dingdong

Economics in One Lesson编校the proofreading plan for Chinese translation

希望有一天Henry Hazlitt这本《一课经济学》，跟物理、化学并列科学教材，作为中学生的必修课。在此利用blog作一个开放的平台，欢迎有兴趣的朋友加入到这个努力中来。

Economics in One Lesson第一版于1946年面市，1948年商务印书馆就推出了中译本《经济学新论》，译者宋桂煌在1947年写的“译者弁言”介绍了相关情况。宋本有助于把我们的认识还原到那个时代。据说，Mises Institute在2008年推出的版本即以1946版为准，而不是后来的1979版，个中缘由我会继续跟踪。1961版算个过渡版本。台湾在1966年重版过宋本，不知有否更新到1961年版。

1979年版是最通行的版本，此后的40周年纪念版、50周年纪念版只是把1979年版中用作说明的例证和统计数据都有更新到当时的最新数据。1989年湖南人民出版社推出中译本《回到常识——剖析经济学中一些“杰出的”谬误》，译者于小庆。洪君彦在“代译者序”中提及：“推荐译者将此译成中文的美国教授们认为，它曾使无数美国知识分子由此开始了解了经济学。”据说，于本一版一印，才出1200本，也值得去挖掘出来。

1999年、2005年、2008年面市的3个中译本都基于50周年纪念版，热捧之余都有声音认为翻译欠佳。应该说校译的潜力还很大吧。1999年清华大学出版社推出中译本《一课之师》，译者吴栋、王力等。在“译者说明”中提及王法、齐险峰、李艳、侯红娅等同学进行了初译。2005年经济新潮社推出的繁体版《一课经济学》，译者罗耀宗。吴荣义、吴惠林、张清溪、詹宏志、熊秉元、薛琦都在译文前撰文专业推荐。2008年中信出版社推出的简体版《一课经济学》，译者蒲定东。朋友雪峰、海云、冬梅、余江等对该书前半部分作了校译。

我拟以5个中译本，以及网上的相关内容为基础，以撰写日志校译连载方式，利用业余时间陆续放上草稿，根据反馈不断修改。

在校译进程中，我们也发现英文原著1979年的第二版对照之前的第一版，也有相当出入。校译以第二版为主，若有译者发现第一版的相关不同内容值得补充进这个校译本，请在译本中对这种补充的地方作说明。

第二版英文原文可参看http://jim.com/econ/contents.html

第一版英文原文可参看http://www.fee.org/library/books/economics.asp

 

规则1：我先贴出一个供大家校译的版本；我会比较手中的几个中译本，整理出这个版本，贴在博文顶楼；摆擂台

规则2：若我自己发现有更好的译文，我会直接修改顶楼；

规则3：若其他博友提出更好的译文，我会先跟帖保留废文，作为修改历史记录，然后到顶楼更新； 

 

mises.org上的这个blog可视为我在德赛公园blog的一个副本，有兴趣的朋友请访问在德赛公园的博客正本：http://www.de-sci.org/blogs/dingdong

为简化起见，这里的副本只转贴开放式编校的最后结果，这个结果是诸多博友共同奉献的结果。我谨在这里把他们的网名帖上来：

深度参与并指导的网友有：寻正
驻足略微参与的网友有：棒棒儿、曾子后、子平、Wonfucious

Economics in One Lesson校译之24. The Assault on Saving (4-1,2)

The Assault on Saving
第24章 抨击储蓄

From time immemorial proverbial wisdom has taught the virtues of saving, and warned against the consequences of prodigality and waste. This proverbial wisdom has reflected the common ethical as well as the merely prudential judgments of mankind. But there have always been squanderers, and there have apparently always been theorists to rationalize their squandering.

远古先哲就在诵赞储蓄是一种美德，而警告挥霍浪费带来的种种恶果。这个古老的智慧，反映了我们常识性的道德判断，以及人类未雨绸缪的明智抉择。但是这个世界上总有许多挥霍成性的人，也总有许多理论家，为挥霍行为寻找合理化的借口。

The classical economists, refuting the fallacies of their own day, showed that the saving policy that was in the best interests of the individual was also in the best interests of the nation. They showed that the rational saver, in ma king provision for his future, was not hurting, but helping, the whole community. But today the ancient virtue of thrift, as well as its defense by the classical economists, is once more under attack, for allegedly new reasons, while the opposite doctrine of spending is in fashion.

正统经济学家勇于驳斥他们那个时代的种种谬论，证明了符合个人最佳利益的储蓄政策，也符合国家的最佳利益。他们指出，懂得长远打算的理性储蓄者， 对整个社会不会有害，反而有益。但当今社会，古老的节俭美德连同正统经济学家的证明再次受到了抨击，许多人搬出反对节俭的新理由，提倡支出的论调蔚然成风。

In order to make the fundamental issue as clear as possible, we cannot do better, I think, than to start with the classic example used by Bastiat. Let us imagine two brothers, then, one a spendthrift and the other a prudent man, each of whom has inherited a sum to yield him an income of $50,000 a year. We shall disregard the income tax, and the question whether both brothers really ought to work for a living or give most of their income to charity, because such questions are irrelevant to our present purpose.

为了把这个基本的问题尽可能讲清楚，我想我们最好从经济学家巴斯夏所用的经典例子开始着手进行说明。假设有两兄弟各继承了一笔财富，因此每年都能各得50 000美元的收入，但是其中一人挥金如土，另一人谨慎节俭。我们在这里忽略掉所得税、以及两兄弟是否应该去工作赚钱，是否该把大部分钱捐给慈善机构，因为这些问题和我们接下来要谈的主题无关。

Alvin, then, the first brother, is a lavish spender. He spends not only by temperament, but on principle. He is a disciple (to go no further back) of Rodbertus, who declared in the middle of the nineteenth century that capitalists “must expend their income to the last penny in comforts and luxuries,” for if they “determine to save... goods accumulate, and part of the workmen will have no work.” Alvin is always seen at the night clubs; he tips handsomely; he maintains a pretentious establishment, with plenty of servants; he has a couple of chauffeurs, and doesn’t stint himself in the number of cars he owns; he keeps a racing stable; he runs a yacht; he travels; he loads his wife down with diamond bracelets and fur coats; he gives expensive and useless presents to his friends.

哥哥阿尔文是个挥霍者，他不仅有挥霍的性情，而且有挥霍的信念。他是卡尔•洛贝图斯（Karl Rodbertus）（我想不用再往前回溯得更远了）的忠实信徒。在19世纪中叶，洛贝图斯宣称资本家“必须将他们的最后一便士收入都花在享乐和奢靡上”，因为如果他们“决定储蓄，……那么商品将积压，部分工人将失业”。{脚注: 洛贝图斯，《生产过剩与恐慌》Karl Rodbertus, Overproduction and Crises (1850), p. 51.}阿尔文常出入夜总会；小费出手十分大方；他拥有一处豪宅，养了很多仆从；他有两三个私家司机，车子买了一辆又一辆；他有一个赛马场；他喜欢架游艇出航；喜欢去各地观光；他给太太买钻石项链和皮裘大衣；送朋友贵重却派不上用场的礼物。

To do all this he has to dig into his capital. But what of it? If saving is a sin, dissaving must be a virtue; and in any case he is simply making up for the harm being done by the saving of his pinchpenny brother Benjamin.

要做所有这一切，他只好动用老本。可这对他又算得了什么呢？如果储蓄是一种罪过，不储蓄当然就是一种美德；而且，无论如何，他这么做不过是为了补偿吝啬鬼弟弟本杰明由于储蓄给社会带来的种种损害。

It need hardly be said that Alvin is a great favorite with the hat check girls, the waiters, the restaurateurs, the furriers, the jewelers, the luxury establishments of all kinds. They regard him as a public benefactor. Certainly it is obvious to everyone that he is giving employment and spreading his money around.

不用说，阿尔文对于迎宾、侍者、餐厅老板、皮货商、珠宝商、各类奢侈品店家来说都是最受欢迎的人。他被视为众人的财神爷。大家都看得很清楚，正是他四处挥洒钞票，人们才有那么多工作可做。

Compared with him brother Benjamin is much less popular. He is seldom seen at the jewelers, the furriers or the night clubs, and he does not call the head waiters by their first names. Whereas Alvin spends not only the full $50,000 income each year but is digging into capital besides, Benjamin lives much more modestly and spends only about $25,000 Obviously, think the people who see only what hits them in the eye, he is providing less than half as much employment as Alvin, and the other $25,000 is as useless as if it did not exist.

与他相比，弟弟本杰明可就远不如他受人欢迎。他很少光顾珠宝店、皮货店和夜总会，也不会亲昵地直呼那些领班侍者的名字。与阿尔文年年吃老本不同，本杰明要节俭得多。他一年的花销在25 000美元左右。在那些目光短浅的人看来，他提供的工作机会显然不到阿尔文的一半，另外25 000美元则丝毫没有派上用场，就跟那笔钱不存在一样。

But let us see what Benjamin actually does with this other $25,000 He does not let it pile up in his pocketbook, his bureau drawers, or in his safe. He either deposits it in a bank or he invests it. If he puts it either into a commercial or a savings bank, the bank either lends it to going businesses on short term for working capital, or uses it to buy securities. In other words, Benjamin invests his money either directly or indirectly. But when money is invested it is used to buy or build capital goods—houses or office buildings or factories or ships or trucks or machines. Any one of these projects puts as much money into circulation and gives as much employment as the same amount of money spent directly on consumption.

且慢！让我们来看看本杰明究竟是如何支配那另外25 000美元的。那笔钱，他并没有放在钱袋子、书桌抽屉和保险箱里面。他把钱存到银行，或者拿去投资。如果他是存到商业银行或储蓄银行，银行会贷给企业用作周转金，或用于购买证券。换句话说，本杰明的钱用于直接或间接投资。而一旦这笔钱以一种资本投资的形式出现时，人们就会把它用来购买或是生产资本类产品 ——房屋、写字楼、工厂、轮船、卡车、机器。通过这些项目，货币同样被投入了流通领域，而且它们也提供了同样多的就业机会。促进就业这种作用与把钱直接用来消费的结果是一样的。

“Saving,” in short, in the modem world, is only another form of spending. The usual difference is that the money is turned over to someone else to spend on means to increase production. So far as giving employment is concerned, Benjamin’s “saving” and spending combined give as much as Alvin’s spending alone, and put as much money in circulation. The chief difference is that the employment provided by Alvin’s spending can be seen by anyone with one eye; but it is necessary to look a little more carefully, and to think a moment, to recognize that every dollar of Benjamin’s saving gives as much employment as every dollar that Alvin throws around.

总之，现代世界中的“储蓄”，只是支出的另一种形式。通常的区别在于，货币被转交给了其他的人，并被他们用于扩大生产。就提供就业机会来说，本杰明的“储蓄”加上他的消费带来的效果，与阿尔文单纯消费的效果一样，他们投入流通的资金也一样多。关键区别就在于，阿尔文花钱提供的就业机会，每个人都看得到；而要认清本杰明储蓄的钱所起到的同样的作用，则需要我们做进一步的观察和思考。

A dozen years roll by. Alvin is broke. He is no longer seen in the night clubs and at the fashionable shops; and those whom he formerly patronized, when they speak of him, refer to him as something of a fool. He writes begging letters to Benjamin. And Benjamin, who continues about the same ratio of spending to saving, not only provides more jobs than ever, because his income, through investment, has grown, but through his investment he has helped to provide better-paying and more productive jobs. His capital wealth and income are greater. He has, in brief, added to the nation’s productive capacity; Alvin has not.

12年后，阿尔文破产了。在夜总会和时尚精品店里再也没有了他的身影；那些曾奉他为财神爷的人如今谈起他时，嘲笑他是傻蛋一个。他不得不向本杰明写信恳求接济。与此相反，本杰明的支出与储蓄比率还是和以前一样，由于投资收益不断增长，通过他的投资创造的就业机会不仅数量更多，并且那些工作待遇更加好、劳动生产率更高。他的资本财富和收入都比以前高。简单来说，他增加了国家的生产能力，阿尔文却没有。

2

So many fallacies have grown up about saving in recent years that they cannot all be answered by our example of the two brothers. It is necessary to devote some further space to them. Many stem from confusions so elementary as to seem incredible, particularly when found in the works of economic writers of wide repute. The word saving, for example, is used sometimes to mean mere hoarding of money, and sometimes to mean investment, with no clear distinction, consistently maintained, between the two uses.

近年来，关于储蓄的谬论层出不穷。要回答这些问题，仅靠我们“两个兄弟”的传统例子恐怕就远远不够了，我们有必要多花一些篇幅对此加以分析。许多谬论连最基本的概念都搞混，到了令人匪夷所思的地步，尤其当类似的错误出现在一些备受尊敬的著名经济学家的著作中时。例如，储蓄一词有时被用来单指蓄藏（hoarding）金钱，有时被用去指投资，甚至用来用去不加区分。

Mere hoarding of hand-to-hand money, if it takes place irrationally, causelessly, and on a large scale, is in most economic situations harmful. But this sort of hoarding is extremely rare. Something that looks like this, but should be carefully distinguished from it, often occurs after a downturn in business has got under way. Consumptive spending and investment are then both contracted. Consumers reduce their buying. They do this partly, indeed, because they fear they may lose their jobs, and they wish to conserve their resources: they have contracted their buying not because they wish to consume less but because they wish to make sure that their power to consume will be extended over a longer period if they do lose their jobs.

如果仅仅是缺乏理智、莫名其妙地大量蓄藏金钱，在大多数经济状况中都是有害无益的。但是这种蓄藏金钱的情形极为罕见。有些舍不得花钱的情形看上去与之有些类似，但那是理性抉择的结果，与其有着本质区别。例如，经济衰退时期，消费和投资萎缩。消费者买东西都很俭省，部分原因是担心工作不保，想留点钱以备不时之需。也就是说，他们紧缩消费，不是因为吝啬守财，而是对前景担忧，万一真的失去工作，让家里能够多维持一段时间的花销。

But consumers reduce their buying for another reason. Prices of goods have probably fallen, and they fear a further fall. If they defer spending, they believe they will get more for their money. They do not wish to have their resources in goods that are falling in value, but in money which they expect (relatively) to rise in value.

消费者紧缩消费还有另一个原因。物价可能正在回落，但是消费者预期还会继续降价。如果他们推后再消费，用同样多的钱就能够买到更多的东西。他们不希望拿钱去买正在缩水贬值的商品，而是愿意持有他们期望（相对而言）可以升值的货币。

The same expectation prevents them from investing. They have lost their confidence in the profitability of business; or at least they believe that if they wait a few months they can buy stocks or bonds cheaper. We may think of them either as refusing to hold goods that may fall in value on their hands, or as holding money itself for a rise.

同样的预期心理使人么紧缩投资。他们对企业的赢利能力已经失去信心。再者，他们愿意再等几个月，届时或许可以买到更便宜的股票或债券。换句话说，他们不愿持有可能贬值的商品，或是为了某种程度的升值而持有货币本身。

It is a misnomer to call this temporary refusal to buy “saving.” It does not spring from the same motives as normal saving. And it is a still more serious error to say that this sort of “saving” is the cause of depressions. It is, on the contrary, the consequence of depressions.

同样，把这种紧缩消费与紧缩投资的行为归入到“储蓄”名下，是不恰当的。它的动机与一般的储蓄有所不同。将这种“储蓄”说成是经济衰退的起因，更是大错特错。恰恰相反，它是经济衰退的后果。

It is true that this refusal to buy may intensify and prolong a depression. At times when there is capricious government intervention in business, and when business does not know what the government is going to do next, uncertainty is created. Profits are not reinvested. Firms and individuals allow cash balances to accumulate in their banks. They keep larger reserves against contingencies. This hoarding of cash may seem like a cause of a subsequent slowdown in business activity. The real cause, however, is the uncertainty brought about by the government policies. The larger cash balances of firms and individuals are merely one link in the chain of consequences from that uncertainty. To blame “excessive saving” for the business decline would be like blaming a fall in the price of apples not on a bumper crop but on the people who refuse to pay more for apples.

