Economics in One Lesson校译之23. The Mirage of Inflation (6-1,2)

The Mirage of Inflation
第23章 通货膨胀的幻景

I have found it necessary to warn the reader from time to time that a certain result would necessarily follow from a certain policy “provided there is no inflation.” In the chapters on public works and on credit I said that a study of the complications introduced by inflation would have to be deferred. But money and monetary policy form so intimate and sometimes so inextricable a part of every economic process that this separation, even for expository purposes, was very difficult and in the chapters on the effect of various government or union wage policies on employment, profits and production, some of the effects of differing monetary policies had to be considered immediately.

我发现有必要时时提醒读者注意,特定的政策只有在“不存在通货膨胀”时,才会必然带来特定的结果。在公共工程和政府信贷的章节中,我说过将通货膨胀会引发的复杂状况挪到后面来讨论。其实,货币与货币政策联系非常紧密,以至于在每一种经济过程中都很难分开。即便是为了简化阐述,要将二者分开也是很困难的事,甚至根本分不开。例如,我们在探讨政府或工会的各种工资政策对就业、利润和生产的影响时,我们都只有把不同的货币政策产生的若干影响立即考虑进去才讲得通。

Before we consider what the consequences of inflation are in specific cases, we should consider what its consequences are in general. Even prior to that, it seems desirable to ask why inflation has been constantly resorted to, why it has had an immemorial popular appeal, and why its siren music has tempted one nation after another down the path to economic disaster.

在我们分析通货膨胀在特殊情况下的影响之前,我们应当首先考虑它通常的后果是什么。也许在此之前,我们最好先考虑些这样的问题,即为什么政府总是采取通货膨胀的手段、为什么它已经具有了某种古老的诱人的吸引力,为什么它那虚幻不实的论调,诱惑一个又一个国家走上经济灾难的不归路。

The most obvious and yet the oldest and most stubborn error on which the appeal of inflation rests is that of confusing “money” with wealth. “That wealth consists in money, or in gold and silver” wrote Adam Smith more than two centuries ago “is a popular notion which naturally arises from the double function of money, as the instrument of commerce, and as the measure of value…. To grow rich is to get money, and wealth and money, in short, are, in common language, considered as in every respect synonymous.

通货膨胀之所以吸引人,最明显、最古老、最顽固的错误,在于把“货币”与财富混为一谈。亚当·斯密两个多世纪前写道:“财富就是货币,或者说就是金钱,这是一个普遍为人接受的观念。很自然,它是因为货币具有双重功能——即作为流通的手段和作为价值的尺度——而产生的……成为富裕的人就是去得到货币。按照通俗的说法,财富和货币从各方面来看都是同义词。”

Real wealth, of course, consists in what is produced and consumed: the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in. It is railways and roads and motor cars; ships and planes and factories; schools and churches and theaters; pianos, paintings and books. Yet so powerful is the verbal ambiguity that confuses money with wealth, that even those who at times recognize the confusion will slide back into it in the course of their reasoning. Each man sees that if he personally had more money he could buy more things from others. If he had twice as much money he could buy twice as many things; if he had three times as much money he would be “worth” three times as much. And to many the conclusion seems obvious that if the government merely issued more money and distributed it to everybody, we should all be that much richer.

当然,真正的财富存在于人们所生产和消费的东西之中。它是我们吃的食物、穿的衣服、住的房屋;它是铁路、公路和车辆;是轮船、飞机和工厂;是学校、教堂和剧场;是钢琴、绘画和书籍。然而,混淆货币与财富的语意含糊的作用是如此之大,以致于那些有时可以认识到这种混淆的人在他们的推理过程中也不知不觉地滑回这种错误中。每个人都懂得,如果自己更有钱,就能从其他人那里买到更多的东西;若手里的钱是先前的两倍,就能多买一倍的东西;有三倍的钱,自己的财富就会有原来“价值”的三倍。对于许多人来讲,结论再清楚不过:只要政府多发行货币并且分配给每一个人,那么我们就可以比原来富裕这么多,这一结论似乎是显而易见的。

These are the most naive inflationists. There is a second group, less naive, who see that if the whole thing were as easy as that the government could solve all our problems merely by printing money. They sense that there must be a catch somewhere; so they would limit in some way the amount of additional money they would have the government issue. They would have it print just enough to make up some alleged “deficiency,” or “gap.”

这些人就是最幼稚的通货膨胀支持者。还有另外一类不那么幼稚的人,他们知道,要是整件事真有那么简单,那么政府只要印钞票,岂不就可以解决我们所有的问题。他们意识到这么干肯定会出问题;所以他们希望通过某种方式限制政府发行新增货币的数量。他们提倡政府增印货币不多不少、刚好足够弥补所谓的“不足”或“缺口”。

Purchasing power is chronically deficient, they think, because industry somehow does not distribute enough money to producers to enable them to buy back, as consumers, the product that is made. There is a mysterious “leak” somewhere. One group “proves” it by equations. On one side of their equations they count an item only once; on the other side they unknowingly count the same item several times over. This produces an alarming gap between what they call “A payments” and what they call “A+B payments.” So they found a movement, put on green uniforms, and insist that the government issue money or “credits” to make good the missing B payments.

购买力是长期不足的,他们觉得,因为那些产业不知怎么回事,不让生产者分得足够的货币以使他们作为消费者可以购买回他们所生产的全部产品。在某个地方存在着一个神秘的“漏洞”。一些人用数学方程来“证明”了这一点。在方程式的一边,他们对某个项只计数一 次,而在方程式的另一边,他们却莫名其妙地把同样的项重复计数好几次。于是这在他们称之为“付款款项A”和他们所说的 “付款款项A+B”之间,制造出惊人的缺口。于是,他们发起一场运动,披上钞票马甲,坚持政府应该发行货币或 “信用”,以弥补失落的付款款项B。

The cruder apostles of “social credit” may seem ridiculous; but there are an indefinite number of schools of only slightly more sophisticated inflationists who have “scientific” plans to issue just enough additional money or credit to fill some alleged chronic or periodic deficiency, or gap, which they calculate in some other way.

那些头脑简单的“社会信用”宣传家看起来太过于荒谬可笑,但是有无数的稍胜一畴的通货膨胀支持者,他们有“科学”计划,能够发行刚好足够的额外货币或信用,弥补所谓的长期或定期发生的,他们以某种另外的方程式计算出来的,不足或缺口。

2

The more knowing inflationists recognize that any substantial increase in the quantity of money will reduce the purchasing power of each individual monetary unit—in other words, that it will lead to an increase in commodity prices. But this does not disturb them. On the contrary, it is precisely why they want the inflation. Some of them argue that this result will improve the position of poor debtors as compared with rich creditors. Others think it will stimulate exports and discourage imports. Still others think it is an essential measure to cure a depression, to “start industry going again, and to achieve “full employment.”[*]

更有见识的通货膨胀支持者意识到,货币的过量增加将使单位货币的购买力下降——换句话说,将导致物价上涨。但是这一点难不到他们。相反,这恰恰是他们想要通货膨胀的理由。其中一些人认为,达到这样的结果能改善贫穷债务人相对于富裕债权人的地位。另外一些人认为这可以刺激出口并抑制进口。还有一些人相信,要医治经济衰退、“让产业复苏”,以及达到“充分就业”,通货膨胀都是一项必要的措施。{脚注:这是凯恩斯学派的根本理论。对于这个理论,我在《“新经济学”的失败》(The Failure of the “New Economics”, New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1959)中做过详细分析。}

There are innumerable theories concerning the way in which increased quantities of money (including bank credit) affect prices. On the one hand, as we have just seen, are those who imagine that the quantity of money could be increased by almost any amount without affecting prices. They merely see this increased money as a means of increasing everyone’s “purchasing power,” in the sense of enabling everybody to buy more goods than before. Either they never stop to remind themselves that people collectively cannot buy twice as much goods as before unless twice as much goods are produced, or they imagine that the only thing that holds down an indefinite increase in production is not a shortage of manpower, working hours or productive capacity, but merely a shortage of monetary demand: if people want the goods, they assume, and have the money to pay for them, the goods will almost automatically be produced.

有关增发货币(以及增发银行信贷)如何影响价格的理论不计其数。一方面,就像我们刚刚谈过的,有人认为无论增发多少货币都不会影响价格。他们仅仅把增加的货币看作是提高每个人“购买力”的一种手段,使每个人都能买到比以前更多的东西。他们似乎没有静下心来想一想:从整体上看,不可能所有人都能买到比从前多两倍的东西,除非生产出来的东西比从前多两倍。他们也可能认为,阻碍生产长期增长的惟一因素是货币需求不足,而不是人力、工时或产能不足;他们认为,如果人们想要某些商品,只要付得起钱,那些商品几乎都会自动生产出来。

On the other hand is the group—and it has included some eminent economists—that holds a rigid mechanical theory of the effect of the supply of money on commodity prices. All the money in a nation, as these theorists picture the matter, will be offered against all the goods. Therefore the value of the total quantity of money multiplied by its “velocity of circulation” must always be equal to the value of the total quantity of goods bought. Therefore, further (assuming no change in velocity of circulation), the value of the monetary unit must vary exactly and inversely with the amount put into circulation. Double the quantity of money and bank credit and you exactly double the “price level”; triple it, and you exactly triple the price level. Multiply the quantity of money n times, in short, and you must multiply the prices of goods n times.

另外一个流派——其中不乏一些杰出的经济学家——则抱定僵化的机械论去考察货币供应量对商品价格的影响。在他们看来:一个国家的所有货币,是相对于所有的产品而发行的。因此,货币总量的价值乘以它的“流通速度”,一定等于交易商品总量的价值。所以,只要流通速度不变,单位货币的价值恰好与投入流通的货币数量成反比。货币和银行信贷的投放量翻一番,“价格水平”就会翻一番;增为三倍的话,价格水平也刚好增为三倍。总之,将货币数量乘以几倍,也就等于将商品的价格乘上了几倍。

There is not space here to explain all the fallacies in this plausible picture.[†] Instead we shall try to see just why and how an increase in the quantity of money raises prices.

由于篇幅关系,我们无法在这里一一剖析这种看似有理的说法的荒谬之处。{脚注:对其分析有兴趣的读者,请参考安德生(B. M. Anderson)《货币的价值》(The Value of Money,1917年;1936年新版);米塞斯《货币与信用理论》(The Theory of Money and Credit,美国版,1935年,1953年);也请参考本书作者的《通货膨胀危机,及其解决之道》(The Inflation Crisis, and How to Resolve It, New Rochelle, NY,: Arlington House, 1978年)。}不过,我们应该弄清楚,货币数量增加为什么会使价格提高,又是如何使价格提高的。

An increased quantity of money comes into existence in a specific way. Let us say that it comes into existence because the government makes larger expenditures than it can or wishes to meet out of the proceeds of taxes (or from the sale of bonds paid for by the people out of real savings). Suppose, for example, that the government prints money to pay war contractors. Then the first effect of these expenditures will be to raise the prices of supplies used in war and to put additional money into the hands of the war contractors and their employees. (As, in our chapter on price-fixing, we deferred for the sake of simplicity some complications introduced by an inflation, so, in now considering inflation, we may pass over the complications introduced by an attempt at government price-fixing. When these are considered it will be found that they do not change the essential analysis. They lead merely to a sort of backed—up or “repressed” inflation that reduces or conceals some of the earlier consequences at the expense of aggravating the later ones.)

货币数量的增长是以一种特殊的方式实现的。比如说,它是由于政府的支出超出了税收能够负担、或者可望负担的水平(假定也超过了政府靠发行国债获得的收入)。再比如说战争时期,政府印发货币来支付契约承包商。这笔支出首先会抬高军需品的价格,大量钞票因此流入到战时承包商和他们员工的手里。(在价格管制那一章,我们为简便起见没有考虑通货膨胀。现在讨论通货膨胀,我们同样忽略政府试图管制价格造成的复杂状况。即使都考虑进来,也不会改变分析的结果。价格管制会导致某种“堵塞”或“受压抑”的通货膨胀,其结果是减小或掩盖对经济运行的某些早期影响,但这是以更加恶化的后期影响为代价的。)

The war contractors and their employees, then, will have higher money incomes. They will spend them for the particular goods and services they want. The sellers of these goods and services will be able to raise their prices because of this increased demand. Those who have the increased money income will be willing to pay these higher prices rather than do without the goods; for they will have more money, and a dollar will have a smaller subjective value in the eyes of each of them.

这么一来,战时承包商和他们的员工便得到了更高的货币收入。他们会把这些钱拿去买自己想要的商品和服务。为他们提供产品和服务的商家,因为需求增加了,可以抬高价格。因为这些买主口袋里有更多的钱,他们不在乎增高的价格,而是要买到所需产品。因为在有钱人眼里,每一块钱的主观价值已经降低了。

Let us call the war contractors and their employees group A, and those from whom they directly buy their added goods and services group B. Group B, as a result of higher sales and prices, will now in turn buy more goods and services from a still further group, C. Group C in turn will be able to raise its prices and will have more income to spend on group D, and so on, until the rise in prices and money incomes has covered virtually the whole nation. When the process has been completed, nearly everybody will have a higher income measured in terms of money. But (assuming that production of goods and services has not increased) prices of goods and services will have increased correspondingly. The nation will be no richer than before.

我们把战时承包商和他们的员工称作A群体,把直接向A群体提供产品和服务的商家及其员工称作B群体。现在,B群体由于销量和价格大幅提高,会向C群体购买更多的产品和服务。C群体同样得以提高价格,获得更多收入,进而向D群体购买产品和服务。依此类推,直到价格上涨和货币收入增加覆盖整个国家。这个过程完成之后,几乎每个人的货币收入都有所增加。但是(假设产品和服务的生产并没有增加),产品和服务的价格也会相应上涨。整个国家并不比以前富有。

This does not mean, however, that everyone’s relative or absolute wealth and income will remain the same as before. On the contrary, the process of inflation is certain to affect the fortunes of one group differently from those of another. The first groups to receive the additional money will benefit the most. The money incomes of group A, for example, will have increased before prices have increased, so that they will be able to buy almost a proportionate increase in goods. The money incomes of group B will advance later, when prices have already increased somewhat; but group B will be better off in terms of goods. Meanwhile, however, the groups that have still had no advance whatever in their money incomes will find themselves compelled to pay higher prices for the things they buy, which means that they will be obliged to get along on a lower standard of living than before.

然而,这并不意味着每个人的相对或绝对财富和收入将保持在原来的水平。相反,通货膨胀是一种不公平的过程,它会对不同群体的命运造成不同的影响。最先获得新增货币的群体获利最大。例如,A群体的货币收入会在价格上涨之前增加,这样,他们商品购买量的增长几乎可以与货币收入量的增长保持相同的比率。B群体的货币收入会在价格刚开始上涨时增加,按照所能购买的商品的实际价值计算,B群体比原来更富裕了一些。当价格普遍上涨之后,货币收入还没有增加的群体,不得不以较高的价格来购买他们想要的东西。这意味着他们的生活水平比以前更差。

We may clarify the process further by a hypothetical set of figures. Suppose we divide the community arbitrarily into four main groups of producers, A, B, C and D, who get the money income benefit of the inflation in that order. Then when money incomes of group A have already increased 30 percent, the prices of the things they purchase have not yet increased at all. By the time money incomes of group B have increased 20 percent, prices have still increased an average of only 10 percent. When money incomes of group C have increased only 10 percent, however, prices have already gone up 15 percent. And when money incomes of group D have not yet increased at all, the average prices they have to pay for the things they buy have gone up 20 percent. In other words, the gains of the first groups of producers to benefit by higher prices or wages from the inflation are necessarily at the expense of the losses suffered (as consumers) by the last groups of producers that are able to raise their prices or wages.

我们可以用一组假设性的数字来更清楚地说明这一过程。假设我们把整个社会分成A、B、C、D四大类生产者,他们按顺序获得通货膨胀的货币收入利益。在A群体的货币收入已经增加30%的时候,他们所购买的商品价格还未上涨。到B群体的货币收入增加20%时,物价平均上涨仅为10%。但是当C群体的货币收入增加10%时,价格已经上涨了15%。当D群体还没有等到货币收入增加时,他们所购买产品的平均价格已经上涨了20%。换句话说,排在最前面的几类生产者可以享受到通货膨胀所导致的更高的物价和工资所带来的好处,而这又必然是以排在最后面的几类生产者(作为消费者)由于提高物价或工资所遭受到的损失为代价的。

It may be that, if the inflation is brought to a halt after a few years, the final result will be, say, an average increase of 25 percent in money incomes, and an average increase in prices of an equal amount, both of which are fairly distributed among all groups. But this will not cancel out the gains and losses of the transition period. Group D, for example, even though its own incomes and prices have at last advanced 25 percent, will be able to buy only as much goods and services as before the inflation started. It will never compensate for its losses during that period when its income and prices had not risen at all, though it had to pay up to 30 percent more for the goods and services it bought from the other producing groups in the community, A, B and C.

假设几年后通货膨胀被控制住了,最终结果是货币收入平均增加25%,价格平均涨幅也相同,每个群体的货币收入都增加了这么多,每个群体所生产的产品都上涨了这么多。但是,这并不能消除转变时期各个群体的各种收益和损失。以D群体为例,尽管在最后阶段该群体的收入和产品价格也上升了25%,而他们能买到的商品和服务,也只是和通货膨胀开始前完全相同。但在通货膨胀期间,在该群体的收入和产品价格还没有上涨时,该群体不得不多花30%的钱向A、B、C等其他的生产群体购买产品和服务,这些损失将永远得不到补偿。

(未完待续)

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)

Economics in One Lesson校译之22. The Function of Profits

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。

Economics in One Lesson校译之21. “Enough to Buy Back the Product” (4-3,4)

第21章 “足以买回产品”

(接前面部分)

3

But now let us suppose that the increase in wage rates is accompanied or followed by a sufficient increase in money and credit to allow it to take place without creating serious unemployment. If we assume that the previous relationship between wages and prices was itself a “normal” long-run relationship, then it is altogether probable that a forced increase of, say, 30 percent in wage rates will ultimately lead to an increase in prices of approximately the same percentage.

