The Function of Profits
第22章 利润的功能

The indignation shown by many people today at the mention of the very word profits indicates how little understanding there is of the vital function that profits play in our economy. To increase our understanding, we shall go over again some of the ground already covered in chapter fifteen on the price system, but we shall view the subject from a different angle.

每当提到利润这个词，很多人所表现出来的愤慨表明了对利润在经济中所起的致关重要的功能的理解是多么的缺乏。为了加深理解，我们在这里换一个不同的角度，来探讨一下第15章介绍价格体系时涉及到的内容。

Profits actually do not bulk large in our total economy. The net income of incorporated business in the fifteen years from 1929 to 1943, to take some illustrative figures, averaged less than 5 percent of the total national income. Corporate profits after taxes in the five years from 1956 to 1960 averaged less than 6 percent of the national income. Corporate profits after taxes in the five years 1971 through 1977 also averaged less than 6 percent of the national income (in spite of the fact that, as a result of insufficient accounting adjustment for inflation, they were probably overstated). Yet profits are the form of income toward which there is most hostility. It is significant that while there is a word profiteer to stigmatize those who make allegedly excessive profits, there is no such word as “wageer”—or “losseer.” Yet the profits of the owner of a barbershop may average much less not merely than the salary of a motion picture star or the hired head of a steel corporation, but less even than the average wage for skilled labor.

实际上，利润在国民经济总量中所占份量并不大。一些统计数字足以说明这一点。从1929年到1943年这15年间，注册企业的净利润占国民收入的比 率，平均低于5%。从1956年到1960年，公司的税后利润占国民收入的比率，年均低于6%。从1971年到1975年，这个比率年平均也低于6%（事 实上，由于通货膨胀因素的会计调整不够充分，这个比率可能被高估）。{书后注:根据经济学家沃伊泰克使用的数据，20世纪60年代和70年代，企业税前利润平均为10～12%。80年代降至不足8%，90年代回升至9%左右。（《投资者财经日报》，1996年1月8日）}然 而利润却是最招致敌意的一种所得。我们用奸商（profiteer）一词，来贬斥那些获取所谓暴利的人，但是找不到“奸工”（wageer）或 “奸赔”（losseer）等名 词。不过，理发店老板的平均利润，不仅远不如电影明星的片酬或者钢铁公司经理人的年薪，甚至可能不如熟练工人的平均工资。

The subject is clouded by all sorts of factual misconceptions. The total profits of General Motors, the greatest industrial corporation in the world, are taken as if they were typical rather than exceptional. Few people are acquainted with the mortality rates for business concerns. They do not know (to quote from the TNEC studies) that “should conditions of business averaging the experience of the last fifty years prevail, about seven of each ten grocery stores opening today will survive into their second year; only four of the ten may expect to celebrate their fourth birthday.” They do not know that in every year from 1930 to 1938, in the income tax statistics, the number of corporations that showed a loss exceeded the number that showed a profit.

不少人在这个问题上充斥着各式各样的想当然。世界上最大的产业公司通用汽车，其利润总额自然可观，然而这种特例却被当成了产业典型。很少有人关注过企业的倒闭率。他们不知道，“如果参照过去50年的企业经营经验，那么今天开店经营杂货店，每10家平均会有7家左右活到第二年；可能只有4家能挨到四周年店庆”（摘自美国临时经济委员会的研究报告）。他们不知道，从1930年到1938年的所得税统计资料显示，亏损企业的数目年年超过盈利企业的数目。

How much do profits, on the average, amount to?

那么，平均而言，利润的总量又有多少呢？

This question is commonly answered by citing the kind of figures I presented at the beginning of this chapter—that corporate profits average less than 6 percent of the national income — or by pointing out that the average profits after income taxes of all manufacturing corporations are less than five cents per dollar of sales. (For the five years 1971 through 1975, for example, the figure was only 4.6 cents.)  But these official figures, though they fall far below popular notions of the size of profits, apply only to corporation results, calculated by conventional methods of accounting. No trustworthy estimate has been made that takes into account all kinds of activity, unincorporated as well as incorporated business, and a sufficient number of good and bad years. But some eminent economists believe that over a long period of years, after allowance is made for all losses, for a minimum “riskless” interest on invested capital, and for an imputed “reasonable” wage value of the services of people who run their own business, no net profit at all may be left over, and that there may even be a net loss. This is not at all because entrepreneurs (people who go into business for themselves) are intentional philanthropists, but because their optimism and self-confidence too often lead them into ventures that do not or cannot succeed.) 

