Economics in One Lesson校译之17. Government Price-Fixing (5-3,4,5)

第17章 政府价格管制

(接前面部分)

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Price-fixing may often appear for a short period to be successful. lt can seem to work well for a while, particularly in wartime, when it is supported by patriotism and a sense of crisis. But the longer it is in effect the more its difficulties increase. When prices are arbitrarily held down by government compulsion, demand is chronically in excess of supply. We have seen that if the government attempts to prevent a shortage of a commodity by reducing also the prices of the labor, raw materials and other factors that go into its cost of production, it creates a shortage of these in turn. But not only will the government, if it pursues this course, find it necessary to extend price control more and more downwards, or “vertically”; it will find it no less necessary to extend price control “horizontally.” If we ration one commodity, and the public cannot get enough of it, though it still has excess purchasing power, it will turn to some substitute. The rationing of each commodity as it grows scarce, in other words, must put more and more pressure on the unrationed commodities that remain. If we assume that the government is successful in its efforts to prevent black markets (or at least prevents them from developing on a sufficient scale to nullify its legal prices), continued price control must drive it to the rationing of more and more commodities. This rationing cannot stop with consumers. In World War II it did not stop with consumers. It was applied first of all, in fact, in the allocation of raw materials to producers.

价格管制往往能在短期内显现出成效。它可能会在一段时间内运作得很好,尤其在战争时期,它会因人们的爱国意识和危机感而获得支持。然而,实施的时间越长,运作的难度就越大。当价格被政府强制压低后,需求会持续地超过供给。我们已经看到,如果政府为了防止受控商品供应短缺,试图去降低其生产成本,即压低其劳工、原材料和其他生产要素的价格,随之而来的将会是这些生产要素的短缺。倘使政府采取这个方针,政府不仅会发现沿产品线“纵向”扩大价格管制不可避免,也会发现有必要对不同产品线“横向”扩大价格管制。如果我们对一种商品实行定量配给,民众得不到满足,尽管仍然存在过剩的购买力,需求将会转向某种替代品。换句话说,对任何一种日益短缺的商品实行配给,势必对仍未实行配给的商品造成越来越大的压力。如果我们假设政府有效地遏制了黑市(或者,至少阻止黑市不致壮大到足以左右法定限价市场的程度),继续执行价格管制必然会迫使政府将越来越多的商品纳入配给的范畴。并且,政府不可能只限于对消费者实施配给。在二战期间就不限于消费者,事实上,而是首先对生产者实施原材料配给。

The natural consequence of a thoroughgoing over-all price control which seeks to perpetuate a given historic price level, in brief, must ultimately be a completely regimented economy. Wages would have to be held down as rigidly as prices. Labor would have to be rationed as ruthlessly as raw materials. The end result would be that the government would not only tell each consumer precisely how much of each commodity he could have; it would tell each manufacturer precisely what quantity of each raw material he could have and what quantity of labor. Competitive bidding for workers could no more be tolerated than competitive bidding for materials. The result would be a petrified totalitarian economy, with every business firm and every worker at the mercy of the government, and with a final abandonment of all the traditional liberties we have known. For as Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers nearly two centuries ago, “A power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.”

总之,旨在将某种历史价格水平永久化的全面价格管制,其自然结果终必是一种完全专制性的经济。工资必须像物价那样,被强制压低。劳工必须像原材料那样,被强制纳入配给。最后,政府为每一位消费者规定了他能得到的每一种商品的数量,为每一家制造商规定了它能得到原材料的数量、能够雇用的劳工的数量。到那时,厂商竞价购买原材料将不被容许,竞价招揽劳工同样不被容许。结果会形成僵化的极权经济,每家厂商、每个劳工都听任政府支配,而最终,我们将放弃掉曾经拥有的全部传统意义的自由。正如亚历山大·汉密尔顿两个世纪前在《联邦党人文集》(Federalist Papers)一书中所指出的:“控制一个人生计的权力,就是控制一个人意志的权力。”

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These are the consequences of what might be described as perfect,” long-continued, and “nonpolitical” price control. As was so amply demonstrated in one country after another, particularly in Europe during and after World War II, some of the more fantastic errors of the bureaucrats were mitigated by the black market. In some countries the black market kept growing at the expense of the legally recognized fixed-price market until the former became, in effect, the market. By nominally keeping the price ceilings, however, the politicians in power tried to show that their hearts, if not their enforcement squads, were in the right place.

