Economics in One Lesson校译之21. Enough to Buy Back the Product” (4-1,2)

“Enough to Buy Back the Product”
第21章 “足以买回产品”

Amateur writers on economics are always asking for “just” prices and “just” wages. These nebulous conceptions of economic justice come down to us from medieval times. The classical economists worked out instead, a different concept—the concept of functional prices and functional wages. Functional prices are those that encourage the largest volume of production and the largest volume of sales. Functional wages are those that tend to bring about the highest volume of employment and the largest real payrolls.

业余的经济学作家总是呼吁订立出“公正”价格和“公正”工资。这些有关经济公正性的含混概念是从中世纪流传下来的。与此不同,正统经济学家则代之以有效价格和有效工资的概念。有效价格是指能够鼓励最大产量和最大销售量的价格。有效工资是指能带来最大就业量和最大的实际工资支付额的工资。

The concept of functional wages has been taken over, in a perverted form, by the Marxists and their unconscious disciples, the purchasing-power school. Both of these groups leave to cruder minds the question whether existing wages are “fair.” The real question, they insist, is whether or not they will work. And the only wages that will work, they tell us, the only wages that will prevent an imminent economic crash, are wages that will enable labor “to buy back the product it creates.” The Marxist and purchasing-power schools attribute every depression of the past to a preceding failure to pay such wages. And at no matter what moment they speak, they are sure that wages are still not high enough to buy back the product.

有效工资的概念,被马克思主义者极其未列入门墙的信徒,购买力学派,曲解并使用。他们把工资是否“公平” 这个问题留给了头脑简单的人,而真正的问题,他们坚称,是目前的工资是否有效。他们说,惟一有效的工资,要能让劳工“买回他们所生产的产品”,这是惟一能够防止经济立即崩溃的工资。马克思学派及购买力学派将以往的每一次经济萧条,归咎于此前没能支付这种工资,并且不论什么时候,他们都认定工资还没有高到足以买回产品的地步。

The doctrine has proved particularly effective in the hands of union leaders. Despairing of their ability to arouse the altruistic interest of the public or to persuade employers (wicked by definition) ever to be “fair,” they have seized upon an argument calculated to appeal to the public’s selfish motives, and frighten it into forcing employers to grant union demands.

这套信条在工会领袖手里被证明特别有用。他们深知自己没有能力去激发公众的利他心理,也没有能力去说服雇主这类邪恶的人“公正”对待劳工,他们抓住一个刻意迎合民众的自私动机的说法,危言耸听,进而迫使雇主接受工会的要求。

How are we to know, however, precisely when labor does have “enough to buy back the product”? Or when it has more than enough? How are we to determine just what the right sum is? As the champions of the doctrine do not seem to have made any real effort to answer such questions, we are obliged to try to find the answers for ourselves.

可是,我们怎么才能准确地知道,在什么时候劳工已经具有了“足以买回其产品”的能力了呢?或何时超过足够的程度呢?我们又如何知道合理的总量确切地说是多少呢?由于此信条倡导者尚未做出努力为我们解答这些问题,我们只好试着自己来寻找答案。

Some sponsors of the theory seem to imply that the workers in each industry should receive enough to buy back the particular product they make. But they surely cannot mean that the makers of cheap dresses should get enough to buy back cheap dresses and the makers of mink coats enough to buy back mink coats; or that the men in the Ford plant should receive enough to buy Fords and the men in the Cadillac plant enough to buy Cadillacs.

一些支持者的言辞似乎在暗示,从事每一产业生产的工人都应当得到足够买回他们所创造的具体产品的工资。但他们的意思肯定不是指,生产低档服装的劳工的应得工资,要够他们买回低档服装,而生产貂皮大衣的劳工的应得工资,要够他们买回貂皮大衣;或者,福特汽车厂劳工的应得工资,要能买回福特汽车,凯迪拉克汽车厂劳工的应得工资,要能买回凯迪拉克轿车。

It is instructive to recall, however, that the unions in the automobile industry, in the 1940s, when most of their members were already in the upper third of the country’s income receivers, and when their weekly wage, according to government figures, was already 20 percent higher than the average wage paid in factories and nearly twice as great as the average paid in retail trade, were demanding a 30 percent increase so that they might, according to one of their spokesmen, “bolster our fast-shrinking ability to absorb the goods which we have the capacity to produce.”