确实，这种紧缩支出行为可能加深和延长一场衰退。有些时候，政府对企业的干预反复无常，企业不知道政府政策下一步又变成什么样子，企业对未来做出预期的不确定性就会增加。于是，企业和个人不愿冒险将利润进行再投资，他们的银行存款余额因此越积越高。他们宁可保有更多的准备金，以防万一。这种现金储备行为似乎成了随之而出现的经济发展速度放慢的原因之一。然而，衰退的真正原因，是政府政策所带来的一种不确定性。企业和个人保有更多的现金，只不过是这种不确定性所导致的一连串后果中的一个环节而已。把经济不景气怪罪到“过度储蓄”上，就像苹果价格下跌，不去怪苹果丰收，却怪人们不肯出更高的价格买苹果一样。

But when once people have decided to deride a practice or an institution, any argument against it, no matter how illogical, is considered good enough. It is said that the various consumers goods industries are built on the expectation of a certain demand, and that if people take to saving they will disappoint this expectation and start a depression. This assertion rests primarily on the error we have already examined—that of forgetting that what is saved on consumers’ goods is spent on capital goods, and that “saving” does not necessarily mean even a dollar’s contraction in total spending. The only element of truth in the contention is that any change that is sudden may be unsettling. It would be just as unsettling if consumers suddenly switched their demand from one consumers’ good to another. It would be even more unsettling if former savers suddenly switched their demand from capital goods to consumers’ goods

然而，一旦有人存心要贬低某种做法或机制的时候，任何帮腔的言论，不论多么不合逻辑，他么都会为之叫好。有人帮腔说，各种消费品工业，是预期有某种需求存在而建立起来的，如果人们只知道把钱存起来，这种预期就会落空，并且导致一场衰退。这一论断主要是以我们已经分析过的错误为出发点的，即忘记了我们在消费品支出上所减少的部分是被用在资本品上了，而“储蓄”并不一定意味着总支出的缩减。他们惟一说对的一点是：任何突然的变化都可能是引起混乱，就象消费者突然把他们的需求从一种商品转向另一种商品时所表现出的混乱一样，而倘若原来的储蓄者将他们对资本品的需求一下子转向了 对消费品的需求，那么由此而来的经济生活的混乱则会更为严重。

Still another objection is made against saving. It is said to be just downright silly. The nineteenth century is derided for its supposed inculcation of the doctrine that mankind through saving should go on baking itself a larger and larger cake without ever eating the cake. This picture of the process is itself naive and childish. It can best be disposed of, perhaps, by putting before ourselves a somewhat more realistic picture of what actually takes place.

反对储蓄的另一种论点，说起来也实在是荒唐透顶。他们嘲讽19世纪人们被反复灌输着储蓄的观念，说结果是，蛋糕越做越大，却没人去吃。这样的描述显得幼稚无知。戳穿这种不实之说的最好办法，是用贴近现实的写照，把实际情况呈现出来。

Let us picture to ourselves, then, a nation that collectively saves every year about 20 percent of all it produces in that year. This figure greatly overstates the amount of net saving that has occurred historically in the United States, but it is a round figure that is easily handled, and it gives the benefit of every doubt to those who believe that we have been “oversaving.”

那么，让我们自己想象一下。假设国家每年的储蓄占国民生产总值的20%左右。{脚注:历史上，20%近似地表示国民生产总值每年投入资本形成（不包括消费资料）的总值。但是如果扣除资本消耗，则每年的净储蓄接近12%。参照：特伯格，《经济成熟的歪理》George Terborgh, The Bogey of Economic Maturity (1945)。1977年官方估计的私人国内投资总额，占国民生产总值的16%。}这个数字已远远超过美国历年来的净储蓄水平，我们取个偏大的整数，一来便于计算，二来好让那些指责“储蓄过度”的人服气。

Now as a result of this annual saving and investment, the total annual production of the country will increase each year. (To isolate the problem we are ignoring for the moment booms, slumps, or other fluctuations.) Let us say that this annual increase in production is 2.5 percentage points. (Percentage points are taken instead of a compounded percentage merely to simplify the arithmetic.) The picture that we get for an eleven-year period, say, would then run something like this in terms of index numbers:

现在，由于这样的年储蓄和投资水平，该国每年的总产出水平将逐年增加。（为了单独讨论这个问题，我们忽略影响增长不均衡的所有因素。）假设生产每年 增加2.5个百分点（为了简化计算，我们用百分点，不用百分增长率）。这样，我们可以用下列指数数字来表示我们所要考察的11年间的大致情况。如下表所示：

年份	总产量	消费品产量	资本品产量
第1年	100	80	20[†]
第2年	102.5	82	20.5
第3年	105	84	21
第4年	107.5	86	21.5
第5年	110	88	22
第6年	112.5	90	22.5
第7年	115	92	23
第8年	117.5	94	23.5
第9年	120	96	24
第10年	122.5	98	24.5
第11年	125	100	25

（图表）{脚注:我们在此假设这11年中储蓄与投资之间的比率保持不变。}

The first thing to be noticed about this table is that total production increases each year because of the saving, and would not have increased without it. (It is possible no doubt to imagine that improvements and new inventions merely in replaced machinery and other capital goods of a value no greater than the old would increase the national productivity; but this increase would amount to very little and the argument in any case assumes enough prior investment to have made the existing machinery possible.) The saving has been used year after year to increase the quantity or improve the quality of existing machinery, and so to increase the nation’s output of goods. There is, it is true (if that for some strange reason is considered an objection), a larger and larger “cake” each year. Each year, it is true, not all of the currently produced cake is consumed. But there is no irrational or cumulative restraint. For each year a larger and larger cake is in fact consumed; until, at the end of eleven years (in our illustration), the annual consumers’ cake alone is equal to the combined consumers’ and producers’ cakes of the first year. Moreover, the capital equipment, the ability to produce goods, is itself 25 percent greater than in the first year.

关于这张表格，我们需要首先注意的是，总产量每年的增长是由于储蓄所引起的，没有储蓄就没有总产量的增长。（你也可以想象，不花什么钱，单靠改良和新发明去提高生产力的情况，但是这方面的增幅非常小；并且，真要靠新工艺新设备，还得要有足够的投资才行。）这种储蓄年复一年被用于增加现有机器的数量和改进其品质，从而提高全国的产品产量。不错，“蛋糕”会越做越大（很奇怪，这也成其为反对的理由）；每一年做出来的蛋糕，的确不会全部吃掉。然而，这里并不存在什么不合理的或是累加的限制。其实，每年吃掉的蛋糕越来越多；到了第11年 底，该年单单消费者吃掉的蛋糕，就等于第一年消费者吃掉的蛋糕和生产者吃掉的蛋糕的总合。而且，资本设备和生产产品的能力本身与第一年相比也已增加了25%。

Let us observe a few other points. The fact that 20 percent of the national income goes each year for saving does not upset the consumers’ goods industries in the least. If they sold only the 80 units they produced in the first year (and there were no rise in prices caused by unsatisfied demand) they would certainly not be foolish enough to build their production plans on the assumption that they were going to sell 100 units in the second year. The consumers’ goods industries, in other words, are already geared to the assumption that the past situation in regard to the rate of savings will continue. Only an unexpected sudden and substantial increase in savings would unsettle them and leave them with unsold goods.

让我们看看其他方面。每年有20%的国民收入用于储蓄，一点都没有扰乱消费品工业的运行。如果它们在第一年生产的产品只卖出80个点（假设没有未获满足的需求使价格上涨），它们在拟定第二年生产计划的时候，当然不会笨到设想能够卖出100个点。换句话说，消费品工业已经习惯假设过去的储蓄率会持续下去。只有储蓄出于预料突然大增，才会扰乱它们的运行，使它们的产品卖不出去。

But the same unsettlement, as we have already observed, would be caused in the capital goods industries by a sudden and substantial decrease in savings. If money that would previously have been used for savings were thrown into the purchase of consumers goods, it would not increase employment but merely lead to an increase in the price of consumption goods and to a decrease in the price of capital goods. Its first effect on net balance would be to force shifts in employment and temporarily to decrease employment by its effect on the capital goods industries. And its long-run effect would be to reduce production below the level that would otherwise have been achieved.

但是，正如我们已经注意到的，假如储蓄额突然锐减，那么它将同样导致资本品工业的混乱。要是存在银行的钱，全部被取出来购买消费品，就业不会增加，只会使消费品的价格升高，同时降低资本品的价格。其总体影响首先会迫使就业发生移转，短期内会使资本品工业中的就业缩减。长期的影响将是使整个社会的生产低于本来可以达到的水平。

（未完待续）

Economics in One Lesson校译之 A NOTE ON BOOKS

A Note on Books
后记与参考书目

Those who desire to read further in economics should turn next to some work of intermediate length and difficulty. I know of no single volume in print today that completely meets this need, but there are several that together supply it. There is an excellent short book (126 pages) by Faustino Ballvé, Essentials of Economics (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education), which briefly summarizes principles and policies. A book that does that at somewhat greater length (327 pages) is Understanding the Dollar Crisis by Percy L. Greaves (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, 1973). Bettina Bien Greaves has assembled two volumes of readings on Free Market Economics (Foundation for Economic Education).

想要多读点经济学的人，接下来应该找几本中等篇幅和难度适中的专业著作来看。据我所知，目前还没有哪本书能完全满足这种要求，不过，有几本书搭配起来效果不错。福斯提诺·波夫（Faustino Ballvé）的《经济学精要》（Essentials of Economics, Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y Foundation for Economic Education; 126页），这本精彩的小册子简要总结了各种经济原则和经济政策。珀西·格里夫斯（Percy L. Greaves）的《探讨美元危机》（Understanding the Dollar Crisis, Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, 1973；327页），主题类似但篇幅较长。还有，贝蒂纳·格里夫斯（Bettina Bien Greaves）主编的两册的《自由市场经济学》（Free Market Economics, Foundation for Economic Education）。

The reader who aims at a thorough understanding, and feels prepared for it, should next read Human Action by Ludwig von Mises (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1949, 1966, 907 pages). This book extended the logical unity and precision of economics beyond that of any previous work. A two-volume work written thirteen years after Human Action by a student of Mises is Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State (Mission, Kan.: Sheed, Andrews and McMeel, 1962, 987 pages). This contains much original and penetrating material; its exposition is admirably lucid; and its arrangement makes it in some respects more suitable for textbook use than Mises’ great work.

想要深入了解经济学的读者，如果已经具备了一定理解能力，接下来应该看米塞斯的《人的行为》（Human Action, Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1949, 1966；907页）。这本书的逻辑单一性和经济学的精确度，超越了以前所有的经济学著作。在《人的行为》出版13年后，米塞斯的学生罗思巴德（Murray N. Rothbard）写了两册的《人、经济与国家》（Man, Economy, and State, Mission, Kan.: Sheed, Andrews and McMeel, 1962；987页）。这本书中有不少新东西，有不少作者透彻的见解；其叙述简单明了；其结构安排在某些方面比米塞斯的巨著更适合作为教科书。

Short books that discuss special economic subjects in a simple way are Planning for Freedom by Ludwig von Mises (South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press, 1952), and Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). There is an excellent pamphlet by Murray N. Rothbard, What HasGovernment Done to Our Money? (Santa Ana, Calif.: Rampart College, 1964, 1974, 62 pages). On the urgent subject of inflation, a book by the present author has recently been published, The Inflation Crisis, and How to Resolve It (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978).

还有些深入浅出探讨特殊经济主题的小册子，包括米塞斯的《规划自由》（Planning for Freedom, South Holland, I11.: Libertarian Press, 1952），弗里德曼的《资本主义与自由》（Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962）。罗思巴德的《为什么我们的钱变薄了？》（What Has Government Done to Our Money?, Santa Ana, Calif,: Rampart College, 1964, 1974；62页）很不错。急于了解通货膨胀的读者，可以读本书作者最近出的《通货膨胀危机，及其解决之道》。

Among recent works which discuss current ideologies and developments from a point of view similar to that of this volume are the present author’s The Failure of the “New Economics”: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies (Arlington House, 1959); F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1945) and the same author’s monumental Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). Ludwig von Mises’ Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936, 1969) is the most thorough and devastating critique of collectivistic doctrines ever written.

与这本书观点类似，从当前的意识形态与发展层面进行探讨的经济学著作，有本书作者的《“新经济学”的失败：分析凯恩斯的谬论》（The Failure of the “New Economics”: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies, Arlington House, 1959）；哈耶克的《通向奴役之路》和《自由秩序原理》。米塞斯的《社会主义：经济与社会分析》（Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, London: Jonathan Cape, 1936, 1969），这本书对集体主义的教条所进行的彻头彻尾的批判是空前的。

The reader should not overlook, of course, Frederic Bastiat’s Economic Sophisms (ca. 1844), and particularly his essay on “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.”

读者当然不要错过巴斯夏的《经济诡辩》（Economic Sophisms，1844），尤其是他写的〈看得见的与看不见的〉。

Those who are interested in working through the economic classics might find it most profitable to do this in the reverse of their historical order. Presented in this order, the chief works to be consulted, with the dates of their first editions, are: Philip Wick-steed, The Common Sense of Political Economy, 1911; John Bates Clark, The Distribution of Wealth, 1899; Eugen von BohmBawerk, The Positive Theory of Capital, 1888; Karl Menger, Principles of Economics, 1871; W. Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, 1871; John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848; David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817; and Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

对经济学经典感兴趣的读者，不妨先读现代的经典，再读时间更久远的经典。按第一版的出版日期，我们倒着列一个书单：威克斯第德的《政治经济学常识》（The Common Sense of Political Economy, 1911）；约翰·克拉克（John Bates Clark）的《财富分配》（The Distribution of Wealth, 1899）；尤金·庞巴维克（Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk）的《正面资本论》（The Positive Theory of Capital, 1888）；卡尔·门格（Karl Menger）的《经济学原理》（Principles of Economics, 1871）；斯坦利·杰文斯（W. Stanley Jevons）的《政治经济理论》（The Theory of Political Economy, 1871）；穆勒的《政治经济原理》；大卫·李嘉图的《政治经济与财税原理》（Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817）；亚当·斯密的《国富论》。

Economics broadens out in a hundred directions. Whole libraries have been written on specialized fields alone, such as money and banking, foreign trade and foreign exchange, taxation and public finance, government control, capitalism and socialism, wages and labor relations, interest and capital, agricultural economics, rent, prices, profits, markets, competition and monopoly, value and utility, statistics, business cycles, wealth and poverty, social insurance, housing, public utilities, mathematical economics, studies of special industries and of economic history. But no one will ever properly understand any of these specialized fields unless he has first of all acquired a firm grasp of basic economic principles and the complex interrelationship of all economic factors and forces. When he has done this by his reading in general economics, he can be trusted to find the right books in his special field of interest.

经济学会往无数个方向发展。仅各专门领域的经济学著作已是汗牛充栋。例如货币与银行、外贸与外汇、税收与公共财政、政府规制、资本主义与社会主义、工资与劳动关系、利息与资本、农业经济学、租金、价格、利润、市场、竞争与垄断、价值与效用、统计经济学、经济周期、财富与贫困问题、社会保险、房地产、公共事业、数理经济学、产业经济学与经济史的研究。但是，没有人能适当掌握这些专门领域，而不对基本的经济原理以及所有经济因素和经济力量之 间复杂的相互关系已有深刻理解。当他能过阅读一般性的经济学内容而有此能力之后，才能被期望在自己感兴趣的特殊领域，找到合适的书籍。

Economics in One Lesson校译之26. The Lesson After Thirty Years (2-2)

第三篇 三十年后的这堂课
第26章 三十年后的这堂课

（接前面部分）

If we go through the chapters of this book seriatim, we find practically no form of government intervention deprecated in the first edition that is not still being pursued, usually with increased obstinacy. Governments everywhere are still trying to cure by public works the unemployment brought about by their own policies. They are imposing heavier and more expropriatory taxes than ever. They still recommend credit expansion. Most of them still make “full employment” their overriding goal. They continue to impose import quotas and protective tariffs. They try to increase exports by depreciating their currencies even further. Farmers are still “striking” for “parity prices.” Governments still provide special encouragements to unprofitable industries. They still make efforts to “stabilize” special commodity prices.

