Economics in One Lesson编校the proofreading plan for Chinese translation

希望有一天Henry Hazlitt这本《一课经济学》,跟物理、化学并列科学教材,作为中学生的必修课。在此利用blog作一个开放的平台,欢迎有兴趣的朋友加入到这个努力中来。

Economics in One Lesson第一版于1946年面市,1948年商务印书馆就推出了中译本《经济学新论》,译者宋桂煌在1947年写的“译者弁言”介绍了相关情况。宋本有助于把我们的认识还原到那个时代。据说,Mises Institute在2008年推出的版本即以1946版为准,而不是后来的1979版,个中缘由我会继续跟踪。1961版算个过渡版本。台湾在1966年重版过宋本,不知有否更新到1961年版。

1979年版是最通行的版本,此后的40周年纪念版、50周年纪念版只是把1979年版中用作说明的例证和统计数据都有更新到当时的最新数据。1989年湖南人民出版社推出中译本《回到常识——剖析经济学中一些“杰出的”谬误》,译者于小庆。洪君彦在“代译者序”中提及:“推荐译者将此译成中文的美国教授们认为,它曾使无数美国知识分子由此开始了解了经济学。”据说,于本一版一印,才出1200本,也值得去挖掘出来。

1999年、2005年、2008年面市的3个中译本都基于50周年纪念版,热捧之余都有声音认为翻译欠佳。应该说校译的潜力还很大吧。1999年清华大学出版社推出中译本《一课之师》,译者吴栋、王力等。在“译者说明”中提及王法、齐险峰、李艳、侯红娅等同学进行了初译。2005年经济新潮社推出的繁体版《一课经济学》,译者罗耀宗。吴荣义、吴惠林、张清溪、詹宏志、熊秉元、薛琦都在译文前撰文专业推荐。2008年中信出版社推出的简体版《一课经济学》,译者蒲定东。朋友雪峰、海云、冬梅、余江等对该书前半部分作了校译。

我拟以5个中译本,以及网上的相关内容为基础,以撰写日志校译连载方式,利用业余时间陆续放上草稿,根据反馈不断修改。

在校译进程中,我们也发现英文原著1979年的第二版对照之前的第一版,也有相当出入。校译以第二版为主,若有译者发现第一版的相关不同内容值得补充进这个校译本,请在译本中对这种补充的地方作说明。

第二版英文原文可参看http://jim.com/econ/contents.html

第一版英文原文可参看http://www.fee.org/library/books/economics.asp

 

规则1:我先贴出一个供大家校译的版本;我会比较手中的几个中译本,整理出这个版本,贴在博文顶楼;摆擂台

规则2:若我自己发现有更好的译文,我会直接修改顶楼;

规则3:若其他博友提出更好的译文,我会先跟帖保留废文,作为修改历史记录,然后到顶楼更新; 

 

mises.org上的这个blog可视为我在德赛公园blog的一个副本,有兴趣的朋友请访问在德赛公园的博客正本:http://www.de-sci.org/blogs/dingdong

为简化起见,这里的副本只转贴开放式编校的最后结果,这个结果是诸多博友共同奉献的结果。我谨在这里把他们的网名帖上来:

深度参与并指导的网友有:寻正
驻足略微参与的网友有:棒棒儿、曾子后、子平、Wonfucious

Economics in One Lesson校译之24. The Assault on Saving (4-1,2)

The Assault on Saving
第24章 抨击储蓄

From time immemorial proverbial wisdom has taught the virtues of saving, and warned against the consequences of prodigality and waste. This proverbial wisdom has reflected the common ethical as well as the merely prudential judgments of mankind. But there have always been squanderers, and there have apparently always been theorists to rationalize their squandering.

远古先哲就在诵赞储蓄是一种美德,而警告挥霍浪费带来的种种恶果。这个古老的智慧,反映了我们常识性的道德判断,以及人类未雨绸缪的明智抉择。但是这个世界上总有许多挥霍成性的人,也总有许多理论家,为挥霍行为寻找合理化的借口。

The classical economists, refuting the fallacies of their own day, showed that the saving policy that was in the best interests of the individual was also in the best interests of the nation. They showed that the rational saver, in ma king provision for his future, was not hurting, but helping, the whole community. But today the ancient virtue of thrift, as well as its defense by the classical economists, is once more under attack, for allegedly new reasons, while the opposite doctrine of spending is in fashion.

正统经济学家勇于驳斥他们那个时代的种种谬论,证明了符合个人最佳利益的储蓄政策,也符合国家的最佳利益。他们指出,懂得长远打算的理性储蓄者, 对整个社会不会有害,反而有益。但当今社会,古老的节俭美德连同正统经济学家的证明再次受到了抨击,许多人搬出反对节俭的新理由,提倡支出的论调蔚然成风。

In order to make the fundamental issue as clear as possible, we cannot do better, I think, than to start with the classic example used by Bastiat. Let us imagine two brothers, then, one a spendthrift and the other a prudent man, each of whom has inherited a sum to yield him an income of $50,000 a year. We shall disregard the income tax, and the question whether both brothers really ought to work for a living or give most of their income to charity, because such questions are irrelevant to our present purpose.

为了把这个基本的问题尽可能讲清楚,我想我们最好从经济学家巴斯夏所用的经典例子开始着手进行说明。假设有两兄弟各继承了一笔财富,因此每年都能各得50 000美元的收入,但是其中一人挥金如土,另一人谨慎节俭。我们在这里忽略掉所得税、以及两兄弟是否应该去工作赚钱,是否该把大部分钱捐给慈善机构,因为这些问题和我们接下来要谈的主题无关。

Alvin, then, the first brother, is a lavish spender. He spends not only by temperament, but on principle. He is a disciple (to go no further back) of Rodbertus, who declared in the middle of the nineteenth century that capitalists “must expend their income to the last penny in comforts and luxuries,” for if they “determine to save… goods accumulate, and part of the workmen will have no work.” Alvin is always seen at the night clubs; he tips handsomely; he maintains a pretentious establishment, with plenty of servants; he has a couple of chauffeurs, and doesn’t stint himself in the number of cars he owns; he keeps a racing stable; he runs a yacht; he travels; he loads his wife down with diamond bracelets and fur coats; he gives expensive and useless presents to his friends.

哥哥阿尔文是个挥霍者,他不仅有挥霍的性情,而且有挥霍的信念。他是卡尔•洛贝图斯(Karl Rodbertus)(我想不用再往前回溯得更远了)的忠实信徒。在19世纪中叶,洛贝图斯宣称资本家“必须将他们的最后一便士收入都花在享乐和奢靡上”,因为如果他们“决定储蓄,……那么商品将积压,部分工人将失业”。{脚注: 洛贝图斯,《生产过剩与恐慌》Karl Rodbertus, Overproduction and Crises (1850), p. 51.}阿尔文常出入夜总会;小费出手十分大方;他拥有一处豪宅,养了很多仆从;他有两三个私家司机,车子买了一辆又一辆;他有一个赛马场;他喜欢架游艇出航;喜欢去各地观光;他给太太买钻石项链和皮裘大衣;送朋友贵重却派不上用场的礼物。

To do all this he has to dig into his capital. But what of it? If saving is a sin, dissaving must be a virtue; and in any case he is simply making up for the harm being done by the saving of his pinchpenny brother Benjamin.

要做所有这一切,他只好动用老本。可这对他又算得了什么呢?如果储蓄是一种罪过,不储蓄当然就是一种美德;而且,无论如何,他这么做不过是为了补偿吝啬鬼弟弟本杰明由于储蓄给社会带来的种种损害。

It need hardly be said that Alvin is a great favorite with the hat check girls, the waiters, the restaurateurs, the furriers, the jewelers, the luxury establishments of all kinds. They regard him as a public benefactor. Certainly it is obvious to everyone that he is giving employment and spreading his money around.

不用说,阿尔文对于迎宾、侍者、餐厅老板、皮货商、珠宝商、各类奢侈品店家来说都是最受欢迎的人。他被视为众人的财神爷。大家都看得很清楚,正是他四处挥洒钞票,人们才有那么多工作可做。

Compared with him brother Benjamin is much less popular. He is seldom seen at the jewelers, the furriers or the night clubs, and he does not call the head waiters by their first names. Whereas Alvin spends not only the full $50,000 income each year but is digging into capital besides, Benjamin lives much more modestly and spends only about $25,000 Obviously, think the people who see only what hits them in the eye, he is providing less than half as much employment as Alvin, and the other $25,000 is as useless as if it did not exist.

与他相比,弟弟本杰明可就远不如他受人欢迎。他很少光顾珠宝店、皮货店和夜总会,也不会亲昵地直呼那些领班侍者的名字。与阿尔文年年吃老本不同,本杰明要节俭得多。他一年的花销在25 000美元左右。在那些目光短浅的人看来,他提供的工作机会显然不到阿尔文的一半,另外25 000美元则丝毫没有派上用场,就跟那笔钱不存在一样。

But let us see what Benjamin actually does with this other $25,000 He does not let it pile up in his pocketbook, his bureau drawers, or in his safe. He either deposits it in a bank or he invests it. If he puts it either into a commercial or a savings bank, the bank either lends it to going businesses on short term for working capital, or uses it to buy securities. In other words, Benjamin invests his money either directly or indirectly. But when money is invested it is used to buy or build capital goods—houses or office buildings or factories or ships or trucks or machines. Any one of these projects puts as much money into circulation and gives as much employment as the same amount of money spent directly on consumption.

且慢!让我们来看看本杰明究竟是如何支配那另外25 000美元的。那笔钱,他并没有放在钱袋子、书桌抽屉和保险箱里面。他把钱存到银行,或者拿去投资。如果他是存到商业银行或储蓄银行,银行会贷给企业用作周转金,或用于购买证券。换句话说,本杰明的钱用于直接或间接投资。而一旦这笔钱以一种资本投资的形式出现时,人们就会把它用来购买或是生产资本类产品 ——房屋、写字楼、工厂、轮船、卡车、机器。通过这些项目,货币同样被投入了流通领域,而且它们也提供了同样多的就业机会。促进就业这种作用与把钱直接用来消费的结果是一样的。

“Saving,” in short, in the modem world, is only another form of spending. The usual difference is that the money is turned over to someone else to spend on means to increase production. So far as giving employment is concerned, Benjamin’s “saving” and spending combined give as much as Alvin’s spending alone, and put as much money in circulation. The chief difference is that the employment provided by Alvin’s spending can be seen by anyone with one eye; but it is necessary to look a little more carefully, and to think a moment, to recognize that every dollar of Benjamin’s saving gives as much employment as every dollar that Alvin throws around.

总之,现代世界中的“储蓄”,只是支出的另一种形式。通常的区别在于,货币被转交给了其他的人,并被他们用于扩大生产。就提供就业机会来说,本杰明的“储蓄”加上他的消费带来的效果,与阿尔文单纯消费的效果一样,他们投入流通的资金也一样多。关键区别就在于,阿尔文花钱提供的就业机会,每个人都看得到;而要认清本杰明储蓄的钱所起到的同样的作用,则需要我们做进一步的观察和思考。

A dozen years roll by. Alvin is broke. He is no longer seen in the night clubs and at the fashionable shops; and those whom he formerly patronized, when they speak of him, refer to him as something of a fool. He writes begging letters to Benjamin. And Benjamin, who continues about the same ratio of spending to saving, not only provides more jobs than ever, because his income, through investment, has grown, but through his investment he has helped to provide better-paying and more productive jobs. His capital wealth and income are greater. He has, in brief, added to the nation’s productive capacity; Alvin has not.

12年后,阿尔文破产了。在夜总会和时尚精品店里再也没有了他的身影;那些曾奉他为财神爷的人如今谈起他时,嘲笑他是傻蛋一个。他不得不向本杰明写信恳求接济。与此相反,本杰明的支出与储蓄比率还是和以前一样,由于投资收益不断增长,通过他的投资创造的就业机会不仅数量更多,并且那些工作待遇更加好、劳动生产率更高。他的资本财富和收入都比以前高。简单来说,他增加了国家的生产能力,阿尔文却没有。

2

So many fallacies have grown up about saving in recent years that they cannot all be answered by our example of the two brothers. It is necessary to devote some further space to them. Many stem from confusions so elementary as to seem incredible, particularly when found in the works of economic writers of wide repute. The word saving, for example, is used sometimes to mean mere hoarding of money, and sometimes to mean investment, with no clear distinction, consistently maintained, between the two uses.

近年来,关于储蓄的谬论层出不穷。要回答这些问题,仅靠我们“两个兄弟”的传统例子恐怕就远远不够了,我们有必要多花一些篇幅对此加以分析。许多谬论连最基本的概念都搞混,到了令人匪夷所思的地步,尤其当类似的错误出现在一些备受尊敬的著名经济学家的著作中时。例如,储蓄一词有时被用来单指蓄藏(hoarding)金钱,有时被用去指投资,甚至用来用去不加区分。

Mere hoarding of hand-to-hand money, if it takes place irrationally, causelessly, and on a large scale, is in most economic situations harmful. But this sort of hoarding is extremely rare. Something that looks like this, but should be carefully distinguished from it, often occurs after a downturn in business has got under way. Consumptive spending and investment are then both contracted. Consumers reduce their buying. They do this partly, indeed, because they fear they may lose their jobs, and they wish to conserve their resources: they have contracted their buying not because they wish to consume less but because they wish to make sure that their power to consume will be extended over a longer period if they do lose their jobs.

如果仅仅是缺乏理智、莫名其妙地大量蓄藏金钱,在大多数经济状况中都是有害无益的。但是这种蓄藏金钱的情形极为罕见。有些舍不得花钱的情形看上去与之有些类似,但那是理性抉择的结果,与其有着本质区别。例如,经济衰退时期,消费和投资萎缩。消费者买东西都很俭省,部分原因是担心工作不保,想留点钱以备不时之需。也就是说,他们紧缩消费,不是因为吝啬守财,而是对前景担忧,万一真的失去工作,让家里能够多维持一段时间的花销。

But consumers reduce their buying for another reason. Prices of goods have probably fallen, and they fear a further fall. If they defer spending, they believe they will get more for their money. They do not wish to have their resources in goods that are falling in value, but in money which they expect (relatively) to rise in value.

消费者紧缩消费还有另一个原因。物价可能正在回落,但是消费者预期还会继续降价。如果他们推后再消费,用同样多的钱就能够买到更多的东西。他们不希望拿钱去买正在缩水贬值的商品,而是愿意持有他们期望(相对而言)可以升值的货币。

The same expectation prevents them from investing. They have lost their confidence in the profitability of business; or at least they believe that if they wait a few months they can buy stocks or bonds cheaper. We may think of them either as refusing to hold goods that may fall in value on their hands, or as holding money itself for a rise.

同样的预期心理使人么紧缩投资。他们对企业的赢利能力已经失去信心。再者,他们愿意再等几个月,届时或许可以买到更便宜的股票或债券。换句话说,他们不愿持有可能贬值的商品,或是为了某种程度的升值而持有货币本身。

It is a misnomer to call this temporary refusal to buy “saving.” It does not spring from the same motives as normal saving. And it is a still more serious error to say that this sort of “saving” is the cause of depressions. It is, on the contrary, the consequence of depressions.

同样,把这种紧缩消费与紧缩投资的行为归入到“储蓄”名下,是不恰当的。它的动机与一般的储蓄有所不同。将这种“储蓄”说成是经济衰退的起因,更是大错特错。恰恰相反,它是经济衰退的后果

It is true that this refusal to buy may intensify and prolong a depression. At times when there is capricious government intervention in business, and when business does not know what the government is going to do next, uncertainty is created. Profits are not reinvested. Firms and individuals allow cash balances to accumulate in their banks. They keep larger reserves against contingencies. This hoarding of cash may seem like a cause of a subsequent slowdown in business activity. The real cause, however, is the uncertainty brought about by the government policies. The larger cash balances of firms and individuals are merely one link in the chain of consequences from that uncertainty. To blame “excessive saving” for the business decline would be like blaming a fall in the price of apples not on a bumper crop but on the people who refuse to pay more for apples.