对这个问题的回答，通常是用上面所引用的那类数字，即公司的利润平均不足国民收入的6%，或者回答说制造业公司每创造1美元的营业额，自己留下的平均税后利润不到5美分（举例来说，从1971到1975年这五年间，这个数字只有4.6美分）。{书后注:关于当今企业利润的更多数据，参看书后注第10条。}尽管这些官方数字远远低于人们对利润规模的通常看法，它们却符合按常规会计方法核算出来的公司的实际经营结果。我们无法获得有关所有经济活动——其中既包括了非公司组织又包括了公司组织，既包括了经营状况比较好的年份又包括了不大景气的年份——的充分可信的数据。不过，一些知名经济学家相信，长期而言，要是把所有的损失考虑进去，把已经投下去的资本的最低“无风险”利息考虑进去，把经营自家企业的人所提供劳务折算成“合理”的工资考虑进去，企业很可能毫无净利润可言，甚至是净亏损。创业家们（自行经营企业的人）并非不想赚钱，而是因为他们过于自信乐观，投入到了一些不会成功或无法成功的事业之中。{脚注:参照：奈特，《风险、不确定性和利润》Frank H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921)。对于存在净资本累积的任何期间，还必须假定以往的投资整体上是盈利的。}

It is clear, in any case, that any individual placing venture capital runs a risk not only of earning no return but of losing his whole principal. In the past it has been the lure of high profits in special firms or industries that has led him to take that great risk. But if profits are limited to a maximum of, say, 10 percent or some similar figure, while the risk of losing one’s entire capital still exists, what is likely to be the effect on the profit incentive, and hence on employment and production? The World War II excess-profits tax showed what such a limit can do, even for a short period, in undermining efficiency.

不管怎样，有一点是很清楚的：任何人掏钱投资时，不仅要承受赚不到任何回报的风险，而且还得面对血本无归的可能性。在以前，一些特殊企业或产业的高利润，一直是人们不惜冒险创业的激励因素。但如果政府政策规定，比如说，最高利润不能超过10%或类似的比率，而同时使其亏本的风险依然存在，那么，创业家的牟利动机会受到什么样的影响？就业和生产又会受到什么样的影响？我们只要看看二战期间开征的超额利润税的结果，即可知这种限制，即便是在短期内，会怎样伤害生产的效率。

Yet governmental policy almost everywhere today tends to assume that production will go on automatically, no matter what is done to discourage it. One of the greatest dangers to world production today still comes from government price-fixing policies. Not only do these policies put one item after another out of production by leaving no incentive to make it, but their long-run effect is to prevent a balance of production in accordance with the actual demands of consumers. When the economy is free, demand so acts that some branches of production make what some government officials regard as “excessive,” “unreasonable,” or even “obscene” profits. But that very fact not only causes every firm in that line to expand its production to the utmost, and to reinvest its profits in more machinery and more employment; it also attracts new investors and producers from everywhere, until production in that line is great enough to meet demand, and the profits in it again fall to (or below) the general average level.

但是现在不论在什么地方，政府在推行其政策时都倾向于认为，无论采取任何抑制生产的举措，生产都会自动进行。当今生产所承受的最大风险之一，仍然是来自于政府的价格管制政策。这些政策不仅根本不能刺激各种产品的生产，其造成长期的影响则是阻碍生产与消费者实际需求达成平衡。在自由经济的环境中，消费者的迫切需求会使得某些产品生产出现政府官员所说的“超额利润”、“不合理利润”，甚至“暴利”。但正是追逐利润的事实在促使每家公司去实现获利产品生产最大化，促使他们追加投资，添置更多的设备、雇用更多的员工，还会吸引来新的投资人和生产者介入该行业，直至那种产品的生产足以满足需求，该产品的利润又会回落到（或低于）总的平均水平。

In a free economy, in which wages, costs and prices are left to the free play of the competitive market, the prospect of profits decides what articles will be made, and in what quantities—and what articles will not be made at all. If there is no profit in making an article, it is a sign that the labor and capital devoted to its production are misdirected: the value of the resources that must be used up in making the article is greater than the value of the article itself.