现在让我们假设,工资率上涨的同时,货币和信贷出现了相应的涨幅,以此避免产生严重的失业。如果我们假设调资前的工资与物价之间的关系本身是一种长期的“正常”关系,那么工资调增,比如30%后,物价必然上升一个大约与之相当的百分比。

The belief that the price increase would be substantially less than that rests on two main fallacies. The first is that of looking only at the direct labor costs of a particular firm or industry and assuming these to represent all the labor costs involved. But this is the elementary error of mistaking a part for the whole. Each “industry” represents not only just one section of the productive process considered “horizontally,” but just one section of that process considered “vertically.” Thus the direct labor cost of making automobiles in the automobile factories themselves may be less than a third, say, of the total costs; and this may lead the incautious to conclude that a 30 percent increase in wages would lead to only a 10 percent increase, or less, in automobile prices. But this would be to overlook the indirect wage costs in the raw materials and purchased parts, in transportation charges, in new factories or new machine tools, or in the dealers’ mark-up.

人们之所以相信价格上涨的幅度会明显地低于工资提高的比率,主要是因为他们犯了两个错误。首先,他们仅仅考虑了特定公司或特定行业的直接人工成本,并认为它们代表了所有的人工成本。这犯是用部分取代整体的常识性错误。这里的每一个“行业”不仅是我们进行“横向”考察的生产过程中的一个部门,它同样是对之加以“纵向”分析的生产过程中的一个阶段。以汽车装配为例,汽车工厂生产汽车的直接人工成本,可能不到总成本的1/3;有些人根据这个数字轻率地下结论说,工资增加30%,汽车价格只会上涨10%或更少。但是他们忽略了原材料和外购零部件、运费、新工厂或新设备、经销商加成等方面的间接工资成本。

Government estimates show that in the fifteen-year period from 1929 to 1943, inclusive, wages and salaries in the United States averaged 69 percent of the national income. In the five-year period 1956—1960 they also averaged 69 percent of the national income! In the five-year period 1972—1976 wages and salaries averaged 66 percent of national income, and when supplements are added, total compensation of employees averaged 76 percent of national income. These wages and salaries, of course, had to be paid out of the national product. While there would have to be both deductions from these figures and additions to them to provide a fair estimate of “labor’s” income, we can assume on this basis that labor costs cannot be less than about two-thirds of total production costs and may run above three-quarters (depending upon our definition of labor). If we take the lower of these two estimates, and assume also that dollar profit margins would be unchanged, it is clear that an increase of 30 percent in wage costs all around the circle would mean an increase of nearly 20 percent in prices.

政府的计算数字表明,从1929年到1943年这15年间,美国的薪资收入平均占国民收入的69%。从1956年到1960年这5间,这个比重同样是69%。从1972年到1976年的5年里,工资收入平均占国民收入的66%,再加上各种补贴,员工的总收入平均占国民收入的76%。{书后注:关于当前工资和薪金收入占国民收入的百分比,参看书后注第8条。}这些工资薪金当然必须从国民生产(national product)去支付。现在我们要据此合理地估计“劳工”的收入,虽然需要在这些数字上进行增减,我们还是可以大概假设:人工成本应该不低于总生产成本的2/3,甚至超过3/4(取决于我们对于劳动力的定义)。我们取其中较低的估计值,并且同样假设以货币衡量的边际利润是不变的,那么工资成本全面升高30%, 价格显然会上涨20%左右。

But such a change would mean that the dollar profit margin representing the income of investors, managers and the self-employed, would then have, say, only 84 percent as much purchasing power as it had before. The long-run effect of this would be to cause a diminution of investment and new enterprise compared with what it would otherwise have been, and consequent transfers of men from the lower ranks of the self-employed to the higher ranks of wage-earners, until the previous relationships had been approximately restored. But this is only another way of saying that a 30 percent increase in wages under the conditions assumed would eventually mean also a 30 percent increase in prices.

然而,这样的一个变化意味着,代表投资人、职业经理人和个体工商户的人们收入的货币边际利润只相当于,嗯,从前购买力的84%(译者注:利润的相对购买力在假设以货币衡量不变的情况下相对下降为原业的83.33%,即1元钱的产品,现在要卖1.2元,而利润仍然是33分钱,33分钱占1.2元的份额只有原业33分钱占1元钱份额的83.33%)。这种状况的长 期影响,是导致投资和创业达不到应有的水准,准备创业的人会放弃创业:与其自己当小老板,不如去当高级打工仔;这种影响会延续到工资与物价的关系恢复到以 前的正常水平。以上我们只不过在用另一种表达方式,说明在那些假设的状况下,工资上升30%,最后也会使价格上涨30%。

It does not necessarily follow that wage-earners would make no relative gains. They would make a relative gain, and other elements in the population would suffer a relative loss, during the period of transition. But it is improbable that this relative gain would mean an absolute gain. For the kind of change in the relationship of costs to prices contemplated here could hardly take place without bringing about unemployment and unbalanced, interrupted or reduced production. So that while labor might get a wider slice of a smaller pie, during this period of transition and adjustment to a new equilibrium, it may be doubted whether this would be greater in absolute size (and it might easily be less) than the previous narrower slice of a larger pie.

这并不等于说工薪族得不到相对利益。在过渡期间,他们会相对获利,其他人则会承受相对损失。但是这种相对获利不可能使工薪族总体上绝对获利。因为我们讨论的这种成本相对于价格的关系发生变化后,会引起失业,会引起生产出现失衡、停产或减产。因此,在经济调整到新均衡状态的过渡期间,劳工虽然可能从更 小的蛋糕分得更大的一块,但是和以前从更大的蛋糕分得更小的一块相比,现在的一块是不是比以前那一块大(多半要小一些)就值得怀疑了。

4

This brings us to the general meaning and effect of economic equilibrium. Equilibrium wages and prices are the wages and prices that equalize supply and demand. If, either through government or private coercion, an attempt is made to lift prices above their equilibrium level, demand is reduced and therefore production is reduced. If an attempt is made to push prices below their equilibrium level, the consequent reduction or wiping out of profits will mean a falling off of supply or less production. Therefore any attempt to force prices either above or below their equilibrium levels (which are the levels toward which a free market constantly tends to bring them) will act to reduce the volume of employment and production below what it would otherwise have been.

这就将我们带入经济均衡(equilibrium)的一般意义和影响的问题上。均衡工资和均衡价格是指使供给和需求相等时的工资和价格。无论通过政府还是通过私人的强制力量,只要我们力图把价格提高到均衡价格之上,那么需求就必然减少,生产也会因此而下降。如果强行将价格压低到市场均衡价格之下,那么利润就会随之减少,甚至没有利润,这事实上就意味着供给或生产的衰退。所以任何迫使价格高于或低于均衡水平(自由市场经常使之趋于这个水平)的企图,都将导致就业量和生产量缩减到低于它们应有的水准。

To return, then, to the doctrine that labor must get “enough to buy back the product.” The national product, it should be obvious, is neither created nor bought by manufacturing labor alone. It is bought by everyone—by white collar workers, professional men, farmers, employers, big and little, by investors, grocers, butchers, owners of small drugstores and gasoline stations—by everybody, in short, who contributes toward making the product.

现在,回到劳动者必须得到“足以买回产品”的工资这一信条上来。显然,国民生产既不是由制造业劳工单独创造,也不是只由他们来购买的。每个人,白领职员、专业人士、农民、大小雇主、投资人、杂货店主、肉贩、小药房老板、加油站业主,简单地说,每一个对产品生产有贡献的人,都在购买产品。

As to the prices, wages and profits that should determine the distribution of that product, the best prices are not the highest prices, but the prices that encourage the largest volume of production and the largest volume of sales. The best wage rates for labor are not the highest wage rates, but the wage rates that permit full production, full employment and the largest sustained payrolls. The best profits, from the standpoint not only of industry but of labor, are not the lowest profits, but the profits that encourage most people to become employers or to provide more employment than before.

谈及决定了产品分配的价格、工资和利润,我们知道,最好的价格并不是最高的价格,而是能刺激达到最大产量和最大销售量的价格。最好的工资率也不是最高的工资率,而是能达到充分生产、充分就业和持久稳定的最大总工资的工资率。不论从业界还是从劳工的角度来看,最好的利润不是指最低的利润,而是能够鼓励更多人投资、创业,更多人成为雇主,能提供更多就业机会的利润。

If we try to run the economy for the benefit of a single group or class, we shall injure or destroy all groups, including the members of the very class for whose benefit we have been trying to run it. We must run the economy for everybody.

倘若我们试图带着某一个集团或阶层的利益服务的目标运行经济,我们将会伤害或破坏所有的人的利益,包括经济政策想要照顾其利益的那些人。我们必须按为所有人谋利益的方式运行经济。

Economics in One Lesson校译之20. Do Unions Really Raise Wages? (4-3,4)

第20章 工会真的提高了工资吗?

(接前面部分)

3

This leads us to the heart of the question. It is usually assumed that an increase in wages is gained at the expense of the profits of employers. This may of course happen for short periods or in special circumstances. If wages are forced up in a particular firm, in such competition with others that it cannot raise its prices, the increase will come out of its profits. This is less likely to happen if the wage increase takes place throughout a whole industry. If the industry does not face foreign competition it may be able to increase its prices and pass the wage increase along to consumers. As these are likely to consist for the most part of workers, they will simply have their real wages reduced by having to pay more for a particular product. It is true that as a result of the increased prices, sales of that industry’s products may fall off, so that volume of profits in the industry will be reduced; but employment and total payrolls in the industry are likely to be reduced by a corresponding amount.

这就把我们带到了问题的核心。这里常用的假设是,调高工资会是以减低雇主的利润为代价的。这种情况在特定条件下或者短期当然有可能发生。例如,某家公司的工资被迫调高,但为了跟同行竞争,产品无法涨价,那么调增那部分工资,只好从利润中扣取。比较少见的是整个行业全部调增工资。如果那个行业不担心外国货的竞争,该行业就可以通过提高价格把调资负担转嫁给消费者。考虑到消费者大多是劳工,必须付更多的钱购买商品,也就等于所有 实际工资会因此下降。那么由于商品提价,那个行业的销量会减少,从而利润基数会减少,而该行业从业员工人数和总工资也会相应减少。

It is possible, no doubt, to conceive of a case in which the profits in a whole industry are reduced without any corresponding reduction in employment—a case, in other words, in which an increase in wage rates means a corresponding increase in payrolls, and in which the whole cost comes out of the industry’s profits without throwing any firm out of business. Such a result is not likely, but it is conceivable.

当然,我们也可以设想有可能出现另一种情况:整个行业的利润减少后,雇用人数没有相应减少。换句话说,工资调增之后,总工资随之增加,不过行业利润足以承担由此造成的成本上升,并且没有公司因此倒闭。这样的结果不太可能,但它是可以想象的。

Suppose we take an industry like that of the railroads, for example, which cannot always pass increased wages along to the public in the form of higher rates, because government regulation will not permit it.

让我们以铁路业为例加以说明。铁路业没有办法通过以提高票价的形式将调资负担转嫁给乘客,因为政府法规不允许它这么做。

It is at least possible for unions to make their gains in the short run at the expense of employers and investors. The investors once had liquid funds. But they have put them, say, into the railroad business. They have turned them into rails and roadbeds, freight cars and locomotives. Once their capital might have been turned into any of a thousand forms, but today it is trapped, so to speak, in one specific form. The railway unions may force them to accept smaller returns on this capital already invested. It will pay the investors to continue running the railroad if they can earn anything at all above operating expenses, even if it is only one-tenth of one percent on their investment.

至少,工会有可能在短期内以牺牲雇主和投资人为代价,而获得工资调涨的利益。投资人曾经拥有很多流动资金,但是假设这些资金已经投资到铁路业了。他们的资金已经转变为了铁轨和路基、货车厢和火车机车。他们的资金曾经可以投到其他很多地方,现在却被套牢在一种特定形式上了。对于那些已经投资下去的资本, 铁路工会可以迫使投资人接受较低的投资回报。只要收入高于经营成本,投资人就会继续让铁路公司运转,即使投资回报率只有0.1%。

But there is an inevitable corollary of this. If the money that they have invested in railroads now yields less than money they can invest in other lines, the investors will not put a cent more into railroads. They may replace a few of the things that wear out first, to protect the small yield on their remaining capital; but in the long run they will not even bother to replace items that fall into obsolescence or decay. If capital invested at home pays them less than that invested abroad, they will invest abroad. If they cannot find sufficient return anywhere to compensate them for their risk, they will cease to invest at all.

如此一来,会产生一个难以避免的结果。如果投资人已经投到铁路业的钱,现在创造的收益比不上投资其他行业,投资人就不会再多投一分钱给铁路公司。他们也许会只更换已经耗损的设施,维持起码的运转,以保护现有投资;但是长期而言,他们想都不会想去追加投资对破旧落后的设备搞更新换代。要是国内的投资回报比不上投资海外,他们会把资金投到海外。如果他们到处都找不到好项目,以足够多的收益来补偿其风险,他们根本不会再进行投资。

Thus the exploitation of capital by labor can at best he merely temporary. It will quickly come to an end. It will come to an end, actually, not so much in the way indicated in our hypothetical illustration, as by the forcing of marginal firms out of business entirely, the growth of unemployment, and the forced readjustment of wages and profits to the point where the prospect of normal (or abnormal) profits leads to a resumption of employment and production. But in the meanwhile, as a result of the exploitation, unemployment and reduced production will have made everybody poorer. Even though labor for a time will have a greater relative share of the national income, the national income will fall absolutely; so that labor’s relative gains in these short periods may mean a Pyrrhic victory: they may mean that labor, too, is getting a lower total amount in terms of real purchasing power.

由此可见,劳动剥削资本至多不过是暂时现象。这一过程很快就会结束。实际上,它的结束并不会像我们假设性的说明那样结束,而是令所有的边际公司破产出局;令失业升高;迫使工资和利润重新调整,直到正常(或者非正常)的获利前景重现,就业和生产得以恢复。但是在此期间,由于劳动剥削资本,失业增加和生产减少会使每个人都更穷。尽管劳动者收入占国民收入的相对比率会一度提高,绝对要下降;劳工相对获益,不仅是短期胜利,甚至是得不偿失的 胜利,因为从实际购买力看,劳动力的收入总量同样降低了。

4

Thus we are driven to the conclusion that unions, though they may for a time be able to secure an increase in money wages for their members, partly at the expense of employers and more at the expense of nonunionized workers, cannot, in the long-run and for the whole body of workers, increase real wages at all.

于是我们得出了这样的结论,尽管工会可能在一段时间内保证其会员货币工资的增长,这种增长一部分以雇主的利益为代价、更多则是以非工会劳工的利益为代价得到的。但是,在长期内,工会根本不能为工人整体增加实际的工资收入

The belief that they do so rests on a series of delusions. One of these is the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, which sees the enormous rise in wages in the last half century, due principally to the growth of capital investment and to scientific and technological advance, and ascribes it to the unions because the unions were also growing during this period. But the error most responsible for the delusion is that of considering merely what a rise of wages brought about by union demands means in the short run for the particular workers who retain their jobs, while failing to trace the effects of this advance on employment, production and the living costs of all workers, including those who forced the increase.

相信工会能够做到这一点的想法是以一系列错误认识为基础的。其中之一是“后发者因之而发” (post hoc ergo propter hoc)的巧合谬论。在过去的半个世纪以来,资本投资增长和科技进步工资大幅升高,因此工资稳步增长,但同期工会也不断成长,因此他们将工资增长归功于工会。但是造成错觉的根本谬误还是在于,只考虑工会要求提高工资之后,特定受聘劳工短期内受到的影响,却没有去追踪工资上涨对所有劳工(包括迫使工资调涨的劳工)的就业、对生产和生活费用所造成的影响。

One may go further than this conclusion, and raise the question whether unions have not, in the long run and for the whole body of workers, actually prevented real wages from rising to the extent to which they otherwise might have risen. They have certainly been a force working to hold down or to reduce wages if their effect, on net balance, has been to reduce labor productivity; and we may ask whether it has not been so.

我们或许可以从这个结论出发,进一步对工会提出质疑:长期来说,工会是否阻碍了全体劳工的实际工资上升到应该达到的水平。如果工会造成的总体影响是降低了劳动生产率,那么工会肯定是阻碍工资上涨、甚至是降低劳工工资的一股力量;我们可以探索事实是否是这样?

With regard to productivity there is something to be said for union policies, it is true, on the credit side. In some trades they have insisted on standards to increase the level of skill and competence. And in their early history they did much to protect the health of their members. Where labor was plentiful, individual employers often stood to make short-run gains by speeding up workers and working them long hours in spite of ultimate ill effects upon their health, because they could easily be replaced with others. And sometimes ignorant or shortsighted employers might even reduce their own profits by overworking their employees. In all these cases the unions, by demanding decent standards, often increased the health and broader welfare of their members at the same time as they increased their real wages.