确实,这种紧缩支出行为可能加深和延长一场衰退。有些时候,政府对企业的干预反复无常,企业不知道政府政策下一步又变成什么样子,企业对未来做出预期的不确定性就会增加。于是,企业和个人不愿冒险将利润进行再投资,他们的银行存款余额因此越积越高。他们宁可保有更多的准备金,以防万一。这种现金储备行为似乎成了随之而出现的经济发展速度放慢的原因之一。然而,衰退的真正原因,是政府政策所带来的一种不确定性。企业和个人保有更多的现金,只不过是这种不确定性所导致的一连串后果中的一个环节而已。把经济不景气怪罪到“过度储蓄”上,就像苹果价格下跌,不去怪苹果丰收,却怪人们不肯出更高的价格买苹果一样。

But when once people have decided to deride a practice or an institution, any argument against it, no matter how illogical, is considered good enough. It is said that the various consumers goods industries are built on the expectation of a certain demand, and that if people take to saving they will disappoint this expectation and start a depression. This assertion rests primarily on the error we have already examined—that of forgetting that what is saved on consumers’ goods is spent on capital goods, and that “saving” does not necessarily mean even a dollar’s contraction in total spending. The only element of truth in the contention is that any change that is sudden may be unsettling. It would be just as unsettling if consumers suddenly switched their demand from one consumers’ good to another. It would be even more unsettling if former savers suddenly switched their demand from capital goods to consumers’ goods

然而,一旦有人存心要贬低某种做法或机制的时候,任何帮腔的言论,不论多么不合逻辑,他么都会为之叫好。有人帮腔说,各种消费品工业,是预期有某种需求存在而建立起来的,如果人们只知道把钱存起来,这种预期就会落空,并且导致一场衰退。这一论断主要是以我们已经分析过的错误为出发点的,即忘记了我们在消费品支出上所减少的部分是被用在资本品上了,而“储蓄”并不一定意味着总支出的缩减。他们惟一说对的一点是:任何突然的变化都可能是引起混乱,就象消费者突然把他们的需求从一种商品转向另一种商品时所表现出的混乱一样,而倘若原来的储蓄者将他们对资本品的需求一下子转向了 对消费品的需求,那么由此而来的经济生活的混乱则会更为严重。

Still another objection is made against saving. It is said to be just downright silly. The nineteenth century is derided for its supposed inculcation of the doctrine that mankind through saving should go on baking itself a larger and larger cake without ever eating the cake. This picture of the process is itself naive and childish. It can best be disposed of, perhaps, by putting before ourselves a somewhat more realistic picture of what actually takes place.

反对储蓄的另一种论点,说起来也实在是荒唐透顶。他们嘲讽19世纪人们被反复灌输着储蓄的观念,说结果是,蛋糕越做越大,却没人去吃。这样的描述显得幼稚无知。戳穿这种不实之说的最好办法,是用贴近现实的写照,把实际情况呈现出来。

Let us picture to ourselves, then, a nation that collectively saves every year about 20 percent of all it produces in that year. This figure greatly overstates the amount of net saving that has occurred historically in the United States, but it is a round figure that is easily handled, and it gives the benefit of every doubt to those who believe that we have been “oversaving.”

那么,让我们自己想象一下。假设国家每年的储蓄占国民生产总值的20%左右。{脚注:历史上,20%近似地表示国民生产总值每年投入资本形成(不包括消费资料)的总值。但是如果扣除资本消耗,则每年的净储蓄接近12%。参照:特伯格,《经济成熟的歪理》George Terborgh, The Bogey of Economic Maturity (1945)。1977年官方估计的私人国内投资总额,占国民生产总值的16%。}这个数字已远远超过美国历年来的净储蓄水平,我们取个偏大的整数,一来便于计算,二来好让那些指责“储蓄过度”的人服气。

Now as a result of this annual saving and investment, the total annual production of the country will increase each year. (To isolate the problem we are ignoring for the moment booms, slumps, or other fluctuations.) Let us say that this annual increase in production is 2.5 percentage points. (Percentage points are taken instead of a compounded percentage merely to simplify the arithmetic.) The picture that we get for an eleven-year period, say, would then run something like this in terms of index numbers:

现在,由于这样的年储蓄和投资水平,该国每年的总产出水平将逐年增加。(为了单独讨论这个问题,我们忽略影响增长不均衡的所有因素。)假设生产每年 增加2.5个百分点(为了简化计算,我们用百分点,不用百分增长率)。这样,我们可以用下列指数数字来表示我们所要考察的11年间的大致情况。如下表所示:

年份 总产量 消费品产量 资本品产量
第1年 100 80 20[†]
第2年 102.5 82 20.5
第3年 105 84 21
第4年 107.5 86 21.5
第5年 110 88 22
第6年 112.5 90 22.5
第7年 115 92 23
第8年 117.5 94 23.5
第9年 120 96 24
第10年 122.5 98 24.5
第11年 125 100 25

(图表){脚注:我们在此假设这11年中储蓄与投资之间的比率保持不变。}

The first thing to be noticed about this table is that total production increases each year because of the saving, and would not have increased without it. (It is possible no doubt to imagine that improvements and new inventions merely in replaced machinery and other capital goods of a value no greater than the old would increase the national productivity; but this increase would amount to very little and the argument in any case assumes enough prior investment to have made the existing machinery possible.) The saving has been used year after year to increase the quantity or improve the quality of existing machinery, and so to increase the nation’s output of goods. There is, it is true (if that for some strange reason is considered an objection), a larger and larger “cake” each year. Each year, it is true, not all of the currently produced cake is consumed. But there is no irrational or cumulative restraint. For each year a larger and larger cake is in fact consumed; until, at the end of eleven years (in our illustration), the annual consumers’ cake alone is equal to the combined consumers’ and producers’ cakes of the first year. Moreover, the capital equipment, the ability to produce goods, is itself 25 percent greater than in the first year.

关于这张表格,我们需要首先注意的是,总产量每年的增长是由于储蓄所引起的,没有储蓄就没有总产量的增长。(你也可以想象,不花什么钱,单靠改良和新发明去提高生产力的情况,但是这方面的增幅非常小;并且,真要靠新工艺新设备,还得要有足够的投资才行。)这种储蓄年复一年被用于增加现有机器的数量和改进其品质,从而提高全国的产品产量。不错,“蛋糕”会越做越大(很奇怪,这也成其为反对的理由);每一年做出来的蛋糕,的确不会全部吃掉。然而,这里并不存在什么不合理的或是累加的限制。其实,每年吃掉的蛋糕越来越多;到了第11年 底,该年单单消费者吃掉的蛋糕,就等于第一年消费者吃掉的蛋糕和生产者吃掉的蛋糕的总合。而且,资本设备和生产产品的能力本身与第一年相比也已增加了25%。

Let us observe a few other points. The fact that 20 percent of the national income goes each year for saving does not upset the consumers’ goods industries in the least. If they sold only the 80 units they produced in the first year (and there were no rise in prices caused by unsatisfied demand) they would certainly not be foolish enough to build their production plans on the assumption that they were going to sell 100 units in the second year. The consumers’ goods industries, in other words, are already geared to the assumption that the past situation in regard to the rate of savings will continue. Only an unexpected sudden and substantial increase in savings would unsettle them and leave them with unsold goods.

让我们看看其他方面。每年有20%的国民收入用于储蓄,一点都没有扰乱消费品工业的运行。如果它们在第一年生产的产品只卖出80个点(假设没有未获满足的需求使价格上涨),它们在拟定第二年生产计划的时候,当然不会笨到设想能够卖出100个点。换句话说,消费品工业已经习惯假设过去的储蓄率会持续下去。只有储蓄出于预料突然大增,才会扰乱它们的运行,使它们的产品卖不出去。

But the same unsettlement, as we have already observed, would be caused in the capital goods industries by a sudden and substantial decrease in savings. If money that would previously have been used for savings were thrown into the purchase of consumers goods, it would not increase employment but merely lead to an increase in the price of consumption goods and to a decrease in the price of capital goods. Its first effect on net balance would be to force shifts in employment and temporarily to decrease employment by its effect on the capital goods industries. And its long-run effect would be to reduce production below the level that would otherwise have been achieved.

但是,正如我们已经注意到的,假如储蓄额突然锐减,那么它将同样导致资本品工业的混乱。要是存在银行的钱,全部被取出来购买消费品,就业不会增加,只会使消费品的价格升高,同时降低资本品的价格。其总体影响首先会迫使就业发生移转,短期内会使资本品工业中的就业缩减。长期的影响将是使整个社会的生产低于本来可以达到的水平。

(未完待续)

Economics in One Lesson校译之 A NOTE ON BOOKS

A Note on Books
后记与参考书目

Those who desire to read further in economics should turn next to some work of intermediate length and difficulty. I know of no single volume in print today that completely meets this need, but there are several that together supply it. There is an excellent short book (126 pages) by Faustino Ballvé, Essentials of Economics (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education), which briefly summarizes principles and policies. A book that does that at somewhat greater length (327 pages) is Understanding the Dollar Crisis by Percy L. Greaves (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, 1973). Bettina Bien Greaves has assembled two volumes of readings on Free Market Economics (Foundation for Economic Education).

想要多读点经济学的人,接下来应该找几本中等篇幅和难度适中的专业著作来看。据我所知,目前还没有哪本书能完全满足这种要求,不过,有几本书搭配起来效果不错。福斯提诺·波夫(Faustino Ballvé)的《经济学精要》(Essentials of Economics, Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y Foundation for Economic Education; 126页),这本精彩的小册子简要总结了各种经济原则和经济政策。珀西·格里夫斯(Percy L. Greaves)的《探讨美元危机》(Understanding the Dollar Crisis, Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, 1973;327页),主题类似但篇幅较长。还有,贝蒂纳·格里夫斯(Bettina Bien Greaves)主编的两册的《自由市场经济学》(Free Market Economics, Foundation for Economic Education)。

The reader who aims at a thorough understanding, and feels prepared for it, should next read Human Action by Ludwig von Mises (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1949, 1966, 907 pages). This book extended the logical unity and precision of economics beyond that of any previous work. A two-volume work written thirteen years after Human Action by a student of Mises is Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State (Mission, Kan.: Sheed, Andrews and McMeel, 1962, 987 pages). This contains much original and penetrating material; its exposition is admirably lucid; and its arrangement makes it in some respects more suitable for textbook use than Mises’ great work.

想要深入了解经济学的读者,如果已经具备了一定理解能力,接下来应该看米塞斯的《人的行为》(Human Action, Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1949, 1966;907页)。这本书的逻辑单一性和经济学的精确度,超越了以前所有的经济学著作。在《人的行为》出版13年后,米塞斯的学生罗思巴德(Murray N. Rothbard)写了两册的《人、经济与国家》(Man, Economy, and State, Mission, Kan.: Sheed, Andrews and McMeel, 1962;987页)。这本书中有不少新东西,有不少作者透彻的见解;其叙述简单明了;其结构安排在某些方面比米塞斯的巨著更适合作为教科书。

Short books that discuss special economic subjects in a simple way are Planning for Freedom by Ludwig von Mises (South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press, 1952), and Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). There is an excellent pamphlet by Murray N. Rothbard, What HasGovernment Done to Our Money? (Santa Ana, Calif.: Rampart College, 1964, 1974, 62 pages). On the urgent subject of inflation, a book by the present author has recently been published, The Inflation Crisis, and How to Resolve It (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978).

还有些深入浅出探讨特殊经济主题的小册子,包括米塞斯的《规划自由》(Planning for Freedom, South Holland, I11.: Libertarian Press, 1952),弗里德曼的《资本主义与自由》(Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)。罗思巴德的《为什么我们的钱变薄了?》(What Has Government Done to Our Money?, Santa Ana, Calif,: Rampart College, 1964, 1974;62页)很不错。急于了解通货膨胀的读者,可以读本书作者最近出的《通货膨胀危机,及其解决之道》。

Among recent works which discuss current ideologies and developments from a point of view similar to that of this volume are the present author’s The Failure of the “New Economics”: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies (Arlington House, 1959); F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1945) and the same author’s monumental Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). Ludwig von Mises’ Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936, 1969) is the most thorough and devastating critique of collectivistic doctrines ever written.

与这本书观点类似,从当前的意识形态与发展层面进行探讨的经济学著作,有本书作者的《“新经济学”的失败:分析凯恩斯的谬论》(The Failure of the “New Economics”: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies, Arlington House, 1959);哈耶克的《通向奴役之路》和《自由秩序原理》。米塞斯的《社会主义:经济与社会分析》(Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, London: Jonathan Cape, 1936, 1969),这本书对集体主义的教条所进行的彻头彻尾的批判是空前的。

The reader should not overlook, of course, Frederic Bastiat’s Economic Sophisms (ca. 1844), and particularly his essay on “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.”

读者当然不要错过巴斯夏的《经济诡辩》(Economic Sophisms,1844),尤其是他写的〈看得见的与看不见的〉。

Those who are interested in working through the economic classics might find it most profitable to do this in the reverse of their historical order. Presented in this order, the chief works to be consulted, with the dates of their first editions, are: Philip Wick-steed, The Common Sense of Political Economy, 1911; John Bates Clark, The Distribution of Wealth, 1899; Eugen von BohmBawerk, The Positive Theory of Capital, 1888; Karl Menger, Principles of Economics, 1871; W. Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, 1871; John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848; David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817; and Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

对经济学经典感兴趣的读者,不妨先读现代的经典,再读时间更久远的经典。按第一版的出版日期,我们倒着列一个书单:威克斯第德的《政治经济学常识》(The Common Sense of Political Economy, 1911);约翰·克拉克(John Bates Clark)的《财富分配》(The Distribution of Wealth, 1899);尤金·庞巴维克(Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk)的《正面资本论》(The Positive Theory of Capital, 1888);卡尔·门格(Karl Menger)的《经济学原理》(Principles of Economics, 1871);斯坦利·杰文斯(W. Stanley Jevons)的《政治经济理论》(The Theory of Political Economy, 1871);穆勒的《政治经济原理》;大卫·李嘉图的《政治经济与财税原理》(Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817);亚当·斯密的《国富论》。

Economics broadens out in a hundred directions. Whole libraries have been written on specialized fields alone, such as money and banking, foreign trade and foreign exchange, taxation and public finance, government control, capitalism and socialism, wages and labor relations, interest and capital, agricultural economics, rent, prices, profits, markets, competition and monopoly, value and utility, statistics, business cycles, wealth and poverty, social insurance, housing, public utilities, mathematical economics, studies of special industries and of economic history. But no one will ever properly understand any of these specialized fields unless he has first of all acquired a firm grasp of basic economic principles and the complex interrelationship of all economic factors and forces. When he has done this by his reading in general economics, he can be trusted to find the right books in his special field of interest.

经济学会往无数个方向发展。仅各专门领域的经济学著作已是汗牛充栋。例如货币与银行、外贸与外汇、税收与公共财政、政府规制、资本主义与社会主义、工资与劳动关系、利息与资本、农业经济学、租金、价格、利润、市场、竞争与垄断、价值与效用、统计经济学、经济周期、财富与贫困问题、社会保险、房地产、公共事业、数理经济学、产业经济学与经济史的研究。但是,没有人能适当掌握这些专门领域,而不对基本的经济原理以及所有经济因素和经济力量之 间复杂的相互关系已有深刻理解。当他能过阅读一般性的经济学内容而有此能力之后,才能被期望在自己感兴趣的特殊领域,找到合适的书籍。

Economics in One Lesson校译之26. The Lesson After Thirty Years (2-2)

第三篇 三十年后的这堂课
第26章 三十年后的这堂课

(接前面部分)

If we go through the chapters of this book seriatim, we find practically no form of government intervention deprecated in the first edition that is not still being pursued, usually with increased obstinacy. Governments everywhere are still trying to cure by public works the unemployment brought about by their own policies. They are imposing heavier and more expropriatory taxes than ever. They still recommend credit expansion. Most of them still make “full employment” their overriding goal. They continue to impose import quotas and protective tariffs. They try to increase exports by depreciating their currencies even further. Farmers are still “striking” for “parity prices.” Governments still provide special encouragements to unprofitable industries. They still make efforts to “stabilize” special commodity prices.

