Economics in One Lesson校译之11. Who’s “Protected” by Tariffs? (6-4,5,6)

第11章 关税“保护”了哪些人?

(接前面部分)

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It is important to notice that the new tariff on sweaters would not raise American wages. To be sure, it would enable Americans to work in the sweater industry at approximately the average level of American wages (for workers of their skill), instead of having to compete in that industry at the British level of wages. But there would be no increase of American wages in general as a result of the duty; for as we have seen, there would be no net increase in the number of jobs provided, no net increase in the demand for goods, and no increase in labor productivity. Labor productivity would, in fact, be reduced as a result of the tariff.

我们必须注意到,这种对羊毛衫征收的新关税并不会提高美国人的工资水平。更准确地说,征收这种关税将使在羊毛衫产业中工作的美国人,其工资处于美国的平均水准上下(就相当技能而言),而不是同该行业的英国工人工资水平竞争。然而,并不存在由关税而带来的美国工资水平普遍的增长。因为,象我们所看到的,这里并不存在就业数量的净增长,也没有对商品需求的净增长,以及劳动生产率的净增长。事实上,作为关税保护的一种结果,劳动生产率是降低了

And this brings us to the real effect of a tariff wall. It is not merely that all its visible gains are offset by less obvious but no less real losses. It results, in fact, in a net loss to the country. For contrary to centuries of interested propaganda and disinterested confusion, the tariff reduces the American level of wages.

这就让我们见到关税壁垒的实质影响。不仅仅是所有看得到的利益,都被不那么明显,但一样真实的损失给冲销掉了。其结果,乃是整个国家承受了净损失。与数百年来无数出于自利的宣传与并非出于自利的认识混乱相反,关税降低了美国的工资水平。

Let us observe more clearly how it does this. We have seen that the added amount which consumers pay for a tariff-protected article leaves them just that much less with which to buy all other articles. There is here no net gain to industry as a whole. But as a result of the artificial barrier erected against foreign goods, American labor, capital and land are deflected from what they can do more efficiently to what they do less efficiently. Therefore, as a result of the tariff wall the average productivity of American labor and capital is reduced.

让我们来进一步察考其中的机制。如前所述,消费者多花钱购买受关税保护的产品,能够用来购买其他产品的钱就会相应减少。产业作为一个整体并没有从中获得净收益。但由于人为地对外国产品设立壁垒,造成美国的劳动力、资本和土地,从相对效率较高的产业,移转到相对效率较低的产业上。因此,美国劳动力和资本的平均生产力,必然由于关税壁垒而降低。

If we look at it now from the consumer’s point of view, we find that he can buy less with his money. Because he has to pay more for sweaters and other protected goods, he can buy less of everything else. The general purchasing power of his income has therefore been reduced. Whether the net effect of the tariff is to lower money wages or to raise money prices will depend upon the monetary policies that are followed. But what is clear is that the tariff—though it may increase wages above what they would have been in the protected industries—must on net balance, when all occupations are considered, reduce real wages—-reduce them, that is to say, compared with what they otherwise would have been.

倘若我们现在从消费者的角度加以分析的话,我们会发现,用同样多的钱所能买的东西更少了。由于他不得不支付更多钱去买羊毛衫和其他受关税保护的产品,所以能买的其他每一样东西都减少了。消费者收入的整体购买力随之下滑。关税的净效果,到底是降低货币工资,还是提高货币物价,要看当时实行的货币政策。很清楚的一点是,尽管受保护产业的工资水平可能比不受关税保护时要高,若把所有产业都考虑在内的话,和本来应有的整体水平相比较,关税一定会降低实际工资水平。

Only minds corrupted by generations of misleading propaganda can regard this conclusion as paradoxical. What other result could we expect from a policy of deliberately using our resources of capital and manpower in less efficient ways than we know how to use them? What other result could we expect from deliberately erecting artificial obstacles to trade and transportation?

只有遭受一代又一代的误导性宣传腐蚀的大脑才会觉得上述结论仍有争议。资本和人力资源,由于经济政策的影响,被刻意运用在比较缺乏效率的地方,我们还能够期待得到与上面不一样的结果吗?贸易和运输,被刻意设立的人为壁垒所阻碍,我们还能期待有其他不同的结果吗?