如果我们逐一阅读本书的章节，我们就会发现，在第一版中我们所责难的各类政府干预形式，无一例外不是正在被各国顽固采用。各国政府都在努力用公共工程来解决政策性失业问题。他们变本加厉地增加税负，推行信用扩张。大多数政府仍以“充分就业”为压倒一切的目标。他们继续实行进口配额和保护性关税。他们设法通过让货币贬值来达到出口增加。农民仍旧在为“等位价格”而努力。 政府则继续帮扶那些无利可图的行业。他们还在努力“稳定”个别商品的价格。

Governments, pushing up commodity prices by inflating their currencies, continue to blame the higher prices on private producers, sellers, and “profiteers.” They impose price ceilings on oil and natural gas, to discourage new exploration precisely when it is in most need of encouragement, or resort to general price and wage fixing or “monitoring.” They continue rent control in the face of the obvious devastation it has caused. They not only retain minimum wage laws but keep increasing their level, in face of the chronic unemployment they so clearly bring about. They continue to pass laws granting special privileges and immunities to labor unions; to oblige workers to become members; to tolerate mass picketing and other forms of coercion; and to compel employers to “bargain collectively in good faith” with such unions— i.e., to make at least some concessions to their demands. The intention of all these measures is to “help labor.” But the result is once more to create and prolong unemployment, and to lower total wage payments compared with what they might have been.

随着通货膨胀抬高了商品价格，各国政府不断将物价上涨的原因，怪罪到私人生产者、销售者以及所谓“奸商”头上。他们规定了石油和天然气的最高限价，在这些产品的生产恰恰是最需要得到鼓励的时候，政府阻碍了新的开发；或者，政府将全面地固定或是“监督”价格和工资；他们仍继续实施租金管制，尽管后者事实上已经造成了明显的灾难。他们不仅保留最低工资法令，而且面对法令所带来的明显的延续的失业，仍然不断提高最低工资标准。他们不断通过制定各种法律，给工会以各种特权和豁免权的支持；硬性要求劳工加入工会；容忍大规模的罢工纠察和其他形式的胁迫；强迫雇主和这些工会进行“集体的真诚的劳资谈判”——也就是说，对他们的要求至少要做出某种让步。所以这些措施的目的都是为了“帮助劳工”，但结果却是又一次制造和延续了失业，同时还减少了总体工资支付，使劳工工资达不到应有的水平。

Most politicians continue to ignore the necessity of profits, to overestimate their average or total net amount, to denounce unusual profits anywhere, to tax them excessively, and sometimes even to deplore the very existence of profits.

大多数政治人物仍在忽视利润的必要性，夸大雇主们的平均利润或净收入总量，反对任何非正常利润，并对它们课以重税。有的时侯，他们甚至对利润本身的存在感到深恶痛绝。

The anticapitalistic mentality seems more deeply embedded than ever. Whenever there is any slowdown in business, the politicians now see the main cause as “insufficient consumer spending.” At the same time that they encourage more consumer spending they pile up further disincentives and penalties in the way of saving and investment. Their chief method of doing this today, as we have already seen, is to embark on or accelerate inflation. The result is that today, for the first time in history, no nation is on a metallic standard, and practically every nation is swindling its own people by printing a chronically depreciating paper currency.

在人们的观念中，反资本主义的思想渗透得比以往更深了。每当经济不景气，政治人物就认为“消费者支出不足”是主要原因。于是，它们一方面鼓励消费者增加支出，另一方面制定更多的妨碍性和惩罚性措施去限制储蓄和投资。我们说过，当今各国政府的主要做法，是制造或加速通货膨胀。结果是，经济发展到今天已经没有一个国家是金属本位的货币政策了，几乎每个国家都通过印制长期贬值的纸币来讹诈它们的人民。

To pile one more item on this heap, let us examine the recent tendency, not only in the United States but abroad, for almost every “social” program, once launched upon, to get completely out of hand. We have already glanced at the overall picture, but let us now look more closely at one outstanding example — Social Security in the United States.

最后，让我们看看最近的一种趋势。政府一旦推行带有“社会”二字的计划，就会完全失控，不仅在美国是如此，在其他所有国家都是如此。对于政府干预，我们已经看了个大概，现在让我们来细看一个当今尤为突出的例子——美国的社保制度。

The original federal Social Security Act was passed in 1935. The theory behind it was that the greater part of the relief problem was that people did not save in their working years, and so, when they were too old to work, they found themselves without resources. This problem could be solved, it was thought, if they were compelled to insure themselves, with employers also compelled to contribute half the necessary premiums, so that they would have a pension sufficient to retire on at age sixty-five or over. Social Security was to be entirely a self-financed insurance plan based on strict actuarial principles. A reserve fund was to be set up sufficient to meet future claims and payments as they fell due.

最早的联邦社会保险法案是1935年通过的。这个法案背后的理论是：大部分社会救济问题，在于人们有工作收入时没把钱存下来，到上了年纪才发现自己没有积蓄安度晚年。立法者认为这个问题可以解决，如果劳工被强制性地给自己保险，同时雇主也被强制性地为劳工负担一半的保费，这样一来，等劳工在65岁或更高年龄退休时，他们就会有足够的退休金安度晚年。社会保障基于严格的精算原则，被设计成完全自偿性保险。设立的社保基金足以应对将来的理赔申请和到期的社保支领。

It never worked out that way. The reserve fund existed mainly on paper. The government spent the Social Security tax receipts, as they came in, either to meet its ordinary expenses or to pay out benefits. Since 1975, current benefit payments have exceeded the system’s tax receipts.

但是实际的运作从来都没有依照这种设计执行过。社保基金只是账面数字。社保金收缴上来之后就被政府挪作它用，用于满足其经常性开支，或者向某些人提供津贴。自1975年以来，当期的社保发放金额已经超过这套制度的社保金缴入金额。

It also turned out that in practically every session Congress found ways to increase the benefits paid, broaden the coverage, and add new forms of “social insurance.” As one commentator pointed out in 1965, a few weeks after Medicare insurance was added: “Social Security sweeteners have been enacted in each of the past seven general election years.

这很自然地产生了每届国会都要寻求增加社保名目的局面，例如增加社保支付、扩大社保覆盖面、增加新形式的“社会保障”。就像在1965年加进医保计划之后不久，一位评论家所指出的那样：“过去七次大选之年，社保名目每次都有增加。”

As inflation developed and progressed, Social Security benefits were increased not only in proportion, but much more. The typical political ploy was to load up benefits in the present and push costs into the future. Yet that future always arrived; and each few years later Congress would again have to increase payroll taxes levied on both workers and employers.

随着通货膨胀的发展和推进，社保金额也必然有所增加。然而，其增长率并不与通货膨胀的发展幅度相同，而是比后者要大得多。典型的政治手段是在眼前积聚起大量的保险费，而将成本推到未来去消化。然而，未来总是要到来的，每过几年，国会将不得不再次提高劳工和雇主缴纳的社保金。

Not only were the tax rates continuously increased, but there was a constant rise in the amount of salary taxed. In the original 1935 bill the salary taxed was only the first $3,000. The early tax rates were very low. But between 1965 and 1977, for example, the Social Security tax shot up from 4.4 percent on the first $6,600 of earned income (levied on employer and employee alike) to a combined 11.7 percent on the first $16,500 (Between 1960 and 1977, the total annual tax increased by 572 percent, or about 12 percent a year compounded. It is scheduled to go much higher.) At the beginning of 1977, unfunded liabilities of the Social Security system were officially estimated at $4.1 trillion.

除了社保金提留比率不断增加，纳入社保缴纳基数的薪金也在不断增加。最早的1935年社保法案中，规定薪金收入的前3,000美元作为社保缴纳基数，并且提留比率很低。1965年规定薪金收入的前6,600美元作为社保缴纳基数，提留比率4.4%（雇主和员工都必须缴纳），到1977年基数激增为前16,500美元，提留比率11.7%。（从1960年到1977年，年度总社保入账增加了572%，按复利计算平均每年增长12%。来年计划中的涨幅比这更高。）

根据官方统计，1977年初，社会保险系统的无资金准备的负债高达4.1万亿美元。{endnotes:现在的社保提留比率是15.3%。据估计，到2010年，美国的社保体系将破产。}

No one can say today whether Social Security is really an insurance program or just a complicated and lopsided relief system. The bulk of the present benefit recipients are being assured that they “earned” and “paid for” their benefits. Yet no private insurance company could have afforded to pay existing benefit scales out of the “premiums” actually received. As of early 1978, when low-paid workers retire, their monthly benefits generally represent about 60 percent of what they earned on the job. Middle-income workers receive about 45 percent. For those with exceptionally high salaries, the ratio can fall to or 10 percent. If Social Security is thought of as a relief system, however, it is a very strange one, for those who have already been getting the highest salaries receive the highest dollar benefits.

如今，谁也无法说明社保制度真的是一个保险计划呢，还是只是一种复杂而不平衡的救济制度。政府总是设法证明，那些众多的受益者所领取的社保金是他们“挣得的”、是他们“出了钱的”。可是，还没有哪家私人保险公司，有能力从实际收取的“保费”中支付现有规模的社保金。1978年初，低收入劳工退休的时候，每月领取的社保相当于工作收入的60%左右。中等收入劳工领取的社保约为原来收入的45%。薪资特别高的人领取的社保约为原来收入的5%或10%。如果我们把社保制度看作是一种救济制度，那它就是一种很奇怪的救济制度。因为，那些已经领取最高工资的人得到了最高水平的保险收益。

Yet Social Security today is still sacrosanct. It is considered political suicide for any congressman to suggest cutting down or cutting back not only present but promised future benefits. The American Social Security system must stand today as a frightening symbol of the almost inevitable tendency of any national relief, redistribution, or “insurance scheme, once established, to run completely out of control.

然而，今天的社会保险制度仍然神圣不可侵犯。如果哪位国会议员胆敢提议取消或削减现在或未来的社保支付，那无异于政治自杀。如今，美国社会保险制度是一种令人畏惧的象征，它代表了一种近乎必然的趋势，即，在任何国家中救济、再分配或是“保险计划”，一旦形成，它们就会不可避免地发展到一种完全无法收拾的地步。

In brief, the main problem we face today is not economic, but political. Sound economists are in substantial agreement concerning what ought to be done. Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment. It is the proper sphere of government to create and enforce a framework of law that prohibits force and fraud. But it must refrain from specific economic interventions. Government’s main economic function is to encourage and preserve a free market. When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.” It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.

简单地说，我们今天面对的主要问题，不是经济上的，而是政治上的。著名的经济学家们已经就怎么做达成了共识。实际上，政府为重分配财富和收入所做的种种努力，只会扼杀生产积极性，并导致普遍贫困化。政府真正该做的事，是建立和执行一套法律架构，禁止暴力和欺诈。政府一定不要去干预个别的经济活动。政府的主要经济职能是鼓励并保障一个自由的市场。当亚历山大大帝去拜访哲学家第欧根尼，居高临下地问哲人有什么请求时，据说，第欧根尼回答道：“是的。请挪尊步，不要挡着我晒太阳。”每位公民都有权对政府这么要求。

The outlook is dark, but it is not entirely without hope. Here and there one can detect a break in the clouds. More and more people are becoming aware that government has nothing to give them without first taking it away from somebody else—or from themselves. Increased handouts to selected groups mean merely increased taxes, or increased deficits and increased inflation. And inflation, in the end, misdirects and disorganizes production. Even a few politicians are beginning to recognize this, and some of them even to state it clearly.

举目阴云蔽日，但并不是完全没有希望。总有某些地方，阳光会破云而出。越来越多人开始意识到，政府不会无中生有给他们什么东西，而不需要把那些东西从别人——或者他们自已——手中抢过来。特定群体享受更多优待，只能是意味着税负加重、赤字增加、通货膨胀加剧。而最终，通货膨胀将把生产引上错误的轨道，并破坏生产的组织。有些政治人物也开始认清这一点，其中有的人甚至清楚明白地把它讲出来。

In addition, there are marked signs of a shift in the intellectual winds of doctrine. Keynesians and New Dealers seem to be in a slow retreat. Conservatives, libertarians, and other defenders of free enterprise are becoming more outspoken and more articulate. And there are many more of them. Among the young, there is a rapid growth of a disciplined school of “Austrian” economists.

此外，人们的信条也存在着明显的变化趋势。凯恩斯学派和新政实行者们逐渐退场。保守派、自由派和其它自由企业的支持者们更加坦率清晰地表达着自己的观点。而且，这样的人越来越多。在年轻一辈中，由一些受到良好教育和训练的经济学者形成的“奥地利学派”快速崛起。

There is a real promise that public policy may be reversed before the damage from existing measures and trends has become irreparable.

真正的出路在于，趁目前的各种措施造成伤害还没有达到不可收拾之前，公共政策干预经济的局面必须扭转。

Economics in One Lesson校译之26. The Lesson After Thirty Years (2-1)

The Lesson after Thirty Years

第三篇 三十年后的这堂课
第26章 三十年后的这堂课

The first edition of this book appeared in 1946. It is now, as I write this, thirty-two years later. How much of the lesson expounded in the previous pages has been learned in this period?

本书第一版是1946年面市的。我现在写这段文字时，一晃已经过了32年。在这三十年间，本书当年所阐述的那些教训，我们真正学到了多少呢？

If we are referring to the politicians—to all those responsible for formulating and imposing government policies—practically none of it has been learned. On the contrary, the policies analyzed in the preceding chapters are far more deeply established and widespread, not only in the United States, but in practically every country in the world, than they were when this book first appeared.

若拿这话问那些政治人物，也就是那些对于制定和实施经济政策负有责任的人，那么他们根本没学到什么。相反，本书反对过的各种经济干预政策，如今远比三十年前更深重、更盛行，不仅在美国是这样，在世界各国都是这样。

We may take, as the outstanding example, inflation. This is not only a policy imposed for its own sake, but an inevitable result of most of the other interventionist policies. It stands today as the universal symbol of government intervention everywhere.

以尤为突出的通货膨胀政策为例。实施通货膨胀政策并不单纯是因为其自身的缘故，而且它同样也是其他经济干预政策所带来的一个不可避免的结果。今天，通货膨胀已经成为各国政府干预经济的普遍象征。

The 1946 edition explained the consequences of inflation, but the inflation then was comparatively mild. True, though federal government expenditures in 1926 had been less than $3 billion and there was a surplus, by fiscal year 1946 expenditures had risen to $55 billion and there was a deficit of $16 billion. Yet in fiscal year 1947, with the war ended, expenditures fell to $35 billion and there was an actual surplus of nearly $4 billion. By fiscal year 1978, however, expenditures had soared to $45’ billion and the deficit to $49 billion.

1946年版中阐明了通货膨胀的后果，但是当时的通货膨胀相对温和得多。我们看到，美国联邦政府1926年的财政支出不到30亿美元，并且有财政盈余。相比之下，虽然在1946财政年度，支出上升到550亿美元，赤字为160亿美元。在战争结束后的1947财政年度，支出降到350亿美元，还出现了40亿美元的财政盈余。但到了1978财政年度，支出飚升到4,510亿美元，财政赤字竟达490亿美元。

All this has been accompanied by an enormous increase in the stock of money—from $113 billion of demand deposits plus currency outside of banks in 1947, to $357 billion in August 1978. In other words, the active money supply has been more than tripled in the period.

这一切都伴随着货币存量的激增——美元的活期存款与银行体系之外的现金总和从1947年的1,130亿美元直升到1978年8月的3,570亿美元。也就是说，三十年间，流通货币的供应超过了原来的3倍。

The effect of this increase in money has been a dramatic increase in prices. The consumer price index in 1946 stood at In September1978 it was 199.3. Prices, in short, more than tripled.