如果我们逐一阅读本书的章节,我们就会发现,在第一版中我们所责难的各类政府干预形式,无一例外不是正在被各国顽固采用。各国政府都在努力用公共工程来解决政策性失业问题。他们变本加厉地增加税负,推行信用扩张。大多数政府仍以“充分就业”为压倒一切的目标。他们继续实行进口配额和保护性关税。他们设法通过让货币贬值来达到出口增加。农民仍旧在为“等位价格”而努力。 政府则继续帮扶那些无利可图的行业。他们还在努力“稳定”个别商品的价格。

Governments, pushing up commodity prices by inflating their currencies, continue to blame the higher prices on private producers, sellers, and “profiteers.” They impose price ceilings on oil and natural gas, to discourage new exploration precisely when it is in most need of encouragement, or resort to general price and wage fixing or “monitoring.” They continue rent control in the face of the obvious devastation it has caused. They not only retain minimum wage laws but keep increasing their level, in face of the chronic unemployment they so clearly bring about. They continue to pass laws granting special privileges and immunities to labor unions; to oblige workers to become members; to tolerate mass picketing and other forms of coercion; and to compel employers to “bargain collectively in good faith” with such unions— i.e., to make at least some concessions to their demands. The intention of all these measures is to “help labor.” But the result is once more to create and prolong unemployment, and to lower total wage payments compared with what they might have been.

随着通货膨胀抬高了商品价格,各国政府不断将物价上涨的原因,怪罪到私人生产者、销售者以及所谓“奸商”头上。他们规定了石油和天然气的最高限价,在这些产品的生产恰恰是最需要得到鼓励的时候,政府阻碍了新的开发;或者,政府将全面地固定或是“监督”价格和工资;他们仍继续实施租金管制,尽管后者事实上已经造成了明显的灾难。他们不仅保留最低工资法令,而且面对法令所带来的明显的延续的失业,仍然不断提高最低工资标准。他们不断通过制定各种法律,给工会以各种特权和豁免权的支持;硬性要求劳工加入工会;容忍大规模的罢工纠察和其他形式的胁迫;强迫雇主和这些工会进行“集体的真诚的劳资谈判”——也就是说,对他们的要求至少要做出某种让步。所以这些措施的目的都是为了“帮助劳工”,但结果却是又一次制造和延续了失业,同时还减少了总体工资支付,使劳工工资达不到应有的水平。

Most politicians continue to ignore the necessity of profits, to overestimate their average or total net amount, to denounce unusual profits anywhere, to tax them excessively, and sometimes even to deplore the very existence of profits.

大多数政治人物仍在忽视利润的必要性,夸大雇主们的平均利润或净收入总量,反对任何非正常利润,并对它们课以重税。有的时侯,他们甚至对利润本身的存在感到深恶痛绝。

The anticapitalistic mentality seems more deeply embedded than ever. Whenever there is any slowdown in business, the politicians now see the main cause as “insufficient consumer spending.” At the same time that they encourage more consumer spending they pile up further disincentives and penalties in the way of saving and investment. Their chief method of doing this today, as we have already seen, is to embark on or accelerate inflation. The result is that today, for the first time in history, no nation is on a metallic standard, and practically every nation is swindling its own people by printing a chronically depreciating paper currency.

在人们的观念中,反资本主义的思想渗透得比以往更深了。每当经济不景气,政治人物就认为“消费者支出不足”是主要原因。于是,它们一方面鼓励消费者增加支出,另一方面制定更多的妨碍性和惩罚性措施去限制储蓄和投资。我们说过,当今各国政府的主要做法,是制造或加速通货膨胀。结果是,经济发展到今天已经没有一个国家是金属本位的货币政策了,几乎每个国家都通过印制长期贬值的纸币来讹诈它们的人民。

To pile one more item on this heap, let us examine the recent tendency, not only in the United States but abroad, for almost every “social” program, once launched upon, to get completely out of hand. We have already glanced at the overall picture, but let us now look more closely at one outstanding example — Social Security in the United States.

最后,让我们看看最近的一种趋势。政府一旦推行带有“社会”二字的计划,就会完全失控,不仅在美国是如此,在其他所有国家都是如此。对于政府干预,我们已经看了个大概,现在让我们来细看一个当今尤为突出的例子——美国的社保制度。

The original federal Social Security Act was passed in 1935. The theory behind it was that the greater part of the relief problem was that people did not save in their working years, and so, when they were too old to work, they found themselves without resources. This problem could be solved, it was thought, if they were compelled to insure themselves, with employers also compelled to contribute half the necessary premiums, so that they would have a pension sufficient to retire on at age sixty-five or over. Social Security was to be entirely a self-financed insurance plan based on strict actuarial principles. A reserve fund was to be set up sufficient to meet future claims and payments as they fell due.

最早的联邦社会保险法案是1935年通过的。这个法案背后的理论是:大部分社会救济问题,在于人们有工作收入时没把钱存下来,到上了年纪才发现自己没有积蓄安度晚年。立法者认为这个问题可以解决,如果劳工被强制性地给自己保险,同时雇主也被强制性地为劳工负担一半的保费,这样一来,等劳工在65岁或更高年龄退休时,他们就会有足够的退休金安度晚年。社会保障基于严格的精算原则,被设计成完全自偿性保险。设立的社保基金足以应对将来的理赔申请和到期的社保支领。

It never worked out that way. The reserve fund existed mainly on paper. The government spent the Social Security tax receipts, as they came in, either to meet its ordinary expenses or to pay out benefits. Since 1975, current benefit payments have exceeded the system’s tax receipts.

但是实际的运作从来都没有依照这种设计执行过。社保基金只是账面数字。社保金收缴上来之后就被政府挪作它用,用于满足其经常性开支,或者向某些人提供津贴。自1975年以来,当期的社保发放金额已经超过这套制度的社保金缴入金额。

It also turned out that in practically every session Congress found ways to increase the benefits paid, broaden the coverage, and add new forms of “social insurance.” As one commentator pointed out in 1965, a few weeks after Medicare insurance was added: “Social Security sweeteners have been enacted in each of the past seven general election years.

这很自然地产生了每届国会都要寻求增加社保名目的局面,例如增加社保支付、扩大社保覆盖面、增加新形式的“社会保障”。就像在1965年加进医保计划之后不久,一位评论家所指出的那样:“过去七次大选之年,社保名目每次都有增加。”

As inflation developed and progressed, Social Security benefits were increased not only in proportion, but much more. The typical political ploy was to load up benefits in the present and push costs into the future. Yet that future always arrived; and each few years later Congress would again have to increase payroll taxes levied on both workers and employers.

随着通货膨胀的发展和推进,社保金额也必然有所增加。然而,其增长率并不与通货膨胀的发展幅度相同,而是比后者要大得多。典型的政治手段是在眼前积聚起大量的保险费,而将成本推到未来去消化。然而,未来总是要到来的,每过几年,国会将不得不再次提高劳工和雇主缴纳的社保金。

Not only were the tax rates continuously increased, but there was a constant rise in the amount of salary taxed. In the original 1935 bill the salary taxed was only the first $3,000. The early tax rates were very low. But between 1965 and 1977, for example, the Social Security tax shot up from 4.4 percent on the first $6,600 of earned income (levied on employer and employee alike) to a combined 11.7 percent on the first $16,500 (Between 1960 and 1977, the total annual tax increased by 572 percent, or about 12 percent a year compounded. It is scheduled to go much higher.) At the beginning of 1977, unfunded liabilities of the Social Security system were officially estimated at $4.1 trillion.

除了社保金提留比率不断增加,纳入社保缴纳基数的薪金也在不断增加。最早的1935年社保法案中,规定薪金收入的前3,000美元作为社保缴纳基数,并且提留比率很低。1965年规定薪金收入的前6,600美元作为社保缴纳基数,提留比率4.4%(雇主和员工都必须缴纳),到1977年基数激增为前16,500美元,提留比率11.7%。(从1960年到1977年,年度总社保入账增加了572%,按复利计算平均每年增长12%。来年计划中的涨幅比这更高。)

根据官方统计,1977年初,社会保险系统的无资金准备的负债高达4.1万亿美元。{endnotes:现在的社保提留比率是15.3%。据估计,到2010年,美国的社保体系将破产。}

No one can say today whether Social Security is really an insurance program or just a complicated and lopsided relief system. The bulk of the present benefit recipients are being assured that they “earned” and “paid for” their benefits. Yet no private insurance company could have afforded to pay existing benefit scales out of the “premiums” actually received. As of early 1978, when low-paid workers retire, their monthly benefits generally represent about 60 percent of what they earned on the job. Middle-income workers receive about 45 percent. For those with exceptionally high salaries, the ratio can fall to or 10 percent. If Social Security is thought of as a relief system, however, it is a very strange one, for those who have already been getting the highest salaries receive the highest dollar benefits.

如今,谁也无法说明社保制度真的是一个保险计划呢,还是只是一种复杂而不平衡的救济制度。政府总是设法证明,那些众多的受益者所领取的社保金是他们“挣得的”、是他们“出了钱的”。可是,还没有哪家私人保险公司,有能力从实际收取的“保费”中支付现有规模的社保金。1978年初,低收入劳工退休的时候,每月领取的社保相当于工作收入的60%左右。中等收入劳工领取的社保约为原来收入的45%。薪资特别高的人领取的社保约为原来收入的5%或10%。如果我们把社保制度看作是一种救济制度,那它就是一种很奇怪的救济制度。因为,那些已经领取最高工资的人得到了最高水平的保险收益。

Yet Social Security today is still sacrosanct. It is considered political suicide for any congressman to suggest cutting down or cutting back not only present but promised future benefits. The American Social Security system must stand today as a frightening symbol of the almost inevitable tendency of any national relief, redistribution, or “insurance scheme, once established, to run completely out of control.

然而,今天的社会保险制度仍然神圣不可侵犯。如果哪位国会议员胆敢提议取消或削减现在或未来的社保支付,那无异于政治自杀。如今,美国社会保险制度是一种令人畏惧的象征,它代表了一种近乎必然的趋势,即,在任何国家中救济、再分配或是“保险计划”,一旦形成,它们就会不可避免地发展到一种完全无法收拾的地步。

In brief, the main problem we face today is not economic, but political. Sound economists are in substantial agreement concerning what ought to be done. Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment. It is the proper sphere of government to create and enforce a framework of law that prohibits force and fraud. But it must refrain from specific economic interventions. Government’s main economic function is to encourage and preserve a free market. When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.” It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.

简单地说,我们今天面对的主要问题,不是经济上的,而是政治上的。著名的经济学家们已经就怎么做达成了共识。实际上,政府为重分配财富和收入所做的种种努力,只会扼杀生产积极性,并导致普遍贫困化。政府真正该做的事,是建立和执行一套法律架构,禁止暴力和欺诈。政府一定不要去干预个别的经济活动。政府的主要经济职能是鼓励并保障一个自由的市场。当亚历山大大帝去拜访哲学家第欧根尼,居高临下地问哲人有什么请求时,据说,第欧根尼回答道:“是的。请挪尊步,不要挡着我晒太阳。”每位公民都有权对政府这么要求。

The outlook is dark, but it is not entirely without hope. Here and there one can detect a break in the clouds. More and more people are becoming aware that government has nothing to give them without first taking it away from somebody else—or from themselves. Increased handouts to selected groups mean merely increased taxes, or increased deficits and increased inflation. And inflation, in the end, misdirects and disorganizes production. Even a few politicians are beginning to recognize this, and some of them even to state it clearly.

举目阴云蔽日,但并不是完全没有希望。总有某些地方,阳光会破云而出。越来越多人开始意识到,政府不会无中生有给他们什么东西,而不需要把那些东西从别人——或者他们自已——手中抢过来。特定群体享受更多优待,只能是意味着税负加重、赤字增加、通货膨胀加剧。而最终,通货膨胀将把生产引上错误的轨道,并破坏生产的组织。有些政治人物也开始认清这一点,其中有的人甚至清楚明白地把它讲出来。

In addition, there are marked signs of a shift in the intellectual winds of doctrine. Keynesians and New Dealers seem to be in a slow retreat. Conservatives, libertarians, and other defenders of free enterprise are becoming more outspoken and more articulate. And there are many more of them. Among the young, there is a rapid growth of a disciplined school of “Austrian” economists.

此外,人们的信条也存在着明显的变化趋势。凯恩斯学派和新政实行者们逐渐退场。保守派、自由派和其它自由企业的支持者们更加坦率清晰地表达着自己的观点。而且,这样的人越来越多。在年轻一辈中,由一些受到良好教育和训练的经济学者形成的“奥地利学派”快速崛起。

There is a real promise that public policy may be reversed before the damage from existing measures and trends has become irreparable.

真正的出路在于,趁目前的各种措施造成伤害还没有达到不可收拾之前,公共政策干预经济的局面必须扭转。

Economics in One Lesson校译之26. The Lesson After Thirty Years (2-1)

The Lesson after Thirty Years

第三篇 三十年后的这堂课
第26章 三十年后的这堂课

The first edition of this book appeared in 1946. It is now, as I write this, thirty-two years later. How much of the lesson expounded in the previous pages has been learned in this period?

本书第一版是1946年面市的。我现在写这段文字时,一晃已经过了32年。在这三十年间,本书当年所阐述的那些教训,我们真正学到了多少呢?

If we are referring to the politicians—to all those responsible for formulating and imposing government policies—practically none of it has been learned. On the contrary, the policies analyzed in the preceding chapters are far more deeply established and widespread, not only in the United States, but in practically every country in the world, than they were when this book first appeared.

若拿这话问那些政治人物,也就是那些对于制定和实施经济政策负有责任的人,那么他们根本没学到什么。相反,本书反对过的各种经济干预政策,如今远比三十年前更深重、更盛行,不仅在美国是这样,在世界各国都是这样。

We may take, as the outstanding example, inflation. This is not only a policy imposed for its own sake, but an inevitable result of most of the other interventionist policies. It stands today as the universal symbol of government intervention everywhere.

以尤为突出的通货膨胀政策为例。实施通货膨胀政策并不单纯是因为其自身的缘故,而且它同样也是其他经济干预政策所带来的一个不可避免的结果。今天,通货膨胀已经成为各国政府干预经济的普遍象征。

The 1946 edition explained the consequences of inflation, but the inflation then was comparatively mild. True, though federal government expenditures in 1926 had been less than $3 billion and there was a surplus, by fiscal year 1946 expenditures had risen to $55 billion and there was a deficit of $16 billion. Yet in fiscal year 1947, with the war ended, expenditures fell to $35 billion and there was an actual surplus of nearly $4 billion. By fiscal year 1978, however, expenditures had soared to $45’ billion and the deficit to $49 billion.

1946年版中阐明了通货膨胀的后果,但是当时的通货膨胀相对温和得多。我们看到,美国联邦政府1926年的财政支出不到30亿美元,并且有财政盈余。相比之下,虽然在1946财政年度,支出上升到550亿美元,赤字为160亿美元。在战争结束后的1947财政年度,支出降到350亿美元,还出现了40亿美元的财政盈余。但到了1978财政年度,支出飚升到4,510亿美元,财政赤字竟达490亿美元。

All this has been accompanied by an enormous increase in the stock of money—from $113 billion of demand deposits plus currency outside of banks in 1947, to $357 billion in August 1978. In other words, the active money supply has been more than tripled in the period.

这一切都伴随着货币存量的激增——美元的活期存款与银行体系之外的现金总和从1947年的1,130亿美元直升到1978年8月的3,570亿美元。也就是说,三十年间,流通货币的供应超过了原来的3倍。

The effect of this increase in money has been a dramatic increase in prices. The consumer price index in 1946 stood at In September1978 it was 199.3. Prices, in short, more than tripled.

