PART ONE: THE LESSON
The Lesson
第一编 主旨
第1章 关于这堂课
Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine-the special pleading of selfish interests. While every group has certain economic interests identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see, interests antagonistic to those of all other groups. While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The group that would benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue for them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible.
在人类所知领域中，经济学总是被更多的谬误所困扰。这决非出于偶然。这门学科内在的难度原本就高，再加上人类好为追求私利掩饰辩护，对于物理学、数学、医学等其他学科而言，这种倾向无关紧要，但在经济学就把问题无数倍地复杂化了。我们将在本书中看到，尽管每个群体都有某些经济利益和所有群体的完全一致，但各自又都存在着与其他不同群体的利益相抵触的利益关系。尽管有一些公共政策从长远来看对所有人都有利，但其它的政策却是以牺牲其他群体的利益为代价来维护某些群体的利益。能够从那些政策直接获利的群体，会在利益的驱使下不遗余力地主张积极实施相关政策。他们会雇来花钱所能雇到的最好的专家来全力宣扬有利于他们的学说。这样做的结果，要不会让大众信以为真，也会让大众稀里糊涂，以至于接下来对经济科学几乎再也无法做清晰地思考。
In addition to these endless pleadings of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.
除去这些无休无止对私人利益的辩护，还有另一个重要因素导致新的经济学谬误每天都在产生。那就是：人们有着天生短视的倾向，总是只关注某项政策的即时影响，或者只关注政策对某个特殊群体产生的影响，而不去探究那项政策对所有群体造成的长远影响。这本身就是忽略种种续发后果的谬误。
In this lies the whole difference between good economics and bad. The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups.
好经济学与坏经济学之间的全部区别就在于此。坏经济学家只顾及眼前所见的利弊得失，而好经济学家则看得更远；坏经济学家只观察经济政策提案中的行动产生的直接结果，好经济学家还会考察更长远的间接结果；坏经济学家只关注某项政策对某个特殊群体已经产生或者即将产生的影响，好经济学家还会去探究该政策对所有群体产生的影响。
The distinction may seem obvious. The precaution of looking for all the consequences of a given policy to everyone may seem elementary. Doesn’t everybody know, in his personal life, that there are all sorts of indulgences delightful at the moment but disastrous in the end? Doesn’t every little boy know that if he eats enough candy he will get sick? Doesn’t the fellow who gets drunk know that he will wake up next morning with a ghastly stomach and a horrible head? Doesn’t the dipsomaniac know that he is ruining his liver and shortening his life? Doesn’t the Don Juan know that he is letting himself in for every sort of risk, from blackmail to disease? Finally, to bring it to the economic though still personal realm, do not the idler and the spendthrift know, even in the midst of their glorious fling, that they are heading for a future of debt and poverty?
两者的区别似乎显而易见，尽可能地探讨某项政策对每个人可能产生的所有影响，似乎应该是起码的常识。难道大家不知道，居家过日子的时候，贪图一时的纵欲享受往往会招致不幸的后果吗？每个小孩不都知道糖吃得太多会恶心不舒服吗？喝醉酒的人不都知道次日晨起之后必定胃灼头痛吗？酗酒成瘾的人不都知道狂饮烂醉会损肝折寿吗？风流成性的人不都知道纵欲贪欢劳命伤财，还容易患上性病吗？回头看看个人生活中的经济问题，游手好闲的懒汉和尽情挥霍的败家子在放纵自己时，不也知道他们是在走向负债与贫困吗？
Yet when we enter the field of public economics, these elementary truths are ignored. There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: “In the long run we are all dead.” And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.
然而，当我们踏进公共经济学的领域时，这些起码的常识却往往被人忘得一干二净。有些被认为是当今杰出经济学家的人抨击储蓄，他们把全国性的铺张浪费推崇为拯救经济的途径。当有人质疑这些政策的长期后果究竟会如何时，他们却像败家子对待严父的告诫，俏皮地答道：“何必看得那么远呢？要知道从长远来看，我们都是要死的。”此种戏言，却被人当作至理名言和最成熟的智慧而流传下来。
But the tragedy is that, on the contrary, we are already suffering the long-run consequences of the policies of the remote or recent past. Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore. The long-run consequences of some economic policies may become evident in a few months. Others may not become evident for several years. Still others may not become evident for decades. But in every case those long-run consequences are contained in the policy as surely as the hen was in the egg, the flower in the seed.
相反很不幸的是，我们已经在承受或远或近的过去实施的政策所带来的长期影响了。坏经济学家昨天要我们置之不理的明天，转眼就成了今天。有些经济政策的长期影响，可能不出几个月就会露出弊端；有些政策产生的后果，也许需要好几年之后才会显现；还有些政策，其后遗症甚至要潜伏数十年才会爆发。这些长远影响蕴含在这些政策之中，这是确定无疑的，就像小鸡孕育于鸡蛋之中，花朵孕育于种子之中一样。
From this aspect, therefore, the whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
因此，从这个角度来看，整个经济学的研究可以简化为一堂课，这堂课又可以归纳成一句话：经济学的艺术，在于不仅要观察任何法案或政策的即期效果，更要考察比较长远的影响；不仅要关注政策给某一群体带来的后果，更要追踪给所有群体造成的后果。
2
Nine-tenths of the economic fallacies that are working such dreadful harm in the world today are the result of ignoring this lesson. Those fallacies all stem from one of two central fallacies, or both: that of looking only at the immediate consequences of an act or proposal, and that of looking at the consequences only for a particular group to the neglect of other groups.