谈到生产力,不少工会政策还是可圈可点的,有贡献是真的。在一些行业中,工会坚持订立标准,帮助劳工提升专业技能。在其早期历史中,工会采取了许多措施来保护会员的健康。在劳动力过剩的地方,个别雇主为了短期利益,不断要求员工进行高强度、长时间工作,而不顾这样做对工人身心健康的严重损害,因为雇主可以随时换人。甚至有的雇主无知短视,不顾一切让员工操劳过度反而减少利润。针对所有这些情况,工会通过争取起码的标准,常常能够改善会员的健康和福利,同时使他们的实际工资得以增长。

But in recent years, as their power has grown, and as much misdirected public sympathy has led to a tolerance or endorsement of antisocial practices, unions have gone beyond their legitimate goals. It was a gain, not only to health and welfare, but even in the long run to production, to reduce a seventy-hour week to a sixty-hour week. It was a gain to health and leisure to reduce a sixty-hour week to a forty-eight-hour week. It was a gain to leisure, but not necessarily to production and income, to reduce a forty-eight-hour week to a forty-four-hour week. The value to health and leisure of reducing the working week to forty hours is much less, the reduction in output and income more clear. But the unions now talk about, and sometimes enforce, thirty-five and thirty-hour weeks, and deny that these can or need reduce output or income.

但是近年来,随着工会权力的增长,以及民众的同情用错地方,工会的一些反社会的做法被民众容忍或支持,工会努力的目标已经超出了合理的限度。将每周的工作时间从70小时减少到60小时,不仅对保障劳工的健康和福利有益,长期而言对提高生产也有帮助。将每周工作时间从60小时减为48小时,对劳工的健康和休闲生活有帮助。再从48小时减为44小时,对劳工的休闲生活有好处,但不一定能增加生产和收入。将每周的工作时数缩减为40小时,对劳工的健康和休 闲生活不会增加多少好处,而产出和收入将明显减少。但是现在的工会讨论甚至有时还强制实行35小时乃至于30小时的周工时制度,否认这样做会或者需要减少产出或者收入。

But it is not only in reducing scheduled working hours that union policy has worked against productivity. That, in fact, is one of the least harmful ways in which it has done so; for the compensating gain, at least, has been clear. But many unions have insisted on rigid subdivisions of labor which have raised production costs and led to expensive and ridiculous “jurisdictional” disputes. They have opposed payment on the basis of output or efficiency, and insisted on the same hourly rates for all their members regardless of differences in productivity. They have insisted on promotion for seniority rather than for merit. They have initiated deliberate slowdowns under the pretense of fighting “speed-ups.” They have denounced, insisted upon the dismissal of, and sometimes cruelly beaten, men who turned out more work than their fellows. They have opposed the introduction or improvement of machinery. They have insisted that if any of their members have been laid off because of the installation of more efficient or more laborsaving machinery, the laid-off workers receive “guaranteed incomes” indefinitely. They have insisted on make-work rules to require more people or more time to perform a given task. They have even insisted, with the threat of ruining employers, on the hiring of people who are not needed at all.

削减每周工时并不是惟一的妨碍生产力增长的工会政策。事实上,这是伤害最小的一种工会政策,至少由此而产生的得失一目了然。我们看到,许多工会坚持实施僵化的细部分工制度,不仅导致生产成本上升,而且引发代价高昂且荒谬的“地盘”之争。它们反对按工人的产出和效率来支付工资,坚持要求所有的会员小时工资标准一视同仁,而不不管劳动生产率的差别。它们坚持论资排辈,而不是论绩效来晋升。在抵制“又要马儿跑,又要马儿不吃草”的名义下,它们刻意怠工。它们谴责那些劳动产出超过其他同事的员工,要雇主解雇他们,甚至殴打泄愤。它们反对引进和改良机器。它们要挟雇主说,如有任何会员因为安装使用机器而遭到解雇,这些被解雇的会员必须无限期领取“保障收入”。它们坚持依照“制造工作机会”的规则行事,要求用更多的人力和时间去完成指派的工作。他们甚至强迫雇主留用根本不需要的员工。

Most of these policies have been followed under the assumption that there is just a fixed amount of work to be done, a definite “job fund” which has to be spread over as many people and hours as possible so as not to use it up too soon. This assumption is utterly false. There is actually no limit to the amount of work to be done. Work creates work. What A produces constitutes the demand for what B produces.

绝大部分类似的政策都是以这样一个假设为前提的,即只有一个固定量的工作可做,只有一个有限的“工作储量”,因此,我们就应当把它分摊给尽可能许多人去做、分散到更长的时间内去做,免得这个储量用得太快。这个假设是完全错误的。事实上,可做的工作并不存在数量上的限制。工作会创造出工作。甲所生产 的东西会产生对乙的产品的需求。

But because this false assumption exists, and because the policies of unions are based on it, their net effect has been to reduce productivity below what it would otherwise have been. Their net effect, therefore, in the long run and for all groups of workers, has been to reduce real wages—that is, wages in terms of the goods they will buy—below the level to which they would otherwise have risen. The real cause for the tremendous increase in real wages in the last century has been, to repeat, the accumulation of capital and the enormous technological advance made possible by it.

然而,正因为存在着这样一个错误的假设,由于工会的政策建立在这个假设之上,它们的净影响是使得劳动生产率降低到了它本可以达到的水平之下。从长期看来,工会政策的净影响对于所有工人来讲是减少了实际工资——也就是说,从他们能够购买的商品的角度来年的工资— —使之低于它们本可以提高到的水平。啰嗦一句,上半世纪中实际工资大幅增长的真正原因,是资本累积以及由此才有可能出现的巨大的科技进步。

But this process is not automatic. As a result not only of bad union but of bad governmental policies, it has, in fact, in the last decade, come to a halt. If we look only at the average of gross weekly earnings of private nonagricultural workers in terms of paper dollars, it is true that they have risen from $107.73 in 1968 to $189.36 in August 1977. But when the Bureau of Labor Statistics allows for inflation, when it translates these earnings into 1967 dollars, to take account of the increase in consumer prices, it finds that real weekly earnings actually fell from $103.39 in 1968 to $103.36 in August 1977.

但是这一进程不是自动实现的。不仅仅因为坏的工会政策,而且也同样因为坏的政府政策,在过去十年中,这种发展事实上已经停止了。如果我们仅仅考察以名义美元价值来衡量的私人非农业工人总的周平均收入的话,它的确从1968年的107.73美元,上涨到1977年8月的189.36美元。但是,劳动统计局扣除了其中的通货膨胀因素,考虑到消费者物价的上涨,以1967年底币值计算这些收入时,它指出,实际的周收入已从1968年的103.39美元下降到1977年8月的103.36美元。{书后注:《投资者财经日报》1996年1月4日刊载的资料显示:过去40年,薪酬占总产出的比重,一直保持在60%左右。经济学家肯尼斯·沃伊泰克(Kenneth P. Voytek)报告说,从1959~1972年,非农劳工每小时薪酬年均增长2.4%。从1973~1994年,这个增幅放缓至0.8%。这是因为,从1959~1972年的生产率年均增长2.4,而从1973~1994年生产率年均增长不到1%。整体而言,自1959年以来,薪酬收入在国民收入中的比重增加了4%,与此同时,工会会员人数是急剧下降。非工资薪酬,如保健和在职培训,不断增加。(《投资者财经日报》,1996年1月8日)}

This halt in the rise of real wages has not been a consequence inherent in the nature of unions. It has been the result of shortsighted union and government policies. There is still time to change both of them.

实际工资收入中止增长,这并不是工会本身性质所决定的一个内在必然的结果。它是那些目光短浅的工会政策和政府政策造成的。现在要改变这两类短视政策还来得及。

Economics in One Lesson校译之20. Do Unions Really Raise Wages? (4-1,2)

Do Unions Really Raise Wages

第20章 工会真正提高了工资吗?

The belief that labor unions can substantially raise real wages over the long run and for the whole working population is one of the great delusions of the present age. This delusion is mainly the result of failure to recognize that wages are basically determined by labor productivity. It is for this reason, for example, that wages in the United States were incomparably higher than wages in England and Germany all during the decades when the “labor movement” in the latter two countries was far more advanced.

相信工会可以在长期内从根本上提高整个工业人口的实际工资,这种想法是当今时代重大的妄想之一。如此妄想的主要原因是在于没有认清工资根本上说是由劳动生产力决定的。举例来说,正是由于这个原因,在英国和德国的“劳工运动”发展远胜于美国的数十年间,这两个国家的工资依旧远远跟不上美国。

In spite of the overwhelming evidence that labor productivity is the fundamental determinant of wages, the conclusion is usually forgotten or derided by labor union leaders and by that large group of economic writers who seek a reputation as “liberals” by parroting them. But this conclusion does not rest on the assumption, as they suppose, that employers are uniformly kind and generous men eager to do what is right. It rests on the very different assumption that the individual employer is eager to increase his own profits to the maximum. If people are willing to work for less than they are really worth to him, why should he not take the fullest advantage of this? Why should he not prefer, for example, to make $1 a week out of a workman rather than see some other employer make $2 a week out of him? And as long as this situation exists, there will be a tendency for employers to bid workers up to their full economic worth.

尽管有压倒性的证据表明,劳动生产力是工资的根本决定因素,但这个结论常被工会领袖所忘记或者嘲笑、一大批跟在工会领袖屁股后面鹦鹉学舌的经济学家也以此求得“自由主义经济学者”的名声。这个结论并不是建立在如那些人所嘲弄的雇主们全都很和善慷慨与仗义疏财的假设上。它是以一个全然不同的假设为前提的,即:雇主个人所渴望的是增加自己的利润收入,并使之最大化。假如有员工愿意只拿少于其实际应得收入的工资的话,雇主怎么可能不充分利用这种好事呢?雇主怎可能坐视别的雇主从一个员工身上每周赚取两美元(自己两手空空),而不自己(少赚一美元却)从他身上每周赚得一美元呢?只要这种状况存在,雇主们竞相出价招揽物超其价的劳工,将使劳工工资趋于他们的最大经济价值。

All this does not mean that unions can serve no useful or legitimate function. The central function they can serve is to improve local working conditions and to assure that all of their members get the true market value of their services.

以上所说并不表示工会起不到任何有益的、合理的作用。工会能起到的核心作用,是改善局部的工作条件,并且确保工会成员所提供的劳务能够得到实际市场价值。

For the competition of workers for jobs, and of employers for workers, does not work perfectly. Neither individual workers nor individual employers are likely to be fully informed concerning the conditions of the labor market. An individual worker may not know the true market value of his services to an employer. And he may be in a weak bargaining position. Mistakes of judgment are far more costly to him than to an employer. If an employer mistakenly refuses to hire a man from whose services he might have profited, he merely loses the net profit he might have made from employing that one man; and he may employ a hundred or a thousand men. But if a worker mistakenly refuses a job in the belief that he can easily get another that will pay him more, the error may cost him dear. His whole means of livelihood is involved. Not only may he fail to find promptly another job offering more; he may fail for a time to find another job offering remotely as much. And time may be the essence of his problem, because he and his family must eat. So he may be tempted to take a wage that he believes to be below his “real worth” rather than face these risks. When an employer’s workers deal with him as a body, however, and set a known “standard wage” for a given class of work, they may help to equalize bargaining power and the risks involved in mistakes.

由于劳动力市场的工人求职与雇主择才的竞争并不完美,无论劳工方面,还是雇主方面,都无法掌握充分的劳动力市场信息。单个劳工也许不知道他对雇主提供的劳务的实际市场价值。同时,劳工的谈判能力往往相对较弱。一旦判断错误,劳工方面付出代价要远高于雇主方面。如果雇主不慎拒用一个能干人,雇主的损失只不过是那个人过人之处所能创造的那部分利润;但是,他雇用了成百上千的求职者。相反,劳工如果自信找份更好的工作并不难,而错误地拒绝了一份工作,那么,对他来讲,这可能意味着巨大的代价。他的谋生全赖一份工作。他不仅会发现自己无法很快找到待遇更好的工作,还有可能一时间连待遇低很多的工作也找不到。他最大的问题是时间上拖不起,他要吃饭,他的家人也要靠他吃饭。为避免这些风险,即便雇主开出的工资低于他心目中“实际市场价值”,他也可能接受。然而,当雇主的工人们形成一个整体与他打交道,并且为其中某一工种确定了一个大家都知道的“标准工资”时,他们会有助于均衡双方在讨价还价中的力量以及判断失误的风险。

But it is easy, as experience has proved, for unions, particularly with the help of one-sided labor legislation which puts compulsions solely on employers, to go beyond their legitimate functions, to act irresponsibly, and to embrace short-sighted and antisocial policies. TI do this, for example, whenever they seek to fix the wages of their members above their real market worth. Such an attempt always brings about unemployment. The arrangement can be made to stick, in fact, only by some form of intimidation or coercion.

历史经验却证明,工会很容易就做过了头,特别是当劳动法规偏向劳动者,单方面强制约束雇主时,工会会做出一些不负责任的行为,实行短视的、反社会的政策。例如,只要他们想把工会成员的工资固定于高出他们实际市场价值的水平,他们就在这么干。这样做一定会造成失业。事实上,要达到这个目的,工会还必定会采取某种胁迫和强制手段。

One device consists in restricting the membership of the union on some other basis than that of proved competence or skill. restriction may take many forms: it may consist in charging new workers excessive initiation fees; in arbitrary membership qualifications; in discrimination, open or concealed, on grounds of religion, race or sex; in some absolute limitation on the number of members, or in exclusion, by force if necessary, not only of the products of nonunion labor, but of the products even of affiliated unions in other states or cities.

手段之一是订立歧视性的工会会员资格,在专长或技能因素之外,设立各种限制条件。可以是对新工人收取过高的入会费、主观裁决会员资格、以公开或隐秘的方式进行宗教、种族或性别歧视、采取某种绝对的会员人数限制,或是在需要的情况下,通过强制手段推行排他性政策:不仅排斥非工会劳工生产的产品,甚至排斥外地的工会生产的产品。

The most obvious case in which intimidation and force are used to put or keep the wages of a particular union above the real market worth of its members’ services is that of a strike. A peaceful strike is possible. To the extent that it remains peaceful, it is a legitimate labor weapon, even though it is one that should be used rarely and as a last resort. If his workers as a body withhold their labor, they may bring a stubborn employer, who has been underpaying them, to his senses. He may find that he is unable to replace these workers with workers equally good who are willing to accept the wage that the former have now rejected. But the moment workers have to use intimidation or violence to enforce their demands—the moment they use mass picketing to prevent any of the old workers from continuing at their jobs, or to prevent the employer from hiring new permanent workers to take their places—their case becomes suspect. For the pickets are really being used, not primarily against the employer, but against other workers. These other workers are willing to take the jobs that the old employees have vacated, and at the wages that the old employees now reject. The fact proves that the other alternatives open to the new workers are not as good as those that the old employees have refused. If, therefore, the old employees succeed by force in preventing new workers from taking the place, they prevent these new workers from choosing the best alternative open to them, and force them to take something worse. The strikers are therefore insisting on a position of privilege, and are using force to maintain this privileged position against other workers.

借助于威胁和强制手段将某些工会会员的工资提高或者保持在实际市场价值之上的最典型的例子就是罢工。和平的罢工是可能的。只要罢工行动是和平的,便是劳工的合法武器。即便如此,罢工也应该是不得已才作为最后的手段。齐心协力的罢工,可以使一贯克扣员工的偏执老板得到教训清醒。他可能会发现,他无法以罢工者拒绝的工资标准去雇到同样优秀的劳工。但是,一当罢工行动掺杂胁迫或暴力的手段——组织大批纠察队员阻止在职员工继续上班工作,或者阻止雇主招募新员工取代他们,罢工者的主张就难免令人质疑。我们看到,纠察队员的目标并非针对雇主,而是针对其他的劳工。这些其他劳工恰恰希望得到老员工空缺出来的岗位,并且愿意接受老员工如今拒绝的工资。这个事实证明,可供新员工选择的其他工作机会,都不如老员工拒绝的这份工作好。如果在老员工的强行阻止下,新员工根本无法上岗工作,这些人只有放弃选择对他们最好的工作,转而去选择那些比较差的工作。由此可见,罢工者们实际上是在霸占某种相对于其他劳工的特权。

If the foregoing analysis is correct, the indiscriminate hatred of the “strikebreaker” is not justified. If the strikebreakers consist merely of professional thugs who themselves threaten violence, or who cannot in fact do the work, or if they are being paid a temporarily higher rate solely for the purpose of making a pretense of carrying on until the old workers are frightened back to work at the old rates, the hatred may be warranted. But if they are in fact merely men and women who are looking for permanent jobs and willing to accept them at the old rate, then they are workers who would be shoved into worse jobs than these in order to enable the striking workers to enjoy better ones. And this superior position for the old employees could continue to be maintained, in fact, only by the ever-present threat of force.

如果上述分析是正确的,那么,不分青红皂白地仇视“罢工破坏者”就不讲道理。如果罢工破坏者只是专职流氓,他们自己就用暴力威胁,或者无能其职,或者他们得到临时的高工资,其唯一目的是制造复工假象直到原有工人被吓倒复工,领原先的微薄工资,人们仇视他们就是有道理的。但如果“罢工破坏者”只是普通的男女劳工,目的不过是为了求得一分稳定的工作,而且愿意接受原有的工资标准,那么,他们就成了为了使那些罢工工人享受更好的工作条件而不得不被推到比此更坏的工作中去的工人了。事实上,也只有通过不断进行持续的暴力威胁,原有雇员的这一优越地位才有可能维持下去。

2

Emotional economics has given birth to theories that calm examination cannot justify. One of these is the idea that labor is being “under paid”generally. This would be analogous to the notion that in a free market prices in general are chronically too low. Another curious but persistent notion is that the interests of a nation’s workers are identical with each other, and that an increase in wages for one union in some obscure way helps all other workers. Not only is there no truth in this idea; the truth is that, if a particular union by coercion is able to enforce for its own members a wage substantially above the real market worth of their services, it will hurt all other workers as it hurts other members of the community.