货币供给高速增长导致物价急剧上涨。消费者物价指数从1946年的58.5飚升到1978年9月的199.3。也就是说,物价也是原来水平的3倍以上。{endnotes:经济学家亨德森报告说,“在1939年之后的56年中,通货膨胀率平均每年为4.4%。听起来很温和,加起来就不温和。实际上,通货膨胀做的不是加法,而是乘法,类似银行利息的复利计算。结果是,1939以来,物价上涨了998%。”(亨德森的〈同通胀娱乐与博弈〉,刊于《财富》1996年3月18日,第35页)}

The policy of inflation, as I have said, is partly imposed for its own sake. More than forty years after the publication of John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory, and more than twenty years after that book has been thoroughly discredited by analysis and experience, a great number of our politicians are still unceasingly recommending more deficit spending in order to cure or reduce existing unemployment. An appalling irony is that they are making these recommendations when the federal government has already been running a deficit for forty-one out of the last forty-eight years and when that deficit has been reaching dimensions of $50 billion a year. 

我已经指出通货膨胀政策的实施部分是由于其自身的缘故。凯恩斯的《就业、利息与货币通论》发表已经是40年前的事情,那本书被各种理论分析和实践经验所彻底质疑也已经有20年,时至今日,无数政治人物仍在不断主张实行大量的赤字支出,以对付和减少失业。极具讽刺的是,过去48年,联邦政府已有41年出现财政赤字,年均赤字高达500亿美元,程度如此严重,那些政治人物仍旧不断提出这种建议。{书后注:到1992年,财政预算赤字已达到2 900亿美元。此后,1995年的预算赤字下降到“只有”1 650亿美元。(《投资者财经日报》,1995年10月5日)}

An even greater irony is that, not satisfied with following such disastrous policies at home, our officials have been scolding other countries, notably Germany and Japan, for not following these “expansionary” policies themselves. This reminds one of nothing so much as Aesop’s fox, who, when he had lost his tail, urged all his fellow foxes to cut off theirs.

更具讽刺意味的是,美国政府官员根本不满足于自身采取这种灾难性的政策,他们甚至还谴责其他的国家(尤其是德国和日本)没有遵循这种“扩张性”的政策。就像伊索寓言里的狐狸,自己丢了尾巴之后,它就强烈要求其他所有的狐狸也都把尾巴割掉。

One of the worst results of the retention of the Keynesian myths is that it not only promotes greater and greater inflation, but that it systematically diverts attention from the real causes of our unemployment, such as excessive union wage-rates, minimum wage laws, excessive and prolonged unemployment insurance, and overgenerous relief payments.

抱持凯恩斯迷信的一个最坏结果是,不仅促使通货膨胀率急剧上升,而且用系统的手段,将人们的注意力从失业的真正成因上转移开,比如工会工资过高、最低工资法规、过度的长期失业保险,以及过分慷慨救济金。

But the inflation, though in part often deliberate, is today mainly the consequence of other government economic interventions. It is the consequence, in brief, of the Redistributive State—of all the policies of expropriating money from Peter in order to lavish it on Paul.

尽管通货膨胀有一部分是故意制造的,但今天的通货膨胀主要是政府诸多经济干预的后果。总之,它是国家再分配的一种后果——从张三那里征敛钱财,再把它随随便便地花在李四身上这种政策的后果。

This process would be easier to trace, and its ruinous effects easier to expose, if it were all done in some single measure—like the guaranteed annual income actually proposed and seriously considered by committees of Congress in the early 1970s. This was a proposal to tax still more ruthlessly all incomes above average and turn the proceeds over to all those living below a so-called minimum poverty line, in order to guarantee them an income— whether they were willing to work or not—”to enable them to live with dignity.” It would be hard to imagine a plan more clearly calculated to discourage work and production and eventually to impoverish everybody.

若整个过程采用单一措施,那么这个过程会比较容易追踪,其破坏性也比较容易揭示,例如20世纪70年代初在国会颇受重视的保证年收入提案。该提案建议对所有高于平均水平的收入课征更高的税收,用于救济生活在贫困线下的人,从而保证后者有一笔“能够过得去”的收入,而不管那些人愿意工作与否。如此明目张胆打击生产、包养懒汉的提案简直空前绝后,这只会让每个人都变穷。

But instead of passing any such single measure, and bringing on ruin in a single swoop, our government has preferred to enact a hundred laws that effect such a redistribution on a partial and selective basis. These measures may miss some needy groups entirely; but on the other hand they may shower upon other groups a dozen different varieties of benefits, subsidies, and other handouts. These include, to give a random list: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, veterans’ benefits, farm subsidies, subsidized housing, rent subsidies, school lunches, public employment on make-work jobs, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and direct relief of all kinds, including aid to the aged, the blind, and the disabled. The federal government has estimated that under these last categories it has been handing federal aid benefits to more than 4 million people—not to count what the states and cities are doing.

但是,我们的政府并没有采用这样一种单一的方法,它也不是在某个个别的干预中损害公众利益的。相反,政府更喜欢制定无数律令,并通过这些律令片面地、有选择性地实现再分配,这样的措施可能完全忽略了某些贫困群体的存在。同时,在另一方面,它又将使其它某些集团享受各种各样的好处,比如津贴、补助、以及其他优待。这些措施,随便列举一些:社保、老年医保、医疗补助、失业保险、食品券、退伍补助、农业补贴、住房补贴、租金补贴、学校午餐、创造工作机会的再就业计划、抚养子女的家庭援助,以及针对老人、盲人、残疾人等实施的各种直接救助。联邦政府统计表明,单单最后这类人,联邦财政救助对象超过400万,这还不 包括接受各州、市财政救助的人数。

One author has recently counted and examined no fewer than forty-four welfare programs. Government expenditures for these in 1976 totaled $187 billion. The combined average growth of these programs between 1971 and 1976 was 25 percent a year—2.5 times the rate of growth of estimated gross national product for the same period. Projected expenditures for 1979 are more than $250 billion. Coincident with the extraordinary growth of these welfare expenditures has been the development of a “national welfare industry,” now composed of 5 million public and private workers distributing payments and services to 50 million beneficiaries.

有位作者最近对至少44种福利方案进行了统计和详细调查。1976年,政府在这些计划上的总支出高达1,870亿美元。把这些计划合起来看,1971年到1976年,年均增长率为25%,是同期国民生产总值增长率的2.5倍。1979年的支出金额预计超过2,500亿美元。与这些福利支出急剧增长相一致的,是“国家福利产业”的发展。目前在这一产业公共部门和私人部门中的就业人数为500万,而从中获得报酬和服务好处的则有5 000万人。{脚注:霍布斯,《福利产业》Charles D. Hobbs, The Welfare Industry (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, 1978)}

Nearly every other Western country has been administering a similar assortment of aid programs—though sometimes a more integrated and less haphazard collection. And in order to do this they have been resorting to more and more Draconian taxation.

几乎每个西方国家都实施了类似的组合福利计划——有时整合化程度比较高,具有更少的随机性。无论如何,为了实施那些福利计划,各国只有征收越来越多的苛捐杂税。

We need merely point to Great Britain as one example. Its government has been taxing personal income from work (“earned” income) up to 83 percent, and personal income from investment (“unearned” income) up to 98 percent. Should it be surprising that it has discouraged work and investment and so profoundly discouraged production and employment? There is no more certain way to deter employment than to harass and penalize employers. There is no more certain way to keep wages low than to destroy every incentive to investment in new and more efficient machines and equipment. But this is becoming more and more the policy of governments everywhere. 

我们只需以英国为例来进行说明。英国政府对个人从工作中得到的收入(称为“劳动”所得)征收的所得税,税率最高达83%;从投资中得到的收入(称为“非劳动”所得)征收的所得税,税率最高达98%。这种税率直接打击工作和投资的积极性,如此全面地抑制了生产和就业,有什么令人吃惊呢?干扰和惩罚雇主是阻碍就业最明显的手段。同样,打击投资积极性,令人们不愿投资效率更高的新机器设备,是压低工资最明显的手段。然而越来越多这样的政策正被各国政府采用。{endnotes:在英国,所得税税率最高达40%,增值税税率为17.5%,资本利得税税率为33%。(1996年的《经济自由指数》(Index of Economic Freedom),布赖恩·约翰逊(Brian T. Johnson)和托马斯·希伊(Thomas P. Sheehy), The Heritage Foundation, 1996.)在1994年,各项税赋刮走了国民生产总值的34%。(《经济学人》(The Economist),1995年2月9日,第99页)}

Yet this Draconian taxation has not brought revenues to keep pace with ever more reckless government spending and schemes for redistributing wealth. The result has been to bring chronic and growing government budget deficits, and therefore chronic and mounting inflation, in nearly every country in the world.

但是,严苛的税赋并没有带来足够的财政收入,去满足重分配型政府诸多开支、以及诸多计划中的开支。结果是世界各国的政府都陷入长期的预算赤字和通货膨胀,并越陷越深。

For the last thirty years or so, Citibank of New York has been keeping a record of this inflation over ten-year periods. Its calculations are based on the cost-of-living estimates published by the individual governments themselves. In its economic letter of October 1977 it published a survey of inflation in fifty countries. These figures show that in 1976, for example, the West German mark, with the best record, had lost 35 percent of its purchasing power over the preceding ten years; that the Swiss franc had lost 40 percent, the American dollar 43 percent, the French franc 50 percent, the Japanese yen 57 percent, the Swedish krone 47 percent, the Italian lira 56 percent, and the British pound 61 percent. When we get to Latin America, the Brazilian cruzeiro had lost 89 percent of its value, and the Uruguayan, Chilean, and Argentine pesos more than 99 percent.

过去三十多年来,纽约花旗银行对10年期通货膨胀率进行了记录。其计算是基于各国政府自己公布的生活费用指数。在其1977年10月的经济通信中,公布了对50个国家通货膨胀的调查结果。该调查显示,截止1976年的最近十年内,表现最好的西德马克,购买力损失35%;瑞士法郎损失40%,美元损失43%,法国法郎损失50%,日元损失57%,瑞典克朗损失47%,意大利里拉损失56%,而英镑则损失了61%。至于拉美国家的购买力,巴西货币克鲁赛罗损失89%,乌拉圭、智利、阿根廷比索损失均达99%以上。

Though when compared with the record of a year or two before, the overall record of world currency depreciations was more moderate; the American dollar in 1977 was depreciating at an annual rate of 6 percent, the French franc of 8.6 percent, the Japanese yen of 9.1 percent, the Swedish krone of percent, the British pound of 14.5 percent, the Italian lira of 15.7 percent, and the Spanish peseta at an annual rate of 17.5 percent. As for Latin American experience, the Brazilian currency unit in 1977 was depreciating at an annual rate of 30.8 percent, the Uruguayan of 35.5, the Chilean of 53.9, and the Argentinean of 65.7.

尽管与一两年前的情况相比,世界通货贬值的总体状况有所缓和,但1977年的贬值率分别是,美元6%,法国法郎8.6%,日元9.1%,瑞典克朗9.5%,英镑14.5%,意大利里拉15.7%,西班牙比塞塔则达17.5%。至于拉美国家,巴西货币单位1977年贬值30.8%,乌拉圭比索35.5%,智利比索53.9%,阿根廷比索则高达65.7%。{endnotes:1994年各国货币的年通货膨胀率为:美国2.8%,法国1.7%,日本-2%,瑞典4.5%,英国2.4%,意大利4%,西班牙45%,巴西2 500%,乌拉圭40%,智利11%,阿根廷5%。(1996年的《经济自由指数》,布赖恩·约翰逊和托马斯·希伊, The Heritage Foundation, 1996.)}

I leave it to the reader to picture the chaos that these rates of depreciation of money were producing in the economies of these countries and the suffering in the lives of millions of their inhabitants.

请读者们想象一下货币大幅贬值所造成的国家经济混乱局面,以及这些国家无数居民所承受的生活困难。

As I have pointed out, these inflations, themselves the cause of so much human misery, were in turn in large part the consequence of other policies of government economic intervention. Practically all these interventions unintentionally illustrate and underline the basic lesson of this book. All were enacted on the assumption that they would confer some immediate benefit on some special group. Those who enacted them failed to take heed of their secondary consequences—failed to consider what their effect would be in the long run on all groups.

正如我已经指出的,这些通货膨胀本身导致了如此严重的人类灾难,可是它又主要是政府进行经济干预政策的后果。实际上,所有这些干预无意间阐明并凸显了本书的基本教训。因为这些政策的实施都是建立在可以给某些特殊群体带来即期利益的假定上。实施干预的人,未能对政策的续发后果进行考虑,也就是没有考虑到它们对所有群体产生的长期影响。

In sum, so far as the politicians are concerned, the lesson that this book tried to instill more than thirty years ago does not seem to have been learned anywhere.

总之,那些政治人物对这本书三十多年前就给出的教训似乎什么都没学到。

(未完待续)

Economics in One Lesson校译之25. The Lesson Restated (4-3,4)

第25章
课后温习

(接前面部分)

3

In the course of our study, also, we have rediscovered an old friend. He is the Forgotten Man of William Graham Sumner. The reader will remember that in Sumner’s essay, which appeared in 1883:

在我们的研究过程中,我们还重新发现了一位老朋友。他就是威廉·格雷厄姆·萨姆纳(William Graham Sumner)讲的“被遗忘的人”(Forgotten Man)。读者也许还记得,萨姆纳曾在他1883年发表的一篇文章中写道:

As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for .. What I want to do is to look up C…. I call him the Forgotten Man…. He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him.

一旦A发现某件事在他看来是错误的,害得X因此遭受苦难,便与B谈论此事,并且建议通过一项补救措施并向X提供帮助的法律。他们通过的法律,总是规定C应该为X做些什么,更好的情况则是A、B和C都应该为X做些什么……我想做的是挖掘一下C……我把他称作“被遗忘的人”……人们从来没有想到过他。他是改革家、社会投机家和慈善家的牺牲品。而我则想向你们指出,他的品格和人们加在他身上的各种负担值得大家去关注。

It is a historic irony that when this phrase, the Forgotten Man, was revived in the 1930s, it was applied, not to C, but to X; and C, who was then being asked to support still more Xs, was more completely forgotten than ever. It is C, the Forgotten Man, who is always called upon to stanch the politician’s bleeding heart by paying for his vicarious generosity.

然而,当“被遗忘的人” 一词在20世纪30年代再度被人提起时,不是指C,而是指X,真可说是历史的反讽。至于C,仍然被要求去支持更多的X们,和以前比起来,更是彻底遭人遗忘。就是这个C,这个被遗忘的人,还得经常响应政治号召去献爱心,使那些政治家们的灵魂得到慰籍。

4

Our study of our lesson would not be complete if, before we took leave of it, we neglected to observe that the fundamental fallacy with which we have been concerned arises not accidentally but systematically. It is an almost inevitable result, in fact, of the division of labor.

在结束本书之前,假如我们没能认识到,出现本书所分析的根本谬误并不是偶然的这一点,那么我们的分析就是不彻底的。事实上,这种系统性谬误是劳动分工所不可避免的结果之一。

In a primitive community, or among pioneers, before the division of labor has arisen, a man works solely for himself or his immediate family. What he consumes is identical with what he produces. There is always a direct and immediate connection between his output and his satisfactions.

在尚未出现劳动分工的原始社会里,或者在那些拓荒者之中,每个人都是单纯为了他自己或他的直接家属而工作的。他的消费与他的生产完全一致,而在其产出与满足之间,总也存在着一种直接的联系。

But when an elaborate and minute division of labor has set in, this direct and immediate connection ceases to exist. I do not make all the things I consume but, perhaps, only one of them. With the income I derive from making this one commodity, or rendering this one service, I buy all the rest. I wish the price of everything I buy to be low, but it is in my interest for the price of the commodity or services that I have to sell to be high. Therefore, though I wish to see abundance in everything else, it is in my interest for scarcity to exist in the very thing that it is my business to supply. The greater the scarcity, compared to everything else, in this one thing that I supply, the higher will be the reward that I can get for my efforts.