货币供给高速增长导致物价急剧上涨。消费者物价指数从1946年的58.5飚升到1978年9月的199.3。也就是说，物价也是原来水平的3倍以上。{endnotes:经济学家亨德森报告说，“在1939年之后的56年中，通货膨胀率平均每年为4.4%。听起来很温和，加起来就不温和。实际上，通货膨胀做的不是加法，而是乘法，类似银行利息的复利计算。结果是，1939以来，物价上涨了998%。”（亨德森的〈同通胀娱乐与博弈〉，刊于《财富》1996年3月18日，第35页）}

The policy of inflation, as I have said, is partly imposed for its own sake. More than forty years after the publication of John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory, and more than twenty years after that book has been thoroughly discredited by analysis and experience, a great number of our politicians are still unceasingly recommending more deficit spending in order to cure or reduce existing unemployment. An appalling irony is that they are making these recommendations when the federal government has already been running a deficit for forty-one out of the last forty-eight years and when that deficit has been reaching dimensions of $50 billion a year. 

我已经指出通货膨胀政策的实施部分是由于其自身的缘故。凯恩斯的《就业、利息与货币通论》发表已经是40年前的事情，那本书被各种理论分析和实践经验所彻底质疑也已经有20年，时至今日，无数政治人物仍在不断主张实行大量的赤字支出，以对付和减少失业。极具讽刺的是，过去48年，联邦政府已有41年出现财政赤字，年均赤字高达500亿美元，程度如此严重，那些政治人物仍旧不断提出这种建议。{书后注:到1992年，财政预算赤字已达到2 900亿美元。此后，1995年的预算赤字下降到“只有”1 650亿美元。（《投资者财经日报》，1995年10月5日）}

An even greater irony is that, not satisfied with following such disastrous policies at home, our officials have been scolding other countries, notably Germany and Japan, for not following these “expansionary” policies themselves. This reminds one of nothing so much as Aesop’s fox, who, when he had lost his tail, urged all his fellow foxes to cut off theirs.

更具讽刺意味的是，美国政府官员根本不满足于自身采取这种灾难性的政策，他们甚至还谴责其他的国家（尤其是德国和日本）没有遵循这种“扩张性”的政策。就像伊索寓言里的狐狸，自己丢了尾巴之后，它就强烈要求其他所有的狐狸也都把尾巴割掉。

One of the worst results of the retention of the Keynesian myths is that it not only promotes greater and greater inflation, but that it systematically diverts attention from the real causes of our unemployment, such as excessive union wage-rates, minimum wage laws, excessive and prolonged unemployment insurance, and overgenerous relief payments.

抱持凯恩斯迷信的一个最坏结果是，不仅促使通货膨胀率急剧上升，而且用系统的手段，将人们的注意力从失业的真正成因上转移开，比如工会工资过高、最低工资法规、过度的长期失业保险，以及过分慷慨救济金。

But the inflation, though in part often deliberate, is today mainly the consequence of other government economic interventions. It is the consequence, in brief, of the Redistributive State—of all the policies of expropriating money from Peter in order to lavish it on Paul.

尽管通货膨胀有一部分是故意制造的，但今天的通货膨胀主要是政府诸多经济干预的后果。总之，它是国家再分配的一种后果——从张三那里征敛钱财，再把它随随便便地花在李四身上这种政策的后果。

This process would be easier to trace, and its ruinous effects easier to expose, if it were all done in some single measure—like the guaranteed annual income actually proposed and seriously considered by committees of Congress in the early 1970s. This was a proposal to tax still more ruthlessly all incomes above average and turn the proceeds over to all those living below a so-called minimum poverty line, in order to guarantee them an income— whether they were willing to work or not—”to enable them to live with dignity.” It would be hard to imagine a plan more clearly calculated to discourage work and production and eventually to impoverish everybody.

若整个过程采用单一措施，那么这个过程会比较容易追踪，其破坏性也比较容易揭示，例如20世纪70年代初在国会颇受重视的保证年收入提案。该提案建议对所有高于平均水平的收入课征更高的税收，用于救济生活在贫困线下的人，从而保证后者有一笔“能够过得去”的收入，而不管那些人愿意工作与否。如此明目张胆打击生产、包养懒汉的提案简直空前绝后，这只会让每个人都变穷。

But instead of passing any such single measure, and bringing on ruin in a single swoop, our government has preferred to enact a hundred laws that effect such a redistribution on a partial and selective basis. These measures may miss some needy groups entirely; but on the other hand they may shower upon other groups a dozen different varieties of benefits, subsidies, and other handouts. These include, to give a random list: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, veterans’ benefits, farm subsidies, subsidized housing, rent subsidies, school lunches, public employment on make-work jobs, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and direct relief of all kinds, including aid to the aged, the blind, and the disabled. The federal government has estimated that under these last categories it has been handing federal aid benefits to more than 4 million people—not to count what the states and cities are doing.

但是，我们的政府并没有采用这样一种单一的方法，它也不是在某个个别的干预中损害公众利益的。相反，政府更喜欢制定无数律令，并通过这些律令片面地、有选择性地实现再分配，这样的措施可能完全忽略了某些贫困群体的存在。同时，在另一方面，它又将使其它某些集团享受各种各样的好处，比如津贴、补助、以及其他优待。这些措施，随便列举一些：社保、老年医保、医疗补助、失业保险、食品券、退伍补助、农业补贴、住房补贴、租金补贴、学校午餐、创造工作机会的再就业计划、抚养子女的家庭援助，以及针对老人、盲人、残疾人等实施的各种直接救助。联邦政府统计表明，单单最后这类人，联邦财政救助对象超过400万，这还不 包括接受各州、市财政救助的人数。

One author has recently counted and examined no fewer than forty-four welfare programs. Government expenditures for these in 1976 totaled $187 billion. The combined average growth of these programs between 1971 and 1976 was 25 percent a year—2.5 times the rate of growth of estimated gross national product for the same period. Projected expenditures for 1979 are more than $250 billion. Coincident with the extraordinary growth of these welfare expenditures has been the development of a “national welfare industry,” now composed of 5 million public and private workers distributing payments and services to 50 million beneficiaries.

有位作者最近对至少44种福利方案进行了统计和详细调查。1976年，政府在这些计划上的总支出高达1,870亿美元。把这些计划合起来看，1971年到1976年，年均增长率为25%，是同期国民生产总值增长率的2.5倍。1979年的支出金额预计超过2,500亿美元。与这些福利支出急剧增长相一致的，是“国家福利产业”的发展。目前在这一产业公共部门和私人部门中的就业人数为500万，而从中获得报酬和服务好处的则有5 000万人。{脚注:霍布斯，《福利产业》Charles D. Hobbs, The Welfare Industry (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, 1978)}

Nearly every other Western country has been administering a similar assortment of aid programs—though sometimes a more integrated and less haphazard collection. And in order to do this they have been resorting to more and more Draconian taxation.

几乎每个西方国家都实施了类似的组合福利计划——有时整合化程度比较高，具有更少的随机性。无论如何，为了实施那些福利计划，各国只有征收越来越多的苛捐杂税。

We need merely point to Great Britain as one example. Its government has been taxing personal income from work (“earned” income) up to 83 percent, and personal income from investment (“unearned” income) up to 98 percent. Should it be surprising that it has discouraged work and investment and so profoundly discouraged production and employment? There is no more certain way to deter employment than to harass and penalize employers. There is no more certain way to keep wages low than to destroy every incentive to investment in new and more efficient machines and equipment. But this is becoming more and more the policy of governments everywhere. 

我们只需以英国为例来进行说明。英国政府对个人从工作中得到的收入（称为“劳动”所得）征收的所得税，税率最高达83%；从投资中得到的收入（称为“非劳动”所得）征收的所得税，税率最高达98%。这种税率直接打击工作和投资的积极性，如此全面地抑制了生产和就业，有什么令人吃惊呢？干扰和惩罚雇主是阻碍就业最明显的手段。同样，打击投资积极性，令人们不愿投资效率更高的新机器设备，是压低工资最明显的手段。然而越来越多这样的政策正被各国政府采用。{endnotes:在英国，所得税税率最高达40%，增值税税率为17.5%，资本利得税税率为33%。（1996年的《经济自由指数》（Index of Economic Freedom），布赖恩·约翰逊（Brian T. Johnson）和托马斯·希伊（Thomas P. Sheehy）, The Heritage Foundation, 1996.）在1994年，各项税赋刮走了国民生产总值的34%。（《经济学人》（The Economist），1995年2月9日，第99页）}

Yet this Draconian taxation has not brought revenues to keep pace with ever more reckless government spending and schemes for redistributing wealth. The result has been to bring chronic and growing government budget deficits, and therefore chronic and mounting inflation, in nearly every country in the world.

但是，严苛的税赋并没有带来足够的财政收入，去满足重分配型政府诸多开支、以及诸多计划中的开支。结果是世界各国的政府都陷入长期的预算赤字和通货膨胀，并越陷越深。

For the last thirty years or so, Citibank of New York has been keeping a record of this inflation over ten-year periods. Its calculations are based on the cost-of-living estimates published by the individual governments themselves. In its economic letter of October 1977 it published a survey of inflation in fifty countries. These figures show that in 1976, for example, the West German mark, with the best record, had lost 35 percent of its purchasing power over the preceding ten years; that the Swiss franc had lost 40 percent, the American dollar 43 percent, the French franc 50 percent, the Japanese yen 57 percent, the Swedish krone 47 percent, the Italian lira 56 percent, and the British pound 61 percent. When we get to Latin America, the Brazilian cruzeiro had lost 89 percent of its value, and the Uruguayan, Chilean, and Argentine pesos more than 99 percent.

过去三十多年来，纽约花旗银行对10年期通货膨胀率进行了记录。其计算是基于各国政府自己公布的生活费用指数。在其1977年10月的经济通信中，公布了对50个国家通货膨胀的调查结果。该调查显示，截止1976年的最近十年内，表现最好的西德马克，购买力损失35%；瑞士法郎损失40%，美元损失43%，法国法郎损失50%，日元损失57%，瑞典克朗损失47%，意大利里拉损失56%，而英镑则损失了61%。至于拉美国家的购买力，巴西货币克鲁赛罗损失89%，乌拉圭、智利、阿根廷比索损失均达99%以上。

Though when compared with the record of a year or two before, the overall record of world currency depreciations was more moderate; the American dollar in 1977 was depreciating at an annual rate of 6 percent, the French franc of 8.6 percent, the Japanese yen of 9.1 percent, the Swedish krone of percent, the British pound of 14.5 percent, the Italian lira of 15.7 percent, and the Spanish peseta at an annual rate of 17.5 percent. As for Latin American experience, the Brazilian currency unit in 1977 was depreciating at an annual rate of 30.8 percent, the Uruguayan of 35.5, the Chilean of 53.9, and the Argentinean of 65.7.

尽管与一两年前的情况相比，世界通货贬值的总体状况有所缓和，但1977年的贬值率分别是，美元6%，法国法郎8.6%，日元9.1%，瑞典克朗9.5%，英镑14.5%，意大利里拉15.7%，西班牙比塞塔则达17.5%。至于拉美国家，巴西货币单位1977年贬值30.8%，乌拉圭比索35.5%，智利比索53.9%，阿根廷比索则高达65.7%。{endnotes:1994年各国货币的年通货膨胀率为：美国2.8%，法国1.7%，日本-2%，瑞典4.5%，英国2.4%，意大利4%，西班牙45%，巴西2 500%，乌拉圭40%，智利11%，阿根廷5%。（1996年的《经济自由指数》，布赖恩·约翰逊和托马斯·希伊, The Heritage Foundation, 1996.）}

I leave it to the reader to picture the chaos that these rates of depreciation of money were producing in the economies of these countries and the suffering in the lives of millions of their inhabitants.

请读者们想象一下货币大幅贬值所造成的国家经济混乱局面，以及这些国家无数居民所承受的生活困难。

As I have pointed out, these inflations, themselves the cause of so much human misery, were in turn in large part the consequence of other policies of government economic intervention. Practically all these interventions unintentionally illustrate and underline the basic lesson of this book. All were enacted on the assumption that they would confer some immediate benefit on some special group. Those who enacted them failed to take heed of their secondary consequences—failed to consider what their effect would be in the long run on all groups.

正如我已经指出的，这些通货膨胀本身导致了如此严重的人类灾难，可是它又主要是政府进行经济干预政策的后果。实际上，所有这些干预无意间阐明并凸显了本书的基本教训。因为这些政策的实施都是建立在可以给某些特殊群体带来即期利益的假定上。实施干预的人，未能对政策的续发后果进行考虑，也就是没有考虑到它们对所有群体产生的长期影响。

In sum, so far as the politicians are concerned, the lesson that this book tried to instill more than thirty years ago does not seem to have been learned anywhere.

总之，那些政治人物对这本书三十多年前就给出的教训似乎什么都没学到。

（未完待续）

Economics in One Lesson校译之25. The Lesson Restated (4-3,4)

第25章
课后温习

（接前面部分）

3

In the course of our study, also, we have rediscovered an old friend. He is the Forgotten Man of William Graham Sumner. The reader will remember that in Sumner’s essay, which appeared in 1883:

在我们的研究过程中，我们还重新发现了一位老朋友。他就是威廉·格雷厄姆·萨姆纳（William Graham Sumner）讲的“被遗忘的人”（Forgotten Man）。读者也许还记得，萨姆纳曾在他1883年发表的一篇文章中写道：

As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for ... .. What I want to do is to look up C.... I call him the Forgotten Man.... He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him.

一旦A发现某件事在他看来是错误的，害得X因此遭受苦难，便与B谈论此事，并且建议通过一项补救措施并向X提供帮助的法律。他们通过的法律，总是规定C应该为X做些什么，更好的情况则是A、B和C都应该为X做些什么……我想做的是挖掘一下C……我把他称作“被遗忘的人”……人们从来没有想到过他。他是改革家、社会投机家和慈善家的牺牲品。而我则想向你们指出，他的品格和人们加在他身上的各种负担值得大家去关注。

It is a historic irony that when this phrase, the Forgotten Man, was revived in the 1930s, it was applied, not to C, but to X; and C, who was then being asked to support still more Xs, was more completely forgotten than ever. It is C, the Forgotten Man, who is always called upon to stanch the politician’s bleeding heart by paying for his vicarious generosity.

然而，当“被遗忘的人” 一词在20世纪30年代再度被人提起时，不是指C，而是指X，真可说是历史的反讽。至于C，仍然被要求去支持更多的X们，和以前比起来，更是彻底遭人遗忘。就是这个C，这个被遗忘的人，还得经常响应政治号召去献爱心，使那些政治家们的灵魂得到慰籍。

4

Our study of our lesson would not be complete if, before we took leave of it, we neglected to observe that the fundamental fallacy with which we have been concerned arises not accidentally but systematically. It is an almost inevitable result, in fact, of the division of labor.

在结束本书之前，假如我们没能认识到，出现本书所分析的根本谬误并不是偶然的这一点，那么我们的分析就是不彻底的。事实上，这种系统性谬误是劳动分工所不可避免的结果之一。

In a primitive community, or among pioneers, before the division of labor has arisen, a man works solely for himself or his immediate family. What he consumes is identical with what he produces. There is always a direct and immediate connection between his output and his satisfactions.

在尚未出现劳动分工的原始社会里，或者在那些拓荒者之中，每个人都是单纯为了他自己或他的直接家属而工作的。他的消费与他的生产完全一致，而在其产出与满足之间，总也存在着一种直接的联系。

But when an elaborate and minute division of labor has set in, this direct and immediate connection ceases to exist. I do not make all the things I consume but, perhaps, only one of them. With the income I derive from making this one commodity, or rendering this one service, I buy all the rest. I wish the price of everything I buy to be low, but it is in my interest for the price of the commodity or services that I have to sell to be high. Therefore, though I wish to see abundance in everything else, it is in my interest for scarcity to exist in the very thing that it is my business to supply. The greater the scarcity, compared to everything else, in this one thing that I supply, the higher will be the reward that I can get for my efforts.