For the erection of tariff walls has the same effect as the erection of real walls. It is significant that the protectionists habitually use the language of warfare. They talk of “repelling an invasion” of foreign products. And the means they suggest in the fiscal field are like those of the battlefield. The tariff barriers that are put up to repel this invasion are like the tank traps, trenches and barbed-wire entanglements created to repel or slow down attempted invasion by a foreign army.

设立关税壁垒的效果,跟筑墙挡道没有两样。值得注意的是,贸易保护论者习惯用战争术语,诸如,应该“击退”舶来品的“入侵”。他们在财政上的建议和在战场上所采用的招式一样。设立关税壁垒以击退舶来品的入侵,就像布设坦克陷阱、战壕、铁丝网,用以抵御或延缓敌军的攻势。

And just as the foreign army is compelled to employ more expensive means to surmount those obstacles — bigger tanks, mine detectors, engineer corps to cut wires, ford streams and build bridges—so more expensive and efficient transportation means must be developed to surmount tariff obstacles. On the one hand, we try to reduce the cost of transportation between England and America, or Canada and the United States, by developing faster and more efficient planes and ships, better roads and bridges, better locomotives and motor trucks. On the other hand, we offset this investment in efficient transportation by a tariff that makes it commercially even more difficult to transport goods than it was before. We make it a dollar cheaper to ship the sweaters, and then increase the tariff by two dollars to prevent the sweaters from being shipped. By reducing the freight that can be profitably carried, we reduce the value of the investment in transport efficiency.

就象外国军队要克服这些障碍就得付出更高的代价——部署更大的坦克;使用地雷探测器;派出工兵剪除铁丝网、架桥、抢滩一样,在外贸中要克服关税壁垒,需要加大投入开发更有效率的运输方式。一方面,我们试图通过开发速度更快和效率更高的飞机与船只,投资修筑更好的公路和桥梁,投入使用更好的火车和载货汽车,尽力去降低英国与美国,或是加拿大与美国之间的运输成本;另一方面,我们设立关税,使得从经济效益上看较以往更难运输货物,因为它抵消了我们在高效率运输上的投资。我们降低羊毛衫运输成本1美元,却又增加了2美元的关税而阻止了它的运输。由于减少了本来可以获利的部分运载量,我们减少了运输效率中投资的价值。

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The tariff has been described as a means of benefiting the producer at the expense of the consumer. In a sense this is correct. Those who favor it think only of the interests of the producers immediately benefited by the particular duties involved. They forget the interests of the consumers who are immediately injured by being forced to pay these duties. But it is wrong to think of the tariff issue as if it represented a conflict between the interests of producers as a unit against those of consumers as a unit. It is true that the tariff hurts all consumers as such. It is not true that it benefits all producers as such. On the contrary, as we have just seen, it helps the protected producers at the expense of all other American producers, and particularly of those who have a comparatively large potential export market.

人们把关税当作是以消费者为代价来使生产者获益的一种手段。从某种意义上讲,这话不错。那些主张征收关税的人,只考虑到受关税保护的生产者能立即获得利益,却忽略被迫支付关税的消费者会立即遭受损失。但是,把关税只看成是生产者一方的利益与消费者一方的利益之间的冲突,却是不对的。关税的确让所有的消费者蒙受损失,但它并不使所有的生产者都能从中获益。相反,象我们刚刚看到的,关税只对受保护的生产者有帮助,为此不惜牺牲其他所有的美国生产者:尤其是以那些出口潜力相对较大的生产者利益为代价。

We can perhaps make this last point clearer by an exaggerated example. Suppose we make our tariff wall so high that it becomes absolutely prohibitive, and no imports come in from the outside world at all. Suppose, as a result of this, that the price of sweaters in America goes up only $5. Then American consumers, because they have to pay $5 more for a sweater, will spend on the average five cents less in each of a hundred other American industries. (The figures are chosen merely to illustrate a principle: there will, of course, be no such symmetrical distribution of the loss; moreover, the sweater industry itself will doubtless be hurt because of protection of still other industries. But these complications may be put aside for the moment.)