但是当更为细致的社会化分工出现,这种直接和立即的关联就不复存在。我消费的东西,不全是我生产的,我可能只生产其中一样。我用我生产的商品、用我提供的服务所赚来的钱,去购买其他我所需要的商品或服务。我希望我购买的每一样东西,价格越便宜越好,但是我生产的商品、我提供的服务,价格要越高越好。我希望其他所有的东西越丰富越好,至于我自己所生产的那类产品,我希望越稀缺越好。常言道,物以稀为贵,若能得遂所愿,我付出的努力就能得到更丰厚的回报。

This does not necessarily mean that I will restrict my own efforts or my own output. In fact, if I am only one of a substantial number of people supplying that commodity or service, and if free competition exists in my line, this individual restriction will not pay me. On the contrary, if I am a grower of wheat, say, I want my particular crop to be as large as possible. But if I am concerned only with my own material welfare, and have no humanitarian scruples, I want the output of all other wheat growers to be as low as possible; for I want scarcity in wheat (and in any foodstuff that can be substituted for it) so that my particular crop may command the highest possible price.

这并不一定意味着我会限制我自身的努力以减少自己的产出。事实上,跟我生产同样产品、提供同样服务的人是大有人在,我只是行业中普通的一员,而且我们这一行是自由竞争,如果我限制自己的努力和生产,对我自己并没有好处。相反,如果我是一个麦农,我会希望我所种植的小麦产量越高越好。倘若我仅仅考虑自己物质上的福利,而没有任何良心不安的话,我一定希望其他所有麦农的产量越低越好;我希望市面上小麦及其替代品供给出现短缺,我的收成就能卖到最好的价钱。

Ordinarily these selfish feelings would have no effect on the total production of wheat. Wherever competition exists, in fact, each producer is compelled to put forth his utmost efforts to raise the highest possible crop on his own land. In this way the forces of self-interest (which, for good or evil, are more persistently powerful than those of altruism) are harnessed to maximum output.

通常,上述这种自利动机对小麦的总产量不会产生任何影响。事实上,只要存在竞争,每位生产者都会尽最大的努力,在自己的土地上耕种尽可能多的农作物。这样,靠自利动机的力量(不管是好是坏,它比利他动机更持久且更具威力)就能使产出最大化。

But if it is possible for wheat growers or any other group of producers to combine to eliminate competition, and if the government permits or encourages such a course, the situation changes. The wheat growers may be able to persuade the national government—or, better, a world organization—to force all of them to reduce pro rata the acreage planted to wheat. In this way they will bring about a shortage and raise the price of wheat; and if the rise in the price per bushel is proportionately greater, as it well may be, than the reduction in output, then the wheat growers as a whole will be better off. They will get more money; they will be able to buy more of everything else. Everybody else, it is true, will be worse off: because, other things equal, everyone else will have to give more of what he produces to get less of what the wheat grower produces. So the nation as a whole will be just that much poorer. It will be poorer by the amount of wheat that has not been grown. But those who look only at the wheat farmers will see a gain, and miss the more than offsetting loss.

但是,如果所有麦农以及小麦替代品的所有生产者,能够联合起来消除竞争,而且政府允许或鼓励这种做法,形势就会发生逆转。麦农就会去说服本国政府(最好是说服相关国际组织),强迫所有的麦农等比例缩减小麦的种植面积。这样就会让小麦供不应求,进而抬高小麦价格;每蒲式耳小麦的价格涨幅,很可能大于产量的降幅,麦农整体上就会因此受益。他们会赚到更多的钱,也就可以买到更多的其它产品。然而,其他人的状况都会因此变差(假使其他条件不变),因为其他人都必须拿出更多自己生产的东西,来换取更少的小麦。很清楚,小麦减产的数量,就是整个国家财富减少的数量,国家因此变得比较贫穷。但那些只将目光放在麦农身上的人,看得到麦农因此获得的利益,却没看到其他所有人因此遭受更多的损失。

And this applies in every other line. If because of unusual weather conditions there is a sudden increase in the crop of oranges, all the consumers will benefit. The world will be richer by that many more oranges. Oranges will be cheaper. But that very fact may make the orange growers as a group poorer than before, unless the greater supply of oranges compensates or more than compensates for the lower price. Certainly if under such conditions my particular crop of oranges is no larger than usual, then I am certain to lose by the lower price brought about by general plenty.

这个道理,适用于其他每一种行业。如果因为气候反常,柑橘的收成突然大增,所有的消费者都会受益。柑橘增产多少,整个世界的富有程度就增加多少。但是,柑橘会卖不起价钱,这会使全体柑农比以前贫穷,除非大量的柑橘卖得出去,销量增加足以弥补降价的损失。当然了,如果在这种情况下,我的柑橘收成反而不如常年,我一定会因为普遍性丰收导致的低价而蒙受损失。

And what applies to changes in supply applies to changes in demand, whether brought about by new inventions and discoveries or by changes in taste. A new cotton-picking machine, though it may reduce the cost of cotton underwear and shirts to everyone, and increase the general wealth, will mean the employment of fewer cotton pickers. A new textile machine, weaving a better cloth at a faster rate, will make thousands of old machines obsolete, and wipe out part of the capital value invested in them, so making poorer the owners of those machines. The further development of nuclear power, though it can confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells.

适用于供给变化的原理,也会适用于需求发生的变化,无是此变化是由新发明或新发现引起的,还是消费者品味发生了改变。新型棉花采摘机,虽然可以降低每个人购买棉质内衣和衬衫的成本,并且提高整体的财富,但是受雇的棉花采摘工人数量会减少。新型纺织机器可以用更快的速度织出更好的衣料,但许多老式纺织机器却会因此遭淘汰,尚未收回本钱的淘汰机器,其部分投资将就此损失,其所有者当然变得比较贫穷。进一步开发核能发电,可以谋巨福于人类,但煤矿和油井的业主却会因此烦恼忧愁。

Just as there is no technical improvement that would not hurt someone, so there is no change in public taste or morals, even for the better, that would not hurt someone. An increase in sobriety would put thousands of bartenders out of business. A decline in gambling would force croupiers and racing touts to seek more productive occupations. A growth of male chastity would ruin the oldest profession in the world.

没有一种技术改进不会伤害某个人,同样的道理,大众的品味与道德的变化,即使是更高雅更好,不会伤害到某个人。若更多人都变得清醒克制, 无数酒吧间招待员将因此失业。若赌风日衰,在赌场和赛马场营生的人就只好另谋更有效率的职业。男人更懂得洁身自爱,世界上最古老的行业就会陷入绝境。

But it is not merely those who deliberately pander to men s vices who would be hurt by a sudden improvement in public morals. Among those who would be hurt most are precisely those whose business it is to improve those morals. Preachers would have less to complain about; reformers would lose their causes; the demand for their services and contributions for their support would decline. If there were no criminals we should need fewer lawyers, judges and firemen, and no jailers, no locksmiths, and (except for such services as untangling traffic snarls) even no policemen.

然而,公众道德水准突然提高,受到伤害的不仅仅是以迎合人们低俗趣味为职业的人。那些毕生致力改善社会风气的人,受到的伤害更大。牧师面前做忏悔的人会减少;社会改革家再也没了动力;人们对他们的服务的需求减弱了,对他们的财经支持也就没了。如果没有人犯罪,我们就不需要那么多律师、法官、消防队员,也不需要监狱看守和锁匠,甚至可以不要警察(交通警察除外)。

Under a system of division of labor, in short, it is difficult to think of a greater fulfillment of any human need which would not, at least temporarily, hurt some of the people who have made investments or painfully acquired skill to meet that precise need. If progress were completely even all around the circle, this antagonism between the interests of the whole community and of the specialized group would not, if it were noticed at all, present any serious problem. If in the same year as the world wheat crop increased, my own crop increased in the same proportion, if the crop of oranges and all other agricultural products increased correspondingly, and if the output of all industrial goods also rose and their unit cost of production fell to correspond, then I as a wheat grower would not suffer because the output of wheat had increased. The price that I got for a bushel of wheat might decline. The total sum that I realized from my larger output might decline. But if I could also because of increased supplies buy the output of everyone else cheaper, then I should have no real cause to complain. If the price of everything else dropped in exactly the same ratio as the decline in the price of my wheat, I should be better off, in fact, exactly in proportion to my increased total crop; and everyone else, likewise, would benefit proportionately from the in creased supplies of all goods and services.

总之,在这样一种劳动分工制度下,我们很难完美地满足人类的需求。因为,要做到这一点,我们至少会暂时地伤害一些已经作出投资的人、已经为此苦练技能的人。如果各个经济领域都是非常均衡的共同增长,那就不存在特殊群体与整个社会之间的利益对抗,就算有,也不会构成任何严重问题。如果同一年全球的小麦收成同步增加,我的小麦收成也同比例增加,与此同时,柑橘和其他所有农作物的收成同时增加,所有工业产品的产出也增加,单位生产成本相对下降,那么我这位麦农不会因为小麦产量增加而受到伤害。虽然,每蒲式耳小麦的价格可能下跌,我的产量增加也没能完全弥补总收入的减少,但是,如果其他每个人的供应量增加,我也能用更便宜的价格卖到他们的产品,算下来大家扯平,那就没有什么好抱怨的。如果其他每一样东西的价格跌幅,和我的小麦价格跌幅完全相同,我的富裕程度会和我收成增加的幅度同比例上升;其他每个人的富裕程度,也会和所有产品与服务供给增加的幅度同比例上升。

But economic progress never has taken place and probably never will take place in this completely uniform way. Advance occurs now in this branch of production and now in that. And if there is a sudden increase in the supply of the thing I help to produce, or if a new invention or discovery makes what I produce no longer necessary, then the gain to the world is a tragedy to me and to the productive group to which I belong.

这种齐头并进的经济增长方式从未发生过,并且永远也不可能发生。经济增长只可能是在不同领域以不同的步调增长,此起彼伏。如果我生产的那种商品,其供应量突然大增,或者如果新发明或新发现,使得我生产的那种商品不再有人需要,这些使整个世界获益的好事情,对我和我的同行们来讲,都是一场悲剧。

Now it is often not the diffused gain of the increased supply or new discovery that most forcibly strikes even the disinterested observer, but the concentrated loss. The fact that there is more and cheaper coffee for everyone is lost sight of; what is seen is merely that some coffee growers cannot make a living at the lower price. The increased output of shoes at lower cost by the new machine is forgotten; what is seen is a group of men and women thrown out of work. It is altogether proper—it is, in fact, essential to a full understanding of the problem—that the plight of these groups be recognized, that they be dealt with sympathetically, and that we try to see whether some of the gains from this specialized progress cannot be used to help the victims find a productive role elsewhere.

但是即使公正无私的观察者,也总是注目在最显眼的集中的损伤,而非因为增产或新发明而带来的广为扩散的好处。每个人都在享用更多价廉物美的咖啡,这个事实没有人注意;人们看到的,只是咖啡种植者们因为咖啡豆买不起价钱而生活难以维继。新机器以更低的成本,提高鞋子的产量,这个事实没有人注意;人们看到的,只是一群男女劳工的生计因此没有着落。诚然,我们应该从总体上认识到这些群体的困境并且富有同情心地帮助他们解决问题,努力去分析能否 利用在这一特殊进程中得到的收益去帮助这些人,使他 们得以另谋更具生产意义的职业,事实上,这还是对问题获得全面的了解所必须的。

But the solution is never to reduce supplies arbitrarily, to prevent further inventions or discoveries, or to support people for continuing to perform a service that has lost its value. Yet this is what the world has repeatedly sought to do by protective tariffs, by the destruction of machinery, by the burning of coffee, by a thousand restriction schemes. This is the insane doctrine of wealth through scarcity.

然而,问题的解决方法,绝对不可以是硬性地去压缩供给、去阻止进一步的发明或发现,或是支持鼓励人们继续从事已经失去价值的工作。但事实上,这正是当今世界各国政府竞相利用开征保护性关税,捣毁机器、烧毁咖啡树,以及无数的限制性措施而力求达到的结果。这种通过制造短缺来创造财富的信条,实在是疯狂透顶。

It is a doctrine that may always be privately true, unfortunately, for any particular group of producers considered in isolation — if they can make scarce the one thing they have to sell while keeping abundant all the things they have to buy. But it is a doctrine that is always publicly false. It can never be applied all around the circle. For its application would mean economic suicide.

遗憾的是,当我们孤立地考虑任何生产者集团的利益时,这种观点往往说得通——倘使这些集团真的能够使得其产品出现短缺,同时又使他们购买的其它产品保证充分供应的话。然而,这种信条推而广之则是荒谬的,它绝不适用于整个经济领域。因为那么做无异于经济自杀。

And this is our lesson in its most generalized form. For many things that seem to be true when we concentrate on a single economic group are seen to be illusions when the interests of everyone, as consumer no less than as producer, are considered.

最后,来高度概括一下我们这一课:当我们专注于某个单一经济群体时,看起来可能是千真万确的许多事情,在转而考虑既是消费者又是生产者的每一个人的利益时,却有可能是一串错觉。

To see the problem as a whole, and not in fragments: that is the goal of economic science.

认识问题的整体而不是片面,这就是经济科学的目标。

Economics in One Lesson校译之25. The Lesson Restated (4-1,2)

The Lesson Restated
第25章
课后温习

Economics, as we have now seen again and again, is a science of recognizing secondary consequences. It is also a science of seeing general consequences. It is the science of tracing the effects of some proposed or existing policy not only on some special interest in the short run, but on the general interest in the long run.

正如我们反复认识到的,经济学是一门认识种种续发后果的科学,同时还是一门分析总体后果的科学。它研究的是某些现行政策或者政策建议的后果,不仅仅限于比较短的时期某些特殊利益集团,而且是在长期内对整体的后果。

This is the lesson that has been the special concern of this book. We stated it first in skeleton form, and then put flesh and skin on it through more than a score of practical applications.

这便是本书所特别关注的教训。我们首先给出了其骨架结构,然后以各种实际应用的例子,使之有血有肉。

But in the course of specific illustration we have found hints of other general lessons; and we should do well to state these lessons to ourselves more clearly.

就在对个例的阐述中,我们也发现了其他一些更为普遍的教训的线索;我们应该就这些教训作出更好更清楚的说明。

In seeing that economics is a science of tracing consequences, we must have become aware that, like logic and mathematics, it is a science of recognizing inevitable implications.

在认识到经济学是一门探究各种后果的科学时,我们必须懂得,就象逻辑学和数学一样,经济学是认识那些必然结果的科学。

We may illustrate this by an elementary equation in algebra. Suppose we say that if x = then x + y = 12. The “solution” to this equation is that y equals 7; but this is so precisely because the calculation tells us in effect that)? equals 7. It does not make that assertion directly, but it inevitably implies it.

我们用个简单的代数方程来说明这一点。假设x=5,且x+y=12。这个方程“解”是y=7。答案之所以确切无疑,是因为这个方程式事实上告诉了我们y等于7。它并没有直接地给出这一结果,但它却必然蕴含了这个结果。

What is true of this elementary equation is true of the most complicated and abstruse equations encountered in mathematics. The answer already lies in the statement of the problem. It must, it is true, be “worked out.” The result, it is true, may sometimes come to the man who works out the equation as a stunning surprise. He may even have a sense of discovering something entirely new—a thrill like that of “some watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken.” His sense of discovery may be justified by the theoretical or practical consequences of his answer. Yet the answer was already contained in the formulation of the problem. It was merely not recognized at once. For mathematics reminds us that inevitable implications are not necessarily obvious implications.