但是当更为细致的社会化分工出现，这种直接和立即的关联就不复存在。我消费的东西，不全是我生产的，我可能只生产其中一样。我用我生产的商品、用我提供的服务所赚来的钱，去购买其他我所需要的商品或服务。我希望我购买的每一样东西，价格越便宜越好，但是我生产的商品、我提供的服务，价格要越高越好。我希望其他所有的东西越丰富越好，至于我自己所生产的那类产品，我希望越稀缺越好。常言道，物以稀为贵，若能得遂所愿，我付出的努力就能得到更丰厚的回报。

This does not necessarily mean that I will restrict my own efforts or my own output. In fact, if I am only one of a substantial number of people supplying that commodity or service, and if free competition exists in my line, this individual restriction will not pay me. On the contrary, if I am a grower of wheat, say, I want my particular crop to be as large as possible. But if I am concerned only with my own material welfare, and have no humanitarian scruples, I want the output of all other wheat growers to be as low as possible; for I want scarcity in wheat (and in any foodstuff that can be substituted for it) so that my particular crop may command the highest possible price.

这并不一定意味着我会限制我自身的努力以减少自己的产出。事实上，跟我生产同样产品、提供同样服务的人是大有人在，我只是行业中普通的一员，而且我们这一行是自由竞争，如果我限制自己的努力和生产，对我自己并没有好处。相反，如果我是一个麦农，我会希望我所种植的小麦产量越高越好。倘若我仅仅考虑自己物质上的福利，而没有任何良心不安的话，我一定希望其他所有麦农的产量越低越好；我希望市面上小麦及其替代品供给出现短缺，我的收成就能卖到最好的价钱。

Ordinarily these selfish feelings would have no effect on the total production of wheat. Wherever competition exists, in fact, each producer is compelled to put forth his utmost efforts to raise the highest possible crop on his own land. In this way the forces of self-interest (which, for good or evil, are more persistently powerful than those of altruism) are harnessed to maximum output.

通常，上述这种自利动机对小麦的总产量不会产生任何影响。事实上，只要存在竞争，每位生产者都会尽最大的努力，在自己的土地上耕种尽可能多的农作物。这样，靠自利动机的力量（不管是好是坏，它比利他动机更持久且更具威力）就能使产出最大化。

But if it is possible for wheat growers or any other group of producers to combine to eliminate competition, and if the government permits or encourages such a course, the situation changes. The wheat growers may be able to persuade the national government—or, better, a world organization—to force all of them to reduce pro rata the acreage planted to wheat. In this way they will bring about a shortage and raise the price of wheat; and if the rise in the price per bushel is proportionately greater, as it well may be, than the reduction in output, then the wheat growers as a whole will be better off. They will get more money; they will be able to buy more of everything else. Everybody else, it is true, will be worse off: because, other things equal, everyone else will have to give more of what he produces to get less of what the wheat grower produces. So the nation as a whole will be just that much poorer. It will be poorer by the amount of wheat that has not been grown. But those who look only at the wheat farmers will see a gain, and miss the more than offsetting loss.

但是，如果所有麦农以及小麦替代品的所有生产者，能够联合起来消除竞争，而且政府允许或鼓励这种做法，形势就会发生逆转。麦农就会去说服本国政府（最好是说服相关国际组织），强迫所有的麦农等比例缩减小麦的种植面积。这样就会让小麦供不应求，进而抬高小麦价格；每蒲式耳小麦的价格涨幅，很可能大于产量的降幅，麦农整体上就会因此受益。他们会赚到更多的钱，也就可以买到更多的其它产品。然而，其他人的状况都会因此变差（假使其他条件不变），因为其他人都必须拿出更多自己生产的东西，来换取更少的小麦。很清楚，小麦减产的数量，就是整个国家财富减少的数量，国家因此变得比较贫穷。但那些只将目光放在麦农身上的人，看得到麦农因此获得的利益，却没看到其他所有人因此遭受更多的损失。

And this applies in every other line. If because of unusual weather conditions there is a sudden increase in the crop of oranges, all the consumers will benefit. The world will be richer by that many more oranges. Oranges will be cheaper. But that very fact may make the orange growers as a group poorer than before, unless the greater supply of oranges compensates or more than compensates for the lower price. Certainly if under such conditions my particular crop of oranges is no larger than usual, then I am certain to lose by the lower price brought about by general plenty.

这个道理，适用于其他每一种行业。如果因为气候反常，柑橘的收成突然大增，所有的消费者都会受益。柑橘增产多少，整个世界的富有程度就增加多少。但是，柑橘会卖不起价钱，这会使全体柑农比以前贫穷，除非大量的柑橘卖得出去，销量增加足以弥补降价的损失。当然了，如果在这种情况下，我的柑橘收成反而不如常年，我一定会因为普遍性丰收导致的低价而蒙受损失。

And what applies to changes in supply applies to changes in demand, whether brought about by new inventions and discoveries or by changes in taste. A new cotton-picking machine, though it may reduce the cost of cotton underwear and shirts to everyone, and increase the general wealth, will mean the employment of fewer cotton pickers. A new textile machine, weaving a better cloth at a faster rate, will make thousands of old machines obsolete, and wipe out part of the capital value invested in them, so making poorer the owners of those machines. The further development of nuclear power, though it can confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells.

适用于供给变化的原理，也会适用于需求发生的变化，无是此变化是由新发明或新发现引起的，还是消费者品味发生了改变。新型棉花采摘机，虽然可以降低每个人购买棉质内衣和衬衫的成本，并且提高整体的财富，但是受雇的棉花采摘工人数量会减少。新型纺织机器可以用更快的速度织出更好的衣料，但许多老式纺织机器却会因此遭淘汰，尚未收回本钱的淘汰机器，其部分投资将就此损失，其所有者当然变得比较贫穷。进一步开发核能发电，可以谋巨福于人类，但煤矿和油井的业主却会因此烦恼忧愁。

Just as there is no technical improvement that would not hurt someone, so there is no change in public taste or morals, even for the better, that would not hurt someone. An increase in sobriety would put thousands of bartenders out of business. A decline in gambling would force croupiers and racing touts to seek more productive occupations. A growth of male chastity would ruin the oldest profession in the world.

没有一种技术改进不会伤害某个人，同样的道理，大众的品味与道德的变化，即使是更高雅更好，不会伤害到某个人。若更多人都变得清醒克制， 无数酒吧间招待员将因此失业。若赌风日衰，在赌场和赛马场营生的人就只好另谋更有效率的职业。男人更懂得洁身自爱，世界上最古老的行业就会陷入绝境。

But it is not merely those who deliberately pander to men s vices who would be hurt by a sudden improvement in public morals. Among those who would be hurt most are precisely those whose business it is to improve those morals. Preachers would have less to complain about; reformers would lose their causes; the demand for their services and contributions for their support would decline. If there were no criminals we should need fewer lawyers, judges and firemen, and no jailers, no locksmiths, and (except for such services as untangling traffic snarls) even no policemen.

然而，公众道德水准突然提高，受到伤害的不仅仅是以迎合人们低俗趣味为职业的人。那些毕生致力改善社会风气的人，受到的伤害更大。牧师面前做忏悔的人会减少；社会改革家再也没了动力；人们对他们的服务的需求减弱了，对他们的财经支持也就没了。如果没有人犯罪，我们就不需要那么多律师、法官、消防队员，也不需要监狱看守和锁匠，甚至可以不要警察（交通警察除外）。

Under a system of division of labor, in short, it is difficult to think of a greater fulfillment of any human need which would not, at least temporarily, hurt some of the people who have made investments or painfully acquired skill to meet that precise need. If progress were completely even all around the circle, this antagonism between the interests of the whole community and of the specialized group would not, if it were noticed at all, present any serious problem. If in the same year as the world wheat crop increased, my own crop increased in the same proportion, if the crop of oranges and all other agricultural products increased correspondingly, and if the output of all industrial goods also rose and their unit cost of production fell to correspond, then I as a wheat grower would not suffer because the output of wheat had increased. The price that I got for a bushel of wheat might decline. The total sum that I realized from my larger output might decline. But if I could also because of increased supplies buy the output of everyone else cheaper, then I should have no real cause to complain. If the price of everything else dropped in exactly the same ratio as the decline in the price of my wheat, I should be better off, in fact, exactly in proportion to my increased total crop; and everyone else, likewise, would benefit proportionately from the in creased supplies of all goods and services.

总之，在这样一种劳动分工制度下，我们很难完美地满足人类的需求。因为，要做到这一点，我们至少会暂时地伤害一些已经作出投资的人、已经为此苦练技能的人。如果各个经济领域都是非常均衡的共同增长，那就不存在特殊群体与整个社会之间的利益对抗，就算有，也不会构成任何严重问题。如果同一年全球的小麦收成同步增加，我的小麦收成也同比例增加，与此同时，柑橘和其他所有农作物的收成同时增加，所有工业产品的产出也增加，单位生产成本相对下降，那么我这位麦农不会因为小麦产量增加而受到伤害。虽然，每蒲式耳小麦的价格可能下跌，我的产量增加也没能完全弥补总收入的减少，但是，如果其他每个人的供应量增加，我也能用更便宜的价格卖到他们的产品，算下来大家扯平，那就没有什么好抱怨的。如果其他每一样东西的价格跌幅，和我的小麦价格跌幅完全相同，我的富裕程度会和我收成增加的幅度同比例上升；其他每个人的富裕程度，也会和所有产品与服务供给增加的幅度同比例上升。

But economic progress never has taken place and probably never will take place in this completely uniform way. Advance occurs now in this branch of production and now in that. And if there is a sudden increase in the supply of the thing I help to produce, or if a new invention or discovery makes what I produce no longer necessary, then the gain to the world is a tragedy to me and to the productive group to which I belong.

这种齐头并进的经济增长方式从未发生过，并且永远也不可能发生。经济增长只可能是在不同领域以不同的步调增长，此起彼伏。如果我生产的那种商品，其供应量突然大增，或者如果新发明或新发现，使得我生产的那种商品不再有人需要，这些使整个世界获益的好事情，对我和我的同行们来讲，都是一场悲剧。

Now it is often not the diffused gain of the increased supply or new discovery that most forcibly strikes even the disinterested observer, but the concentrated loss. The fact that there is more and cheaper coffee for everyone is lost sight of; what is seen is merely that some coffee growers cannot make a living at the lower price. The increased output of shoes at lower cost by the new machine is forgotten; what is seen is a group of men and women thrown out of work. It is altogether proper—it is, in fact, essential to a full understanding of the problem—that the plight of these groups be recognized, that they be dealt with sympathetically, and that we try to see whether some of the gains from this specialized progress cannot be used to help the victims find a productive role elsewhere.

但是即使公正无私的观察者，也总是注目在最显眼的集中的损伤，而非因为增产或新发明而带来的广为扩散的好处。每个人都在享用更多价廉物美的咖啡，这个事实没有人注意；人们看到的，只是咖啡种植者们因为咖啡豆买不起价钱而生活难以维继。新机器以更低的成本，提高鞋子的产量，这个事实没有人注意；人们看到的，只是一群男女劳工的生计因此没有着落。诚然，我们应该从总体上认识到这些群体的困境并且富有同情心地帮助他们解决问题，努力去分析能否 利用在这一特殊进程中得到的收益去帮助这些人，使他 们得以另谋更具生产意义的职业，事实上，这还是对问题获得全面的了解所必须的。

But the solution is never to reduce supplies arbitrarily, to prevent further inventions or discoveries, or to support people for continuing to perform a service that has lost its value. Yet this is what the world has repeatedly sought to do by protective tariffs, by the destruction of machinery, by the burning of coffee, by a thousand restriction schemes. This is the insane doctrine of wealth through scarcity.

然而，问题的解决方法，绝对不可以是硬性地去压缩供给、去阻止进一步的发明或发现，或是支持鼓励人们继续从事已经失去价值的工作。但事实上，这正是当今世界各国政府竞相利用开征保护性关税，捣毁机器、烧毁咖啡树，以及无数的限制性措施而力求达到的结果。这种通过制造短缺来创造财富的信条，实在是疯狂透顶。

It is a doctrine that may always be privately true, unfortunately, for any particular group of producers considered in isolation — if they can make scarce the one thing they have to sell while keeping abundant all the things they have to buy. But it is a doctrine that is always publicly false. It can never be applied all around the circle. For its application would mean economic suicide.

遗憾的是，当我们孤立地考虑任何生产者集团的利益时，这种观点往往说得通——倘使这些集团真的能够使得其产品出现短缺，同时又使他们购买的其它产品保证充分供应的话。然而，这种信条推而广之则是荒谬的，它绝不适用于整个经济领域。因为那么做无异于经济自杀。

And this is our lesson in its most generalized form. For many things that seem to be true when we concentrate on a single economic group are seen to be illusions when the interests of everyone, as consumer no less than as producer, are considered.

最后，来高度概括一下我们这一课：当我们专注于某个单一经济群体时，看起来可能是千真万确的许多事情，在转而考虑既是消费者又是生产者的每一个人的利益时，却有可能是一串错觉。

To see the problem as a whole, and not in fragments: that is the goal of economic science.

认识问题的整体而不是片面，这就是经济科学的目标。

Economics in One Lesson校译之25. The Lesson Restated (4-1,2)

The Lesson Restated
第25章
课后温习

Economics, as we have now seen again and again, is a science of recognizing secondary consequences. It is also a science of seeing general consequences. It is the science of tracing the effects of some proposed or existing policy not only on some special interest in the short run, but on the general interest in the long run.

正如我们反复认识到的，经济学是一门认识种种续发后果的科学，同时还是一门分析总体后果的科学。它研究的是某些现行政策或者政策建议的后果，不仅仅限于比较短的时期某些特殊利益集团，而且是在长期内对整体的后果。

This is the lesson that has been the special concern of this book. We stated it first in skeleton form, and then put flesh and skin on it through more than a score of practical applications.

这便是本书所特别关注的教训。我们首先给出了其骨架结构，然后以各种实际应用的例子，使之有血有肉。

But in the course of specific illustration we have found hints of other general lessons; and we should do well to state these lessons to ourselves more clearly.

就在对个例的阐述中，我们也发现了其他一些更为普遍的教训的线索；我们应该就这些教训作出更好更清楚的说明。

In seeing that economics is a science of tracing consequences, we must have become aware that, like logic and mathematics, it is a science of recognizing inevitable implications.

在认识到经济学是一门探究各种后果的科学时，我们必须懂得，就象逻辑学和数学一样，经济学是认识那些必然结果的科学。

We may illustrate this by an elementary equation in algebra. Suppose we say that if x = then x + y = 12. The “solution” to this equation is that y equals 7; but this is so precisely because the calculation tells us in effect that)? equals 7. It does not make that assertion directly, but it inevitably implies it.

我们用个简单的代数方程来说明这一点。假设x=5，且x+y=12。这个方程“解”是y=7。答案之所以确切无疑，是因为这个方程式事实上告诉了我们y等于7。它并没有直接地给出这一结果，但它却必然蕴含了这个结果。

What is true of this elementary equation is true of the most complicated and abstruse equations encountered in mathematics. The answer already lies in the statement of the problem. It must, it is true, be “worked out.” The result, it is true, may sometimes come to the man who works out the equation as a stunning surprise. He may even have a sense of discovering something entirely new—a thrill like that of “some watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken.” His sense of discovery may be justified by the theoretical or practical consequences of his answer. Yet the answer was already contained in the formulation of the problem. It was merely not recognized at once. For mathematics reminds us that inevitable implications are not necessarily obvious implications.