不过,回顾一下20世纪40年代汽车制造业工会的情形,我们或许可以从中得到启发。当时汽车工会大部分会员的收入已经位列全美国工薪族的三甲,根据官方统计数字,他们周薪已经比制造业平均周薪水平高出20%,几乎是零售业平均工资的两倍。他们却要求进一步调高工资30%。其发言人说,“提升保持正快速下降的我们对所生产的产品的购买能力”。

What, then, of the average factory worker and the average retail worker? If, under such circumstances, the automobile workers needed a 30 percent increase to keep the economy from collapsing, would a mere 30 percent have been enough for the others? Or would they have required increases of to 160 percent to give them as much per capita purchasing power as the automobile workers? For let us remember that then as now enormous differences existed between the average wage levels of different industries. In 1976, workers in retail trade averaged weekly earnings of only $113.96, while workers in all manufacturing averaged $207.60 and those in contract construction $284.93

那么,产业工人和零售业工人的平均工资应该涨多少呢?在那样的经济环境下,如果汽车业工人需要调高30%才能阻止不景气,其他行业的劳工仅仅调高 30%就够了吗?或者,政府是否应当使他们的工资得到160%的增长,以达到同汽车业工人相仿的人均购买力水平呢?我们应当记住,那时的情况就象现在一样,不同行业的平均工资水平存在着巨大差距。在1976年,零售业劳工的平均工资每周只有113.96美元,全体制造业劳工的平均收入为207.60美元,承包政府工程的建筑业劳工周薪为284.93美元。

(We may be sure, if the history of wage bargaining even within individual unions is any guide, that the automobile workers, if this last proposal had been made, would have insisted on the maintenance of their existing differentials; for the passion for economic equality, among union members as among the rest of us, is, with the exception of a few rare philanthropists and saints, a passion for getting as much as those above us in the economic scale already get rather than a passion for giving those below us as much as we ourselves already get. But it is with the logic and soundness of a particular economic theory, rather than with these distressing weaknesses of human nature, that we are at present concerned.)

(如果工资谈判史,以及个别工会内部为工资讨价还价的史料还有某种指导价值的话,那么,我们可以确信,要是有人提出后一个建议(即其他行业的工会要求大幅调高工资与汽车工人持平),汽车业工人一定会坚持现有的工资差距。因为,除去那些少见的慈善家和圣人之外,工人以及其余的人,对于经济平等的强烈要求,事实上是追求得到同现有经济规模中比我们收入更高的人一样收入水平的热情;而不是努力帮助那些工资水平比我们目前的收入还低的人,使之与我们看齐的热情。不过,我们在这里所讨论的是有关某一特殊经济理论的逻辑与合理性问题,而不是人类天性中的这些弱点。)

2

The argument that labor should receive enough to buy back the product is merely a special form of the general “purchasing-power” argument. The workers’ wages, it is correctly enough contended, are the workers’ purchasing power. But it is just as true that everyone’s income—the grocer’s, the landlord’s, the employer’s— is his purchasing power for buying what others have to sell. And one of the most important things for which others have to find purchasers is their labor services.

劳工应当获得足够买回产品的工资的说法,只是一般“购买力论调”的一种特殊形式。认为劳工的工资就是劳工的购买力,这种认 识没有错。但是同样没错的是每个人的收 入,包括杂货店老板、房东、雇主的收入,都是他用于购买别人的产品的购买力。别人不得不为之寻找到买主最重要的东西之一,是他们的劳务。

All this, moreover, has its reverse side. In an exchange economy everybody’s money income is somebody else’s cost. Every increase in hourly wages, unless or until compensated by an equal increase in hourly productivity, is an increase in costs of production. An increase in costs of production, where the government controls prices and forbids any price increase, takes the profit from marginal producers, forces them out of business, and means a shrinkage in production and a growth in unemployment. Even where a price increase is possible, the higher price discourages buyers, shrinks the market, and also leads to unemployment. If a 30 percent increase in hourly wages all around the circle forces a 30 percent increase in prices, labor can buy no more of the product than it could at the beginning; and the merry-go-round must start all over again.