这个简单的方程式所蕴含的道理就是数学中其它最复杂、最深奥的方程式也要遵循的。答案已经蕴含于问题的陈述之中。因此,必须把它“解出来”。的确,出现的结果有的时候出乎解题的人的意料,甚至有一种感觉,好象发祥了某种全新的东西——那种兴奋战栗,就象“天文观测者猛然发现一颗新行星游入了他的视野”。对其答案进行理论的和实际的分析所得到的结果而言,他的这种创造感也名至实归。然而,答案的确早已蕴含在问题的陈述里了,只不过并非一目了然。数学的研究告诉我们:必然的结果未必是显然的结果。

All this is equally true of economics. In this respect economics might be compared also to engineering. When an engineer has a problem, he must first determine all the facts bearing on that problem. If he designs a bridge to span two points, he must first know the exact distance between these two points, their precise topographical nature, the maximum load his bridge will be designed to carry, the tensile and compressive strength of the steel or other material of which the bridge is to be built, and the stresses and strains to which it may be subjected. Much of this factual research has already been done for him by others. His predecessors, also, have already evolved elaborate mathematical equations by which, knowing the strength of his materials and the stresses to which they will be subjected, he can determine the necessary diameter, shape, number and structure of his towers, cables and girders.

所有这些对于经济学来说同样适用。在这方面,经济学也可以拿工程来比喻。工程师处理问题的时候,必须先确定对那个问题有影响的所有事实。如果他要设计一座桥梁来连接两地,就必须先知道这两个点之间的精确距离、两点附近确实的地形特性、桥梁所要承受的最大载荷、建桥用的钢材或其他材料的抗张和抗压强度,以及桥梁应该具有的应力和应变等等。这些参数方面的实际研究已经由其他人完成了。他的前辈们早已推出了复杂精确的数学方程式,从这些方程式出发,根据他已经掌握了的材料的强度和桥梁应当达到的应力,他就能确定索塔、斜拉索、主梁的必要直径、形状、数量和结构。

In the same way the economist, assigned a practical problem, must know both the essential facts of that problem and the valid deductions to be drawn from those facts. The deductive side of economics is no less important than the factual. One can say of it what Santayana says of logic (and what could be equally well said of mathematics), that it “traces the radiation of truth,” so that “when one term of a logical system is known to describe a fact, the whole system attaching to that term becomes, as it were, incandescent.”

同样,当一个经济学家确定了自己所要分析的问题时,他必须用类似的方法了解与其问题有关的基本事实,以及从这些事实中可以得出的有根据的推论。在经济学分析中,演绎推理与了解事实是同等重要的。我们可以引用桑塔雅纳论述逻辑学的话来讲经济学(它同样适用于数学),即它是“探寻真理之光的辐射”,因此,“当人们懂得了逻辑体系中的一个词,并用它来描述事实时,与这个词联系在一起的整个逻辑体系就会豁然明朗”。{脚注:桑塔雅纳,《真理的境界》George Santayana, The Realm of Truth (1938), p. 16.}

Now few people recognize the necessary implications of the economic statements they are constantly making. When they say that the way to economic salvation is to increase credit, it is just as if they said that the way to economic salvation is to increase debt: these are different names for the same thing seen from opposite sides. When they say that the way to prosperity is to increase farm prices, it is like saying that the way to prosperity is to make food dearer for the city worker. When they say that the way to national wealth is to pay out governmental subsidies, they are in effect saying that the way to national wealth is to increase taxes. When they make it a main objective to increase exports, most of them do not realize that they necessarily make it a main objective ultimately to increase imports. When they say, under nearly all conditions, that the way to recovery is to increase wage rates, they have found only another way of saying that the way to recovery is to increase costs of production.

现在,很少有人能够真正懂得,他们不断提出的各种经济主张会有什么样的必然结果。当他们说,拯救经济的方式就是增加信贷,就等于是说,加重债务就能拯救经济。二者是同一事物,从不同侧面去看,便有了含义不同的名称。当他们说,繁荣之道是提高农产品的价格,就等于是说,让城市劳工购买的食物价格变贵就能迈向繁荣。当他们说,增加国家财富的方法是政府提供补贴,就等于是说,加重税负就能增进国家的财富。当他们主张以增加出口为主要目标的时候,大多数人并没有意识到,应该相应制定一个扩大进口的目标。当他们说,任何情况下,刺激经济复苏的方法是提高工资率,就等于拐弯抹角表示,只有提高生产成本才能促使经济复苏。

It does not necessarily follow, because each of these propositions, like a coin, has its reverse side, or because the equivalent proposition, or the other name for the remedy, sounds much less attractive, that the original proposal is under all conditions unsound. There may be times when an increase in debt is a minor consideration as against the gains achieved with the borrowed funds; when a government subsidy is unavoidable to achieve a certain military purpose; when a given industry can afford an increase in production costs, and so on. But we ought to make sure in each case that both sides of the coin have been considered, that all the implications of a proposal have been studied. And this is seldom done.

上述种种说法都象硬币一样有其相反的一面,可能因为我们观察的角度不同,或是为了说得更全面一些而换了一种说法,现在它们听起来似乎不如原来有吸引力。当然,这不一定表示,那些主张在所有的情况下都站不住脚。有些时候,借来的资金可以产生很大的收益,加重债务也许算不得什么;有些时候,为达到军事目的,政府在个别情况下进行补贴也是不可避免的;而且,有的时候,个别产业也负担得起生产成本的增加;诸如此类。不过,不管是哪一种状况,我们都务必要同时考虑硬币的两面,去探讨经济政策提案所蕴含的的所有结果。事实上,人们很少能做到这一点。

2

The analysis of our illustrations has taught us another incidental lesson. This is that, when we study the effects of various proposals, not merely on special groups in the short run, but on all groups in the long run, the conclusions we arrive at usually correspond with those of unsophisticated common sense. It would not occur to anyone unacquainted with the prevailing economic half-literacy that it is good to have windows broken and cities destroyed; that it is anything but waste to create needless public projects; that it is dangerous to let idle hordes of men return to work; that machines which increase the production of wealth and economize human effort are to be dreaded; that obstructions to free production and free consumption increase wealth; that a nation grows richer by forcing other nations to take its goods for less than they cost to produce; that saving is stupid or wicked and that squandering brings prosperity.

我们对例证所作的分析,从另一方面给了我们一点附带的启发。那就是说,当我们不仅仅从短期的某一集团的利益出发,而同样研究了各种各样的建议对所有集团长期利益的影响时,我们所得到的结论通产符合那些最简单的常识。不了解当今流行经济观点的“半文盲”们也根本不会想到,橱窗被砸破、城市毁于战火是件好事;或者兴建一些并不需要的公共工程不算纯粹浪费;或者政府裁撤冗员让闲人重回劳动市场非常危险;或者添置能增进财富创造、让工作更省 力的机器会令人不寒而栗;或者对自由生产和自由消费设置障碍就可以增加财富;或者迫使其它国家以低于生产成本的价格,购买我们的产品,可以让我们变得更加富裕;或者储蓄是既愚蠢又邪恶的行为以及挥霍享用才能带来繁荣。

“What is prudence in the conduct of every private family,” said Adam Smith’s strong common sense in reply to the sophists of his time, “can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.” But lesser men get lost in complications. They do not reexamine their reasoning even when they emerge with conclusions that are palpably absurd. The reader, depending upon his own beliefs, may or may not accept the aphorism of Bacon that “A little philosophy inclineth men’s minds to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.” It is certainly true, however, that a little economics can easily lead to the paradoxical and preposterous conclusions we have just rehearsed, but that depth in economics brings men back to common sense. For depth in economics consists in looking for all the consequences of a policy instead of merely resting one’s gaze on those immediately visible.

亚当·斯密用极其普通的常识,回应当时的诡辩家说:“在每一个家庭的管理中是精明的举措,用于一个大国的管理,很少会是错的。”但不智者就在复杂关系中迷失了。即使他们得出来的结论看上去就很荒唐,他们也不会重新检查自己的推导过程。哲学家培根说:“稍微懂点哲学的人会倾向于无神论,而深究哲理则会使人的思想更接近宗教。”依读者本身的信仰而定,可能接受,也可能不接受这句箴言。不过,下面这句话却千真万确:懂得一点点经济学很容易引导人们得出自相矛盾的十分荒谬的结论,而真正理解经济学则会使人的思想重新回到常识。因为通达的经济学在于向人们揭示一项经济政策的全部后果,而不是仅仅引导人们把目光停留在那些显而易见的现象上。

(未完待续)

Economics in One Lesson校译之24. The Assault on Saving (4-3,4)

第24章 抨击储蓄

(接前面部分)

3

The enemies of saving are not through. They begin by drawing a distinction, which is proper enough, between “savings” and “investment.” But then they start to talk as if the two were independent variables and as if it were merely an accident that they should ever equal each other. These writers paint a portentous picture. On the one side are savers automatically, pointlessly, stupidly continuing to save; on the other side are limited “investment opportunities” that cannot absorb this saving. The result, alas, is stagnation. The only solution, they declare, is for the government to expropriate these stupid and harmful savings and to invent its own projects, even if these are only useless ditches or pyramids, to use up the money and provide employment.

抨击储蓄的对手们并没有就此认输。他们起初对“储蓄”和“投资”加以区别,这确实是很恰当的。但是,在作出这种区别之后,他们又把储蓄和投资看作成了两个完全独立的变量,好象这两个变量能够彼此相等纯属偶然。这些经济作者勾勒出一幅奇特的画面。一方面,储蓄者会自动、无缘无故、愚蠢地闷头存钱;另一方面,可以吸收这些储蓄的“投资机会”却非常有限。至于结果,唉——,自然是经济迟滞不前。他们宣称,惟一的解决方法,是由政府出面征用这些愚蠢和有害的储蓄,投资到公共工程上,哪怕拿去搞些毫无用处的沟渠或者金字塔,总之要将钱花掉以扩大就业。

There is so much that is false in this picture and “solution” that we can here point only to some of the main fallacies. Savings can exceed investment only by the amounts that are actually hoarded in cash. Few people nowadays, in a modern industrial community, hoard coins and bills in stockings or under mattresses. To the small extent that this may occur, it has already been reflected in the production plans of business and in the price level. It is not ordinarily even cumulative: dishoarding, as eccentric recluses die and their hoards are discovered and dissipated, probably offsets new hoarding. In fact, the whole amount involved is probably insignificant in its effect on business activity.

以上观点及其“解决方案”包含太多的错误,这里我们只能选其主要错误加以指正。储蓄大于投资的部分,只相当于被真正蓄藏的现金。{footnotes:经济学家就这个问题的分歧,只是定义不同所致。你也可以对储蓄和投资给出相同的定义,那么二者肯定相等。在这里,我选择从货币的角度定义储蓄、从商品的角度定义投资。这个定义与人们对其字面意义的大体相同,但并不完全一致。}但在当今现代化的工业社会中,极少人会把硬币和钞票藏在袜子里面或床垫底下。就算这种可能性极小事情真的发生,它也已经反映在企业的生产计划和价格水平上。它甚至不具备通常的累积效果——行为古怪的隐居者生前蓄藏的现金被人找到,拿出来花光用光,可能就跟新出现的蓄藏现金额度相当。事实上,这方面的总金额都可能对经营活动的影响微不足道。

If money is kept either in savings banks or commercial banks, as we have already seen, the banks are eager to lend and invest it. They cannot afford to have idle funds. The only thing that will cause people generally to try to increase their holdings of cash, or that will cause banks to hold funds idle and lose the interest on them, is, as we have seen, either fear that prices of goods are going to fall or the fear of banks that they will be taking too great a risk with their principal. But this means that signs of a depression have already appeared, and have caused the hoarding, rather than that the hoarding has started the depression.

倘若象我们所看到的那样,人们把钱存入储蓄银行或商业银行,银行会急着把钱借出去或者拿去投资。银行付不起让资金闲置的代价。惟有当人们担心产品的价格下跌、当银行担心投资风险太大时,人们才会增加持有现金,银行让资金闲置。但这种迹象表明经济衰退已经显现,才造成贮存现金的行为,而不是贮存现金的行为引发经济衰退。

Apart from this negligible hoarding of cash, then (and even this exception might be thought of as a direct “investment” in money itself) savings and investment are brought into equilibrium with each other in the same way that the supply of and demand for any commodity are brought into equilibrium. For we may define savings and investment as constituting respectively the supply of and demand for new capital. And just as the supply of and demand for any other commodity are equalized by price, so the supply of and demand for capital are equalized by interest rates. The interest rate is merely the special name for the price of loaned capital. It is a price like any other.

撇开这种可以忽略的现金贮存不考虑(即使是这种例外情形,也可以视为直接“投资”于货币本身),储蓄和投资会趋于彼此均衡,就像任何商品的供给和需求会趋于均衡那样。我们可以认为储蓄和投资分别构成了新资本的供给和需求。其他任何商品的供给和需求,在价格的作用下会达成均衡,资本的供应和需求也一样,在利率的作用下会达成均衡。利率只是资本借贷价格的特殊名称,它与其他价格没有两样。

This whole subject has been so appallingly confused in recent years by complicated sophistries and disastrous governmental policies based upon them that one almost despairs of getting back to common sense and sanity about it. There is a psychopathic fear of “excessive” interest rates. It is argued that if interest rates are too high it will not be profitable for industry to borrow and invest in new plants and machines. This argument has been so effective that governments everywhere in recent decades have pursued artificial “cheap-money” policies. But the argument, in its concern with increasing the demand for capital, overlooks the effect of these policies on the supply of capital. It is one more example of the fallacy of looking at the effects of a policy only on one group and forgetting the effects on another.

这整个主题,在近年来被复杂的诡辩、被糟烂的政府政策如此过分愚蠢地混淆在一起,让人对人们是不是能够重拾常识和理性感到失望。人们病态地害怕利率“过高”。人们认为如果利率太高,产业界借钱来投资新厂房和机器,会赚不到钱。这种观点极具影响力,近几十年来各国政府都以人为的力量,实施“廉价资金”政策。但是相关的论调只注意了提高资本需求,却忽视这些政策对资本供给的影响。事实上,这不过是顾及了政策对于某一集团的影响而忽略了其他后果这种错误的又一个例子而已。

If interest rates are artificially kept too low in relation to risks, there will be a reduction in both saving and lending. The cheap-money proponents believe that saving goes on automatically, regardless of the interest rate, because the sated rich have nothing else that they can do with their money. They do not stop to tell us at precisely what personal income level a man saves a fixed minimum amount regardless of the rate of interest or the risk at which he can lend it.

如果相对于风险,利率被刻意压得太低,储蓄和借贷都会减少。廉价资金政策的支持者相信,不管利率是高是低,储蓄都会自动进行,因为,富人家的余钱也只有存银行。但他们并没有说清楚,一个人在什么样的收入水平下才有可能固定地存储一笔小量资金,而不考虑当时的利息率水平或者贷款的风险如何。

The fact is that, though the volume of saving of the very rich is doubtless affected much less proportionately than that of the moderately well-off by changes in the interest rate, practically everyone’s saving is affected in some degree. To argue, on the basis of an extreme example, that the volume of real savings would not be reduced by a substantial reduction in the interest rate, is like arguing that the total production of sugar would not be reduced by a substantial fall of its price because the efficient, low-cost producers would still raise as much as before. The argument overlooks the marginal saver, and even, indeed, the great majority of savers.

尽管富豪的储蓄额受利率的影响要比一般富裕的人小得多,但事实上每个人的储蓄额都会受到某种程度的影响。试图证明在一种极端的情况下实质储蓄额不会因为利率大幅下降而减少,这就好比是在说,糖的总产量,不会因为价格大幅下跌而减少,理由是高效率、低成本的生产者会继续生产。这种观点忽略了边际储蓄者,甚至忽略了绝大部分的储蓄者。

The effect of keeping interest rates artificially low, in fact, is eventually the same as that of keeping any other price below the natural market. It increases demand and reduces supply. It increases the demand for capital and reduces the supply of real capital. It creates economic distortions. It is true, no doubt, that an artificial reduction in the interest rate encourages increased borrowing. It tends, in fact, to encourage highly speculative ventures that cannot continue except under the artificial conditions that gave them birth. On the supply side, the artificial reduction of interest rates discourages normal thrift, saving, and investment. It reduces the accumulation of capital. It slows down that increase in productivity, that “economic growth,” that “progressives” profess to be so eager to promote.