这个简单的方程式所蕴含的道理就是数学中其它最复杂、最深奥的方程式也要遵循的。答案已经蕴含于问题的陈述之中。因此，必须把它“解出来”。的确，出现的结果有的时候出乎解题的人的意料，甚至有一种感觉，好象发祥了某种全新的东西——那种兴奋战栗，就象“天文观测者猛然发现一颗新行星游入了他的视野”。对其答案进行理论的和实际的分析所得到的结果而言，他的这种创造感也名至实归。然而，答案的确早已蕴含在问题的陈述里了，只不过并非一目了然。数学的研究告诉我们：必然的结果未必是显然的结果。

All this is equally true of economics. In this respect economics might be compared also to engineering. When an engineer has a problem, he must first determine all the facts bearing on that problem. If he designs a bridge to span two points, he must first know the exact distance between these two points, their precise topographical nature, the maximum load his bridge will be designed to carry, the tensile and compressive strength of the steel or other material of which the bridge is to be built, and the stresses and strains to which it may be subjected. Much of this factual research has already been done for him by others. His predecessors, also, have already evolved elaborate mathematical equations by which, knowing the strength of his materials and the stresses to which they will be subjected, he can determine the necessary diameter, shape, number and structure of his towers, cables and girders.

所有这些对于经济学来说同样适用。在这方面，经济学也可以拿工程来比喻。工程师处理问题的时候，必须先确定对那个问题有影响的所有事实。如果他要设计一座桥梁来连接两地，就必须先知道这两个点之间的精确距离、两点附近确实的地形特性、桥梁所要承受的最大载荷、建桥用的钢材或其他材料的抗张和抗压强度，以及桥梁应该具有的应力和应变等等。这些参数方面的实际研究已经由其他人完成了。他的前辈们早已推出了复杂精确的数学方程式，从这些方程式出发，根据他已经掌握了的材料的强度和桥梁应当达到的应力，他就能确定索塔、斜拉索、主梁的必要直径、形状、数量和结构。

In the same way the economist, assigned a practical problem, must know both the essential facts of that problem and the valid deductions to be drawn from those facts. The deductive side of economics is no less important than the factual. One can say of it what Santayana says of logic (and what could be equally well said of mathematics), that it “traces the radiation of truth,” so that “when one term of a logical system is known to describe a fact, the whole system attaching to that term becomes, as it were, incandescent.”

同样，当一个经济学家确定了自己所要分析的问题时，他必须用类似的方法了解与其问题有关的基本事实，以及从这些事实中可以得出的有根据的推论。在经济学分析中，演绎推理与了解事实是同等重要的。我们可以引用桑塔雅纳论述逻辑学的话来讲经济学（它同样适用于数学），即它是“探寻真理之光的辐射”，因此，“当人们懂得了逻辑体系中的一个词，并用它来描述事实时，与这个词联系在一起的整个逻辑体系就会豁然明朗”。{脚注:桑塔雅纳，《真理的境界》George Santayana, The Realm of Truth (1938), p. 16.}

Now few people recognize the necessary implications of the economic statements they are constantly making. When they say that the way to economic salvation is to increase credit, it is just as if they said that the way to economic salvation is to increase debt: these are different names for the same thing seen from opposite sides. When they say that the way to prosperity is to increase farm prices, it is like saying that the way to prosperity is to make food dearer for the city worker. When they say that the way to national wealth is to pay out governmental subsidies, they are in effect saying that the way to national wealth is to increase taxes. When they make it a main objective to increase exports, most of them do not realize that they necessarily make it a main objective ultimately to increase imports. When they say, under nearly all conditions, that the way to recovery is to increase wage rates, they have found only another way of saying that the way to recovery is to increase costs of production.

现在，很少有人能够真正懂得，他们不断提出的各种经济主张会有什么样的必然结果。当他们说，拯救经济的方式就是增加信贷，就等于是说，加重债务就能拯救经济。二者是同一事物，从不同侧面去看，便有了含义不同的名称。当他们说，繁荣之道是提高农产品的价格，就等于是说，让城市劳工购买的食物价格变贵就能迈向繁荣。当他们说，增加国家财富的方法是政府提供补贴，就等于是说，加重税负就能增进国家的财富。当他们主张以增加出口为主要目标的时候，大多数人并没有意识到，应该相应制定一个扩大进口的目标。当他们说，任何情况下，刺激经济复苏的方法是提高工资率，就等于拐弯抹角表示，只有提高生产成本才能促使经济复苏。

It does not necessarily follow, because each of these propositions, like a coin, has its reverse side, or because the equivalent proposition, or the other name for the remedy, sounds much less attractive, that the original proposal is under all conditions unsound. There may be times when an increase in debt is a minor consideration as against the gains achieved with the borrowed funds; when a government subsidy is unavoidable to achieve a certain military purpose; when a given industry can afford an increase in production costs, and so on. But we ought to make sure in each case that both sides of the coin have been considered, that all the implications of a proposal have been studied. And this is seldom done.

上述种种说法都象硬币一样有其相反的一面，可能因为我们观察的角度不同，或是为了说得更全面一些而换了一种说法，现在它们听起来似乎不如原来有吸引力。当然，这不一定表示，那些主张在所有的情况下都站不住脚。有些时候，借来的资金可以产生很大的收益，加重债务也许算不得什么；有些时候，为达到军事目的，政府在个别情况下进行补贴也是不可避免的；而且，有的时候，个别产业也负担得起生产成本的增加；诸如此类。不过，不管是哪一种状况，我们都务必要同时考虑硬币的两面，去探讨经济政策提案所蕴含的的所有结果。事实上，人们很少能做到这一点。

2

The analysis of our illustrations has taught us another incidental lesson. This is that, when we study the effects of various proposals, not merely on special groups in the short run, but on all groups in the long run, the conclusions we arrive at usually correspond with those of unsophisticated common sense. It would not occur to anyone unacquainted with the prevailing economic half-literacy that it is good to have windows broken and cities destroyed; that it is anything but waste to create needless public projects; that it is dangerous to let idle hordes of men return to work; that machines which increase the production of wealth and economize human effort are to be dreaded; that obstructions to free production and free consumption increase wealth; that a nation grows richer by forcing other nations to take its goods for less than they cost to produce; that saving is stupid or wicked and that squandering brings prosperity.

我们对例证所作的分析，从另一方面给了我们一点附带的启发。那就是说，当我们不仅仅从短期的某一集团的利益出发，而同样研究了各种各样的建议对所有集团长期利益的影响时，我们所得到的结论通产符合那些最简单的常识。不了解当今流行经济观点的“半文盲”们也根本不会想到，橱窗被砸破、城市毁于战火是件好事；或者兴建一些并不需要的公共工程不算纯粹浪费；或者政府裁撤冗员让闲人重回劳动市场非常危险；或者添置能增进财富创造、让工作更省 力的机器会令人不寒而栗；或者对自由生产和自由消费设置障碍就可以增加财富；或者迫使其它国家以低于生产成本的价格，购买我们的产品，可以让我们变得更加富裕；或者储蓄是既愚蠢又邪恶的行为以及挥霍享用才能带来繁荣。

“What is prudence in the conduct of every private family,” said Adam Smith’s strong common sense in reply to the sophists of his time, “can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.” But lesser men get lost in complications. They do not reexamine their reasoning even when they emerge with conclusions that are palpably absurd. The reader, depending upon his own beliefs, may or may not accept the aphorism of Bacon that “A little philosophy inclineth men’s minds to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.” It is certainly true, however, that a little economics can easily lead to the paradoxical and preposterous conclusions we have just rehearsed, but that depth in economics brings men back to common sense. For depth in economics consists in looking for all the consequences of a policy instead of merely resting one’s gaze on those immediately visible.

亚当·斯密用极其普通的常识，回应当时的诡辩家说：“在每一个家庭的管理中是精明的举措，用于一个大国的管理，很少会是错的。”但不智者就在复杂关系中迷失了。即使他们得出来的结论看上去就很荒唐，他们也不会重新检查自己的推导过程。哲学家培根说：“稍微懂点哲学的人会倾向于无神论，而深究哲理则会使人的思想更接近宗教。”依读者本身的信仰而定，可能接受，也可能不接受这句箴言。不过，下面这句话却千真万确：懂得一点点经济学很容易引导人们得出自相矛盾的十分荒谬的结论，而真正理解经济学则会使人的思想重新回到常识。因为通达的经济学在于向人们揭示一项经济政策的全部后果，而不是仅仅引导人们把目光停留在那些显而易见的现象上。

（未完待续）

Economics in One Lesson校译之24. The Assault on Saving (4-3,4)

第24章 抨击储蓄

（接前面部分）

3

The enemies of saving are not through. They begin by drawing a distinction, which is proper enough, between “savings” and “investment.” But then they start to talk as if the two were independent variables and as if it were merely an accident that they should ever equal each other. These writers paint a portentous picture. On the one side are savers automatically, pointlessly, stupidly continuing to save; on the other side are limited “investment opportunities” that cannot absorb this saving. The result, alas, is stagnation. The only solution, they declare, is for the government to expropriate these stupid and harmful savings and to invent its own projects, even if these are only useless ditches or pyramids, to use up the money and provide employment.

抨击储蓄的对手们并没有就此认输。他们起初对“储蓄”和“投资”加以区别，这确实是很恰当的。但是，在作出这种区别之后，他们又把储蓄和投资看作成了两个完全独立的变量，好象这两个变量能够彼此相等纯属偶然。这些经济作者勾勒出一幅奇特的画面。一方面，储蓄者会自动、无缘无故、愚蠢地闷头存钱；另一方面，可以吸收这些储蓄的“投资机会”却非常有限。至于结果，唉——，自然是经济迟滞不前。他们宣称，惟一的解决方法，是由政府出面征用这些愚蠢和有害的储蓄，投资到公共工程上，哪怕拿去搞些毫无用处的沟渠或者金字塔，总之要将钱花掉以扩大就业。

There is so much that is false in this picture and “solution” that we can here point only to some of the main fallacies. Savings can exceed investment only by the amounts that are actually hoarded in cash. Few people nowadays, in a modern industrial community, hoard coins and bills in stockings or under mattresses. To the small extent that this may occur, it has already been reflected in the production plans of business and in the price level. It is not ordinarily even cumulative: dishoarding, as eccentric recluses die and their hoards are discovered and dissipated, probably offsets new hoarding. In fact, the whole amount involved is probably insignificant in its effect on business activity.

以上观点及其“解决方案”包含太多的错误，这里我们只能选其主要错误加以指正。储蓄大于投资的部分，只相当于被真正蓄藏的现金。{footnotes:经济学家就这个问题的分歧，只是定义不同所致。你也可以对储蓄和投资给出相同的定义，那么二者肯定相等。在这里，我选择从货币的角度定义储蓄、从商品的角度定义投资。这个定义与人们对其字面意义的大体相同，但并不完全一致。}但在当今现代化的工业社会中，极少人会把硬币和钞票藏在袜子里面或床垫底下。就算这种可能性极小事情真的发生，它也已经反映在企业的生产计划和价格水平上。它甚至不具备通常的累积效果——行为古怪的隐居者生前蓄藏的现金被人找到，拿出来花光用光，可能就跟新出现的蓄藏现金额度相当。事实上，这方面的总金额都可能对经营活动的影响微不足道。

If money is kept either in savings banks or commercial banks, as we have already seen, the banks are eager to lend and invest it. They cannot afford to have idle funds. The only thing that will cause people generally to try to increase their holdings of cash, or that will cause banks to hold funds idle and lose the interest on them, is, as we have seen, either fear that prices of goods are going to fall or the fear of banks that they will be taking too great a risk with their principal. But this means that signs of a depression have already appeared, and have caused the hoarding, rather than that the hoarding has started the depression.

倘若象我们所看到的那样，人们把钱存入储蓄银行或商业银行，银行会急着把钱借出去或者拿去投资。银行付不起让资金闲置的代价。惟有当人们担心产品的价格下跌、当银行担心投资风险太大时，人们才会增加持有现金，银行让资金闲置。但这种迹象表明经济衰退已经显现，才造成贮存现金的行为，而不是贮存现金的行为引发经济衰退。

Apart from this negligible hoarding of cash, then (and even this exception might be thought of as a direct “investment” in money itself) savings and investment are brought into equilibrium with each other in the same way that the supply of and demand for any commodity are brought into equilibrium. For we may define savings and investment as constituting respectively the supply of and demand for new capital. And just as the supply of and demand for any other commodity are equalized by price, so the supply of and demand for capital are equalized by interest rates. The interest rate is merely the special name for the price of loaned capital. It is a price like any other.

撇开这种可以忽略的现金贮存不考虑（即使是这种例外情形，也可以视为直接“投资”于货币本身），储蓄和投资会趋于彼此均衡，就像任何商品的供给和需求会趋于均衡那样。我们可以认为储蓄和投资分别构成了新资本的供给和需求。其他任何商品的供给和需求，在价格的作用下会达成均衡，资本的供应和需求也一样，在利率的作用下会达成均衡。利率只是资本借贷价格的特殊名称，它与其他价格没有两样。

This whole subject has been so appallingly confused in recent years by complicated sophistries and disastrous governmental policies based upon them that one almost despairs of getting back to common sense and sanity about it. There is a psychopathic fear of “excessive” interest rates. It is argued that if interest rates are too high it will not be profitable for industry to borrow and invest in new plants and machines. This argument has been so effective that governments everywhere in recent decades have pursued artificial “cheap-money” policies. But the argument, in its concern with increasing the demand for capital, overlooks the effect of these policies on the supply of capital. It is one more example of the fallacy of looking at the effects of a policy only on one group and forgetting the effects on another.

这整个主题，在近年来被复杂的诡辩、被糟烂的政府政策如此过分愚蠢地混淆在一起，让人对人们是不是能够重拾常识和理性感到失望。人们病态地害怕利率“过高”。人们认为如果利率太高，产业界借钱来投资新厂房和机器，会赚不到钱。这种观点极具影响力，近几十年来各国政府都以人为的力量，实施“廉价资金”政策。但是相关的论调只注意了提高资本需求，却忽视这些政策对资本供给的影响。事实上，这不过是顾及了政策对于某一集团的影响而忽略了其他后果这种错误的又一个例子而已。

If interest rates are artificially kept too low in relation to risks, there will be a reduction in both saving and lending. The cheap-money proponents believe that saving goes on automatically, regardless of the interest rate, because the sated rich have nothing else that they can do with their money. They do not stop to tell us at precisely what personal income level a man saves a fixed minimum amount regardless of the rate of interest or the risk at which he can lend it.

如果相对于风险，利率被刻意压得太低，储蓄和借贷都会减少。廉价资金政策的支持者相信，不管利率是高是低，储蓄都会自动进行，因为，富人家的余钱也只有存银行。但他们并没有说清楚，一个人在什么样的收入水平下才有可能固定地存储一笔小量资金，而不考虑当时的利息率水平或者贷款的风险如何。

The fact is that, though the volume of saving of the very rich is doubtless affected much less proportionately than that of the moderately well-off by changes in the interest rate, practically everyone’s saving is affected in some degree. To argue, on the basis of an extreme example, that the volume of real savings would not be reduced by a substantial reduction in the interest rate, is like arguing that the total production of sugar would not be reduced by a substantial fall of its price because the efficient, low-cost producers would still raise as much as before. The argument overlooks the marginal saver, and even, indeed, the great majority of savers.

尽管富豪的储蓄额受利率的影响要比一般富裕的人小得多，但事实上每个人的储蓄额都会受到某种程度的影响。试图证明在一种极端的情况下实质储蓄额不会因为利率大幅下降而减少，这就好比是在说，糖的总产量，不会因为价格大幅下跌而减少，理由是高效率、低成本的生产者会继续生产。这种观点忽略了边际储蓄者，甚至忽略了绝大部分的储蓄者。

The effect of keeping interest rates artificially low, in fact, is eventually the same as that of keeping any other price below the natural market. It increases demand and reduces supply. It increases the demand for capital and reduces the supply of real capital. It creates economic distortions. It is true, no doubt, that an artificial reduction in the interest rate encourages increased borrowing. It tends, in fact, to encourage highly speculative ventures that cannot continue except under the artificial conditions that gave them birth. On the supply side, the artificial reduction of interest rates discourages normal thrift, saving, and investment. It reduces the accumulation of capital. It slows down that increase in productivity, that “economic growth,” that “progressives” profess to be so eager to promote.