冷静思考一下就会发现,“情绪经济学”孕育出来的理论很难自圆其说。其中之一是说,劳工普遍“工资待遇偏低”。这就好比是说,在自由市场中,价格普遍长期偏低。另一个离奇并且顽固的观点是说,一个国家工人的利益是彼此相同的,一个工会内工人的工资以某种方式调增讲有助于所有其余的工人。这一观点不仅毫无真实可言,而且实际情况是,如果某个工会强行为会员争取到的工资高于其劳务的实际市场价格,这样做,对当地的其他人、对其他所有的劳工都造成伤害。

In order to see more clearly how this occurs, let us imagine a community in which the facts are enormously simplified arithmetically. Suppose the community consisted of just half a dozen groups of workers, and that these groups were originally equal to each other in their total wages and the market value of their product.

为了更清楚地了解这种伤害是如何发生的,让我们设计一个极为简化的假想社会。假设这个社会只由六群劳工组成,并且假设它们的起始工资相同,他们的产品的市场价值一开始也相同。

Let us say that these six groups of workers consist of (i) farm hands, (2) retail store workers, (3) workers in the clothing trades, (4) coal miners, (5) building workers, and (6) railway employees. Their wage rates, determined without any element of coercion, are not necessarily equal; but whatever they are, let us assign to each of them an original index number of 100 as a base. Now let us suppose that each group forms a national union and is able to enforce its demands in proportion not merely to its economic productivity but to its political power and strategic position. Suppose the result is that the farm hands are unable to raise their wages at all, that the retail store workers are able to get an increase of 10 percent, the clothing workers of 20 percent, the coal miners of 30 percent, the building trades of 40 percent, and the railroad employees of 50 percent.

这六群劳工分别是:(1)农场工人;(2)零售商店店员;(3)制衣工人;(4)煤矿矿工;(5)建筑工人;(6)铁路职工。他们的工资不由任何强制因素决定,不一定彼此相等,但不管工资是多少,我们直接给每一群劳工一个原始的指数,以100为基础。现在,让我们假设每一群劳工都组织了全国性的工会,六大工会能够仰仗自身行业的经济生产力、政治权力和战略地位,提出各自的调资要求。假设你争我夺后的调资结果是,农场工人根本得不到工资的提高,零售商店店员涨10%,制衣工人涨20%,煤矿矿工涨30%,建筑工人涨40%,铁路职工涨50%。

On the assumptions we have made, this will mean that there has been an average increase in wages of 25 percent. Now suppose, again for the sake of arithmetical simplicity, that the price of the product that each group of workers makes rises by the same percentage as the increase in that group’s wages. (For several reasons, including the fact that labor costs do not represent all costs, the price will not quite do that—certainly not in any short period. But the figures will nonetheless serve to illustrate the basic principle involved.)

根据上面所出的假设,我们可以计算出工资平均上涨了25%。现在,为方便计算,我们再假设各行业的产品价格涨幅与该行业工资增幅相同。(由于好几个原因,包括了劳动力成本并不能代表所有生产成本这一事实,价格不会那么变动——短期内是肯定不会的。尽管如此,那样的数字仍然可以用来说明其中的基本原理。)

We shall then have a situation in which the cost of living has risen by an average of 25 percent. The farm hands, though they have had no reduction in their money wages, will be considerably worse off in terms of what they can buy. The retail store workers, even though they have got an increase in money wages of 10 percent, will be worse off than before the race began. Even the workers in the clothing trades, with a money-wage increase of 20 percent, will be at a disadvantage compared with their previous position. The coal miners, with a money-wage increase of 30 percent, will have made in purchasing power only a slight gain. The building and railroad workers will of course have made a gain, but one much smaller in actuality than in appearance.

现在的情况是,生活费用平均上涨25%。农场工人的货币工资看似没有下降,从能够买到的东西看,他们的处境变得相当糟糕。零售商店店员的货币工资虽然涨了10%,处境也比调资竞赛之前时更糟。制衣工人的货币工资即使涨了20%,生活也无法和以前相比。煤矿矿工的货币工资纵然涨了30%,购买力只是增加了一点点。建筑工人和铁路职工当然有所改善,但其实际获益比表面看上去小得多。

But even such calculations rest on the assumption that the forced increase in wages has brought about no unemployment. This is likely to be true only if the increase in wages has been accompanied by an equivalent increase in money and bank credit; and even then it is improbable that such distortions in wage rates can be brought about without creating areas of unemployment, particularly in the trades in which wages have advanced the most. If this corresponding monetary inflation does not occur, the forced wage advances will bring about widespread unemployment.

即使这样的简化计算,还要假设强行涨工资不会带来失业。要这个假设成立,我们还必须假设工资调增的同时,货币供应和银行信贷也等量增加。即使如此,扭曲的工资率也不可能不造成行业性失业,特别是在那些工资调增最多的行业中。如果没有采取相应的通货膨胀,强行涨工资会造成普遍性的失业。

The unemployment need not necessarily be greatest, in percentage terms, among the unions whose wages have been advanced the most; for unemployment will be shifted and distributed in relation to the relative elasticity of the demand for different kinds of labor and in relation to the “joint” nature of the demand for many kinds of labor. Yet when all these allowances have been made, even the groups whose wages have been advanced the most will probably be found, when their unemployed are averaged with their employed members, to be worse off than before. And in terms of welfare, of course, the loss suffered will be much greater than the loss in merely arithmetical terms, because the psychological losses of those who are unemployed will greatly outweigh the psychological gains of those with a slightly higher income in terms of purchasing power.

按百分比计算,最严重的失业并不一定发生在工资涨幅最大的工会中。因为,失业出现了转移和分配,跟对不同劳动力的需求弹性以及很多种劳动力的“联合需求”特点相关。然而,当我们把所有这些因素都考虑进去,我们很可能会发现,在把失业人数与就业人数进行权衡时,即使是那些工资涨幅最大的集团,他们的处境也每况愈下。当然,从福利的角度分析,我们将会发现,真正受到的损害要远远高出用数字表示出来的损失。因为,失业劳工承受的心理损失,远高于受雇劳工购买力增加一点点而获得的心理收益。

Nor can the situation be rectified by providing unemployment relief. Such relief, in the first place, is paid for in large part, directly or indirectly, out of the wages of those who work. It therefore reduces these wages. “Adequate” relief payments, moreover, as we have already seen, create unemployment. They do so in several ways. When strong labor unions in the past made it their function to provide for their own unemployed members, they thought twice before demanding a wage that would cause heavy unemployment. But where there is a relief system under which the general taxpayer is forced to provide for the unemployment caused by excessive wage rates, this restraint on excessive union demands is removed. Moreover, as we have already noted, “adequate” relief will cause some men not to seek work at all, and will cause others to consider that they are in effect being asked to work not for the wage offered, but only for the difference between that wage and the relief payment. And heavy unemployment means that fewer goods are produced, that the nation is poorer, and that there is less for everybody.

这种局面也不能靠提供失业救济来弥补。首先,此种救济很大程度上是直接或间接地从那些就业者的工资中支付的。因此,这降低了工资水平。同时,象我们已经看到的,“充分的”的救济金支付创造了失业。出现这样的结果有多种形式。在过去,扶助失业会员是有影响的工会的一项基本功能,所以,它们在要求涨工资时,总是三思而后行,会充分衡量由此可能带来的失业。而在现代失业救济制度下,政府强迫一般纳税人负担工资过高造成的失业救济支出,工会便失去此种针对提过分调资要求的约束。此外,我们说过,“充分的”救济会使一些人根本不想工作,而工作的人又觉得努力工作挣来的实际收入仅相当于工资和救济金两者的差额。严重的失业意味着产品产量更小、国家更穷、每个人能拥有的东西都更少。

The apostles of salvation by unionism sometimes attempt another answer to the problem I have just presented. It may be true, they will admit, that the members of strong unions today exploit among others, the nonunionized workers; but the remedy is simple: unionize everybody. The remedy, however, is not quite that simple. In the first place, in spite of the enormous legal and political encouragements (one might in some cases say compulsions) to unionization under the Wagner-Taft-Hartley Act and other laws, it is not an accident that only about a fourth of this nation’s gainfully employed workers are unionized. The conditions propitious to unionization are much more special than generally recognized. But even if universal unionization could be achieved, the unions could not possibly be equally powerful, any more than they are today. Some groups of workers are in a far better strategic position than others, either because of greater numbers, of the more essential nature of the product they make, of the greater dependence on their industry of other industries, or of their greater ability to use coercive methods. But suppose this were not so? Suppose, in spite of the self-contradictoriness of the assumption, that all workers by coercive methods could raise their money wages by an equal percentage? Nobody would be any better off in the long run, than if wages had not been raised at all.

工联主义的倡导者有时会用另一个答案来回答刚才的救济问题。他们承认,如今的大工会会员的确会欺压没有参加工会的劳工,补救办法很简单:人人都参加工会。然而,这种补救方案并没有那么简单。首先,不论瓦格纳—塔夫脱—哈特利法(Wagner-Taft-Hartley Act)以及其他的法律条文怎样从法律上和政治上给予工会组织以极大的支持(人们可能会在某些情况下把这种做法称为强制),但美国仍然只有约四分之一的潜在受惠的劳工参加了工会。{书后注:现在,劳工参加工会的入会率为15.5%(《投资者财经日报》,1995年11月14日)}导致工会化的条件要比我们通常所认为的要特殊得多。即使人人参加工会,各工会的力量也不可能很均衡,一如今天的形势。某些种类的工人有远比他人更有利的策略性优势,要么是会员人多势众,要么是生产的产品不可或缺,要么其他行业对这一行业更为依赖,要么是更会使用暴力。但是,假如情况相反呢?撇开这一假设中自我矛盾之处不谈,如果所有工人的货币工资都可以通过强迫手段等比例地提高,又能如何呢?可以肯定,从长期来看,没有人会过得比工资丝毫不变要好哪怕一点点。

(未完待续)

Economics in One Lesson校译之19. Minimum Wage Laws

Minimum Wage Laws

第19章 最低工资法令

We have already seen some of the harmful results of arbitrary governmental efforts to raise the price of favored commodities. The same sort of harmful results follow efforts to raise wages through minimum wage laws. This ought not to be surprising, for a wage is, in fact, a price. It is unfortunate for clarity of economic thinking that the price of labor’s services should have received an entirely different name from other prices. This has prevented most people from recognizing that the same principles govern both.

我们已经看到政府通过强制手段提高某些商品的价格所带来的恶果。靠颁订最低工资法令来提高工资,也会带来类似的恶果。这不足为奇,因为事实上,工资就是一种价格。我们给劳动力价格取了一个完全区别于其他产品价格的名称,对经济思考的清晰性而言这是一种不幸。大多数人因此不了解商品价格和劳动力价格是由同样的原则在支配。

Thinking has become so emotional and so politically biased on the subject of wages that in most discussions of them the plainest principles are ignored. People who would be among the first to deny that prosperity could be brought about by artificially boosting prices, people who would be among the first to point out that minimum price laws might be most harmful to the very industries they were designed to help, will nevertheless advocate minimum wage laws, and denounce opponents of them, without misgivings.

一说起工资,众人的思维就变得如此情绪化和政治化,以至于大多数讨论都忽略了最基本的原则。那些会马上站出来驳斥“人为抬高商品价格可以带来繁荣”的说法的人,会马上站出来指出最低价格法令可能适得其反、给它们想要帮助的行业造成最大伤害的人,仍然会力挺最低工资法令,并会抨击持反对意见的人,不带丝毫疑虑。

Yet it ought to be clear that a minimum wage law is, at best, a limited weapon for combatting the evil of low wages, and that the possible good to be achieved by such a law can exceed the possible harm only in proportion as its aims are modest. The more ambitious such a law is, the larger the number of workers it attempts to cover, and the more it attempts to raise their wages, the more certain are its harmful effects to exceed any possible good effects.

然而应当明确的一点是,最低工资法令至多不过是克服低工资弊端的一个有限的武器。由它所能得到的好处是否能够超过它所造成的损害,要取决于其目标有所克制的程度。这类法令越是雄心勃勃,力图囊括的劳工数量越大,力求拉动的工资涨幅越大,就越是注定其弊大于利。

The first thing that happens, for example, when a law is passed that no one shall be paid less than $106 for a forty-hour week is that no one who is not worth $106 a week to an employer will be employed at all. You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage you substitute unemployment. You do harm all around, with no comparable compensation.

举例来说,当政府通过一项法令,规定工人每周工作40小时的工资不得低于106美元,那么,首当其冲的是那些劳动价值够不上这106美元的劳工,他们将不会被雇用。法律可以规定雇主给雇员开的工资达不到某个标准就算违法,但法律并不能使雇来的人的劳动价值一定够得上这个标准。你在阻止了社会享有他能提供的有限的、力所能及的服务的时候,只不过是剥夺他能力与条件能挣到相应工资的权利。简单地说,你用失业取代低工资,损害了所有人的利益而没有相当的补偿。

The only exception to this occurs when a group of workers is receiving a wage actually below its market worth. This is likely to happen only in rare and special circumstances or localities where competitive forces do not operate freely or adequately; but nearly all these special cases could be remedied just as effectively, more flexibly and with far less potential harm, by unionization.

针对上述情况的唯一例外是一群劳工的工资低于了市场价值。这种状况极为少见,情况非常特殊,或者是发生在竞争力量无法自由而充分地发挥作用的地区。但是几乎所有这些特殊的情况,都可以通过组织工会的方式予以解决,同样有效,却比法律条例更灵活,副作用也远比之为小。

It may be thought that if the law forces the payment of a higher wage in a given industry, that industry can then charge higher prices for its product, so that the burden of paying the higher wage is merely shifted to consumers. Such shifts, however, are not easily made, nor are the consequences of artificial wage-raising so easily escaped. A higher price for the product may not be possible: it may merely drive consumers to the equivalent imported products or to some substitute. Or, if consumers continue to buy the product of the industry in which wages have been raised, the higher price will cause them to buy less of it. While some workers in the industry may be benefited from the higher wage, therefore, others will be thrown out of employment altogether. On the other hand, if the price of the product is not raised, marginal producers in the industry will be driven out of business; so that reduced production and consequent unemployment will merely be brought about in another way.

可能有人认为,如果法律强制规定某行业支付更高的工资,那个行业可采用提高产品价格的方式,将工资负担转嫁给消费者。然而,这种转嫁是不易办到的,就像人为地调高工资的后果也难以避免一样。产品提价的可能性可能不存在:因为消费者会转而去买同类进口产品或改用其他替代品。即便消费者继续购买提高工资行业的产品,但较高的价格将迫使他们买得比从前更少。结果会是,该行业的某些劳工能从高工资中受益,其他的劳工将被迫失业。另一方面,如果工资涨而价格不涨,这个行业的边际生产者将挤出这个行业;所以,这不过是以另一种方式促使产量减少,进而促成工人失业。

When such consequences are pointed out, there are those who reply: “Very well; if it is true that the X industry cannot exist except by paying starvation wages, then it will be just as well if the minimum wage puts it out of existence altogether.” But this brave pronouncement overlooks the realities. It overlooks, first of all, that consumers will suffer the loss of that product. It forgets, in the second place, that it is merely condemning the people who worked in that industry to unemployment. And it ignores, finally, that bad as were the wages paid in the X industry, they were the best among all the alternatives that seemed open to the workers in that industry; otherwise the workers would have gone into another. If, therefore, the X industry is driven out of existence by a minimum wage law, then the workers previously employed in that industry will be forced to turn to alternative courses that seemed less attractive to them in the first place. Their competition for jobs will drive down the pay offered even in these alternative occupations. There is no escape from the conclusion that the minimum wage will increase unemployment.

在我们指出此类后果以后,有人会说:“行啊,如果某行业全靠低工资吊命,那么还不如用最低工资法令把这个行业完全淘汰掉。”这种大胆的说法忽视了现实。首先,它忽视了消费者将再也得不到此种产品。其次,它忘记了这仅仅是用失业惩罚了在那一产业中工作的工人。最后,它还忽略了一点,即便X行业的工资很低,却是业界劳工的最佳选择;否则,那些劳工早就改行了。因此,如果X行业因为最低工资法而遭淘汰,先前的业界劳工会被迫转行到更不如意的其他行业。求职竞争甚至还会压低那些可供选择的职位的工资。总之,最低工资法必定造成失业增加,在这点上不可能得出其他结论。

2

A nice problem, moreover, will be raised by the relief program designed to take care of the unemployment caused by the minimum wage law. By a minimum wage of, say, $2.65 an hour, we have forbidden anyone to work forty hours in a week for less than $106.[5] Suppose, now, we offer only $70 a week on relief. This means that we have forbidden a man to be usefully employed at, say, $90 a week, in order that we may support him at $70 a week in idleness. We have deprived society of the value of his services. We have deprived the man of the independence and self-respect that come from self-support, even at a low level, and from performing wanted work, at the same time as we have lowered what the man could have received by his own efforts.

此外,实施旨在处理好最低工资法导致失业问题的救济方案,还会引发出令人费解的问题。比如,法律把每小时最低工资定为2.65美元,表明劳工一周工作40小时而工资低于106美元的,统统为法律所禁止。{书后注5:最低工资现在是每小时4.25美元。按每周工作40小时计算,单单工资成本,雇主就要负担每周170美元一个人。}再假设现在的失业救济金标准是一周70美元。这意味着,我们宁可每周花70美元去养活一个闲人,也不肯让人尽其所能去挣得周薪为90美元的工资。最低工资法剥夺了社会享有这部分人的服务所创造的价值,也剥夺了这些人凭自力更生而拥有的独立与自尊。与此同时,我们降低了他们本可以通过自己的努力而得到的收入。

These consequences follow as long as the weekly relief payment is a penny less than $106. Yet the higher we make the relief payment, the worse we make the situation in other respects. If we offer $106 for relief, then we offer many men just as much for not working as for working. Moreover, whatever the sum we offer for relief, we create a situation in which everyone is working only for the difference between his wages and the amount of the relief. If the relief is $106 a week, for example, workers offered a wage of $2.75 an hour, or $110 a week, are in fact, as they see it, being asked to work for only $4 a week—for they can get the rest without doing anything.

