has already, perhaps, through industry, frugality and foresight, accumulated enough cash to pay a fourth of the price of the farm. They lend him the other three-fourths; and he gets the farm.

这就要靠比较甲与乙各自的价值,各自对生产的贡献,或者有能力做什么贡献。假设政府不干预,甲会得到农场。当地的银行家和邻 居都了解他,对他知根知底。他们希望自己手上的资金得到合理有效的利用。他们知道甲是诚实守信的人,值得在他身上冒险。也许因为勤劳、节俭、有远见,他已经积攒了购买农场所需资金的四分之一,他们借给了他其余的四分之三,这样他就得到这个农场。

There is a strange idea abroad, held by all monetary cranks, that credit is something a banker gives to a man. Credit on the contrary, is something a man already has. He has it, perhaps, because he already has marketable assets of a greater cash value than the loan for which he is asking. Or he has it because his character and past record have earned it. He brings it into the bank with him. That is why the banker makes him the loan. The banker is not giving something for nothing. He feels assured of repayment. He is merely exchanging a more liquid form of asset or credit for a less liquid form. Sometimes he makes a mistake, and then it is not only the banker who suffers, but the whole community; for values which were supposed to be produced by the lender are not produced and resources are wasted.

有一个奇怪的说法很流行,是所有造钱学派学者的主张【译者注:monetary cranks,指迷信通货膨胀的经济学者】,说信用是银行赋予某个人的。事实恰恰相反,信用是人已经拥有的东西。一个人有信用,或许是因为他拥有资产折合成现金来计算,其价值大于他想取得的贷款。或许是因为个人品行与信用记录让他获得了信用。他带着本身具备的信用到银行去,银行家才愿意借钱给他。银行家绝不会随随便便地借钱给别人,他需要得到偿还的保证。银行只是把借款人的资产或信用从流动性较低的形式转换成流动性较高的形式而已。有时银行也难免失误,这样一来,不但银行家自己受损失,整个社会也会受损失,因为借款人没能创造出预期的价值,资源被浪费了。

Now it is to A, let us say, who has credit that the banker would make his loan. But the government goes into the lending business in a charitable frame of mind because, as we say, it is worried about B. B cannot get a mortgage or other loans from private lenders because he does not have credit with them. He has no savings; he has no impressive record as a good farmer; he is perhaps at the moment on relief. Why not, say the advocates of government credit, make him a useful and productive member of society by lending him enough for a farm and a mule or tractor and setting him up in business?

可以看出,具备信用的甲是银行愿意借钱的对象。但抱着施舍心态的政府更关怀乙的处境。缺乏信用的乙没办法从私人放贷者那里取得抵押贷款和其他贷款,他没有储蓄,没有信用记录支持他可以作为一个成功的农民,当时他还可能是靠领救济金生活。提倡扩大政府信用的人争辩说,为什么不借给他足够的钱,让他购买农场、小拖拉机、大牵引车,助其立业,使他成为有价值也有生产效益的社会成员呢?

Perhaps in an individual case it may work out all right. But it is obvious that in general the people selected by these government standards will be poorer risks than the people selected by private standards. More money will be lost by loans to them. There will be a much higher percentage of failures among them. They will be less efficient. More resources will be wasted by them. Yet the recipients of government credit will get their farms and tractors at the expense of those who otherwise would have been the recipients of private credit. Because B has a farm, A will be deprived of a farm. A may be squeezed out either because interest rates have gone up as a result of the government operations, or because farm prices have been forced up as a result of them, or because there is no other farm to be had in his neighborhood. In any case, the net result of government credit has not been to increase the amount of wealth produced by the community but to reduce it, because the available real capital (consisting of actual farms, tractors, etc.) has been placed in the hands of the less efficient borrowers rather than in the hands of the more efficient and trustworthy.

也许就个别的案例来说,这种愿望能够很好地得到实现。但整体而言,按政府的标准选定的信贷对象,风险显然高于按私人放贷标准选定的信贷对象。投给乙们的贷款越多,损失越大,他们中间失败的比例会高出很多。乙们的效率会比较低,更多的资源会被他们浪费掉。可是,获得政府贷款的人将买到农场和拖拉机,本来可望获得私人贷款的人就反而得不到。乙有了农场,甲就被剥夺了拥有这个农场的机会。甲被排挤出去,可能是因为政府信贷导致的利率提高,或因为农场的价格因之上涨,或因为邻近地区也没有剩余的农场可买了。这样一来,政府信贷所造成的净效果是减少而不是增加了当地所能创造财富,因为可用的实体资本(由实际的农场、拖拉机等构成)没有交给效率更高的、值得信赖的人,而是落到了低效率的借款人手里。

Economics in One Lesson校译之5. Taxes Discourage Production

Taxes Discourage Production

第5章 税负抑制生产
 
There is a still further factor which makes it improbable that the wealth created by government spending will fully compensate for the wealth destroyed by the taxes imposed to pay for that spending. It is not a simple question, as so often supposed, of taking something out of the nation’s right-hand pocket to put into its left-hand pocket. The government spenders tell us, for example, that if the national income is $1,500 billion then federal taxes of $360 billion a year would mean that only 24 percent of the national income is being transferred from private purposes to public purposes. This is to talk as if the country were the same sort of unit of pooled resources as a huge corporation, and as if all that were involved were a mere bookkeeping transaction. The government spenders forget that they are taking the money from A in order to pay it to B. Or rather, they know this very well but while they dilate upon all the benefits of the process to B, and all the wonderful things he will have which he would not have had if the money had not been transferred to him, they forget the effects of the transaction on A. B is seen; A is forgotten.