而且,上述所有这些,都有其相对应的另一面。在交换经济中,每个人的货币收入同时又是另外某个人的成本。小时工资每次调升,便会使产品成本上升,除非或直到能从单位小时的劳动生产率的等量增长中得到补偿。如果政府管制价格,禁止产品涨价,生产成本的增高就会减低利润,迫使边际生产者停产,这将意味着表示生产萎缩,失业增加。即使价格可以调高,但更高的价格会使买方望而却步,市场会因此萎缩,同样会增加失业。如果所有劳工的小时工资普调30%,使得物价上涨30%,那么劳工能购买到的产品不会比从前多;经济生活就像旋转木马那样原地转圈。

No doubt many will be inclined to dispute the contention that a 30 percent increase in wages can force as great a percentage increase in prices. It is true that this result can follow only in the long run and only if monetary and credit policy permit it. If money and credit are so inelastic that they do not increase when wages are forced up (and if we assume that the higher wages are not justified by existing labor productivity in dollar terms), then the chief effect of forcing up wage rates will be to force unemployment.

毫无疑问,很多人会反对上述观点,认为工资增长30%未必会导致物价出现等比例涨幅。的确,这种假设是建立在长期的基础上,并且是在货币和信贷政策允许的前提下。如果货币和信贷缺乏弹性,也就是当工资被强行提高时(也就是超过劳动生产率的增加),货币和信贷并没有增加,那么工资率上升的主要影响,将使失业率上升。

And it is probable, in that case, that total payrolls, both in dollar amount and in real purchasing power, will be lower than before. For a drop in employment (brought about by union policy and not as a transitional result of technological advance) necessarily means that fewer goods are being produced for everyone. And it is unlikely that labor will compensate for the absolute drop in production by getting a larger relative share of the production that is left. For Paul H. Douglas in America and A. C. Pigou in England, the first from analyzing a great mass of statistics, the second by almost purely deductive methods, arrived independently at the conclusion that the elasticity of the demand for labor is somewhere between 3 and 4. This means, in less technical language, that “a 1 percent reduction in the real rate of wage is likely to expand the aggregate demand for labor by not less than 3 percent.” Or, to put the matter the other way, “If wages are pushed up above the point of marginal productivity, the decrease in employment would normally be from three to four times as great as the increase in hourly rates” so that the total incomes of the workers would be reduced correspondingly.

在这种情况下,总工资都可能低于从前,从货币金额和实质购买力来看都是如此。就业率降低(工会的政策造成的,不是科技进步转型造成的),必然意味着人均拥有的产品数量减少。不太可能出现劳工在剩余产品中相对份额增加,从而弥补产量绝对值减少的损失。美国的保罗·道格拉斯(Paul H. Douglas)通过分析大量的统计数字,英国的庇古(A. C. Pigou)通过纯理论推导,各自独立地得出同一结论——劳动力的需求弹性介于3和4之间。通俗地说,这表示“实际工资每下降1%,将使对劳动力的总体 需求至少上升3%”。换种方式来说,“如果工资被推升到高于边际生产力那一点,那么就业率的减幅通常是工资增幅的三到四倍”。{脚注:道格拉斯,《工资理论》Paul H. Douglas, The Theory of Wages (1934), p. 501}所以,劳工的总收入肯定会相应的减少。

Even if these figures are taken to represent only the elasticity of the demand for labor revealed in a given period of the past and not necessarily to forecast that of the future, they deserve the most serious consideration.

尽管这些数字只代表过去某个历史时期劳动力需求弹性,并不一定能用于预计未来的情况,我们还是有必要认真考虑这些结论。

(未完待续)

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