这就是所谓“完美的”、长效和“无关政治的”价格控制的后果。 政府管制酿成的一些大错,有一部分被黑市所化解。这个现象在一个又一个国家得到证实,在二战期间以及战后的欧洲尤其如此。在有些国家,黑市的成长壮大是以破坏法定限价市场来实现的,直至前者成为事实上的市场。然而,当权的政客们仍然力图通过维持形同虚设的法定价格来表明,即便其政策实施者们有过失,他们的立意是完全正确的。

Because the black market, however, finally supplanted the legal price-ceiling market, it must not be supposed that no harm was done. The harm was both economic and moral. During the transition period the large, long-established firms, with a heavy capital investment and a great dependence upon the retention of public good-will, are forced to restrict or discontinue production. Their place is taken by fly-by-night concerns with little capital and little accumulated experience in production. These new firms are inefficient compared with those they displace; they turn out inferior and dishonest goods at much higher production costs than the older concerns would have required for continuing to turn out their former goods. A premium is put on dishonesty. The new firms owe their very existence or growth to the fact that they are willing to violate the law; their customers conspire with them; and as a natural consequence demoralization spreads into all business practices.

不过,并不因为黑市最终取代了法定限价市场,我们就可以认为这个过程没有任何伤害。这伤害既有经济上的,也有道德上的。一些大型的老牌企业,过去靠的是雄厚的资本,并且在很大程度上依赖于他们在公众中的信誉,而在市场转型期,它们被迫限制生产或中断生产。取而代之的,是那些既无资本又无生产经验的皮包公司。这些新公司跟那些被取代的老牌企业相比效率低下,它们以远远高于先前企业用来继续生产其产品所需的生产成本,产出质量低劣、名不副实的商品。这是对不诚实的一种奖励。这些新公司之所以能够生存和发展,是靠钻法律空子,而顾客又与它们沆瀣一气。自然而然,道德败坏深入到经济生活的每一个角落。

It is seldom, moreover, that any honest effort is made by the price-fixing authorities merely to preserve the level of prices existing when their efforts began. They declare that their intention is to “hold the line.” Soon, however, under the guise of “correcting inequities” or “social in justices,” they begin a discriminatory price-fixing which gives most to those groups that are politically powerful and least to other groups.

此外,政府价格管理部门很少真正做出努力,去维持他们一开始急吼吼要维持的现行价格水平。他们声称旨在努力“保持价格不变”。然而,他们很快就会以“纠正不公平”,或者“社会公正”为借口,着手实施歧视性的价格管制政策,结果是政治力量强大的群体得到政策倾斜最多,其他的群体则得不到政策照顾。

As political power today is most commonly measured by votes, the groups that the authorities most often attempt to favor are workers and farmers. At first it is contended that wages and living costs are not connected; that wages can easily be lifted without lifting prices. When it becomes obvious that wages can be raised only at the expense of profits, the bureaucrats begin to argue that profits were already too high anyway, and that lifting wages and holding prices will still permit a “fair profit.” As there is no such thing as a uniform rate of profit, as profits differ with each concern, the result of this policy is to drive the least profitable concerns out of business altogether, and to discourage or stop the production of certain items. This means unemployment, a shrinkage in production and a decline in living standards.

由于当今政治力量大抵以选票来衡量,因此当局总是力求讨好工人和农民。起初,人们不太能把工资和生活费用关联起来,认为可以单纯地涨工资而不涨价。后来,当人们认识到涨工资势必以牺牲利润为代价时,官僚们则争辩说,反正利润本来都高,即便涨工资而价格不变,生产者仍可以获得“公平的利润”。由于并不存在一个一致的利润率,而企业的利润又各不相同,所以,对利润一刀切的做法势必将赢利能力最差的公司一举淘汰出局,进而导致若干商品的产量减少或停产。这就意味着失业、生产萎缩、生活水平下降。

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What lies at the base of the whole effort to fix maximum prices? There is first of all a misunderstanding of what it is that has been causing prices to rise. The real cause is either a scarcity of goods or a surplus of money. Legal price ceilings cannot cure either. In fact, as we have just seen, they merely intensify the shortage of goods. What to do about the surplus of money will be discussed in a later chapter. But one of the errors that lie behind the drive for price-fixing is the chief subject of this book. Just as the endless plans for raising prices of favored commodities are the result of thinking of the interests only of the producers immediately concerned, and forgetting the interests of consumers, so the plans for holding down prices by legal edict are the result of thinking of the short-run interests of people only as consumers and forgetting their interests as producers. And the political support for such policies springs from a similar confusion in the public mind. People do not want to pay more for milk, butter, shoes, furniture, rent, theater tickets or diamonds. Whenever any of these items rises above its previous level the consumer becomes indignant, and feels that he is being rooked.