将利率人为压低所造成的影响，其实与把商品价格压低到自然市场水平以下所产生的影响相同：需求会增加，供应会减少。压低利率会导致资本的需求增加，而实质资本的供给减少。它会造成经济扭曲。毫无疑问，人为压低利率，就鼓励借贷。而实际上，这倾向于鼓励了高投机风险的经济活动，这种经济活动除非在类似人为造就的低利率条件下是无法存在的。从供给面来说，人为压低利率，会抑制正常的节约、储蓄和投资行为。它会减低资本的累积、放慢了劳动生产率的增速，与阻碍实现那种如此急切想要催生的“经济的增长”与“改良”的许诺。

The money rate can, indeed, be kept artificially low only by continuous new injections of currency or bank credit in place of real savings. This can create the illusion of more capital just as the addition of water can create the illusion of more milk. But it is a policy of continuous inflation. It is obviously a process involving cumulative danger. The money rate will rise and a crisis will develop if the inflation is reversed, or merely brought to a halt, or even continued at a diminished rate.

的确可以人为压低资金利率，但只有靠持续不断注入新资金、不断扩张银行信贷，以替代实质储蓄。这么做会制造资本供给增加的假象，就象多掺点水，会让人觉得牛奶更多了一样。但这是一种持续的通货膨胀政策。显然这是一个累积危险的过程。倘若通货膨胀得到了逆转，或者仅仅是被控制住，甚至只是膨胀速度放慢的话，资金利率就会上涨，并爆发经济危机。

It remains to be pointed out that while new injections of currency or bank credit can at first, and temporarily, bring about lower interest rates, persistence in this device must eventually raise interest rates. It does so because new injections of money tend to lower the purchasing power of money. Lenders then come to realize that the money they lend today will buy less a year from now, say, when they get it back. Therefore to the normal interest rate they add a premium to compensate them for this expected loss in their money s purchasing power. This premium can be high, depending on the extent of the expected inflation. Thus the annual interest rate on British treasury bills rose to 14 percent in 1976; Italian government bonds yielded 16 percent in ‘977; and the discount rate of the central bank of Chile soared to 75 percent in 1974. Cheap-money policies, in short, eventually bring about far more violent oscillations in business than those they are designed to remedy or prevent.

还有一点要指出，新注入的货币或银行信贷，虽然能在开始带来短期的利率降低，但持续注水最终将使利率上升。之所以如此，是因为注水会让货币贬值，导致货币的购买力下降。放贷者开始意识到，今天借出去的钱，等到一年后还回来时，能买到的东西会减少。为了弥补这种预期货币购买力的损失，他们会在正常贷款利率上再加上一笔溢价。这个溢价可以很高，它取决于预期的通货膨胀率的高低。由于这个原因，1976年英国国库券的年利率上升到14%；1977年意大利政府公债的盈利率高达16%；1974年智利中央银行的重点贴现率激升到75%。总之，廉价资金政策最终必将造成巨大的经济动荡，这比起它们原本希望纠正或者避免的问题要来得剧烈得多。

If no effort is made to tamper with money rates through inflationary governmental policies, increased savings create their own demand by lowering interest rates in a natural manner. The greater supply of savings seeking investment forces savers to accept lower rates. But lower rates also mean that more enterprises can afford to borrow because their prospective profit on the new machines or plants they buy with the proceeds seems likely to exceed what they have to pay for the borrowed funds.

假如我们并不准备采取通货膨胀性的政府政策去干扰资金利率，那么，当储蓄额增长时，利息率会自然降低，从而以一种自然的方式为增加了的储蓄创造需求。也就是说，更多的储蓄供给要寻求投资机会，就会迫使储蓄者接受较低的利率。同时，较低的利率水平意味着更多的企业贷得起款。因为，贷款购置新机器或厂房带来的的预期利润，更有可能超过必须支付的贷款利息。

4

We come now to the last fallacy about saving with which I intend to deal. This is the frequent assumption that there is a fixed limit to the amount of new capital that can be absorbed, or even that the limit of capital expansion has already been reached. It is incredible that such a view could prevail even among the ignorant, let alone that it could be held by any trained economist. Almost the whole wealth of the modern world, nearly everything that distinguishes it from the preindustrial world of the seventeenth century, consists of its accumulated capital.

现在来看一下我准备讨论的有关储蓄的最后一种谬论。经常有人认为，在吸收新的资本上，存在着一个确切的数量极限。他们甚至假设说，我们已经达到了这个资本扩张的极限。这样的观点能够在那些无知的人们中流行开来已经够让人吃惊了，而训练有素的经济学家居然也能接受它，简直令人匪夷所思。现代社会几乎全部的财富、几乎每一件区别于是17世纪前工业化时代的东西，都是由累积的资本构成的。

This capital is made up in part of many things that might better be called consumers’ durable goods—automobiles, refrigerators, furniture, schools, colleges, churches, libraries, hospitals and above all private homes. Never in the history of the world has there been enough of these. Even if there were enough homes from a purely numerical point of view, qualitative improvements are possible and desirable without definite limit in all but the very best houses.

这种资本一部分是由许多称之为耐用消费品的东西组成，例如汽车、冰箱、家具、学校、学院、教堂、图书馆、医院，以及比它们都更重要的私人住宅。在世界历史上，人类从来没有对这些东西感到满足过。就算住宅的数量够多，但除了那些最好的房屋外，对于居住品质上的改善总是可能的，也是需要的。这种要求从来没有什么限度。

The second part of capital is what we may call capital proper. It consists of the tools of production, including everything from the crudest axe, knife or plow to the finest machine tool, the greatest electric generator or cyclotron, or the most wonderfully equipped factory. Here, too, quantitatively and especially qualitatively, there is no limit to the expansion that is possible and desirable. There will not be a “surplus” of capital until the most backward country is as well equipped technologically as the most advanced, until the most inefficient factory in America is brought abreast of the factory with the latest and finest equipment, and until the most modern tools of production have reached a point where human ingenuity is at a dead end, and can improve them no further. As long as any of these conditions remains unfulfilled, there will be indefinite room for more capital.

资本的第二部分就是我们所谓严格意义上的资本。它由生产工具组成，包括从最原始的斧头、刀，或者耕犁，到最精密的机床、最大的发电机或粒子回旋加速器，或者设备最先进的工厂。在这方面，可以扩增和想要扩增的数量，尤其是品质，也同样没有上限。在可预见的未来不会有“过剩”的资本，除非最落后国家的技术装备赶上最先进国家；除非美国效率最差的工厂赶上设备最新、最好的工厂；除非最现代化的生产工具，已经达到人类智力的极限，再也无法改进。只要以上任何一种条件尚不具备，经济中就必然有更多资本的用武之地。

But how can the additional capital be “absorbed”? How can it be “paid for”? If it is set aside and saved, it will absorb itself and pay for itself. For producers invest in new capital goods—that is, they buy new and better and more ingenious tools — because these tools reduce costs of production. They either bring into existence goods that completely unaided hand labor could not bring into existence at all (and this now includes most of the goods around us—books, typewriters, automobiles, locomotives, suspension bridges); or they increase enormously the quantities in which these can be produced; or (and this is merely saying these things in a different way) they reduce unit costs of production. And as there is no assignable limit to the extent to which unit costs of production can be reduced—until everything can be produced at no cost at all—there is no assignable limit to the amount of new capital that can be absorbed.

然而，如何才能“吸纳”新增资本呢？如何实现其“偿付”呢？如果能将资本储蓄起来，它会自行吸纳和自行偿付。生产者会投资于新的资本财货（也就是购买更好、更精巧的新工具），因为这些工具能够降低生产成本；这些工具做得出纯靠手工根本做不出来的产品（包括我们身边的大部分用品，例如书籍、打字机、汽车、火车机车、吊桥）；或者，这些工具能够大幅提高产量；或者（换种方式来说），这些工具能够降低单位生产成本。而且，就像单位生产成本可以降低到什么程度并没有极限（除非每样东西都是零成本生产），可以吸纳的新资本数量，也没有极限。

The steady reduction of unit costs of production by the addition of new capital does either one of two things, or both. It reduces the costs of goods to consumers, and it increases the wages of the labor that uses the new equipment because it increases the productive power of that labor. Thus a new machine benefits both the people who work on it directly and the great body of consumers. In the case of consumers we may say either that it supplies them with more and better goods for the same money, or, what is the same thing, that it increases their real incomes. In the case of the workers who use the new machines it increases their real wages in a double way by increasing their money wages as well. A typical illustration is the automobile business. The American automobile industry pays the highest wages in the world, and among the very highest even in America. Yet (until about 1960) American motorcar makers could undersell the rest of the world, because their unit cost was lower. And the secret was that the capital used in making American automobiles was greater per worker and per car than anywhere else in the world.

由于新增资本使得单位生产成本稳定下降，它可以在两个方面单独或者一起发挥作用：即减低消费者购买商品的成本，或者提高使用新设备获得增产能力的劳工领得的工资。因此，新机器对直接使用它们的人，以及广大的消费者，都有好处。对消费者来说，同样的钱，能买到更多、更好的产品。或者说这些东西提高了他们的实质收入。对使用新机器的劳工来说，除了货币工资增加，实质工资也增加了。汽车业是个典型的例子。美国的汽车工业的工资是全世界同行中最高的，甚至在美国的各行各业中也排在工薪族之最。然而（直到1960年），美国的汽车制造商仍能以比世界其他各国更低的价格出售其产品，因为其单位成本更低。其秘诀在于美国生产汽车时，每位劳工和每辆汽车所使用的资本量比其他国家都多得多。

And yet there are people who think we have reached the end of this process, and still others who think that even if we haven’t, the world is foolish to go on saving and adding to its stock of capital.

不过，仍有一些人认为我们已经走到了这一资本累进进程的尽头，{footnotes:对这个谬论统计意义上的反驳，参看特伯格《经济成熟的歪理》。加尔布雷思学派（Galbraithians）用近似的理论继续驳斥“长期停滞论者”。}也还有另外一些人认为，即使我们目前还没有走到头，但这样继续储蓄和不断增加资本积累无论如何也是愚蠢的。

It should not be difficult to decide, after our analysis, with whom the real folly lies.

在作了这些分析之后，应该不难辨别那种做法才是愚蠢的

(It is true that the U. S. has been losing its world economic leadership in recent years, but because of our own anticapitalist governmental policies, not because of “economic maturity.”)

（确实，近些年来美国已经失去了全球经济的领导地位，但原因出在美国政府本身的反资本主义政策，而不是因为所谓的“经济成熟”。）

Economics in One Lesson校译之23. The Mirage of Inflation (6-5,6)

第23章 通货膨胀的幻景

（接前面部分）

5

The more sophisticated advocates of inflation, in brief, are disingenuous. They do not state their case with complete candor; and they end by deceiving even themselves. They begin to talk of paper money, like the more naive inflationists, as if it were itself a form of wealth that could be created at will on the printing press. They even solemnly discuss a “multiplier,” by which every dollar printed and spent by the government becomes magically the equivalent of several dollars added to the wealth of the country.

总之，那些更老练的通货膨胀支持者实在不够坦率。他们并没有开诚布公地阐明问题，到头来甚至把自己也愚弄了。他们就像那些更幼稚的通胀支持者一样，也开始大谈钞票，仿佛这种可以随随便便印出来的钞票本身就是一种财富似的。他们甚至一本正经地去讨论所谓“乘数”（multiplier），来证明政府每印制和开销一块钱，整个国家的财富就会很神奇地增加好几块钱。

In brief, they divert both the public attention and their own from the real causes of any existing depression. For the real causes, most of the time, are maladjustments within the wage-cost-price structure: maladjustments between wages and prices, between prices of raw materials and prices of finished goods, or between one price and another or one wage and another. At some point these maladjustments have removed the incentive to produce, or have made it actually impossible for production to continue; and through the organic interdependence of our exchange economy, depression spreads. Not until these maladjustments are corrected can full production and employment be resumed.

简言之，他们使公众的注意力、以及他们自己的注意力都从目前经济衰退的真正原因上移开了。大多数时候，衰退的真正原因是工资-成本-价格结构失调：即工资与价格关系失调、原材料价格与产成品价格关系失调，或是一种价格与另一种价格、一种工资与另一种工资之间关系的失调。在达到一定程度后，这些失调化解了生产的动力，甚至使得生产无法继续；并通过交易经济的有机关联，使这种不景气向外扩散。一直要到这些失调被矫正，充分生产和充分就业才有可能恢复。

True, inflation may sometimes correct them; but it is a heady and dangerous method. It makes its corrections not openly and honestly, but by the use of illusion. Inflation, indeed, throws a veil of illusion over every economic process. It confuses and deceives almost everyone, including even those who suffer by it. We are all accustomed to measuring our income and wealth in terms of money. The mental habit is so strong that even professional economists and statisticians cannot consistently break it. It is not easy to see relationships always in terms of real goods and real welfare. Who among us does not feel richer and prouder when he is told that our national income has doubled (in terms of dollars, of course) compared with some preinflationary period? Even the clerk who used to get $75 a week and now gets $120 thinks that he must be in some way better off, though it costs him twice as much to live as it did when he was getting $75. He is of course not blind to the rise in the cost of living. But neither is he as fully aware of his real position as he would have been if his cost of living had not changed and if his money salary had been reduced to give him the same reduced purchasing power that he now has, in spite of his salary increase, because of higher prices. Inflation is the autosuggestion, the hypnotism, the anesthetic, that has dulled the pain of the operation for him. Inflation is the opium of the people.

通货膨胀有时的确可以起到矫正这些失调的作用，但这是一种轻率而危险的手段。这种矫正手段靠的是错觉，而不是开诚布公。它给每一经济过程罩上了一层迷惑人的面纱，欺骗了几乎所有人，包括那些深受其害的人。我们都习惯于用货币来衡量自己的收入和财富。这种思维习惯非常顽固，就连专业的经济学家和统计学家也不容易摆脱。坚持用实体产品和实质福利来看待各种关系很不容易。当我们听到，国民收入（以货币计量）比通货膨胀之前增加一倍，谁不会觉得更富有更骄傲呢?甚至那些过去周薪75美元而现在每周能拿120美元的小职员也会认为，虽然与过去周薪75美元相比，要维持同样的生活水平他必须多花上一倍的开销，不管怎么说自己总还是比原来更有钱了。当然，他并不是看不到生活费用的上升，但他却没能象认识目前的实际处境那样，充分认识到另一种可能的情况，即假如他的实际生活费用没有变化，而他的货币薪金有所下降，那么他的购买力也只是降到目前的水平，即工资随更高的物价有所调增的水平。通货膨胀有如自我暗示、催眠术、麻醉剂，可以减轻手术时的痛苦。通货膨胀就是大众的鸦片。

6

And this is precisely its political function. It is because inflation confuses everything that it is so consistently resorted to by our modern “planned economy” governments. We saw in chapter four, to take but one example, that the belief that public works necessarily create new jobs is false. If the money was raised by taxation, we saw, then for every dollar that the government spent on public works one less dollar was spent by the taxpayers to meet their own wants, and for every public job created one private job was destroyed.

确切地说，通货膨胀的政治作用正在于此。这是因为，通货膨胀能混淆了所有事情，以致现今实行“计划经济”的政府总是把它当作摆脱困境的最后一着。例如我们在第四章谈到，有人鼓吹靠推动公共工程去创造新的就业机会。现在我们知道那种说法是错的。我们说过，如果投入公共建设的钱是靠税收，那么政府公共工程上多花一块钱，供纳税人自己支配的钱就会少掉一块钱；公共工程每创造一个工作机会，就会毁掉私人部门的一个工作机会。

But suppose the public works are not paid for from the proceeds of taxation? Suppose they are paid for by deficit financing—that is, from the proceeds of government borrowing or from resort to the printing press? Then the result just described does not seem to take place. The public works seem to be created out of “new” purchasing power. You cannot say that the purchasing power has been taken away from the taxpayers. For the moment the nation seems to have got something for nothing.