只要救济金标准还低于一周106美元,就会带来上述后果。然而,把救济金提得越高,则其他方面的后果就会越糟。如果救济标准调到一周106美元,那么对于许多人而言,工作与不工作的收入一个样。更进一步说,无论救济金标准高还是低,都会造成了这种局面,即:每个人努力工作,挣得的只是工资与救济金之间的差额。举例来说,假设每周的救济金是106美元,某劳工每小时工资是2.75美元、即周薪110美元,那么该劳工实际上只是在为每周4美元的工资而工作。因为他不工作也能领到106美元。

It may be thought that we can escape these consequences by offering “work relief” instead of “home relief “; but we merely change the nature of the consequences. Work relief means that we are paying the beneficiaries more than the open market would pay them for their efforts. Only part of their relief-wage is for their efforts, therefore, while the rest is a disguised dole.

也许有的人会认为,我们可以通过提供“工作救助”而不是“家庭救济”的办法来避免上述结果,;但这只是换汤不换药。工作救助意味着我们付给受惠劳工的工资比市场上付给他的工资高。因此,他们领取的救助性工资,只有一部分是劳动报酬,其余则是变相支付的救济金。

It remains to be pointed out that government make-work is necessarily inefficient and of questionable utility. The government has to invent projects that will employ the least skilled. It cannot start teaching people carpentry, masonry, and the like, for fear of competing with established skills and arousing the antagonism of existing unions. I am not recommending it, but it probably would be less harmful all around if the government in the first place frankly subsidized the wages of submarginal workers at the work they were already doing. Yet this would create political headaches of its own.

有必要进一步指出,政府以工代赈安排的工作必然没有效率,其效用也很成问题。政府不得不搞出一些再就业工程来雇用技能最差的劳工。它不能着手于培训人们木工、泥瓦工或是类似的手艺,因为他们担心那么做会导致与目前的熟练工人的竞争,甚至引发工会之间的对抗。虽然我不主张搞补贴,但是如果政府首先公开地对那些处于边际生产水平以下的工人进行直接的工资补贴,或许从总体上看,它所造成的损失可能会小一些。可这样做却会有政治麻烦。

We need not pursue this point further, as it would carry us into problems not immediately relevant. But the difficulties and consequences of relief must be kept in mind when we consider the adoption of minimum wage laws or an increase in minimums already fixed [*]

这个问题就此打住,再谈就跑题了。请记住,在我们考虑实施最低工资法,或者提高最低工资时,我们一定要认识到实施救济的种种困难和后果。{脚注:1938年,当美国所有制造业的平均工资是每小时63美分时,国会制定的最低工资限额只是每小时25美分。1945年,当所有工厂的平均工资提高到每小时1.02美元时,国会制定的最低限额为每小时40美分。1949年,当所有工厂的平均工资提高到每小时1.40美元时,国会将最低限额提高为每小时75美分。1955年,当所有工厂的平均工资提高到每小时1.88美元时,国会将最低工资限额提高到每小时1美元。1961年,当所有工厂平均工资提高到每小时2.30美元时,国会将最低限额提高到每小时1.15美元,1963年再提高到1.25美元。长话短说,1967年最低工资增为1.40美元,1968年为1.60美元,1974年为2.00美元,1975年为2.10美元,1976年为2.30美元(那时所有私营非农业生产就业者的平均工资是4.87美元)。1977年,当非农工人的平均工资达到了每小时5.26美元,最低工资也提高到每小时2.65美元,附加条款规定在此后三年中要相继增长进一步提高。于是,随着普遍的小时工资的提高,最低工资法的提倡者认为,法定最低工资水平至少应到相应地提高。尽管是最低工资在随市场工资进行提高,但总有人构建最低工资立法提高了市场工资水平这一迷信。}{书后注6:在黑兹利特上述脚注之后,最低工资又增加了三次:在1981年增至3.35美元,1990年为3.80美元,1992年为4.25美元。每一次最低工资的增加,伴随着失业增加(尤其是少数族裔的年轻人失业)与新增就业机会的减少。 (理查德·维德(Richard Vedder)和洛厄尔·盖洛维(Lowell Gallaway)的〈联邦最低工资应该调增吗?〉(Should the Federal Minimum Wage Be Increased?),NCPA政策报告第190号,1995年2月)}

Before we finish with the topic I should perhaps mention another argument sometimes put forward for fixing a minimum wage rate by statute. This is that in an industry in which one big company enjoys a monopoly, it need not fear competition and can offer below-market wages. This is a highly improbable situation. Such a “monopoly” company must offer high wages when it is formed, in order to attract labor from other industries. Thereafter it could theoretically fail to increase wage rates as much as other industries, and so pay “substandard” wages for that particular specialized skill. But this would be likely to happen only if that industry (or company) was sick or shrinking; if it were prosperous or expanding, it would have to continue to offer high wages to increase its labor force.

在结束这一论题之前,也许我应当提一下主张以法规形式确定某一最低工资率的另一种论调。有人指出:一家大公司如果垄断某一行业,它不用担心竞争,可以用低于市价的工资来支付劳动力报酬。在很大程度上这种情况并不符合现实。这样的“垄断”公司在形成过程中必须以高工资从其他行业吸引员工。形成垄断之后,从理论上讲,它以向有具体特殊技能的工人支付“低于应有水平”的工资,而不是象其他行业一样大幅度地提高工资。但是这种情况只有在该产业(或公司)病入膏肓或者龟缩时才有可能;如果它处于兴盛或扩张阶段,则必须继续用高工资才能吸引扩增其员工人数。

We know as a matter of experience that it is the big companies —those most often accused of being monopolies—that pay the highest wages and offer the most attractive working conditions. It is commonly the small marginal firms, perhaps suffering from excessive competition, that offer the lowest wages. But all employers must pay enough to hold workers or to attract them from each other.

经验告诉我们,那些被指责为垄断的大公司,所支付的工资最高,所提供的工作条件最吸引人。而绩效较差的小公司迫于竞争压力,支付的工资往往最低。但是无论公司大小,所有的雇主都必须支付够高的工资,才能留住员工,竞争人才。

3

All this is not to argue that there is no way of raising wages. It is merely to point out that the apparently easy method of raising them by government fiat is the wrong way and the worst way.

以上所说并非表明我们找不到提高工资的方法,它仅仅指出,靠政府的法令来提高工资,这种方式表面上看来简便易行,却是错误的,并且是最糟糕的。

This is perhaps as good a place as any to point out that what distinguishes many reformers from those who cannot accept their proposals is not their greater philanthropy, but their greater impatience. The question is not whether we wish to see everybody as well off as possible. Among men of good will such an aim can be taken for granted. The real question concerns the proper means of achieving it. And in trying to answer this we must never lose sight of a few elementary truisms. We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces.

也许这是最佳时候,指出许多改革者与那些不能接受他们建议的人之间的区别,并不在于他们更有善心,而是他们更缺乏耐心。问题不在于我们是否愿人富不愿人穷,任何有良心的人当然希望大家都过得好。真正的问题在于用什么手段去实现这个良好愿望。在回答这个问题时,请不要无视一些最基本的真理。我们没办法无中生有,让劳工报酬长期高出其创造的价值。

The best way to raise wages, therefore, is to raise marginal labor productivity. This can be done by many methods: by an increase in capital accumulation — i.e., by an increase in the machines with which the workers are aided; by new inventions and improvements; by more efficient management on the part of employers; by more industriousness and efficiency on the part of workers; by better education and training. The more the individual worker produces, the more he increases the wealth of the whole community. The more he produces, the more his services are worth to consumers, and hence to employers. And the more he is worth to employers, the more he will be paid. Real wages come out of production, not out of government decrees.

所以,提高工资的最佳手段,是提高劳动力的边际生产水平。这可以通过许多方法来实现:通过增加资本累积,例如添置机器以协助劳工;通过新的发明和革新;通过雇主更有效率的管理;通过员工的勤劳和更有效劳作;通过更好的教育培训等。单个生产者产出越多,他为整个社会所增加的财富就越多。他生产得越多,他的服务对于消费者的价值越大,因此对雇主的价值也越大,雇主越有可能给他涨工资。实质工资来源于产值,而不是来源于政府的法令。

So government policy should be directed, not to imposing more burdensome requirements on employers, but to following policies that encourage profits, that encourage employers to expand, to invest in newer and better machines to increase the productivity of workers — in brief, to encourage capital accumulation, instead of discouraging it—and to increase both employment and wage rates.

因此,政府政策不应该给雇主增加更多负担,而应该鼓励他们创造利润;鼓励他们扩张经营,通过添置更新更好的机器来提高劳工的生产力。也就是不要限制资本积累,而要鼓励资本累积,并以此来增加就业、提高工资率。

Economics in One Lesson校译之 18. What Rent Control Does

18. What Rent Control Does

第18章 房租管制的后果

Government control of the rents of houses and apartments is a special form of price control. Most of its consequences are substantially the same as those of price control in general, but a few call for special consideration.

政府对院宅和公寓房租的管制,是价格管制的一种特殊形式。从实质上讲其主要后果与一般的物价管制也是相同的,但仍有几点需要特别考虑。

Rent controls are sometimes imposed as a part of general price controls, but more often they are decreed by a special law. A frequent occasion is the beginning of a war. An army post is set up in a small town; rooming houses increase rents for rooms; owners of apartments and houses increase their rents. This leads to public indignation. Or houses in some towns may be actually destroyed by bombs, and the need for armaments or other supplies diverts materials and labor from the building trades.

有的时候,实行房租管制是整个物价管制政策的一个部分,但多数时候则是通过专门立法来规范的。这类情况往往出现在在战争初期。有的小镇因为部队驻扎,寄宿店主提高房价,公寓和院宅的业主提高租金,于是这导致了公众的愤慨。或者,在某些城镇,房屋事实上可能被炮弹炸毁了,而对武器或其他军需品的需求又挤占了建筑业所需的原材料和劳动力。

Rent control is initially imposed on the argument that the supply of housing is not “elastic”—i.e., that a housing shortage cannot be immediately made up, no matter how high rents are allowed to rise. Therefore, it is contended, the government, by forbidding increases in rents, protects tenants from extortion and exploitation without doing any real harm to landlords and without discouraging new construction.

房租管制最初是以房屋供应缺乏“弹性”为依据强制实施的——也就是说,无论租金被提高到怎样的水平,住房短缺都不可能得到立即弥补。因此,人们坚持认为,通过禁止提高房租,政府可以保护租户不被敲竹杠、不被盘剥,同时不会对业主造成实质的伤害,也不会打消建造新房屋的积极性。

This argument is defective even on the assumption that the rent control will not long remain in effect. It overlooks an immediate consequence. If landlords are allowed to raise rents to reflect a monetary inflation and the true conditions of supply and demand, individual tenants will economize by taking less space. This will allow others to share the accommodations that are in short supply. The same amount of housing will shelter more people, until the shortage is relieved.

即便我们假设不会长期实行房租管制,上述论调也有缺陷。它忽视了一个立即就会出现的后果。如果我们允许房东提高租金,以反映出通货膨胀和真实的供求状况的话,那么,各个租户将会节省租用面积以求经济合算。这样使得其他人可以分享供不应求的居住设施。相同数量的住房,就可以供更多的人居住,直到房荒得到缓解。

Rent control, however, encourages wasteful use of space. It discriminates in favor of those who already occupy houses or apartments in a particular city or region at the expense of those who find themselves on the outside. Permitting rents to rise to the free market level allows all tenants or would-be tenants equal opportunity to bid for space. Under conditions of monetary inflation or real housing shortage, rents would rise just as surely if landlords were not allowed to set an asking price, but were allowed merely to accept the highest competitive bids of tenants.

然而,房租管制鼓励了居住面积使用上的浪费。它造成一种差别待遇,其中,已经在某一城市或地区占有院宅或公寓的租户得到了特别的优待,却牺牲了四处找房的求租人的利益。只有允许租金上涨到自由市场的水平,才可能让所有的租户或求租人享有同等的机会,竞价争取居住空间。在通货膨胀或房源短缺的状况下,倘若不允许房东自己定个一口价,而只允许房东接受出价最高的人承租,那么租金毫无疑问也是会上涨的。

The effects of rent control become worse the longer the rent control continues. New housing is not built because there is no incentive to build it. With the increase in building costs (commonly as a result of inflation), the old level of rents will not yield a profit. If, as often happens, the government finally recognizes this and exempts new housing from rent control, there is still not an incentive to as much new building as if older buildings were also free of rent control. Depending on the extent of money depreciation since old rents were legally frozen, rents for new housing might be ten or twenty times as high as rent in equivalent space in the old. (This actually happened in France after World War II, for example.) Under such conditions existing tenants in old buildings are indisposed to move, no matter how much their families grow or their existing accommodations deteriorate.

房租管制持续的时间越长,其影响就越恶劣。新的房子不会盖出来,因为不存在盖新楼的经济激励。而随着住宅建造成本升高(通常是通货膨胀造成的),原来价位的房租不再能带来利润。正如现实中通常发生的那样,即使政府最后认识到了这一点,并且不把新房屋的租金纳入管制范围,对兴建新住宅的激励,以及建造数量,还是会少于完全不实施房租管制的情况。新房屋的租金可能是同等大小旧房屋的10~20倍不等,具体要看旧房屋租金的价位,以及旧房屋租金管制以来的货币贬值程度(这样的事情曾经发生在二次世界大战后的法国)。在这样的状况下,住在老房子中的租户,不管家庭人数增加多少,或者目前的房屋多么破旧,都不愿意搬迁。

Because of low fixed rents in old buildings, the tenants already in them, and legally protected against rent increases, are encouraged to use space wastefully, whether or not their families have grown smaller. This concentrates the immediate pressure of new demand on the relatively few new buildings. It tends to force rents in them, at the beginning, to a higher level than they would have reached in a wholly free market.

由于老房子的固定低房租,已经住在里面的租户合法地受到限制租金提高这一政策的保护。这等于鼓励他们浪费性地使用空间,而不考虑他们的家庭是否已经变小。如此一来,新需求迫在眉睫的压力都集中到了数量相对较少的新建筑上,并从一开始就迫使新房屋的租金高于完全自由的市场中应有的价位。

Nevertheless, this will not correspondingly encourage the construction of new housing. Builders or owners of preexisting apartment houses, finding themselves with restricted profits or perhaps even losses on their old apartments, will have little or no capital to put into new construction. In addition, they, or those with capital from other sources, may fear that the government may at any time find an excuse for imposing rent controls even on the new buildings. And it often does.

尽管如此,这种做法并不能相应地激励新住宅的建设。原有的的建筑商或业主发现,从旧房屋上他们只能得到极为有限的利润,甚至处于亏损。他们不会有多少资金,甚至可能拿不出资金去投入新的建设。此外,他们或其他具有资金来源的人们有钱也不敢投,因为担心政府随时另找借口,突然对新房屋实施房租管制。这样的事常有发生。

The housing situation will deteriorate in other ways. Most important, unless the appropriate rent increases are allowed, landlords will not trouble to remodel apartments or make other improvements in them. In fact, where rent control is particularly unrealistic or oppressive, landlords will not even keep rented houses or apartments in tolerable repair. Not only will they have no economic incentive to do so; they may not even have the funds. The rent-control laws, among their other effects, create ill feeling between landlords who are forced to take minimum returns or even losses, and tenants who resent the landlord’s failure to make adequate repairs.

住房状况的恶化也可能会表现在其他方面。最重要的是,除非政府允许适当地提高租金,否则业主不会自找麻烦修缮公寓或做其他方面的改善。事实上,在房租管制与现实严重脱节,价位打压过猛的情况下,房东甚至不会对租出去的院宅或公寓给予必要的维修。他们不仅没有经济动力,甚至没有足够资金去维修。房租管制法令也造成房东与房客之间关系恶化:房东被迫接受最低的回报率、甚至不赚反赔,租户则抱怨房东连起码的维修都不管。

A common next step of legislatures, acting under merely political pressures or confused economic ideas, is to take rent controls off “luxury” apartments while keeping them on low or middle-grade apartments. The argument is that the rich tenants can afford to pay higher rents, but the poor cannot.

迫于压力或由于混乱不清的经济思想,下一个步骤通常是取消“高档”住宅的房租管制,而同时继续维持中低档住宅的房租管制。其论点是:富人负担得起较高的房租,而穷人负担不起。

The long-run effect of this discriminatory device, however, is the exact opposite of what its advocates intend. The builders and owners of luxury apartments are encouraged and rewarded; the builders and owners of the more needed low-rent housing are discouraged and penalized. The former are free to make as big a profit as the conditions of supply and demand warrant; the latter are left with no incentive (or even capital) to build more low-rent housing.