我们不妨用一个夸张的例子,来使这最后一点更清楚些。假定我们设立的关税壁垒很高,完全是禁止性的,让人根本不可能从国外进口商品。设想一下,作为后果之一,美国羊毛衫售价刚好上涨5美元。消费者购买一件羊毛衫不得不多花5美元,他们将在其他100种行业的产品上平均少花5美分。(选这样的数字,只是为了说明其中原理。实际数字当然不会分布得这么均匀。再者,羊毛衫行业本身也无疑会由于其他行业受保护而受到一些损害。但这些复杂情形可以暂时不考虑。)

Now because foreign industries will find their market in America totally cut off, they will get no dollar exchange, and therefore they will be unable to buy any American goods at all. As a result of this, American industries will suffer in direct proportion to the percentage of their sales previously made abroad. Those that will be most injured, in the first instance, will be such industries as raw cotton producers, copper producers, makers of sewing machines, agricultural machinery, typewriters, commercial airplanes, and so on.

现在,由于外国的某些行业发现他们进入美国市场的途径被完全切断了,他们得不到美元外汇,根本没办法去购买任何美国产品。于是,结果之一,美国产业的受害程度,和以前的出口率成正比。首当其冲的受害者包括,原棉生产者、铜生产商,以及缝纫机、农业机械、打字机、商用飞机等产品的制造商。

A higher tariff wall, which, however, is not prohibitive, will produce the same kind of results as this, but merely to a smaller degree.

就算关税壁垒不是完全禁止性的,仍然会产生同样的结果,只不过损害程度小一些而已。

The effect of a tariff, therefore, is to change the structure of American production. It changes the number of occupations, the kind of occupations, and the relative size of one industry as compared with another. It makes the industries in which we are comparatively inefficient larger, and the industries in which we are comparatively efficient smaller. Its net effect, therefore, is to reduce American efficiency, as well as to reduce efficiency in the countries with which we would otherwise have traded more largely.

因此,关税的作用是改变美国的生产结构。它改变了职业的数目、职业的种类,以及一种产业相对于另一种产业的规模。关税使得相对效率较低的产业规模扩大,相对效率较高的产业规模缩小。因此,其净效果是减低美国的生产效率,同时也减低相应贸易国的生产效率。

In the long run, notwithstanding the mountains of argument pro and con, a tariff is irrelevant to the question of employment. (True, sudden changes in the tariff, either upward or downward, can create temporary unemployment, as they force corresponding changes in the structure of production. Such sudden changes can even cause a depression.) But a tariff is not irrelevant to the question of wages. In the long run it always reduces real wages, because it reduces efficiency, production and wealth.

尽管有成堆的支持和反对的意见,长期而言,关税与就业问题是无关的。的确,突然改变关税,无论调高或是调低,其所引发的产业调整,都会引起暂时的失业率上升,甚至会带来暂时的经济萧条。但是,关税与工资问题却有关系。关税的长期效应一定会使实际工资下降,因为它减低了效率、生产和财富。

Thus all the chief tariff fallacies stem from the central fallacy with which this book is concerned. They are the result of looking only at the immediate effects of a single tariff rate on one group of producers, and forgetting the long-run effects both on consumers as a whole and on all other producers.

由此可知,衍生出关税谬论的核心谬论是本书所要剖析的。也就是,只看单一关税税率对一群制造商造成的立即影响,而忽略了由此对全体消费者和其他所有制造商造成的长期影响。

(I hear some reader asking: “Why not solve this by giving tariff protection to all producers?” But the fallacy here is that this cannot help producers uniformly, and cannot help at all domestic producers who already “outsell” foreign producers: these efficient producers must necessarily suffer from the diversion of purchasing power brought about by the tariff.)

(我曾听到过某些读者提出这样的疑问:“为什么不通过对所有生产者加以关税保护来解决这个问题呢?”这里的错误在于,这样做并不能让所有生产者获得一致的裨益,那些产品销路已经具备国际优势的本国制造商,根本不可能从中获益;关税所导致购买力转向,一定会给那些生产效率高的制造商造成损失。)

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On the subject of the tariff we must keep in mind one final precaution. It is the same precaution that we found necessary in examining the effects of machinery. It is useless to deny that a tariff does benefit—or at least can benefit—special interests. True, it benefits them at the expense of eveiyone else. But it does benefit them. If one industry alone could get protection, while its owners and workers enjoyed the benefits of free trade in everything else they bought, that industry would benefit, even on net balance. As an attempt is made to extend the tariff blessings, however, even people in the protected industries, both as producers and consum ers, begin to suffer from other people’s protection, and may finally be worse off even on net balance than if neither they nor anybody else had protection.