但是，假设公共工程的资金不是从税收收益中支付的，那么情况会怎样呢？假设它是用赤字财政来支付的——也就是说，通过政府借债或者印发货币来为这些项目筹资——会出现什么问题呢？在这种假设下，上一段所说的一得一失的结果似乎就可以避免。有人可能说，这种公共工程是靠“新的”购买力创造出来的，纳税人的购买力并没有被拿走。所有这些错觉给我们造成一种印象，似乎这样一来国家不需付出任何东西就可以有所收获。

But now, in accordance with our lesson, let us look at the longer consequences. The borrowing must some day be repaid. The government cannot keep piling up debt indefinitely; for if it tries, it will some day become bankrupt. As Adam Smith observed in 1776:

然而，现在，让我们运用这课知识来考察这种做法的长期后果。政府欠下债务，总有一天是要拿纳税人的钱去还的。并且政府不可能无限期累积债务。倘若试图如此，总有一天会垮台。就像亚当•斯密于1776年所指出的：

When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has even been brought about at all, has always been brought about by a bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretended payment.

当一国的债务一旦累积到某一程度时，我相信，这个国家就几乎不会公平地而且彻底地偿清债务，历来如此。清偿公共债务，如果真的实现了的话，那通常也是以政府破产来了结的；有的时候是通过公开的破产，但更常见的是通过一种虚假的支付来偿还的事实上的破产。

Yet when the government comes to repay the debt it has accumulated for public works, it must necessarily tax more heavily than it spends. In this later period, therefore, it must necessarily destroy more jobs than it creates. The extra-heavy taxation then required does not merely take away purchasing power; it also lowers or destroys incentives to production, and so reduces the total wealth and income of the country.

然而，当政府开始偿还其因公共工程累积的债务时，它必须课征比这笔支出更重的税收。因此，以后它毁掉的工作机会，一定比它创造的工作机会要多。这种额外的重税不仅削弱购买力，而且降低或破坏对生产的刺激，从而减少国家的总财富和总收入。

The only escape from this conclusion is to assume (as of course the apostles of spending always do) that the politicians in power will spend money only in what would otherwise have been depressed or “deflationary” periods, and will promptly pay the debt off in what would otherwise have been boom or “inflationary” periods. This is a beguiling fiction, but unfortunately the politicians in power have never acted that way. Economic forecasting, moreover, is so precarious, and the political pressures at work are of such a nature, that governments are unlikely ever to act that way. Deficit spending, once embarked upon, creates powerful vested interests which demand its continuance under all conditions.

这个结论的惟一例外是这样一种假设之下的情况（那些鼓吹这种支出的人事实上也确实往往这么假设），即假设大权在握的政治人物，将只把钱用在那些不拯 救就会衰退的产业上，或者只把钱花在“通货紧缩”时期，课税还账呢，要对那些不课重税就会出现过度扩张的产业，或者在可能出现“通货膨胀”的时期及时地偿 还其债务。这是一个引人入胜的传说，可惜大权在握的政治人物，从来不如此行事。考虑到政治运作的压力变化莫测、经济预测难以捉摸， 政府不可能有机会那样做。赤字支出一旦启动，就会产生强大的既得利益者，他们会不顾一切维持此种政策。

If no honest attempt is made to pay off the accumulated debt, and resort is had to outright inflation instead, then the results follow that we have already described. For the country as a whole cannot get anything without paying for it. Inflation itself is a form of taxation. It is perhaps the worst possible form, which usually bears hardest on those least able to pay. On the assumption that inflation affected everyone and everything evenly (which, we have seen, is never true), it would be tantamount to a flat sales tax of the same percentage on all commodities, with the rate as high on bread and milk as on diamonds and furs. Or it might be thought of as equivalent to a flat tax of the same percentage, without exemptions, on everyone’s income. It is a tax not only on every individual’s expenditures, but on his savings account and life insurance. It is, in fact, a flat capital levy, without exemptions, in which the poor man pays as high a percentage as the rich man.

如果政府不打算偿还累积的债务，而借助通货膨胀来应对，其结果就是我们前面所叙述的情形。国家作为一个整体不可能无中生有。通货膨胀本身就是一种 税收，而且可能是最邪恶的一种，支付能力最低的人，负担通常最重。假设通货膨胀对每个人和每样东西的影响均等（我们已经证明这绝不可能），那就相当于对 所有的商品征收单一税率的销售税，对面包牛奶与钻石皮裘征收相同税率。或者，它也可以被看作对每个人的收入征收单一税率的人头税，没有人能够例外。它不仅对每个人的支出征税，而且对他的存款和人寿保险也征税。事实上，它是一种单一税率的没有任何免税可能的财产税。在这种情况下，穷人要支付同富人一样高的税率。

But the situation is even worse than this, because, as we have seen, inflation does not and cannot affect everyone evenly. Some suffer more than others. The poor are usually more heavily taxed by inflation, in percentage terms, than the rich, for they do not have the same means of protecting themselves by speculative purchases of real equities. Inflation is a kind of tax that is out of control of the tax authorities. It strikes wantonly in all directions. The rate of tax imposed by inflation is not a fixed one: it cannot be determined in advance. We know what it is today; we do not know what it will be tomorrow; and tomorrow we shall not know what it will be on the day after.

然而，情况甚至比这更坏。因为，象我们所看到的，通货膨胀对每个人的影响不是也不可能是均等的。有些人的苦难比其他人更深重。从百分比来讲，由于通货膨胀，穷人所承担的税负通常比富人重，因为穷人的财力不比富人，无法通过投机购买实质资产来保护自己。通货膨胀这种税，不是税务稽征机关所能控制的。它无孔不入。它可以任意施加税率，谁也无法事先确定。我们知道今天的税率是多少，却无法知道明天会是多少；等到明天，又不知道后天将是多少。

Like every other tax, inflation acts to determine the individual and business policies we are all forced to follow. It discourages all prudence and thrift. It encourages squandering, gambling, reckless waste of all kinds. It often makes it more profitable to speculate than to produce. It tears apart the whole fabric of stable economic relationships. Its inexcusable injustices drive men toward desperate remedies. It plants the seeds of fascism and communism. It leads men to demand totalitarian controls. It ends invariably in bitter disillusion and collapse.

和所有税收的影响一样，通货膨胀这种税收也决定了个人和企业不得不服从的经济政策。它不鼓励谨慎节俭的行为，而助长了各种挥霍、赌运气及其他不计后果的浪费行为。它往往使投机比生产更有利可图。它扯裂了稳定的经济关系。它那无处说理的不公，驱使大家乱来，孤注一掷。它促使人们要求施行集权控制，以此埋下法西斯主义和共产主义的种子。最后的下场，必定是幻境破灭的痛苦和经济崩溃。

Economics in One Lesson校译之23. The Mirage of Inflation (6-3,4)

第23章 通货膨胀的幻景

（接前面部分）

3

So inflation turns out to be merely one more example of our central lesson. It may indeed bring benefits for a short time to favored groups, but only at the expense of others. And in the long run it brings ruinous consequences to the whole community. Even a relatively mild inflation distorts the structure of production. It leads to the overexpansion of some industries at the expense of others. This involves a misapplication and waste of capital. When the inflation collapses, or is brought to a halt, the misdirected capital investment—whether in the form of machines, factories or office buildings—cannot yield an adequate return and loses the greater part of its value.

因此，通货膨胀只不过是我们的核心课程的又一例子。在短时期内，通货膨胀的确可以为某些集团带来好处，但这不过是建立在其余人的代价之上的。而且就长期而言，它会给整个社会造成破坏性后果。即便是一次相对缓和的通货膨胀，也会扭曲生产结构。它牺牲掉其他产业的利益以带来某些产业过度扩张。这是资本的错误运用和浪费。当通货膨胀被消除，或是被抑制住时，这种不恰当的资本投放（形式可能是机器、工厂或写字楼）都不可能产生出充分的收益，并很有可能损失大部分的价值。

Nor is it possible to bring inflation to a smooth and gentle stop, and so avert a subsequent depression. It is not even possible to halt an inflation once embarked upon, at some preconceived point, or when prices have achieved a previously agreed upon level; for both political and economic forces will have got out of hand. You cannot make an argument for a 25 percent advance in prices by inflation without someone’s contending that the argument is twice as good for an advance of 50 percent, and someone else’s adding that it is four times as good for an advance of 100 percent. The political pressure groups that have benefited from the inflation will insist upon its continuance.

我们同样不可能使通货膨胀顺利而缓和地停止下来，从而避免一场随之而来的衰退。甚至不可能在预先设定的时点，或在价格上涨到预先设定的水平而让通货膨胀终止。因为，到了那时，政治和经济两方面的力量都无法控制住局面。当有人主张让价格上涨并固定在25%最好，就有人进一步主张，提价50%的效果会比此好一倍，也许还有人会补充说提价100%的好处会翻上两番。政治上的压力集团则会坚持主张使通货膨胀继续下去。

It is impossible, moreover, to control the value of money under inflation. For, as we have seen, the causation is never a merely mechanical one. You cannot, for example, say in advance that a 100 percent increase in the quantity of money will mean a 50 percent fall in the value of the monetary unit. The value of money, as we have seen, depends upon the subjective valuations of the people who hold it. And those valuations do not depend solely on the quantity of it that each person holds. They depend also on the quality of the money. In wartime the value of a nation’s monetary unit, not on the gold standard, will rise on the foreign exchanges with victory and fall with defeat, regardless of changes in its quantity. The present valuation will often depend upon what people expect the future quantity of money to be. And, as with commodities on the speculative exchanges, each person’s valuation of money is affected not only by what he thinks its value is but by what he thinks is going to be eveiybody else’s valuation of money.

此外，我们不可能控制通货膨胀下的货币价值。前面谈过，因果关系绝不是机械性的。比方说，你不可能事先计算出，货币数量增加100%，则单位货币价值下跌50%。我们也说过，货币的价值是由持有者的主观价值认定的。而价值的认定，不仅取决于每个人持有的量，而且也取决于货币的质。在非金本位制度下，战争的胜败将决定参战国货币汇率的涨跌，这与货币数量关系不大。货币的当前价值往往取决于人们对未来的货币数量的预期。而且，由于投机交易的存在和发展，每一个人对于货币价值的认识也不仅仅取决于他自己的判断，而且同样受到他认为其余的每一个人对货币价值会做出怎样的判断这种考虑的影响。

All this explains why, when hyperinflation has once set in, the value of the monetary unit drops at a far faster rate than the quantity of money either is or can be increased. When this stage is reached, the disaster is nearly complete; and the scheme is bankrupt.

所有这些，可以解释为什么恶性通货膨胀一旦发生，单位货币价值下跌的速度将远远超过比货币数量正在增加或者能够增加的速度。到这个地步，那就是经济的灭顶之灾，整个通货膨胀的计划就此宣告破产。

4

Yet the ardor for inflation never dies. It would almost seem as if no country is capable of profiting from the experience of another and no generation of learning from the sufferings of its forebears. Each generation and country follows the same mirage. Each grasps for the same Dead Sea fruit that turns to dust and ashes in its mouth. For it is the nature of inflation to give birth to a thousand illusions.

然而，人们对通货膨胀的热情从未消退过。几乎没有任何国家能以别国的失败为前车之鉴，也没有哪代人能从前人的苦难中吸取教训。每一个国家，每一代人，都沉迷于相同的幻景。每次都伸手去摘死海的苹果，一到嘴里便化为一团灰烬。通货膨胀的特质让人们幻化出千百种错觉。

In our own day the most persistent argument put forward for inflation is that it will “get the wheels of industry turning,” that it will save us from the irretrievable losses of stagnation and idleness and bring “full employment.” This argument in its cruder form rests on the immemorial confusion between money and real wealth. It assumes that new “purchasing power” is being brought into existence, and that the effects of this new purchasing power multiply themselves in ever-widening circles, like the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a pond. The real purchasing power for goods, however, as we have seen, consists of other goods. It cannot be wondrously increased merely by printing more pieces of paper called dollars. Fundamentally what happens in an exchange economy is that the things that A produces are exchanged for the things that B produces. 

当今社会主张实施通货膨胀最顽固的论调，是认为它能“使产业之轮运转起来”，能把我们从产业停滞和资产闲置的白白损失中拯救出来，进而带来“充分就业”。这套说法的原型仍就是混淆货币与财富。它假设通货膨胀能带来新的“购买力 ”，而且这一新购买力将在良性循环中使其自身成倍的增加，好比一颗石头丢到池塘里，掀起层层扩散的涟漪那样。然而，我们已经知道，对特 定产品的实质购买力是由其他许多产品组成的，它不可能只靠印刷更多我们称之为美元的纸张来使其神奇地增加。交易经济的基本运作方式，是甲拿自己生产的东西交换乙生产的东西。{脚注:参照：穆勒的《政治经济原理》（Principles of Political Economy; Book 3, Chap. 14, par.2）；马歇尔的《经济学原理》（Principles of Economics; Book VI, Chap. XIII, sec. 10）；安德森的〈反驳凯恩斯对总体供给创造总体需求学说的抨击〉（A Refutation of Keynes’ Attack on the Doctrine that Aggregate Supply Creates Aggregate Demand），该文刊于经济学家论文集《资助美国繁荣》（Financing American Prosperity）。也请参照：本书作者主编的论文集《凯恩斯经济学批判》（The Critics of Keynesian Economics; New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1960）。}

What inflation really does is to change the relationships of prices and costs. The most important change it is designed to bring about is to raise commodity prices in relation to wage rates, and so to restore business profits, and encourage a resumption of output at the points where idle resources exist, by restoring a workable relationship between prices and costs of production.

通货膨胀的真正作用是改变价格和成本之间的关系。它所带来的最大改变，是提高相对于工资率的商品价格，借此来恢复价格和生产成本之间可以持续经营的关系，进而恢复商业利润，鼓励资源闲置的企业重新达到某一种产出水平。

It should be immediately clear that this could be brought about more directly and honestly by a reduction in unworkable wage rates. But the more sophisticated proponents of inflation believe that this is now politically impossible. Sometimes they go further, and charge that all proposals under any circumstances to reduce particular wage rates directly in order to reduce unemployment are “antilabor.” But what they are themselves proposing, stated in bald terms, is to deceive labor by reducing real wage rates (that is, wage rates in terms of purchasing power) through an increase in prices.

整个事情已经摆明：把难以为继的工资率降低，是更直接和更诚实的做法。但是久经世故的通货膨胀支持者声称这种做法在政治上行不通。那些通过直接调降工资率来降低失业率的提案，甚至被他们指控为 “反劳工”。然而，坦率地讲，他们自己所主张的就是通过提高价格来减少实际工资率（即以购买力水平表示的工资率），以此欺瞒劳工。

What they forget is that labor has itself become sophisticated; that the big unions employ labor economists who know about index numbers, and that labor is not deceived. The policy, therefore, under present conditions, seems unlikely to accomplish either its economic or its political aims. For it is precisely the most powerful unions, whose wage rates are most likely to be in need of correction, that will insist that their wage rates be raised at least in proportion to any increase in the cost-of-living index. The unworkable relationships between prices and key wage rates, if the insistence of the powerful unions prevails, will remain. The wage rate structure, in fact, may become even more distorted; for the great mass of unorganized workers, whose wage rates even before the inflation were not out of line (and may even have been unduly depressed through union exclusionism), will be penalized further during the transition by the rise in prices.

他们小看了经过千锤百炼的劳工；大工会都聘有懂得指数数字的专业劳动力经济学家，所以劳工不容易被蒙骗。鉴于此，通货膨胀政策似乎既无法达到其经济目标，也无法实现其政治目的。那些最强势的工会的工资水平往往最有待修正，而也正是他们坚持主张说，至少应当使他们工资率与生活费用指数保持同比例的提高。如果各大工会的这一要求取得了优势，那么物价和主要工资水平间不切实际的关系就会继续存在。事实上，工资率的结构甚至可能变得更不公平——众多没有参加工会的工人，他们的工资水平甚至在通货膨胀之前就不大符合他们应得的标准（甚至可能因为遭受工会排挤，而被压得过低），而在物价上涨的过渡期间，他们的处境将进一步恶化。

（未完待续）

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。