然而,这种区别对待政策的长期影响与其预期恰恰相反。高档住宅的建筑商和业主得到鼓励和更好回报;而需求更为迫切的低租金房屋,其建筑商和业主反而受到限制和惩罚。前者可以自由地赚取供需状况所允许的最大利润;后者则缺乏激励(甚至缺乏资金)去建造更多的低租金房屋。

The result is a comparative encouragement to the repair and remodeling of luxury apartments, and a tendency for what new private building there is to be diverted to luxury apartments. But there is no incentive to build new low-income housing, or even to keep existing low-income housing in good repair. The accommodations for the low-income groups, therefore, will deteriorate in quality, and there will be no increase in quantity. Where the population is increasing, the deterioration and shortage in low-income housing will grow worse and worse. It may reach a point where many landlords not only cease to make any profit but are faced with mounting and compulsory losses. They may find that they cannot even give their property away. They may actually abandon their property and disappear, so they cannot be held liable for taxes. When owners cease supplying heat and other basic services, the tenants are compelled to abandon their apartments. Wider and wider neighborhoods are reduced to slums. In recent years, in New York City, it has become a common sight to see whole blocks of abandoned apartments, with windows broken, or boarded up to prevent further havoc by vandals. Arson becomes more frequent, and the owners are suspected.

上述做法相对鼓励了业主对高档住宅的维修和改造,致使新建私人建筑被迫转向高档公寓。然而,人们缺乏激励去建造新的低收入住宅,甚至缺乏激励去保障现有低收入住宅的修缮。因此,对于低收入群体来讲,其住房质量将会恶化,而且数量上也不会有什么增加。在人口增长的情况下,低收入住宅的恶化和短缺都将会愈演愈烈。甚至严重到这样一种地步:那时,许多房东不仅赚不到钱,反而被迫月月赔钱。也许到了那时,他们甚至连放弃这笔财产也做不到。他们可能当真抛弃房产,溜之大吉,从而避免纳税。当住宅的供暖和其他的基本服务无人管理时,租户也只有另找住处。越来越多居民区沦为贫民窟。近年来,在纽约城区内,经常可见整段的街区都是废弃的公寓建筑,窗户破烂,或者用木板钉死以防遭人恣意毁坏。纵火案比以前增多,房主就有嫌疑。

A further effect is the erosion of city revenues, as the property-value base for such taxes continues to shrink. Cities go bankrupt, or cannot continue to supply basic services.

一个进一步影响是市政收入流失,这是由于以财产价值为税基的税收持续萎缩。市政面临破产,或是无法继续提供基本的服务。

When these consequences are so clear that they become glaring, there is of course no acknowledgment on the part of the imposers of rent control that they have blundered. Instead, they denounce the capitalist system. They contend that private enterprise has “failed” again; that “private enterprise cannot do the job.” Therefore, they argue, the State must step in and itself build low-rent housing.

当这些结果变得明朗并引起广泛关注时,那些实施管制的人自然不会承认他们犯有过错。正相反,他们怪罪到资本主义体制头上。他们争辩说,私有制度再度“失灵”,“私有产业解决不了问题”。因此,他们力陈,国家必须介入,一肩担起兴建廉租房的重任。

This has been the almost universal result in every country that was involved in World War II or imposed rent control in an effort to offset monetary inflation.

对于那些参与过二次世界大战的国家、以及那些为了平抑通货膨胀而实施房租管制的国家来说,这几乎是统一的结局。

So the government launches on a gigantic housing program — at the taxpayers’ expense. The houses are rented at a rate that does not pay back costs of construction and operation. A typical arrangement is for the government to pay annual subsidies, either directly to the tenants in lower rents or to the builders or managers of the State housing. Whatever the nominal arrangement, the tenants in the buildings are being subsidized by the rest of the population. They are having part of their rent paid for them. They are being selected for favored treatment. The political possibilities of this favoritism are too clear to need stressing. A pressure group is built up that believes that the taxpayers owe it these subsidies as a matter of right. Another all but irreversible step is taken toward the total Welfare State.

于是乎,政府推出规模浩大的廉租房兴建计划(当然是拿纳税人的钱去做这件事)。当然,廉租房的房租,根本不足以弥补房屋的建造和营运成本。不足部分通常由政府每年拿钱出来补贴,无论是通过收取低廉的房租来直接补贴租户,还是以各种名义补贴廉租房的承建商和物业公司。无论名义上如何安排和计划,享受廉租房的租户都得到了别人的补贴。他们所需交纳的一部分租金是由别人提供的。这些租户是被政府选中的接受优待的一群人。对于优待特定的一群人的各种政治可能性,明眼人一看即知,无需多说。一个压力集团将由此形成并壮大,进而相信它有权接受纳税人的补贴。这是向全面的福利国家迈进的另一个不可逆的步骤。

A final irony of rent control is that the more unrealistic, Draconian, and unjust it is, the more fervid the political arguments for its continuance. If the legally fixed rents are on the average 95 percent as high as free market rents would be, and only minor injustice is being done to landlords, there is no strong political objection to taking off rent controls, because tenants will only have to pay increases averaging about percent. But if the inflation of the currency has been so great, or the rent-control laws so repressive and unrealistic, that legally fixed rents are only 10 percent of what free market rents would be, and gross injustice is being done to owners and landlords, a great outcry will be raised about the dreadful evils of removing the controls and forcing tenants to pay an economic rent. The argument is made that it would be unspeakably cruel and unreasonable to ask the tenants to pay so sudden and huge an increase. Even the opponents of rent control are then disposed to concede that the removal of controls must be a very cautious, gradual, and prolonged process. Few of the opponents of rent control, indeed, have the political courage and economic insight under such conditions to ask even for this gradual decontrol. In sum, the more unrealistic and unjust the rent control is, the harder it is politically to get rid of it. In country after country, a ruinous rent control has been retained years after other forms of price control have been abandoned.

实施房租管制,最具讽刺的一点,在于它越是背离现实、手段越严厉、越不公正,支持继续管制的政治呼声越强烈。假如法定固定房租平均来说是自由市场租金水平的95%,并且对房东来讲只有些许不公平的话,政府此时取消房租管制,遇到的政治阻力不会太大,毕竟租户只需要多负担约5%的房租。但是,倘若通货膨胀非常严重,或者房租管制法十分严厉,总之跟现实大幅脱节,以至于法定固定房租只相当于自由市场租金的10%,巨大的不公平让业主和房东受损、让租户受益,政府此时取消房租管制、要租户转而支付高租金就会引起非常强烈的反对。反对者会说,突然加重租户房租负担,未免过于残酷和不合情理。鉴于这种情况,甚至反对实施房租管制的人也会妥协,认为取消管制必须慎重、渐进、慢慢来。实际上,就是连这种逐步取消管制的方案,在房租管制的人中,也极少有人怀有政治上的勇气和经济上的远见而敢于提倡。总之,房租管制越是不切实际、不公正,取消管制在政治上的可行性越小。一个接一个国家的实践表明,即使其他的价格管制形式已经取消了好多年,为害不小的房租管制依然照旧在实施。

The political excuses offered for continuing rent control pass credibility. The law sometimes provides that the controls may be lifted when the “vacancy rate” is above a certain figure. The officials retaining the rent control keep triumphantly pointing out that the vacancy rate has not yet reached that figure. Of course not. The very fact that the legal rents are held so far below market rents artificially increases the demand for rental space at the same time as it discourages any increase in supply. So the more unreasonably low the rent ceilings are held, the more certain it is that the ‘‘scarcity” of rental houses or apartments will continue.

继续实施房租管制的政治借口毫无道理可言。法律有时规定,当“空房率”高于某个数字时,可以解除控制。执行房租管制的官员总是提醒公众,空房率还没有达到那个数字。这当然是不会达到的。法定房租至今一直被控制在远远低于市场价格的水平,这足以使阻碍出租房屋供给的增长,另一方面又人为地增加了对它的需求。因此,政府所规定的租价上限越是低得不合理,出租房源的“稀缺”情况将持续下去就越必然。

The injustice imposed on landlords is flagrant. They are, to repeat, forced to subsidize the rents paid by their tenants, often at the cost of great net losses to themselves. The subsidized tenants may frequently be richer than the landlord forced to assume part of what would otherwise be his market rent. The politicians ignore this. Men in other businesses, who support the imposition or retention of rent control because their hearts bleed for the tenants, do not go so far as to suggest that they themselves be asked to assume part of the tenant subsidy through taxation. The whole burden falls on the single small class of people wicked enough to have built or to own rental housing.

强加于房东们的不公正待遇是公然的恶行。大家不要忘了,他们被强制补贴租户的租金的,为此他们往往要自己承担很大的净亏损。享受补贴的租户,也许会比补贴他们的房东还富有,因为后者不得不承担市场租价中的部分份额。政治家们忽视了这一点,而其他行业的人有可能因为同情租户的处境而支持实施或者维持房租管制,但他们绝不会自找麻烦,建议通过纳税而自己也向租户提供部分的补贴。全部的负担落到非常倒霉的一小群建设或拥有出租房屋的家伙身上。

Few words carry stronger obloquy than slumlord. And what is a slumlord? He is not a man who owns expensive property in fashionable neighborhoods, but one who owns only rundown property in the slums, where the rents are lowest and where payment is most dilatory, erratic and undependable. It is not easy to imagine why (except for natural wickedness) a man who could afford to own decent rental housing would decide to become a slumlord instead.

甚少有比贫民窟恶房东更具有贬义的词汇了。贫民窟恶房东是什么样的人呢?他并不拥有坐落在黄金地段的豪宅,而是只有位于贫民窟的破旧老屋。那里的房租是最便宜的,而租金的支付又是最拖拉、最不稳定、最靠不住的。很难想象一个人(除非天性邪恶)具有相当的经济条件,可以拥有像样的房屋出租的话,相反他选择了去作一个贫民窟恶房东。

When unreasonable price controls are placed on articles of immediate consumption, like bread, for example, the bakers can simply refuse to continue to bake and sell it. A shortage becomes immediately obvious, and the politicians are compelled to raise the ceilings or repeal them. But housing is very durable. It may take several years before tenants begin to feel the results of the discouragement to new building, and to ordinary maintenance and repair. It may take even longer before they realize that the scarcity and deterioration of housing is directly traceable to rent control. Meanwhile, as long as landlords are getting any net income whatever above their taxes and mortgage interest, they seem to have no alternative but to continue holding and renting their property. The politicians—remembering that tenants have more votes than landlords—cynically continue their rent control long after they have been forced to give up general price controls.

不合理的价格管制施加在面包等日用消费品上的时候,比如面包,面包店只要停止烘焙、停止出售面包就行了。面包马上就会供不应求,迫使政治人物提高价格上限,甚至取消价格管制。但是,房子是非常耐用的消费品。可能要住上好几年,寻租户才会开始感受到房东无力维修与扩建的苦果。也许再过数年,人们才会意识到房荒与房屋设施恶化与房租管制有直接的关系。与此同时,只要房主们在扣除税金和抵押贷款利息之后还算有点净收入,那么,除了继续拥有和出租房产,他们似乎也别无选择。于是,政治家们——记住,租户的票数比房东的票数更多——在被迫放普通价格管制之后,仍然长久地继续执行房租管制政策。

So we come back to our basic lesson. The pressure for rent control comes from those who consider only its imagined short-run benefits to one group in the population. But when we consider its long-ran effects on everybody, including the tenants themselves, we recognize that rent control is not only increasingly futile, but increasingly destructive the more severe it is, and the longer it remains in effect.

这就回到了我们的基本课程。要求实施房租管制的压力,来自于仅仅考虑了臆想出来的全部人口中某一群体的短期利益。而当我们考虑到这种控制在长期内对于包括租户自己在内的每个人的影响时,我们就会认识到,不仅房租管制徒劳无益,并且,管制手段越严厉、延续时间越长,它的破坏性越大。

Economics in One Lesson校译之16. “Stabilizing” Commodities

“Stabilizing” Commodities

第16章 “稳定”物价

Attempts to lift the prices of particular commodities permanently above their natural market levels have failed so often, so disastrously and so notoriously that sophisticated pressure groups, and the bureaucrats upon whom they apply the pressure, seldom openly avow that aim. Their stated aims, particularly when they are first proposing that the government intervene, are usually more modest, and more plausible.

那些想要长期把某些商品的价格抬高到其自然的市场价格水平之上的企图,每每以失败而告终,败得很惨,败得声名狼藉,以至于那些圆熟精明的施压集团,以及承受他们压力的官员,很少公开宣称这一目的。尤其是在他们率先提议实行政府干预时,他们所陈述的目标往往更为温和、更加动听。

They have no wish, they declare, to raise the price of commodity X permanently above its natural level. That, they concede, would be unfair to consumers. But it is now obviously selling far below its natural level. The producers cannot make a living. Unless we act promptly, they will be thrown out of business. Then there will be a real scarcity, and consumers will have to pay exorbitant prices for the commodity. The apparent bargains that the consumers are now getting will cost them dear in the end. For the present “temporary” low price cannot last. But we cannot afford to wait for so-called natural market forces, or for the “blind” law of supply and demand, to correct the situation. For by that time the producers will be ruined and a great scarcity will be upon us. The government must act. All that we really want to do is to correct these violent, senseless fluctuations in price. We are not trying to boost the price; we are only trying to stabilize it.

他们宣称,他们并不是想要长期把某商品的价格提高到其自然价格水平之上,他们也承认这种干预对消费者是不公平的。但是,由于该商品目前的售价显然远低于其自然价格水平,生产者养不活自己。除非政府立即采取行动,不然的话,他们只有破产出局。如果真成了那样,必将出现真正的匮乏,而消费者也将不得不以高得离谱的价格去购买这种商品。消费者现在图“一时”便宜,但最终这将使他们付出高昂的代价,因为,现在这种“暂时 的”低价格不可能永远撑下去。但是,我们不能坐等所谓的自然市场力量,或“盲目的”供求法则,来矫正眼前的状况。等不到那一天,生产厂商已经倒闭,大家只有陷入大短缺的恐慌之中。政府必须有所行动。我们真正要做的,是熨平这些剧烈的、无益的价格波动。我们并非想要提高商品价格,我们仅仅是要使它稳定

There are several methods by which it is commonly proposed to do this. One of the most frequent is government loans to farmers to enable them to hold their crops off the market.

人们通常提出的实现稳定物价的方案有好几种。其中最常见的就是主张政府向农民提供贷款,好让他们可以暂时囤积其收获的谷物,而不急于拿到市场上出售。

Such loans are urged in Congress for reasons that seem very plausible to most listeners. They are told that the farmers’ crops are all dumped on the market at once, at harvest time; that this is precisely the time when prices are lowest, and that speculators take advantage of this to buy the crops themselves and hold them for higher prices when food gets scarcer again. Thus it is urged that the farmers suffer, and that they, rather than the speculators, should get the advantage of the higher average price.

国会被敦促实施这种贷款,其理由让大多数听众觉得颇有道理。议员们被告之,农民的谷物都集中在收获时节上市出售,而这正好是一年中农产品价格最低的时候,投机商乘机买进囤积,等到青黄不接的时候,就高价倒卖。农民则因此蒙受损失。政府应该确保这个钱应该拿给农民赚,而不要让投机商从中渔利。

This argument is not supported by either theory or experience. The much-reviled speculators are not the enemy of the farmer; they are essential to his best welfare. The risks of fluctuating farm prices must be borne by somebody; they have in fact been borne in modern times chiefly by the professional speculators. In general, the more competently the latter act in their own interest as speculators, the more they help the farmer. For speculators serve their own interest precisely in proportion to their ability to foresee future prices. But the more accurately they foresee future prices the less violent or extreme are the fluctuations in prices.

无论是理论还是经验都无法支持这样的论点。倍受谴责的投机商,并不是农民的敌人,相反,他们对于农民的最高福利至关重要。因为,农产品价格波动的风险必须要有人来承担,而在现代社会中,这些风险其实主要是由职业投机商们承担的。一般说来,投机运作越成功,职业投机商对农民的帮助越大。因为,投机商们的赢利能力,恰好仰仗于他们预测未来价格的能力。也就是说,他们预测未来价格的越准确,价格波动就会少几分剧烈和偏激。

Even if farmers had to dump their whole crop of wheat on the market in a single month of the year, therefore, the price in that month would not necessarily be below the price at any other month (apart from an allowance for the costs of storage). For speculators, in the hope of making a profit, would do most of their buying at that time. They would keep on buying until the price rose to a point where they saw no further opportunity of future profit. They would sell whenever they thought there was a prospect of future loss. The result would be to stabilize the price of farm commodities the year round.

因此,即使大多数农民不得不在收获后的那个月,把全部的小麦收成送到市场销售,对那些农民来说,那个月的价格也不一定就低于其他月份(这里要扣除仓储成本,【若农民愿意自己负担仓储成本,他们也可以不必急于集中销售小麦,译者注】)。对于投机商来说,若想要趁机获利,他们就会在那个时期集中买进小麦。他们会不断地收购,直到价格升到使他们感到在将来根本无利可图的那个价位。他们会在将来他们认为有可能会有损失的时候售出这批商品。其带来的结果,必是使全年农产品的价格趋于稳定。

It is precisely because a professional class of speculators exists to take these risks that farmers and millers do not need to take them. The latter can protect themselves through the markets. Under normal conditions, therefore, when speculators are doing their job well, the profits of farmers and millers will depend chiefly on their skill and industry in farming or milling, and not on market fluctuations.

正因为有职业投机商承担了这些风险,农民和粮食加工业者才得以免除风险。生产者是可以通过市场来实现自我保护的。所以,在正常的情况下,当投机商们干得很出色时,农民和粮食加工业者他们的利润主要取决于本身的生产技能和勤劳与否,而与市场的波动无关。

Actual experience shows that on the average the price of wheat and other nonperishable crops remains the same all year round except for an allowance for storage, interest and insurance charges. In fact, some careful investigations have shown that the average monthly rise after harvest time has not been quite sufficient to pay such storage charges, so that the speculators have actually subsidized the farmers. This, of course, was not their intention: it has simply been the result of a persistent tendency to overoptimism on the part of speculators. (This tendency seems to affect entrepreneurs in most competitive pursuits: as a class they are constantly, contrary to intention, subsidizing consumers. This is particularly true wherever the prospects of big speculative gains exist. Just as the subscribers to a lottery, considered as a unit, lose money because each is unjustifiably hopeful of drawing one of the few spectacular prizes, so it has been calculated that the total value of the labor and capital dumped into prospecting for gold or oil has exceeded the total value of the gold or oil extracted.)