在关税的问题上,最后我们一定要牢记一件事。这同样是我们在探究机器的影响时发现的必须谨慎的一点。我们毋庸否认,关税确实对特殊利益集团有利,至少有可能有利于特殊利益集团。没错,关税是牺牲其他每个人的利益,来为他们造福。而他们的确得到了好处。如果受关税保护的行业只有一个,当该行业的业主和劳工购买别人的产品时,可以尽享自由贸易的好处,那么该行业将整体受益。但是,如果受关税保护的行业越来越多,最初受保护的行业中人,既包括生产者,也包括消费者,也会开始因为其他人得到保护而受害,最终结果可能在整体上比没有任何人受到保护时还要糟。

But we should not deny, as enthusiastic free traders have so often done, the possibility of these tariff benefits to special groups. We should not pretend, for example, that a reduction of the tariff would help everybody and hurt nobody. It is true that its reduction would help the country on net balance. But somebody would be hurt. Groups previously enjoying high protection would be hurt. That in fact is one reason why it is not good to bring such protected interests into existence in the first place. But clarity and candor of thinking compel us to see and acknowledge that some industries are right when they say that a removal of the tariff on their product would throw them out of business and throw their workers (at least temporarily) out of jobs. And if their workers have developed specialized skills, they may even suffer permanently, or until they have at long last learnt equal skills. In tracing the effects oftariffs, as in tracing the effects of machinery, we should endeavor to see all the chief effects, in both the short run and the long run, on all groups.

但是,我们不应该象那些热烈的自由贸易论者通常所做的那样,否认关税有可能对特殊群体产生利益。比如,我们不能妄想减少关税将有助于所有人,而不会有人受到损害。的确,降低关税对国家整体有益,但是有人会受到伤害,原先享受关税保护的群体将遭受损失。那其实就是根本不应该在一开始就实行这类保护政策的原因之一。但思考的明晰与公正让我们看到与承认,当某些企业呼吁,取消它们的产品关税,会致使工厂倒闭、工人失业(至少暂时如此),他们所言不虚。而且如果其工人已经发展了行业专门技能,他们甚至可能遭受长期的利益损害,或者直到他们最后能掌握别的专门技能为止。我们探究关税的影响时,应与探究机器的影响时相同,我们应该力求认清所有的主要影响,包括短期的以及长期的,对于所有集团的影响。

As a postscript to this chapter I should add that its argument is not directed against all tariffs, including duties collected mainly for revenue, or to keep alive industries needed for war; nor is it directed against all arguments for tariffs. It is merely directed against the fallacy that a tariff on net balance “provides employment,” “raises wages,” or “protects the American standard of living.” It does none of these things; and so far as wages and the standard of living are concerned, it does the precise opposite. But an examination of duties imposed for other purposes would carry us beyond our present subject.

作为本章的结束语,我应当补充说明一点,本章的论点并不在于反对所有类型的关税,包括不反对那些主要为了增加财政收入、或者为了扶持战时需要的产业而征收的关税;也不在于反对开征关税的所有主张。本章只是针对这样一种谬论:关税总体上可以“提供就业机会”、“提高工资”,或者“保障美国人的生活水准”。其实这些事情,它一样都办不到;而且就工资和生活水准来说,关税的作用适得其反。至于对那些为了其他目的而征收的关税,这些话题已经超出了本章的讨论范围。

Nor need we here examine the effect of import quotas, exchange controls, bilateralism and other means of reducing, diverting or preventing international trade. Such devices have, in general, the same effects as high or prohibitive tariffs, and often worse effects. They present more complicated issues, but their net results can be traced through the same kind of reasoning that we have just applied to tariff barriers.

我们无需在这里探讨进口配额、外汇管制、双边互惠,以及其他减低、转移或阻碍进行国际贸易的手段的影响。大体上讲,这些方式具有与高关税或者禁止性关税相同的影响,而且结果往往更糟。它们导致了更为复杂的问题,而运用我们在分析关税壁垒问题时所采取的推理过程,我们可以认识到这些政策的最终效果。

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