在一个工资、成本和价格取决于竞争市场作用的自由经济中，人们对于利润的预期决定了应当去生产些什么产品，应当生产多少，——以及什么东西是根本不应该生产的。如果生产某种产品毫无利润可言，就表明我们在人力和资本投入方向上犯了错误，因为用于生产该种产品的各种要素的价值势必高于产品本身的价值。

One function of profits, in brief, is to guide and channel the factors of production so as to apportion the relative output of thousands of different commodities in accordance with demand. No bureaucrat, no matter how brilliant, can solve this problem arbitrarily. Free prices and free profits will maximize production and relieve shortages quicker than any other system. Arbitrarily fixed prices and arbitrarily limited profits can only prolong shortages and reduce production and employment.

总之，利润的一大功能是为生产要素的配置指出合理的方向，并且为之开辟途径。只有这样，我们才能恰当地确定无数不同产品的相对产出，使它与需求相一致。任何一位政府官员，不论他有多英明，都没办法以硬性手段解决这个问题。自由价格和自由利润会迅速促成生产最大化，迅速缓解供不应求，这是其他任何体制不可比的。硬性管制价格和硬性管制利润，只会使供不应求拖延更久，并使生产和就业下滑。

The function of profits, finally, is to put constant and unremitting pressure on the head of every competitive business to introduce further economies and efficiencies, no matter to what stage these may already have been brought. In good times he does this to increase his profits further, in normal times he does it to keep ahead of his competitors, in bad times he may have to do it to survive at all. For profits may not only go to zero, they may quickly turn into losses; and a man will put forth greater efforts to save himself from ruin than he will merely to improve his position.

此外，利润还能对每一家参与竞争的企业持续不断地施加压力，不论这些企业目前的经营绩效处于什么水平，他们都必须不断改善经济效益和效率。景气好的时候，这么做能有更多的利润收入；景气普通的时候，这么做能领先竞争对手；不景气的时候，不这么做就无法生存。因为利润不仅可以降为零，还可以迅速转为亏损。经营者往往需要付出更大的努力去避免损失，而不仅仅是改善处境。

Contrary to a popular impression, profits are achieved not by raising prices, but by introducing economies and efficiencies that cut costs of production. It seldom happens (and unless there is a monopoly it never happens over a long period) that every firm in an industry makes a profit. The price charged by all firms for the same commodity or service must be the same; those who try to charge a higher price do not find buyers. Therefore the largest profits go to the firms that have achieved the lowest costs of production. These expand at the expense of the inefficient firms with higher costs. It is thus that the consumer and the public are served.

与通常给人的印象相反，利润的实现不是靠提高价格，而是靠降低生产成本，靠讲求经济效益和效率。同一行业的每一家公司都赚钱的情况很少见（而且除非存在垄断，在长期内则更是不可能的了）。对于相同的商品或服务，每一家公司的要价最终必然相同；那些要价过高的公司，它的产品将无人问津。由此可见，生产成本最低的公司，取得的利润率最高。获利公司继续扩张以那些效率较差、成本较高的公司的败落为代价。这种结果也正是消费者和公众所需要的。

Profits, in short, resulting from the relationships of costs to prices, not only tell us which goods it is most economical to make, but which are the most economical ways to make them. These questions must be answered by a socialist system no less than by a capitalist one; they must be answered by any conceivable economic system; and for the overwhelming bulk of the commodities and services that are produced, the answers supplied by profit and loss under competitive free enterprise are incomparably superior to those that could be obtained by any other method.

总之，由成本与价格的关系所决定的利润，不仅告诉我们生产何种产品最经济，而且告诉我们哪种生产方式最经济。这些问题，不仅资本主义经济体系必须回答，社会主义经济体系同样必须回答；任何想象得到的经济体系，都必须回答。对于绝大多数商品和服务而言，在用全部方法得到的所有答案中，自由竞争条件下损益分析所得出的结果无疑是最为出色的。

I have been putting my emphasis on the tendency to reduce costs of production because this is the function of profit-and-loss that seems to be least appreciated. Greater profit goes, of course, to the man who makes a better mousetrap than his neighbor as well as to the man who makes one more efficiently. But the function of profit in rewarding and stimulating superior quality and innovation has always been recognized.

我一直强调降低生产成本这个问题，因为这正是损益分析的最不为人所理解的作用。显然，更多的利润要给那比邻居制造出更好更经济的捕鼠器的人。 至于利润在回报、在激励人们生产优质产品和创新方面的功能，则通常是人所共知的。