实际经验表明,除开仓储、利息和保险费用,小麦和其他不易腐烂的谷物的平均价格水平在一年之中是相同的。事实上,一些精细的调研表明,收获季节之后的谷物价格平均单月涨幅并不足以抵偿这些仓储费用。因此,投机商实际上还补贴了农民。不消说,这并非他们的本意,它仅仅是投机商一方所表现出来的一种顽固的过分乐观的倾向。(这种倾向似乎在最有竞争性的行为中存在于企业家们身上:作为一个阶层,企业家们经常事与愿违地补贴消费者,特别是当存在着很大的投机收益前景时,尤其如此。就象购买彩票的彩民,整体上肯定是赔钱,因为每个人都抱着赌一把的心态,想要押中那中奖率微乎其微的头彩。有资料显示,投入到黄金和石油勘探开采的劳力与资本总值,超过开采出来的黄金或石油的总值。)

The case is different, however, when the State steps in and either buys the farmers’ crops itself or lends them the money to hold the crops off the market. This is sometimes done in the name of maintaining what is plausibly called an “ever-normal granary. But the history of prices and annual carryovers of crops shows that this function, as we have seen, is already being well performed by the privately organized free markets. When the government steps in, the ever-normal granary becomes in fact an ever-political granary. The farmer is encouraged, with the taxpayers’ money, to withhold his crops excessively. Because they wish to make sure of retaining the farmer’s vote, the politicians who initiate the policy, or the bureaucrats who carry it out, always place the so-called fair price for the farmer’s product above the price that supply and demand conditions at the time justify. This leads to a falling off in buyers. The ever-normal granary therefore tends to become an ever-abnormal granary. Excessive stocks are held off the market. The effect of this is to secure a higher price temporarily than would otherwise exist, but to do so only by bringing about later on a much lower price than would otherwise have existed. For the artificial shortage built up this year by withholding part of a crop from the market means an artificial surplus the next year.

然而,当政府介入这一过程,无论是政府收购农民的谷物,还是贷款给农民让他们囤积谷物,暂不上市销售,情况就完全不同了。有时,这是以维护所谓的“常平仓贮”(ever-normal granary)的名义来实施的。但是正如前面说过的,这个功能已经由私人组织的自由市场执行得很好,谷物价格和每年的谷物存货结转纪录已经证明了这一点。当政府介入之后,常平仓贮其实成了政治仓贮。政府用纳税人的钱,鼓励农民囤积了过多的谷物。政治人物瞄准的是农民的选票,为此,提出这种政策的政客,或实施这种政策的官僚,总是给农产品定一个所谓的公平价格,使之高于当时的供需状况所允许的价位。这必然导致买家减少,常平仓贮因此往往成为常不平仓贮。过多的谷物被囤积在市场之外,其结果是暂时保证了一个高于正常情况的价格。然而,这样做只会带来此后比正常情况更低的价格。因为,该年通过囤积一部分粮食,使之不能被投放到市场上去,这造成人为的短缺,这将意味着来年人为造成的过剩。
 
It would carry us too far afield to describe in detail what actually happened* when this program was applied, for example, to Amencan cotton. We piled up an entire year’s crop in storage. We destroyed the foreign market for our cotton. We stimulated enormously the growth of cotton in other countries. Though these results had been predicted by opponents of the restriction and loan policy, when they actually happened the bureaucrats responsible for the result merely replied that they would have happened anyway.

我们若去详述在这种政策下实际将会发生的情况,我们恐怕会离题太远,比如说,对美国棉花种植业的影响。{脚注: 不过,棉花生产和销售的计划方案是一个特别有启发的例子。截止1956年8月1日,美国棉花储备量达到了破纪录的数字1452.9万包,这比整整一年正常的产量或消费量还要多。为了解决这个问题,政府改变它的计划,决定从生产者那里购买大部分收成,再立即折价转售。为了夺回美国棉花的国际市场,政府对棉花采取出口补贴,一开始每磅补贴6美分,到1961年,提高到8.5美分。这一政策在减少原棉储备上确实取得了成功。但是,除了它强加给纳税人的损失外,它还是的美国的纺织品与外国的纺织品相比,无论在国内市场还是在国际市场上,都处于严重的竞争劣势。因为这样做等于补贴了外国纺织业,被牺牲掉的是美国纺织业。这是典型的政府定价方案。为了避免出现一个人们不希望产生的后果,整个经济陷入了另一种并且是更糟糕的境地。}{书后注:黑兹利特加入脚注之后,情况并没有好转。据《投资者财经日报》(Investor’s Business Daily ,1995年9月29日),“从1986年至1993年,政府的棉花计划耗资120亿美元,平均每年要花15亿美元。跟许多农产品计划一样,政府将大量的钱抱给为数不多的生产者。在1993年,政府补贴支付给了大约9.6万户棉农。”强加在消费者头上的额外成本也相当高。美国审计总署(GAO)在1995年7月20日发布的一项研究结果显示,过去8年,棉花计划耗费的社会成本平均每年为7.38亿美元。这份GAO报告的结论认为,“政府的棉花计划,已经陷入代价高昂的,由国内国际价格组成的迷阵之中,棉农从中获益而政府和社会为此牺牲很大。”美国第104届国会改革此棉花计划的努力以失败告终。}我们囤积了整整一年的棉花收成,不拿去出口,从而刺激其他国家棉产量增长,致使本国棉花的海外市场被破坏。尽管反对这种限制和贷款政策的人们早已预计到了这样的结果,但等到事情真的发生了,那些对此后果负有责任的官僚们却只是轻描淡写地说:这本来就是无论如何都要发生的事情。
 
For the loan policy is usually accompanied by, or inevitably leads to, a policy of restricting production — i.e., a policy of scarcity. In nearly every effort to “stabilize” the price of a commodity, the interests of the producers have been put first. The real object is an immediate boost of prices. To make this possible, a proportional restriction of output is usually placed on each producer subject to the control. This has several immediately bad effects. Assuming that the control can be imposed on an international scale, it means that total world production is cut. The world’s consumers are able to enjoy less of that product than they would have enjoyed without restriction. The world is just that much poorer. Because consumers are forced to pay higher prices than otherwise for that product, they have just that much less to spend on other products.

贷款政策通常伴随着、有时则不可避免地引出限产政策——也就是人为制造出短缺。几乎在每次努力“稳定 ”物价的时候,总是把生产者的利益放在第一位的。实际的目标则是使价格立即上涨。为了使涨价成为可能,政府通常会对受管制的每一位生产者采取一定比例的限产措施。这种限制会立即产生几个坏影响。假设可以在国际范围内实施这种控制的话,那么,它将意味着世界总产出的削减。因此,全球消费者能够享用那种产品的数量,比不受限制的时候更少。世界也就贫穷了那么多。由于消费者为此被迫支付高价,以高于应有水平的价格购买那种产品,他们也就因此损失了这么多钱来购买其他产品。

2
 
The restrictionists usually reply that this drop in output is what happens anyway under a market economy. But there is a fundamental difference, as we have seen in the preceding chapter. In a competitive market economy it is the high-cost producers, the inefficient producers, that are driven out by a fall in price. In the case of an agricultural commodity it is the least competent farmers, or those with the poorest equipment, or those working the poorest land, that are driven out. The most capable farmers on the best land do not have to restrict their production. On the contrary, if the fall in price has been symptomatic of a lower average cost of production, reflected through an increased supply, then the driving out of the marginal farmers on the marginal land enables the good farmers on the good land to expand their production. So there may be, in the long run, no reduction whatever in the output of that commodity. And the product is then produced and sold at a permanently lower price.

主张实施限产政策的人通常的解释是,在市场经济条件下也会发生产量下降的事情。但是就象我们在上一章中所看到的那样,这二者之间存在着巨大的区别。在自由竞争的市场经济中,由于价格下跌而被逐出市场的,是那些高成本、低效率的生产者。拿农产品来说,被淘汰出局的农民的是那些能力最差、或设备最差、或耕地最贫瘠的生产者。对那些耕种最好的土地的最有能力的农民,是没有必要限制其生产的。相反,如果价格下跌是平均生产成本降低的一个标志,而通过增长了的供给表现出来的话,那么,在边际土地上耕种的边际农民被淘汰出局,反倒有助于在好土地上耕种的能干农民扩大其生产。因此,在长期中可能并不存在该产品产量的任何下降。而且这一产品将在一个永远比较低的价格水平上生产和出售。
 
If that is the outcome, then the consumers of that commodity will be as well supplied with it as they were before. But, as a result of the lower price, they will have money left over, which they did not have before, to spend on other things. The consumers, therefore, will obviously be better off. But their increased spending in other directions will give increased employment in other lines, which will then absorb the former marginal farmers in occupations in which their efforts will be more lucrative and more efficient.

若真的出现这种好现象,那么该商品的消费者将会获得的和以前一样充裕供给。同时由于商品价格更加便宜,他们得以节省下更多的钱,转而用于购买其他东西,而在以前他们是不会有这笔钱的。因此,消费者显然会过得比以前更好。同样,他们在其他方面开销增加之后,其他行业的就业又随之增加,并吸收那些原来处于边际地位的农民。新职业能让他们的努力会更有收益,也更有效率。
 
A uniform proportional restriction (to return to our government intervention scheme) means, on the one hand, that the efficient low-cost producers are not permitted to turn out all the output they can at a low price. It means, on the other hand, that the inefficient high-cost producers are artificially kept in business. This increases the average cost of producing the product. It is being produced less efficiently than otherwise. The inefficient marginal producer thus artificially kept in that line of production continues to tie up land, labor and capital that could much more profitably and efficiently be devoted to other uses.

回头再看政府干预的情形。一视同仁按比例限产的结果,一方面意味着不允许那些效率高、成本低的生产者去生产所有他们能够以低价格制造的产品;另一方面,这又意味着人为地使那些效率低、成本高的生产者继续留在这一行业中。这种政策增加了该产品的平均生产成本,生产的效率也降低了。同时,这样被人为保留在某一行业中的缺乏效率的边际生产者,也将因此继续占用着该行业生产中的土地、人力和资本,使这些资源不能被投入到其他收益更大、效率更高的地方。
 
There is no point in arguing that as a result of the restriction scheme at least the price of farm products has been raised and “the farmers have more purchasing power.” They have got it only by taking just that much purchasing power away from the city buyer. (We have been over all this ground before in our analysis of parity prices.) To give farmers money for restricting production, or to give them the same amount of money for an artificially restricted production, is no different from forcing consumers or taxpayers to pay people for doing nothing at all. In each case the beneficiaries of such policies get “purchasing power.” But in each case someone else loses an exactly equivalent amount. The net loss to the community is the loss of production, because people are supported for not producing. Because there is less for everybody, because there is less to go around, real wages and real incomes must decline either through a fall in their monetary amount or through higher living costs.

至于有人争辩说,实施限产的结果,至少让农产品的价格提高了,且“农民拥有了更多的购买力”,这样的论调实在是没有意义的。农民们所获得的,正是从城市消费者那里拿走的同样大小的购买能力。(在等位价格那一章,我们已经做过充分说明。)为了限制生产而向农民提供贷款,为了人为地控制产量而给予农民相应的补贴,这些做法都无异于强迫消费者或纳税人向无所事事的人支付报酬。在每一种情况下,这种政策的受益者肯定都得到了“购买力”,但每一种情况下,总有其他人也恰恰损失了相同数量的资财。社会所受的净损失便是生产的损失。因为,政策支持人们可以不去生产。由于每个人的资财变少,经济中可以流通的东西减少,实际工资和实际收入必然会下降,这种下降表现为货币收入减少或生活费用升高。
 
But if an attempt is made to keep up the price of an agricultural commodity and no artificial restriction of output is imposed, unsold surpluses of the overpriced commodity continue to pile up until the market for that product finally collapses to a far greater extent than if the control program had never been put into effect. Or producers outside the restriction program, stimulated by the artificial rise in price, expand their own production enormously. This is what happened in the British rubber-restriction and the American cotton-restriction programs. In either case the collapse of prices finally goes to catastrophic lengths that would never have been reached without the restriction scheme. The plan that started out so bravely to “stabilize” prices and conditions brings incomparably greater instability than the free forces of the market could possibly have brought.

但是,假使试图将农产品保持在一种较高的水平,同时并不实施人为的限产政策,那么价格过高的农产品不仅卖不出去,并且随着产出而越积越多,直到该商品的市场价格最终跌到一种比倘若从未实施过这种方案时的价格水平低得多的程度。或者,其他不受限产方案管制的生产者,在人为高价的刺激下,会争相大幅增加其产量。在英国的橡胶生产限制方案和美国的棉花生产限制方案中,都发生过上述这种事情。在这两个例子中,价格的下降都达到了灾难性的地步,不实施类似方案无论如何也不会出现这样的后果。一开始急吼吼制定“稳定”物价和稳定局面的计划,结果反而造成不稳定,相反,市场的自由力量根本不可能造成那么极不稳定的后果。
 
Yet new international commodity controls are constantly being proposed. This time, we are told, they are going to avoid all the old errors. This time prices are going to be fixed that are “fair” not only for producers but for consumers. Producing and consuming nations are going to agree on just what these fair prices are, because no one will be unreasonable. Fixed prices will necessarily involve “just” allotments and allocations for production and consumption as among nations, but only cynics will anticipate any unseemly international disputes regarding these. Finally, by the greatest miracle of all, this world of superinternational controls and coercions is also going to be a world of “free” international trade!

尽管如此,人们仍然不断地提出各种各样新的控制商品价格的国际性方案。他们宣称,这一次,我们会避免一切过去犯过的错误。这一次,设定的价格不仅仅对生产者“公平”,对消费者同样“公平”。这一次,生产国和消费国将会在一种非常公平的价格上达成一致,因为每一种价格都会是很合理的。设定价格将同样必然带来生产与消费在各国之间的“合理的”划拨和配置。那时,只有那些专好冷嘲热讽的人才会预言各国关于此事将有纠纷发生。最后,一定会出现伟大的奇迹:这个实施超级国际管制和强制计划的世界,也将成为一个在国际贸易上“自由的”世界!
 
Just what the government planners mean by free trade in this connection I am not sure, but we can be sure of some of the things they do not mean. They do not mean the freedom of ordinary people to buy and sell, lend and borrow, at whatever prices or rates they like and wherever they find it most profitable to do so. They do not mean the freedom of the plain citizen to raise as much of a given crop as he wishes, to come and go at will, to settle where he pleases, to take his capital and other belongings with him. They mean, I suspect, the freedom of bureaucrats to settle these matters for him. And they tell him that if he docilely obeys the bureaucrats he will be rewarded by a rise in his living standards. But if the planners succeed in tying up the idea of international cooperation with the idea of increased State domination and control over economic life, the international controls of the future seem only too likely to follow the pattern of the past, in which case the plain man’s living standards will decline with his liberties.

政府中的规划官员在这里所说的自由贸易概念是什么含义,我无从揣知。但是,他们的言下之意不包含哪些事情,我们倒是相当确定。他们的意思绝对不是说,平民百姓拥有以任何他们愿意出的价格从事买卖和借贷的自由,拥有在任何他们觉得最有利可图的地方从事买卖和借贷的自由。他们的意思绝对不是说,平民百姓可以去种植任何他们想种的谷物并达到他们期望的产量、可以自由移民、可以自由支配自己的资本和财物。我猜测,他们所说的自由,是官僚们代表平民百姓决定这些事情的自由。而且,他们还将告诉平民百姓说,假使他服从于官僚们的指示的话,驯服的奖赏将是生活水平的提高。但是如果规划官员将国家主宰、控制全民经济生活的观念,绑定到国际合作的观念之中,那么未来的国际控制很有可能会像国家控制的情形:平民百姓的生活水平,随着他们的自由的缩减而每况愈下。

Economics in One Lesson校译之15. How the Price System Works

How the Price System Works

第15章 价格体系如何运作?

The whole argument of this book may be summed up in the statement that in studying the effects of any given economic proposal we must trace not merely the immediate results but the results in the long run, not merely the primary consequences but the secondary consequences, and not merely the effects on some special group but the effects on everyone. It follows that it is foolish and misleading to concentrate our attention merely on some special point—to examine, for example, merely what happens in one industry without considering what happens in all. But it is precisely from the persistent and lazy habit of thinking only of some particular industry or process in isolation that the major fallacies of economics stem. These fallacies pervade not merely the arguments of the hired spokesmen of special interests, but the arguments even of some economists who pass as profound.

本书的主旨可以概括为:在研究任何经济政策提案的影响时,不仅要考察提案带来的立即结果,也要探究长期结果;不仅要探讨其首发后果,也要探讨次级后果;不仅要看其对某些特定群体的影响,还要看其对所有人的影响。由此可以认为,把注意力只集中在特别的某一点是愚蠢的,也是误导,比如只关注某个行业发生的事情,而忽略在所有的行业发生的变化。然而,经济学中的重大谬误,正是出于人们长期养成的这种思维惯性和惰性,总是孤立地考察特定行业或特定过程而不顾其他。这些谬误,不仅仅充斥在利益集团代言人的言论中,就连一些颇具影响的经济学家也时常挂在嘴边。

It is on the fallacy of isolation, at bottom, that the “productionfor-use-and-not-for-profit” school is based, with its attack on the allegedly vicious “price system.” The problem of production, say the adherents of this school, is solved. (This resounding error, as we shall see, is also the starting point of most currency cranks and share-the-wealth charlatans.) The scientists, the efficiency experts, the engineers, the technicians, have solved it. They could turn out almost anything you cared to mention in huge and practically unlimited amounts. But, alas, the world is not ruled by the engineers, thinking only of production, but by the businessmen, thinking only of profit. The businessmen give their orders to the engineers, instead of vice versa. These businessmen will turn out any object as long as there is a profit in doing so, but the moment there is no longer a profit in making that article, the wicked businessmen will stop making it, though many people’s wants are unsatisfied, and the world is crying for more goods.