除开前面所讲的,还存在着一个因素,使得政府支出所创造的财富也就不可能完全补偿其征税所破坏的财富。人们通常简单地认为政府支出就是把国家的钱从右边的口袋掏出来,再放进左边的口袋,整个问题不是这么简单。比如,主张扩大政府支出的人告诉我们,如果国民所得一年是1.5万亿美元,联邦税收是3 600亿美元,那么就只有24%的国民所得从私人用途转到公共用途{endnotes:1989年的国民收入为6.2万亿美元(按1993年的美元币值计算)。当年的联邦税收为2.4万亿美元,约占国民收入的40%。(杰拉尔德·斯卡利[Gerald W. Scully]:〈什么是最优政府规模〉[What  is the Optimal Size of Government?], NCPA报告第188号,1994年11月.)}。这种说法就好像把整个国家当成资源汇聚在一处的大公司,资源转移只是账面上的调整而已。这帮主张扩大政府支出的人忘记了,政府支出必定需要首先从甲那里拿走那一笔钱,然后才能给乙,他们或许十分清楚这个道理,但他们只谈这个过程给乙带来的那些好处,如果不把钱转移给乙,这些美好的东西就不会发生,他们忘记了此类操作对甲造成的影响。乙能够被看见,而甲就避而不谈。
 
In our modern world there is never the same percentage of income tax levied on everybody. The great burden of income taxes is imposed on a minor percentage of the nation’s income; and these income taxes have to be supplemented by taxes of other kinds. These taxes inevitably affect the actions and incentives of those from whom they are taken. When a corporation loses a hundred cents of every dollar it loses, and is permitted to keep only fifty-two cents of every dollar it gains, and when it cannot adequately offset its years of losses against its years of gains, its policies are affected. It does not expand its operations, or it expands only those attended with a minimum of risk. People who recognize this situation are deterred from starting new enterprises. Thus old employers do not give more employment, or not as much more as they might have; and others decide not to become employers at all. Improved machinery and better-equipped factories come into existence much more slowly than they otherwise would. The result in the long run is that consumers are prevented from getting better and cheaper products to the extent that they otherwise would, and that real wages are held down, compared with what they might have been.

在现代社会中,每个人所承受的所得税比例不尽相同。所得税的巨大负担被强加于国民收入的一小部分之上,为了弥补公共开支的不足,政府还必须开征其他名目的赋税。这些赋税最终都会影响到交税者的行为与生产动力。如果一家公司发生亏损,每赔一块钱,就得足足损失一块钱;当这家公司赚钱的时候,每赚一块钱,却只能留下52分钱,当它不能用丰年的收益去弥补亏损期的损失时,公司的经营政策就会受到影响,它将丧失扩张业务的冲动,或者只扩张那些风险最低的业务。觉察到这种状况的人甚至会打消开创新事业的念头。现有的雇主将不再提供更多就业机会,或者不再象他本可以提供的那样多,其他人则根本不打算成为雇主。长期下来,与本来可以达到的水准相比,新设备和新工艺的应用放慢。最终结果是,相对那样的水准而言,消费者买不到更好更便宜的产品,实际工资达不到应有的水平。
 
There is a similar effect when personal incomes are taxed 50, 60 or 70 percent. People begin to ask themselves why they should work six, eight or nine months of the entire year for the government, and only six, four or three months for themselves and their families. If they lose the whole dollar when they lose, but can keep only a fraction of it when they win, they decide that it is foolish to take risks with their capital. In addition, the capital available for risk-taking itself shrinks enormously. It is being taxed away before it can be accumulated. In brief, capital to provide new private jobs is first prevented from coming into existence, and the part that does come into existence is then discouraged from starting new enterprises. The government spenders create the very problem of unemployment that they profess to solve.

当个人所得税率调升至50%、60%或70%时,也会产生同样的效果。人们将开始扪心自问:辛辛苦苦一年下来,为什么有6个月、8个月甚至9个月全是在为政府做贡献,只剩下6个月、4个月甚至3个月的所得供自己和家人使用?赔钱的时候,自己必须承担全部损失,赚钱的时候却只能留下一小部分利润,他们会认为,拿自己的钱去冒这种风险未免愚不可及。再者,他们也没有多余的钱拿去冒险,因为资本还没有累积就已经被征收走了。简单而言,用于创造民营工作机会的资本不能成形,已成形的资本则被阻止了发起新的企业,主张扩大政府支出的人,正好创造了他们宣称想要解决的失业问题。
 
A certain amount of taxes is of course indispensable to carry on essential government functions. Reasonable taxes for this purpose need not hurt production much. The kind of government services then supplied in return, which among other things safeguard production itself, more than compensate for this. But the larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment. When the total tax burden grows beyond a bearable size, the problem of devising taxes that will not discourage and disrupt production becomes insoluble.

当然,为了执行基本的政府职能,一定数量的税收必不可少,围绕这个目的的合理税收对生产不会造成太大的损害。此类政府职能除了其它方面,也为生产提供了保障,此种保障提供的效益超过弥补生产者税收上的损失。但是,以税收形式征取的国民收入的百分比越大,对于私人生产和就业的阻碍和威胁就越大。等到总税负大到超过了一个可以承受的限度时,政府又想课税又想不至于抑制和破坏生产,将成为一个不可能解决的问题。