将利率人为压低所造成的影响,其实与把商品价格压低到自然市场水平以下所产生的影响相同:需求会增加,供应会减少。压低利率会导致资本的需求增加,而实质资本的供给减少。它会造成经济扭曲。毫无疑问,人为压低利率,就鼓励借贷。而实际上,这倾向于鼓励了高投机风险的经济活动,这种经济活动除非在类似人为造就的低利率条件下是无法存在的。从供给面来说,人为压低利率,会抑制正常的节约、储蓄和投资行为。它会减低资本的累积、放慢了劳动生产率的增速,与阻碍实现那种如此急切想要催生的“经济的增长”与“改良”的许诺。

The money rate can, indeed, be kept artificially low only by continuous new injections of currency or bank credit in place of real savings. This can create the illusion of more capital just as the addition of water can create the illusion of more milk. But it is a policy of continuous inflation. It is obviously a process involving cumulative danger. The money rate will rise and a crisis will develop if the inflation is reversed, or merely brought to a halt, or even continued at a diminished rate.

的确可以人为压低资金利率,但只有靠持续不断注入新资金、不断扩张银行信贷,以替代实质储蓄。这么做会制造资本供给增加的假象,就象多掺点水,会让人觉得牛奶更多了一样。但这是一种持续的通货膨胀政策。显然这是一个累积危险的过程。倘若通货膨胀得到了逆转,或者仅仅是被控制住,甚至只是膨胀速度放慢的话,资金利率就会上涨,并爆发经济危机。

It remains to be pointed out that while new injections of currency or bank credit can at first, and temporarily, bring about lower interest rates, persistence in this device must eventually raise interest rates. It does so because new injections of money tend to lower the purchasing power of money. Lenders then come to realize that the money they lend today will buy less a year from now, say, when they get it back. Therefore to the normal interest rate they add a premium to compensate them for this expected loss in their money s purchasing power. This premium can be high, depending on the extent of the expected inflation. Thus the annual interest rate on British treasury bills rose to 14 percent in 1976; Italian government bonds yielded 16 percent in ‘977; and the discount rate of the central bank of Chile soared to 75 percent in 1974. Cheap-money policies, in short, eventually bring about far more violent oscillations in business than those they are designed to remedy or prevent.

还有一点要指出,新注入的货币或银行信贷,虽然能在开始带来短期的利率降低,但持续注水最终将使利率上升。之所以如此,是因为注水会让货币贬值,导致货币的购买力下降。放贷者开始意识到,今天借出去的钱,等到一年后还回来时,能买到的东西会减少。为了弥补这种预期货币购买力的损失,他们会在正常贷款利率上再加上一笔溢价。这个溢价可以很高,它取决于预期的通货膨胀率的高低。由于这个原因,1976年英国国库券的年利率上升到14%;1977年意大利政府公债的盈利率高达16%;1974年智利中央银行的重点贴现率激升到75%。总之,廉价资金政策最终必将造成巨大的经济动荡,这比起它们原本希望纠正或者避免的问题要来得剧烈得多。

If no effort is made to tamper with money rates through inflationary governmental policies, increased savings create their own demand by lowering interest rates in a natural manner. The greater supply of savings seeking investment forces savers to accept lower rates. But lower rates also mean that more enterprises can afford to borrow because their prospective profit on the new machines or plants they buy with the proceeds seems likely to exceed what they have to pay for the borrowed funds.

假如我们并不准备采取通货膨胀性的政府政策去干扰资金利率,那么,当储蓄额增长时,利息率会自然降低,从而以一种自然的方式为增加了的储蓄创造需求。也就是说,更多的储蓄供给要寻求投资机会,就会迫使储蓄者接受较低的利率。同时,较低的利率水平意味着更多的企业贷得起款。因为,贷款购置新机器或厂房带来的的预期利润,更有可能超过必须支付的贷款利息。

4

We come now to the last fallacy about saving with which I intend to deal. This is the frequent assumption that there is a fixed limit to the amount of new capital that can be absorbed, or even that the limit of capital expansion has already been reached. It is incredible that such a view could prevail even among the ignorant, let alone that it could be held by any trained economist. Almost the whole wealth of the modern world, nearly everything that distinguishes it from the preindustrial world of the seventeenth century, consists of its accumulated capital.

现在来看一下我准备讨论的有关储蓄的最后一种谬论。经常有人认为,在吸收新的资本上,存在着一个确切的数量极限。他们甚至假设说,我们已经达到了这个资本扩张的极限。这样的观点能够在那些无知的人们中流行开来已经够让人吃惊了,而训练有素的经济学家居然也能接受它,简直令人匪夷所思。现代社会几乎全部的财富、几乎每一件区别于是17世纪前工业化时代的东西,都是由累积的资本构成的。

This capital is made up in part of many things that might better be called consumers’ durable goods—automobiles, refrigerators, furniture, schools, colleges, churches, libraries, hospitals and above all private homes. Never in the history of the world has there been enough of these. Even if there were enough homes from a purely numerical point of view, qualitative improvements are possible and desirable without definite limit in all but the very best houses.

这种资本一部分是由许多称之为耐用消费品的东西组成,例如汽车、冰箱、家具、学校、学院、教堂、图书馆、医院,以及比它们都更重要的私人住宅。在世界历史上,人类从来没有对这些东西感到满足过。就算住宅的数量够多,但除了那些最好的房屋外,对于居住品质上的改善总是可能的,也是需要的。这种要求从来没有什么限度。

The second part of capital is what we may call capital proper. It consists of the tools of production, including everything from the crudest axe, knife or plow to the finest machine tool, the greatest electric generator or cyclotron, or the most wonderfully equipped factory. Here, too, quantitatively and especially qualitatively, there is no limit to the expansion that is possible and desirable. There will not be a “surplus” of capital until the most backward country is as well equipped technologically as the most advanced, until the most inefficient factory in America is brought abreast of the factory with the latest and finest equipment, and until the most modern tools of production have reached a point where human ingenuity is at a dead end, and can improve them no further. As long as any of these conditions remains unfulfilled, there will be indefinite room for more capital.

资本的第二部分就是我们所谓严格意义上的资本。它由生产工具组成,包括从最原始的斧头、刀,或者耕犁,到最精密的机床、最大的发电机或粒子回旋加速器,或者设备最先进的工厂。在这方面,可以扩增和想要扩增的数量,尤其是品质,也同样没有上限。在可预见的未来不会有“过剩”的资本,除非最落后国家的技术装备赶上最先进国家;除非美国效率最差的工厂赶上设备最新、最好的工厂;除非最现代化的生产工具,已经达到人类智力的极限,再也无法改进。只要以上任何一种条件尚不具备,经济中就必然有更多资本的用武之地。

But how can the additional capital be “absorbed”? How can it be “paid for”? If it is set aside and saved, it will absorb itself and pay for itself. For producers invest in new capital goods—that is, they buy new and better and more ingenious tools — because these tools reduce costs of production. They either bring into existence goods that completely unaided hand labor could not bring into existence at all (and this now includes most of the goods around us—books, typewriters, automobiles, locomotives, suspension bridges); or they increase enormously the quantities in which these can be produced; or (and this is merely saying these things in a different way) they reduce unit costs of production. And as there is no assignable limit to the extent to which unit costs of production can be reduced—until everything can be produced at no cost at all—there is no assignable limit to the amount of new capital that can be absorbed.

然而,如何才能“吸纳”新增资本呢?如何实现其“偿付”呢?如果能将资本储蓄起来,它会自行吸纳和自行偿付。生产者会投资于新的资本财货(也就是购买更好、更精巧的新工具),因为这些工具能够降低生产成本;这些工具做得出纯靠手工根本做不出来的产品(包括我们身边的大部分用品,例如书籍、打字机、汽车、火车机车、吊桥);或者,这些工具能够大幅提高产量;或者(换种方式来说),这些工具能够降低单位生产成本。而且,就像单位生产成本可以降低到什么程度并没有极限(除非每样东西都是零成本生产),可以吸纳的新资本数量,也没有极限。

The steady reduction of unit costs of production by the addition of new capital does either one of two things, or both. It reduces the costs of goods to consumers, and it increases the wages of the labor that uses the new equipment because it increases the productive power of that labor. Thus a new machine benefits both the people who work on it directly and the great body of consumers. In the case of consumers we may say either that it supplies them with more and better goods for the same money, or, what is the same thing, that it increases their real incomes. In the case of the workers who use the new machines it increases their real wages in a double way by increasing their money wages as well. A typical illustration is the automobile business. The American automobile industry pays the highest wages in the world, and among the very highest even in America. Yet (until about 1960) American motorcar makers could undersell the rest of the world, because their unit cost was lower. And the secret was that the capital used in making American automobiles was greater per worker and per car than anywhere else in the world.

由于新增资本使得单位生产成本稳定下降,它可以在两个方面单独或者一起发挥作用:即减低消费者购买商品的成本,或者提高使用新设备获得增产能力的劳工领得的工资。因此,新机器对直接使用它们的人,以及广大的消费者,都有好处。对消费者来说,同样的钱,能买到更多、更好的产品。或者说这些东西提高了他们的实质收入。对使用新机器的劳工来说,除了货币工资增加,实质工资也增加了。汽车业是个典型的例子。美国的汽车工业的工资是全世界同行中最高的,甚至在美国的各行各业中也排在工薪族之最。然而(直到1960年),美国的汽车制造商仍能以比世界其他各国更低的价格出售其产品,因为其单位成本更低。其秘诀在于美国生产汽车时,每位劳工和每辆汽车所使用的资本量比其他国家都多得多。

And yet there are people who think we have reached the end of this process, and still others who think that even if we haven’t, the world is foolish to go on saving and adding to its stock of capital.

不过,仍有一些人认为我们已经走到了这一资本累进进程的尽头,{footnotes:对这个谬论统计意义上的反驳,参看特伯格《经济成熟的歪理》。加尔布雷思学派(Galbraithians)用近似的理论继续驳斥“长期停滞论者”。}也还有另外一些人认为,即使我们目前还没有走到头,但这样继续储蓄和不断增加资本积累无论如何也是愚蠢的。

It should not be difficult to decide, after our analysis, with whom the real folly lies.

在作了这些分析之后,应该不难辨别那种做法才是愚蠢的

(It is true that the U. S. has been losing its world economic leadership in recent years, but because of our own anticapitalist governmental policies, not because of “economic maturity.”)

(确实,近些年来美国已经失去了全球经济的领导地位,但原因出在美国政府本身的反资本主义政策,而不是因为所谓的“经济成熟”。)

Economics in One Lesson校译之23. The Mirage of Inflation (6-5,6)

第23章 通货膨胀的幻景

(接前面部分)

5

The more sophisticated advocates of inflation, in brief, are disingenuous. They do not state their case with complete candor; and they end by deceiving even themselves. They begin to talk of paper money, like the more naive inflationists, as if it were itself a form of wealth that could be created at will on the printing press. They even solemnly discuss a “multiplier,” by which every dollar printed and spent by the government becomes magically the equivalent of several dollars added to the wealth of the country.

总之,那些更老练的通货膨胀支持者实在不够坦率。他们并没有开诚布公地阐明问题,到头来甚至把自己也愚弄了。他们就像那些更幼稚的通胀支持者一样,也开始大谈钞票,仿佛这种可以随随便便印出来的钞票本身就是一种财富似的。他们甚至一本正经地去讨论所谓“乘数”(multiplier),来证明政府每印制和开销一块钱,整个国家的财富就会很神奇地增加好几块钱。

In brief, they divert both the public attention and their own from the real causes of any existing depression. For the real causes, most of the time, are maladjustments within the wage-cost-price structure: maladjustments between wages and prices, between prices of raw materials and prices of finished goods, or between one price and another or one wage and another. At some point these maladjustments have removed the incentive to produce, or have made it actually impossible for production to continue; and through the organic interdependence of our exchange economy, depression spreads. Not until these maladjustments are corrected can full production and employment be resumed.

简言之,他们使公众的注意力、以及他们自己的注意力都从目前经济衰退的真正原因上移开了。大多数时候,衰退的真正原因是工资-成本-价格结构失调:即工资与价格关系失调、原材料价格与产成品价格关系失调,或是一种价格与另一种价格、一种工资与另一种工资之间关系的失调。在达到一定程度后,这些失调化解了生产的动力,甚至使得生产无法继续;并通过交易经济的有机关联,使这种不景气向外扩散。一直要到这些失调被矫正,充分生产和充分就业才有可能恢复。

True, inflation may sometimes correct them; but it is a heady and dangerous method. It makes its corrections not openly and honestly, but by the use of illusion. Inflation, indeed, throws a veil of illusion over every economic process. It confuses and deceives almost everyone, including even those who suffer by it. We are all accustomed to measuring our income and wealth in terms of money. The mental habit is so strong that even professional economists and statisticians cannot consistently break it. It is not easy to see relationships always in terms of real goods and real welfare. Who among us does not feel richer and prouder when he is told that our national income has doubled (in terms of dollars, of course) compared with some preinflationary period? Even the clerk who used to get $75 a week and now gets $120 thinks that he must be in some way better off, though it costs him twice as much to live as it did when he was getting $75. He is of course not blind to the rise in the cost of living. But neither is he as fully aware of his real position as he would have been if his cost of living had not changed and if his money salary had been reduced to give him the same reduced purchasing power that he now has, in spite of his salary increase, because of higher prices. Inflation is the autosuggestion, the hypnotism, the anesthetic, that has dulled the pain of the operation for him. Inflation is the opium of the people.

通货膨胀有时的确可以起到矫正这些失调的作用,但这是一种轻率而危险的手段。这种矫正手段靠的是错觉,而不是开诚布公。它给每一经济过程罩上了一层迷惑人的面纱,欺骗了几乎所有人,包括那些深受其害的人。我们都习惯于用货币来衡量自己的收入和财富。这种思维习惯非常顽固,就连专业的经济学家和统计学家也不容易摆脱。坚持用实体产品和实质福利来看待各种关系很不容易。当我们听到,国民收入(以货币计量)比通货膨胀之前增加一倍,谁不会觉得更富有更骄傲呢?甚至那些过去周薪75美元而现在每周能拿120美元的小职员也会认为,虽然与过去周薪75美元相比,要维持同样的生活水平他必须多花上一倍的开销,不管怎么说自己总还是比原来更有钱了。当然,他并不是看不到生活费用的上升,但他却没能象认识目前的实际处境那样,充分认识到另一种可能的情况,即假如他的实际生活费用没有变化,而他的货币薪金有所下降,那么他的购买力也只是降到目前的水平,即工资随更高的物价有所调增的水平。通货膨胀有如自我暗示、催眠术、麻醉剂,可以减轻手术时的痛苦。通货膨胀就是大众的鸦片。

6

And this is precisely its political function. It is because inflation confuses everything that it is so consistently resorted to by our modern “planned economy” governments. We saw in chapter four, to take but one example, that the belief that public works necessarily create new jobs is false. If the money was raised by taxation, we saw, then for every dollar that the government spent on public works one less dollar was spent by the taxpayers to meet their own wants, and for every public job created one private job was destroyed.

确切地说,通货膨胀的政治作用正在于此。这是因为,通货膨胀能混淆了所有事情,以致现今实行“计划经济”的政府总是把它当作摆脱困境的最后一着。例如我们在第四章谈到,有人鼓吹靠推动公共工程去创造新的就业机会。现在我们知道那种说法是错的。我们说过,如果投入公共建设的钱是靠税收,那么政府公共工程上多花一块钱,供纳税人自己支配的钱就会少掉一块钱;公共工程每创造一个工作机会,就会毁掉私人部门的一个工作机会。

But suppose the public works are not paid for from the proceeds of taxation? Suppose they are paid for by deficit financing—that is, from the proceeds of government borrowing or from resort to the printing press? Then the result just described does not seem to take place. The public works seem to be created out of “new” purchasing power. You cannot say that the purchasing power has been taken away from the taxpayers. For the moment the nation seems to have got something for nothing.