主张“生产致用而非利润至上”的经济学派,其观点从根本上说,就是以这种孤立片面性的错误为基础的。他们据此抨击所谓邪恶的“价格体系”。该学派的信徒宣称,生产问题已经解决了。(象我们后面将会看到的,这一重大的错误也正是那些认为印钱就能解决一切,认为均贫富就能解决问题的忽悠术士的出发点。)科学家、效率专家、工程师、技师,已经解决了生产问题;凡是你想要的东西,他们都能生产出来,要多少有多少。他们接着表示,可惜这个世界并非由生产致用的工程师主宰,而是由利润至上的企业家主宰,是工程师听命于企业家,而不是企业家听命于工程师。只要有利可图,这些企业家就会让工程师把任何物品生产出来,一旦赚不到钱,刻薄的企业家就会停止生产,他才不管众人的要求有没有得到满足,也不管整个世界对更多的产品的迫切需要。

There are so many fallacies in this view that they cannot all be disentangled at once. But the central error, as we have hinted, comes from looking at only one industry, or even at several industries in turn, as if each of them existed in isolation. Each of them in fact exists in relation to all the others, and every important decision made in it is affected by and affects the decisions made in all the others.

这种论调中存在好些谬误,很难一下子梳理清楚。不过,我们已经了解到,其核心错误在于只看一个产业,或挨个孤立地考察几个产业,好像各产业之间没有任何联系。其实,任何一个产业与其他所有产业都是有联系的,并且,每个产业中的决策都是与其他各产业中的决策相互影响的。

We can understand this better if we understand the basic problem that business collectively has to solve. To simplify this as much as possible, let us consider the problem that confronts a Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. His wants at first seem endless. He is soaked with rain; he shivers from cold; he suffers from hunger and thirst. He needs everything: drinking water, food, a roof over his head, protection from animals, a fire, a soft place to lie down. It is impossible for him to satisfy all these needs at once; he has not the time, energy or resources. He must attend immediately to the most pressing need. He suffers most, say, from thirst. He hollows out a place in the sand to collect rain water, or builds some crude receptacle. When he has provided for only a small water supply, however, he must turn to finding food before he tries to improve this. He can try to fish; but to do this he needs either a hook and line, or a net, and he must set to work on these. But everything he does delays or prevents him from doing something else only a little less urgent. He is faced constantly by the problem of alternative applications of his time and labor.

如果我们能够认识到商业作为一个整体所必须解决的问题的话,我们就可以更好的理解上述论点。为了把这一基本问题尽量简化,我们先谈鲁滨逊漂流到荒岛时面对的问题。一开始,他的需求似乎是无穷无尽的。他被雨淋透、冻得发抖、饥渴交加。他需要每一样东西:饮用水、食物、房子、不被野兽咬伤、火、一个足够软可供躺下睡觉的地方。他不可能一下子满足所有这些需要,毕竟一个人的时间、精力或资源都很有限。他必须先立即解决自己最需要的。比方说,极度焦渴最为令他痛苦,于是他在沙地上挖坑收集雨水,或者做个简陋的容器蓄水。等到有了少量的水,紧接着必须去找吃的,改善水源则是以后的事。他或许想去抓鱼,为此,他需要鱼钩鱼线,或渔网,而且必须事先准备好这些工具。但是不管他在做什么事,做这个就做不了那个,他只能把不那么急迫的事挪到以后再说。他得时时考虑把时间和力气用在做哪些事情上。

A Swiss Family Robinson, perhaps, finds this problem a little easier to solve. It has more mouths to feed, but it also has more hands to work for them. It can practice division and specialization of labor. The father hunts; the mother prepares the food; the children collect firewood. But even the family cannot afford to have one member of it doing endlessly the same thing, regardless of the relative urgency of the common need he supplies and the urgency of other needs still unfilled. When the children have gathered a certain pile of firewood, they cannot be used simply to increase the pile. It is soon time for one of them to be sent, say, for more water. The family too has the constant problem of choosing among alternative applications of labor, and, if it is lucky enough to have acquired guns, fishing tackle, a boat, axes, saws and so on, of choosing among alternative applications of labor and capital. It would be considered unspeakably silly for the wood-gathering member of the family to complain that they could gather more firewood if his brother helped him all day, instead of getting the fish that were needed for the family dinner. It is recognized clearly in the case of an isolated individual or family that one occupation can expand only at the expense of all other occupations.

在电影《海角一乐园》(Swiss Family Robinson)中,身陷荒岛的那个瑞士家庭也许会发觉这个问题稍好解决一些。虽然有更多张嘴巴要吃饭,却也多了更多双手干活儿。他们可以分工作业,例如父亲打猎,母亲煮饭,孩子们拾柴火。但是,即便如此,这个家庭里也不能让某位成员去无休止地做同一件事情,而不考虑他所满足的公共需求与其他一些尚未被满足的需要相对而言的迫切程度。当孩子们已经拾了一堆柴火之后,就不应简单地让他们接着拾。比如说,可以派其中一个孩子去担水。这户人家同样不断面临应把力气用在哪里的问题。而如果他们有幸拥有猎枪、渔具、船、斧头、锯子的话,更得要考虑劳力和资本用在什么地方。要是拾柴火的小孩抱怨说,哥哥要是不去抓鱼 而去帮他拾柴火,他们会拾得更多,这就是难以言喻的蠢话。从上面孤立的个人或家庭的故事,我们能清楚地认识到,某项工作做得多,往往不过是以牺牲其他所有的工作为代价得到的。

Elementary illustrations like this are sometimes ridiculed as “Crusoe economics.” Unfortunately, they are ridiculed most by those who most need them, who fail to understand the particular principle illustrated even in this simple form, or who lose track of that principle completely when they come to examine the bewildering complications of a great modern economic society.

像这类浅显易晓的论述,有时被嘲讽为“克鲁索经济学”。不幸的是,嘲讽得最厉害的,是那些最需要这种经济学的人,是那些无法理解简单故事背后的基本原理的人,是那些在探讨错综复杂的现代经济社会时,却又把这些基本原理忘到了一边的人。

2

Let us now turn to such a society. How is the problem of alternative applications of labor and capital, to meet thousands of different needs and wants of different urgencies, solved in such a society? It is solved precisely through the price system. It is solved through the constantly changing interrelationships of costs of production, prices and profits.

我们回过头来谈现代社会。在这样一个错综复杂的社会中,人们的需要和要求及其轻重缓急千差万别,如何解决劳力和资本用在哪里的问题?解决之道正是通过价格体系,也就是通过生产成本、价格和利润三者间不断变动的相互关系来调节的。

Prices are fixed through the relationship of supply and demand and in turn affect supply and demand. When people want more of an article, they offer more for it. The price goes up. This increases the profits of those who make the article. Because it is now more profitable to make that article than others, the people already in the business expand their production of it, and more people are attracted to the business. This increased supply then reduces the price and reduces the profit margin, until the profit margin on that article once more falls to the general level of profits (relative risks considered) in other industries. Or the demand for that article may fall; or the supply of it may be increased to such a point that its price drops to a level where there is less profit in making it than in making other articles; or perhaps there is an actual loss in making it. In this case the “marginal” producers, that is, the producers who are least efficient, or whose costs of production are highest, will be driven out of business altogether. The product will now be made only by the more efficient producers who operate on lower costs. The supply of that commodity will also drop, or will at least cease to expand.

价格是由供需关系决定的,反过来又会影响供给和需求。当人们对于某项物品需要越多,他们就会出更多的钱去购买,于是其价格上升,其生产商的利润也由此增加了。由于现在生产该物品会比做其他更赚钱,那些已经在此行业中的人就会扩大生产,同时更多人被吸引进入那一行。随后,供应增多又会导致价格下降、边 际利润下滑,直至其边际利润跌回到其他行业的平均利润水平(相对于其风险)。或者,人们对那种物品的需求减少,其供给可能会增加到这样的一点,使得其价格降至生产它的利润小于生产其他产品,甚至不赚反赔。这种情况下, “边际”生产者,也就是效率最低或成本最高的生产者,会被淘汰出局。只剩下成本较低,效率较高的制造商仍在生产。那种商品的供应也会减少,或至少不再增加。

This process is the origin of the belief that prices are determined by costs of production. The doctrine, stated in this form, is not true. Prices are determined by supply and demand, and demand is determined by how intensely people want a commodity and what they have to offer in exchange for it. It is true that supply is in part determined by costs of production. What a commodity has cost to produce in the past cannot determine its value. That will depend on the present relationship of supply and demand. But the expectations of businessmen concerning what a commodity will cost to produce in the future, and what its future price will be, will determine how much of it will be made. This will affect future supply. There is therefore a constant tendency for the price of a commodity and its marginal cost of production to equal each other, but not because that marginal cost of production directly determines the price.

认为生产成本决定了价格的这种想法也是由上述过程产生的。不过,这个学说,若以这样的形式来说明,却是不正确的。价格取决于供给和需求,而需求取决 于人们想要拥有某种商品渴求程度,以及他们愿意支付多少来换取。认为供给部分地取决于生产成本,这一点是对的。但一种商品已经发生的生产成本却不能决定商品的价值。商品价值取决于现在发生的供需关系。然而,制造商们对于一种商品未来生产成本和市场价位的预期,将会决定那种商品未来的生产数量,这种预期就会影响未来的供给。因此,一种商品的价格与其边际生产成本之间存在着一种彼此不断接近一致的趋势。不过,这并不是由于边际生产成本直接决定价格。

The private enterprise system, then, might be compared to thousands of machines, each regulated by its own quasi-automatic governor, yet with these machines and their governors all interconnected and influencing each other, so that they act in effect like one great machine. Most of us must have noticed the automatic governor” on a steam engine. It usually consists of two balls or weights which work by centrifugal force. As the speed of the engine increases, these balls fly away from the rod to which they are attached and so automatically narrow or close off a throttle valvewhich regulates the intake of steam and thus slows down the engine. If the engine goes too slowly, on the other hand, the balls drop, widen the throttle valve, and increase the engine’s speed. Thus every departure from the desired speed itself sets in motion the forces that tend to correct that departure.

这样来说,私人企业体系好比成千上万部机器,每部机器由各自的半自动化调节器来管理。机器之间,连同它们的调节器之间,彼此连接,相互影响,整个运作起来好比一部有生命的大机器。我们大多数人一定见过蒸汽机上的自动调速器。它通常是由两颗小球或重锤组成,以重力和离心力发生作用。当引擎速度加大时,这些小球会绕着它们所附着的活塞杆飞起,形成离心力,以此自动收紧或关闭调整蒸汽送入量的节流阀,从而减慢引擎的转速。反之,如果引擎的速度太慢,小球就飞不起来,从而扩大节流阀,加快引擎转速。因此,速度一偏离理想的水平,这种偏离就会自动启动一种力量去对偏离进行自动矫正。

It is precisely in this way that the relative supply of thousands of different commodities is regulated under the system of competitive private enterprise. When people want more of a commodity, their competitive bidding raises its price. This increases the profits of the producers who make that product. This stimulates them to increase their production. It leads others to stop making some of the products they previously made, and turn to making the product that offers them the better return. But this increases the supply of that commodity at the same time that it reduces the supply of some other commodities. The price of that product therefore falls in relation to the price of other products, and the stimulus to the relative increase in its production disappears.

正是通过类似的调节方式,成千上万种不同商品的相对供应量,在自由竞争的私人企业体系中得到调节。当人们对于某种商品的需求增加时,其竞争性的出价便抬高了产品的价格,生产者会因为有利可图而扩大生产。生产其他商品的制造商也会转向,加入到这种回报率较高的产品生产中。但增加这种商品的供应的同时会减少其他一些商品的供给。如此一来,这种商品的价格因此相对于其他商品的价格开始下跌,先前激励其产量相对增加的价差因素便不复存在。

In the same way, if the demand falls off for some product, its price and the profit in making it go lower, and its production declines.

同样是用这种方式,如果某种产品的需求减少,该产品的价格和利润会下降,产量当然也会随之减少。

It is this last development that scandalizes those who do not understand the “price system” they denounce. They accuse it of creating scarcity. Why, they ask indignantly, should manufacturers cut off the production of shoes at the point where it becomes unprofitable to produce any more? Why should they be guided merely by their own profits? Why should they be guided by the market? Why do they not produce shoes to the “full capacity of modern technical processes”? The price system and private enterprise, conclude the “production-for-use” philosophers, are merely a form of “scarcity economics.”

正是最后一个环节让那些不理解“价格体系”的人大为反感。他们谴责价格体系导致了匮乏。他们愤慨地责问:为什么在生产鞋子不赚钱时,企业家就要停止生产?为什么他们只受自己利润的支配?为什么他们的行动要由市场操纵?为什么他们不“开足马力充分利用现代的制造工艺”来生产鞋子?这些“生产致用”的哲学家下结论说:价格体系和私人企业只不过是“匮乏经济学”的一种形式。

These questions and conclusions stem from the fallacy of looking at one industry in isolation, of looking at the tree and ignoring the forest. Up to a certain point it is necessary to produce shoes. But it is also necessary to produce coats, shirts, trousers, homes, plows, shovels, factories, bridges, milk and bread. It would be idiotic to go on piling up mountains of surplus shoes, simply because we could do it, while hundreds of more urgent needs went unfilled.

这些问题和结论主要源于孤立地观察一个产业、只见树木不见森林的错误看法。在达到某一平衡点之前,继续生产鞋子是必要的。但是我们也有必要生产外套、衬衫、长裤、耕犁、铁锹、牛奶和面包,建造住宅、工厂、桥梁。若这些迫切的生活需要都没有得到满足,却一味地生产出堆积如山的鞋子,而理由仅仅是我们有能力做鞋子,这种做法可说是要多蠢有多蠢。

Now, in an economy in equilibrium, a given industry can expand only at the expense of other industries. For at any moment the factors of production are limited. One industry can be expanded only by diverting to it labor, land and capital that would otherwise be employed in other industries. And when a given industry shrinks, or stops expanding its output, it does not necessarily mean that there has been any net decline in aggregate production. The shrinkage at that point may have merely released labor and capital to permit the expansion of other industries. It is erroneous to conclude, therefore, that a shrinkage of production in one line necessarily means a shrinkage in total production.

经济处于均衡状态时,某个产业只有以其他行业牺牲为代价,才有可能得到扩展。因为,在任何时候,生产要素都是有限的。只有当原来用于其他产业劳工、土地和资本,转移到了某个产业,那个产业才能够扩张。而且,当某一产业萎缩或者停止增产,并不必然意味着总体生产出现减少。因为该产业一定程度上的萎缩,可能仅仅是释放出了一些劳工和资本,以允许其他产业的扩张。因此,仅仅因为某个产业的生产减少,就下结论说生产缩减,是错误的。

Everything, in short, is produced at the expense of forgoing something else. Costs of production themselves, in fact, might be defined as the things that are given up (the leisure and pleasures, the raw materials with alternative potential uses) in order to create the thing that is made.

总之,每一种东西的生产,都得以牺牲放弃某些其他东西为代价。事实上,生产成本本身可以定义为:为了生产某样东西而放弃的其他事物(休闲和娱乐,或可以用于其他地方的原材料等)。

It follows that it is just as essential for the health of a dynamic economy that dying industries should be allowed to die as that growing industries should be allowed to grow. For the dying industries absorb labor and capital that should be released for the growing industries. It is only the much vilified price system that solves the enormously complicated problem of deciding precisely how much of tens of thousands of different commodities and services should be produced in relation to each other. These otherwise bewildering equations are solved quasi-automatically by the system of prices, profits and costs. They are solved by this system incomparably better than any group of bureaucrats could solve them. For they are solved by a system under which each consumer makes his own demand and casts a fresh vote, or a dozen fresh votes, every day; whereas bureaucrats would try to solve it by having made for the consumers, not what the consumers themselves wanted, but what the bureaucrats decided was good for them. Yet though the bureaucrats do not understand the quasi-automatic system of the market, they are always disturbed by it. They are always trying to improve it or correct it, usually in the interests of some wailing pressure group. What some of the results of their intervention are, we shall examine in succeeding chapters.

由此可见,为了一个有活力的经济的健康发展,我们应当放手让衰败中的产业消亡,允许成长中的产业扩张。因为,那些衰败的产业吸收着本应被解放并投入于成长产业中的劳力和资本。正是倍受妄责的价格体系解决了那个极为错综复杂的问题,即准确地决定无数商品和服务彼此相对应该生产多少。靠价格、利润和成本体系的半自动化运作,让本来复杂难解的方程式迎刃而解,这种解决能力远非任何一群官僚能比。因为这套系统的解决方式,是由每一位消费者根据本身的需求,每天由自己去投下新的一票或十几票来调节的。而官僚的解决办法,是要代表消费者去决定各自的需求;这样决定的结果并不是消费者自己的愿望,而是官僚们认为对消费者会有好处的需求。

然而,尽管官僚们并不理解市场的这种半自动化体系,他们却常常为之心态失常。他们总是从向他们施压的集团的利益出发,努力去改进或矫正这种体系。至于他们这样的干预会产生什么的后果,我们将在接下来的几章进行考察。