费尽折腾去规定最高价格,其根本原因是什么呢?首先,是什么致使价格上涨,人们在这一点上存在误解。真正的原因是商品匮乏或货币过剩。法定价格上限根本无法解决这两方面的问题。事实上,正如我们所见,它们仅仅加剧了商品的短缺。至于货币过剩如何应对,我们会在后面章节讨论。不过,隐藏在限价政策背后的谬误之一,倒是本书的主题。正如无数计划旨在人为抬高某些商品的价格,是政府一心顾及生产者的眼前利益而没有考虑消费者利益的结果,同样,通过法令来压低价格的那些计划,是政府一心顾及公众作为消费者的眼前利益,而没有考虑他们作为生产者的利益的结果。这类政策所得的政治支持,产生自公众思想中类似的模糊观念。人们决不愿花更多的钱去购买牛奶、黄油、鞋子、家具、戏票、钻石,去支付租金。任何时候,任何一样这些商品的价格高于先前的价位,消费者就开始忿忿,感觉遭人敲竹杠。

The only exception is the item he makes himself: here he understands and appreciates the reason for the rise. But he is always likely to regard his own business as in some way an exception. “Now my own business,” he will say, “is peculiar, and the public does not understand it. Labor costs have gone up; raw material prices have gone up; this or that raw material is no longer being imported, and must be made at a higher cost at home. Moreover, the demand for the product has increased, and the business should be allowed to charge the prices necessary to encourage its expansion to supply this demand.” And so on. Everyone as consumer buys a hundred different products; as producer he makes, usually, only one. He can see the inequity in holding down the price of that. And just as each manufacturer wants a higher price for his particular product, so each worker wants a higher wage or salary. Each can see as producer that price control is restricting production in his line. But nearly everyone refuses to generalize this observation, for it means that he will have to pay more for the products of others.

惟一的例外,是他自己生产的商品:此刻,他完全理解并赞成提价的理由。不过,他总容易把自己的行业看作是某种例外。“我干的这行”,他会这样说,“现在的情况相当特殊,一般人是不了解的。人工成本在涨;原材料价格也在涨;这种那种原材料已经不再允许进口,必须以较高的成本在国内制造。此外,市场对本行产品的需求增加了,应该允许本行产品做必要的提价,从而鼓励供给以满足需求。”等等。每个人作为消费者时,都会买很多种不同的商品;而作为生产者时,通常只生产一种产品。他看得出,压低自己的产品的价格是不公平的。正如每家制造商都希望他自己的产品卖到更高的价格,每个工人都想要更高的工资或薪金。作为生产者时,每个人都看得出价格管制限制了本行的生产。但是,几乎每个人都不愿将观察到的这个事实推己及人,因为这意味着他会付更更高的的价钱去买别人的产品。

Each one of us, in brief, has a multiple economic personality. Each one of us is producer, taxpayer, consumer. The policies he advocates depend upon the particular aspect under which he thinks of himself at the moment. For he is sometimes Dr. Jekyll and sometimes Mr. Hyde. As a producer he wants inflation (thinking chiefly of his own services or product); as a consumer he wants price ceilings (thinking chiefly of what he has to pay for the products of others). As a consumer he may advocate or acquiesce in subsidies; as a taxpayer he will resent paying them. Each person is likely to think that he can so manage the political forces that he can benefit from a rise for his own product (while his raw material costs are legally held down) and at the same time benefit as a consumer from price control. But the overwhelming majority will be deceiving themselves. For not only must there be at least as much loss as gain from this political manipulation of prices; there must be a great deal more loss than gain, because price-fixing discourages and disrupts employment and production.

简单地说,我们每个人都具备多重经济角色。每个人都是生产者、纳税人,消费者。一个人支持何种政策,取决于他当时从何种身份去为自身利益作考虑。犹如电影《化身博士》(Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde),他有时处于这种身份、有时处于那种身份。作为生产者时,他便希望通货膨胀(这时主要顾及自己提供的服务或产品);作为消费者时,他便希望政府限价(这时主要顾及他不得不掏钱买别人的产品)。作为消费者,他可能拥护或者默许政府实施补贴;而作为纳税人,他会愤慨为此埋单。每个人都很可能认为他能应付各种政治力量,以便能从他自己产出的商品涨价中获利(同时还要他的原材料价格被合法的压低),同时他还可以以消费者的身份受惠于价格管制。但是绝大多数的人都在自欺欺人——利用政治力量操纵价格,注定得不偿失;因为管制价格不可避免地会限制和破坏就业与生产。

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