但是,假设公共工程的资金不是从税收收益中支付的,那么情况会怎样呢?假设它是用赤字财政来支付的——也就是说,通过政府借债或者印发货币来为这些项目筹资——会出现什么问题呢?在这种假设下,上一段所说的一得一失的结果似乎就可以避免。有人可能说,这种公共工程是靠“新的”购买力创造出来的,纳税人的购买力并没有被拿走。所有这些错觉给我们造成一种印象,似乎这样一来国家不需付出任何东西就可以有所收获。

But now, in accordance with our lesson, let us look at the longer consequences. The borrowing must some day be repaid. The government cannot keep piling up debt indefinitely; for if it tries, it will some day become bankrupt. As Adam Smith observed in 1776:

然而,现在,让我们运用这课知识来考察这种做法的长期后果。政府欠下债务,总有一天是要拿纳税人的钱去还的。并且政府不可能无限期累积债务。倘若试图如此,总有一天会垮台。就像亚当•斯密于1776年所指出的:

When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has even been brought about at all, has always been brought about by a bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretended payment.

当一国的债务一旦累积到某一程度时,我相信,这个国家就几乎不会公平地而且彻底地偿清债务,历来如此。清偿公共债务,如果真的实现了的话,那通常也是以政府破产来了结的;有的时候是通过公开的破产,但更常见的是通过一种虚假的支付来偿还的事实上的破产。

Yet when the government comes to repay the debt it has accumulated for public works, it must necessarily tax more heavily than it spends. In this later period, therefore, it must necessarily destroy more jobs than it creates. The extra-heavy taxation then required does not merely take away purchasing power; it also lowers or destroys incentives to production, and so reduces the total wealth and income of the country.

然而,当政府开始偿还其因公共工程累积的债务时,它必须课征比这笔支出更重的税收。因此,以后它毁掉的工作机会,一定比它创造的工作机会要多。这种额外的重税不仅削弱购买力,而且降低或破坏对生产的刺激,从而减少国家的总财富和总收入。

The only escape from this conclusion is to assume (as of course the apostles of spending always do) that the politicians in power will spend money only in what would otherwise have been depressed or “deflationary” periods, and will promptly pay the debt off in what would otherwise have been boom or “inflationary” periods. This is a beguiling fiction, but unfortunately the politicians in power have never acted that way. Economic forecasting, moreover, is so precarious, and the political pressures at work are of such a nature, that governments are unlikely ever to act that way. Deficit spending, once embarked upon, creates powerful vested interests which demand its continuance under all conditions.

这个结论的惟一例外是这样一种假设之下的情况(那些鼓吹这种支出的人事实上也确实往往这么假设),即假设大权在握的政治人物,将只把钱用在那些不拯 救就会衰退的产业上,或者只把钱花在“通货紧缩”时期,课税还账呢,要对那些不课重税就会出现过度扩张的产业,或者在可能出现“通货膨胀”的时期及时地偿 还其债务。这是一个引人入胜的传说,可惜大权在握的政治人物,从来不如此行事。考虑到政治运作的压力变化莫测、经济预测难以捉摸, 政府不可能有机会那样做。赤字支出一旦启动,就会产生强大的既得利益者,他们会不顾一切维持此种政策。

If no honest attempt is made to pay off the accumulated debt, and resort is had to outright inflation instead, then the results follow that we have already described. For the country as a whole cannot get anything without paying for it. Inflation itself is a form of taxation. It is perhaps the worst possible form, which usually bears hardest on those least able to pay. On the assumption that inflation affected everyone and everything evenly (which, we have seen, is never true), it would be tantamount to a flat sales tax of the same percentage on all commodities, with the rate as high on bread and milk as on diamonds and furs. Or it might be thought of as equivalent to a flat tax of the same percentage, without exemptions, on everyone’s income. It is a tax not only on every individual’s expenditures, but on his savings account and life insurance. It is, in fact, a flat capital levy, without exemptions, in which the poor man pays as high a percentage as the rich man.

如果政府不打算偿还累积的债务,而借助通货膨胀来应对,其结果就是我们前面所叙述的情形。国家作为一个整体不可能无中生有。通货膨胀本身就是一种 税收,而且可能是最邪恶的一种,支付能力最低的人,负担通常最重。假设通货膨胀对每个人和每样东西的影响均等(我们已经证明这绝不可能),那就相当于对 所有的商品征收单一税率的销售税,对面包牛奶与钻石皮裘征收相同税率。或者,它也可以被看作对每个人的收入征收单一税率的人头税,没有人能够例外。它不仅对每个人的支出征税,而且对他的存款和人寿保险也征税。事实上,它是一种单一税率的没有任何免税可能的财产税。在这种情况下,穷人要支付同富人一样高的税率。

But the situation is even worse than this, because, as we have seen, inflation does not and cannot affect everyone evenly. Some suffer more than others. The poor are usually more heavily taxed by inflation, in percentage terms, than the rich, for they do not have the same means of protecting themselves by speculative purchases of real equities. Inflation is a kind of tax that is out of control of the tax authorities. It strikes wantonly in all directions. The rate of tax imposed by inflation is not a fixed one: it cannot be determined in advance. We know what it is today; we do not know what it will be tomorrow; and tomorrow we shall not know what it will be on the day after.

然而,情况甚至比这更坏。因为,象我们所看到的,通货膨胀对每个人的影响不是也不可能是均等的。有些人的苦难比其他人更深重。从百分比来讲,由于通货膨胀,穷人所承担的税负通常比富人重,因为穷人的财力不比富人,无法通过投机购买实质资产来保护自己。通货膨胀这种税,不是税务稽征机关所能控制的。它无孔不入。它可以任意施加税率,谁也无法事先确定。我们知道今天的税率是多少,却无法知道明天会是多少;等到明天,又不知道后天将是多少。

Like every other tax, inflation acts to determine the individual and business policies we are all forced to follow. It discourages all prudence and thrift. It encourages squandering, gambling, reckless waste of all kinds. It often makes it more profitable to speculate than to produce. It tears apart the whole fabric of stable economic relationships. Its inexcusable injustices drive men toward desperate remedies. It plants the seeds of fascism and communism. It leads men to demand totalitarian controls. It ends invariably in bitter disillusion and collapse.

和所有税收的影响一样,通货膨胀这种税收也决定了个人和企业不得不服从的经济政策。它不鼓励谨慎节俭的行为,而助长了各种挥霍、赌运气及其他不计后果的浪费行为。它往往使投机比生产更有利可图。它扯裂了稳定的经济关系。它那无处说理的不公,驱使大家乱来,孤注一掷。它促使人们要求施行集权控制,以此埋下法西斯主义和共产主义的种子。最后的下场,必定是幻境破灭的痛苦和经济崩溃。

Economics in One Lesson校译之23. The Mirage of Inflation (6-3,4)

第23章 通货膨胀的幻景

(接前面部分)

3

So inflation turns out to be merely one more example of our central lesson. It may indeed bring benefits for a short time to favored groups, but only at the expense of others. And in the long run it brings ruinous consequences to the whole community. Even a relatively mild inflation distorts the structure of production. It leads to the overexpansion of some industries at the expense of others. This involves a misapplication and waste of capital. When the inflation collapses, or is brought to a halt, the misdirected capital investment—whether in the form of machines, factories or office buildings—cannot yield an adequate return and loses the greater part of its value.

因此,通货膨胀只不过是我们的核心课程的又一例子。在短时期内,通货膨胀的确可以为某些集团带来好处,但这不过是建立在其余人的代价之上的。而且就长期而言,它会给整个社会造成破坏性后果。即便是一次相对缓和的通货膨胀,也会扭曲生产结构。它牺牲掉其他产业的利益以带来某些产业过度扩张。这是资本的错误运用和浪费。当通货膨胀被消除,或是被抑制住时,这种不恰当的资本投放(形式可能是机器、工厂或写字楼)都不可能产生出充分的收益,并很有可能损失大部分的价值。

Nor is it possible to bring inflation to a smooth and gentle stop, and so avert a subsequent depression. It is not even possible to halt an inflation once embarked upon, at some preconceived point, or when prices have achieved a previously agreed upon level; for both political and economic forces will have got out of hand. You cannot make an argument for a 25 percent advance in prices by inflation without someone’s contending that the argument is twice as good for an advance of 50 percent, and someone else’s adding that it is four times as good for an advance of 100 percent. The political pressure groups that have benefited from the inflation will insist upon its continuance.

我们同样不可能使通货膨胀顺利而缓和地停止下来,从而避免一场随之而来的衰退。甚至不可能在预先设定的时点,或在价格上涨到预先设定的水平而让通货膨胀终止。因为,到了那时,政治和经济两方面的力量都无法控制住局面。当有人主张让价格上涨并固定在25%最好,就有人进一步主张,提价50%的效果会比此好一倍,也许还有人会补充说提价100%的好处会翻上两番。政治上的压力集团则会坚持主张使通货膨胀继续下去。

It is impossible, moreover, to control the value of money under inflation. For, as we have seen, the causation is never a merely mechanical one. You cannot, for example, say in advance that a 100 percent increase in the quantity of money will mean a 50 percent fall in the value of the monetary unit. The value of money, as we have seen, depends upon the subjective valuations of the people who hold it. And those valuations do not depend solely on the quantity of it that each person holds. They depend also on the quality of the money. In wartime the value of a nation’s monetary unit, not on the gold standard, will rise on the foreign exchanges with victory and fall with defeat, regardless of changes in its quantity. The present valuation will often depend upon what people expect the future quantity of money to be. And, as with commodities on the speculative exchanges, each person’s valuation of money is affected not only by what he thinks its value is but by what he thinks is going to be eveiybody else’s valuation of money.

此外,我们不可能控制通货膨胀下的货币价值。前面谈过,因果关系绝不是机械性的。比方说,你不可能事先计算出,货币数量增加100%,则单位货币价值下跌50%。我们也说过,货币的价值是由持有者的主观价值认定的。而价值的认定,不仅取决于每个人持有的量,而且也取决于货币的。在非金本位制度下,战争的胜败将决定参战国货币汇率的涨跌,这与货币数量关系不大。货币的当前价值往往取决于人们对未来的货币数量的预期。而且,由于投机交易的存在和发展,每一个人对于货币价值的认识也不仅仅取决于他自己的判断,而且同样受到他认为其余的每一个人对货币价值会做出怎样的判断这种考虑的影响。

All this explains why, when hyperinflation has once set in, the value of the monetary unit drops at a far faster rate than the quantity of money either is or can be increased. When this stage is reached, the disaster is nearly complete; and the scheme is bankrupt.

所有这些,可以解释为什么恶性通货膨胀一旦发生,单位货币价值下跌的速度将远远超过比货币数量正在增加或者能够增加的速度。到这个地步,那就是经济的灭顶之灾,整个通货膨胀的计划就此宣告破产。

4

Yet the ardor for inflation never dies. It would almost seem as if no country is capable of profiting from the experience of another and no generation of learning from the sufferings of its forebears. Each generation and country follows the same mirage. Each grasps for the same Dead Sea fruit that turns to dust and ashes in its mouth. For it is the nature of inflation to give birth to a thousand illusions.

然而,人们对通货膨胀的热情从未消退过。几乎没有任何国家能以别国的失败为前车之鉴,也没有哪代人能从前人的苦难中吸取教训。每一个国家,每一代人,都沉迷于相同的幻景。每次都伸手去摘死海的苹果,一到嘴里便化为一团灰烬。通货膨胀的特质让人们幻化出千百种错觉。

In our own day the most persistent argument put forward for inflation is that it will “get the wheels of industry turning,” that it will save us from the irretrievable losses of stagnation and idleness and bring “full employment.” This argument in its cruder form rests on the immemorial confusion between money and real wealth. It assumes that new “purchasing power” is being brought into existence, and that the effects of this new purchasing power multiply themselves in ever-widening circles, like the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a pond. The real purchasing power for goods, however, as we have seen, consists of other goods. It cannot be wondrously increased merely by printing more pieces of paper called dollars. Fundamentally what happens in an exchange economy is that the things that A produces are exchanged for the things that B produces. 

当今社会主张实施通货膨胀最顽固的论调,是认为它能“使产业之轮运转起来”,能把我们从产业停滞和资产闲置的白白损失中拯救出来,进而带来“充分就业”。这套说法的原型仍就是混淆货币与财富。它假设通货膨胀能带来新的“购买力 ”,而且这一新购买力将在良性循环中使其自身成倍的增加,好比一颗石头丢到池塘里,掀起层层扩散的涟漪那样。然而,我们已经知道,对特 定产品的实质购买力是由其他许多产品组成的,它不可能只靠印刷更多我们称之为美元的纸张来使其神奇地增加。交易经济的基本运作方式,是甲拿自己生产的东西交换乙生产的东西。{脚注:参照:穆勒的《政治经济原理》(Principles of Political Economy; Book 3, Chap. 14, par.2);马歇尔的《经济学原理》(Principles of Economics; Book VI, Chap. XIII, sec. 10);安德森的〈反驳凯恩斯对总体供给创造总体需求学说的抨击〉(A Refutation of Keynes’ Attack on the Doctrine that Aggregate Supply Creates Aggregate Demand),该文刊于经济学家论文集《资助美国繁荣》(Financing American Prosperity)。也请参照:本书作者主编的论文集《凯恩斯经济学批判》(The Critics of Keynesian Economics; New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1960)。}

What inflation really does is to change the relationships of prices and costs. The most important change it is designed to bring about is to raise commodity prices in relation to wage rates, and so to restore business profits, and encourage a resumption of output at the points where idle resources exist, by restoring a workable relationship between prices and costs of production.

通货膨胀的真正作用是改变价格和成本之间的关系。它所带来的最大改变,是提高相对于工资率的商品价格,借此来恢复价格和生产成本之间可以持续经营的关系,进而恢复商业利润,鼓励资源闲置的企业重新达到某一种产出水平。

It should be immediately clear that this could be brought about more directly and honestly by a reduction in unworkable wage rates. But the more sophisticated proponents of inflation believe that this is now politically impossible. Sometimes they go further, and charge that all proposals under any circumstances to reduce particular wage rates directly in order to reduce unemployment are “antilabor.” But what they are themselves proposing, stated in bald terms, is to deceive labor by reducing real wage rates (that is, wage rates in terms of purchasing power) through an increase in prices.

整个事情已经摆明:把难以为继的工资率降低,是更直接和更诚实的做法。但是久经世故的通货膨胀支持者声称这种做法在政治上行不通。那些通过直接调降工资率来降低失业率的提案,甚至被他们指控为 “反劳工”。然而,坦率地讲,他们自己所主张的就是通过提高价格来减少实际工资率(即以购买力水平表示的工资率),以此欺瞒劳工。

What they forget is that labor has itself become sophisticated; that the big unions employ labor economists who know about index numbers, and that labor is not deceived. The policy, therefore, under present conditions, seems unlikely to accomplish either its economic or its political aims. For it is precisely the most powerful unions, whose wage rates are most likely to be in need of correction, that will insist that their wage rates be raised at least in proportion to any increase in the cost-of-living index. The unworkable relationships between prices and key wage rates, if the insistence of the powerful unions prevails, will remain. The wage rate structure, in fact, may become even more distorted; for the great mass of unorganized workers, whose wage rates even before the inflation were not out of line (and may even have been unduly depressed through union exclusionism), will be penalized further during the transition by the rise in prices.

他们小看了经过千锤百炼的劳工;大工会都聘有懂得指数数字的专业劳动力经济学家,所以劳工不容易被蒙骗。鉴于此,通货膨胀政策似乎既无法达到其经济目标,也无法实现其政治目的。那些最强势的工会的工资水平往往最有待修正,而也正是他们坚持主张说,至少应当使他们工资率与生活费用指数保持同比例的提高。如果各大工会的这一要求取得了优势,那么物价和主要工资水平间不切实际的关系就会继续存在。事实上,工资率的结构甚至可能变得更不公平——众多没有参加工会的工人,他们的工资水平甚至在通货膨胀之前就不大符合他们应得的标准(甚至可能因为遭受工会排挤,而被压得过低),而在物价上涨的过渡期间,他们的处境将进一步恶化。

(未完待续)