那些给当今世界带来严重危害的经济学谬误，十有八九是忽视这常识的一课的结果。那些谬误全都植根于两个中心谬误之一，或者兼而有之：一是只注意经济法案或提案的短期后果，二是只关注其对于某一特殊群体的影响而忽略了其他群体。
It is true, of course, that the opposite error is possible. In considering a policy we ought not to concentrate only on its long-run results to the community as a whole. This is the error often made by the classical economists. It resulted in a certain callousness toward the fate of groups that were immediately hurt by policies or developments which proved to be beneficial on net balance and in the long run.
当然，与其相反的错误也是可能有的。在考虑一项政策时，我们不应该只顾其对社会整体的长期效应。此类错误常常来自古典经济学家，那些被证明为在长期中有净利益的经济政策，往往会立即伤害到一些人的利益，而上述错误思想往往会导致一种对这些人的命运冷淡无情的态度。
But comparatively few people today make this error; and those few consist mainly of professional economists. The most frequent fallacy by far today, the fallacy that emerges again and again in nearly every conversation that touches on economic affairs, the error of a thousand political speeches, the central sophism of the new economics, is to concentrate on the short-run effects of policies on special groups and to ignore or belittle the long-run effects on the community as a whole. The “new” economists flatter themselves that this is a great, almost a revolutionary advance over the methods of the “classical” or “orthodox,” economists, because the former take into consideration short-run effects which the latter often ignored. But in themselves ignoring or slighting the long-run effects, they are making the far more serious error. They overlook the woods in their precise and minute examination of particular trees. Their methods and conclusions are often profoundly reactionary. They are sometimes surprised to find themselves in accord with seventeenth-century mercantilism. They fall, in fact, into all the ancient errors (or would, if they were not so inconsistent) that the classical economists, we had hoped, had once and for all got rid of.
但在今天犯此类错误的，相比而言仅属少数，并且大多是一些专业经济学家。当今最为盛行的那些谬误，在涉及经济事务的每次探讨中反反复复暴露出来的那些谬误、无数政治演讲中的错误、以及新经济学中核心的似是而非的论点，便是只重视政策对于特殊集团产生的短期效果，而忽略或淡化其对整个社会的长远影响。“新”经济学家们自认为这是超越“古典”、“正统”经济学家思想方法一次伟大 的、甚至是革命的进步，因为他们考虑到了昔日为经济学家们所忽视的短期效应。然而，他们自己却因为忽略或轻视长期影响，而犯下了更严重的错误。他们只对某些个别的树木作了精确细致地考验，却忽略了整片森林。他们使用的方法和得到的结论经常是倒行逆施，以至于有时会惊讶地发现自己竟和17世纪的重商主义不谋而合。事实上，他们陷入了（或者是如果他们寻求逻辑自洽的话，必定会陷入）古老的谬误之中，而这些谬误，我们过去以为传统经济学家早已根除掉了。
3
It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it. But the basic reason for this ought not to be mysterious. The reason is that the demagogues and bad economists are presenting half-truths. They are speaking only of the immediate effect of a proposed policy or its effect upon a single group. As far as they go they may often be right. In these cases the answer consists in showing that the proposed policy would also have longer and less desirable effects, or that it could benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The answer consists in supplementing and correcting the half-truth with the other half. But to consider all the chief effects of a proposed course on everybody often requires a long, complicated, and dull chain of reasoning. Most of the audience finds this chain of reasoning difficult to follow and soon becomes bored and inattentive. The bad economists rationalize this intellectual debility and laziness by assuring the audience that it need not even attempt to follow the reasoning or judge it on its merits because it is only “classicism” or “laissez faire” or “capitalist apologetics” or whatever other term of abuse may happen to strike them as effective.
常有人感叹说，坏经济学家向大众兜售谬论，往往比好经济学家宣扬真理更动听。常有人抱怨说，蛊惑人心者鼓吹经济谬论时，总是比那些点出问题要害的诚实的人更能获得大众的欢呼喝彩。这其中并没有什么奥妙：煽动家和坏经济学家，都只强调了一半的真相。他们只谈某项政策提案的即时影响，或者只谈其对某个特殊群体的影响。仅就他们所关注的东西而论，也往往是言之成理。在这种情况下，我们只需要站出来，指出政策提案也会带来长远的不良影响，或者指明这是牺牲其他一切群体的利益去满足某个特殊群体。也就是说，我们必须用另一半的事实，来补足和矫正他们所强调的半边真相。不过，要想阐明某一方案对于每个人的全部主要影响，往往需要进行冗长、复杂而无趣的推理。大多数听众总是怕听长篇大论，很快就会厌烦和不专心。坏经济学家利用了听众理性上的懒惰与低能，指出这些答案只不过是“古典主义”、“自由放任主义”、“资本主义的辩护术”、甚至其它认为有效的攻击污蔑之词，使听众相信根本没有必要去进行那样的推导与综合判断是非优劣。
We have stated the nature of the lesson, and of the fallacies that stand in its way, in abstract terms. But the lesson will not be driven home, and the fallacies will continue to go unrecognized, unless both are illustrated by examples. Through these examples we can move from the most elementary problems in economics to the most complex and difficult. Through them we can learn to detect and avoid first the crudest and most palpable fallacies and finally some of the most sophisticated and elusive. To that task we shall now proceed.
以上，我们用抽象的语言陈述了这一课的本质，及其所针对的谬误的性质。但是，如果我们不给出一些实例，并加以说明，读者将不能很好地理解这一课的真正含义，公众也将继续被那些盛行谬误所蒙蔽。我们会利用经济生活中的实例，从经济学中最基本的问题讲起，一直讲到最复杂最艰深的问题。我们会借助这些例证，先学会如何察觉和避开那些最粗浅最明显的谬误，直至学会发现和避开那些最复杂最难以捉摸的谬误。这些正是接下来要讲的内容。