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第8章 分散工作机会的方案

（接前面部分）

What is the actual effect of such plans, whether enforced by individual unions or by legislation? It will clarify the problem if we consider two cases. The first is a reduction in the standard working week from forty hours to thirty without any change in the hourly rate of pay. The second is a reduction in the working week from forty hours to thirty, but with a sufficient increase in hourly wage rates to maintain the same weekly pay for the individual workers already employed.

这样的计划，无论是通过单个工会推行，还是靠立法去执行，其实际效果会如何呢？我们将通过下面两种情况的分析来阐明这个问题。第一种情况是把每周标准工时从40小时缩减为30小时，而不改变小时工资率。第二种情况是把周工时从40小时缩减为30小时，同时调高小时工资率，以保证从业员工维持原有的周薪水平。

Let us take the first case. We assume that the working week is cut from forty hours to thirty, with no change in hourly pay. If there is substantial unemployment when this plan is put into effect, the plan will no doubt provide additional jobs. We cannot assume that it will provide sufficient additional jobs, however, to maintain the same payrolls and the same number of man-hours as before, unless we make the unlikely assumptions that in each industry there has been exactly the same percentage of unemployment and that the new men and women employed are no less efficient at their special tasks on the average than those who had already been employed. But suppose we do make these assumptions. Suppose we do assume that the right number of additional workers of each skill is available, and that the new workers do not raise production costs. What will be the result of reducing the working week from forty hours to thirty (without any increase in hourly pay)?

我们先来分析第一种状况。假设每周工时从40小时减为30小时，而小时工资率不变。若实行该措施时，恰逢失业潮，这么做无疑可以提供更多的就业机会。但无论如何我们也不能冒然假设，这一计划将提供充分的新增工作以维持同样的工薪支付和同样的工时数字。除非我们提出一些不切实际的假设：每个行业的失业率都相同，每个工种新手的工作效率都赶得上熟手，等等。我们姑且认为以上假设成立，再假定每项技术工作都有足够多的技术工人可雇佣，假定新雇的工人不增加生产成本。那么，将周工时从40小时减少到30小时（同时不增加小时工资），将有什么样的结果呢？

Though more workers will be employed, each will be working fewer hours, and there will, therefore, be no net increase in man-hours. It is unlikely that there will be any significant increase in production. Total payrolls and “purchasing power” will be no larger. All that will have happened, even under the most favorable assumptions (which would seldom be realized) is that the workers previously employed will subsidize, in effect, the workers previously unemployed. For in order that the new workers will individually receive three-fourths as many dollars a week as the old workers used to receive, the old workers will themselves now individually receive only three-fourths as many dollars a week as previously. It is true that the old workers will now work fewer hours; but this purchase of more leisure at a high price is presumably not a decision they have made for its own sake: it is a sacrifice made to provide others with jobs.

尽管雇用的工人多了，但每人工作的时间将减少，总工时并无增加。生产未必会有任何显著的增加。工资总额和整体“购买力”不会扩大。即使在最理想的假设之下（这种情况几乎不可能发生），实际结果只可能是老员工补贴新员工。因为，为了让新员工的周薪能够拿到老员工原有工资的四分之三，老员工现在只能拿到原有工资的四分之三。确实，老员工现在工作的时间短了，但是这种用高代价换来的休闲时间并非出于自愿。给别人提供工作对他们来讲是一种牺牲。

The labor union leaders who demand shorter weeks to “spread the work” usually recognize this, and therefore they put the proposal forward in a form in which everyone is supposed to eat his cake and have it too. Reduce the working week from forty hours to thirty, they tell us, to provide more jobs; but compensate for the shorter week by increasing the hourly rate of pay by 33.33 percent. The workers employed, say, were previously getting an average of $226 a week for forty hours work; in order that they may still get $226 for only thirty hours work, the hourly rate of pay must be advanced to an average of more than $7.53.

那些要求缩短每周工时以“分散工作机会”的工会领袖通常都能认识到这一点，因此他们提出的方案就是让每个人都能分到一块蛋糕，并且不会变小。他们告诉我们说，应当将周工时从40小时降低到30小时，以提供更多的就业。然后，通过增加33.33%的小时工资来补偿缩短工时造成的工资下降。举例来说，如果受雇的员工以前每周工作40小时，平均可领226美元，为了使他们每周只工作30小时仍能领到226美元，小时工资率则必须提高到平均7.53美元以上的水平。

What would be the consequences of such a plan? The first and most obvious consequence would be to raise costs of production. If we assume that the workers, when previously employed for forty hours, were getting less than the level of production costs, prices and profits made possible, then they could have got the hourly increase without reducing the length of the working week. They could, in other words, have worked the same number of hours and got their total weekly incomes increased by one-third, instead of merely getting, as they are under the new thirty-hour week, the same weekly income as before. But if under the forty-hour week, the workers were already getting as high a wage as the level of production costs and prices made possible (and the very unemployment they are trying to cure may be a sign that they were already getting even more than this), then the increase in production costs as a result of the 33.33 percent increase in hourly wage rates will be much greater than the existing state of prices, production and costs can stand.

这种方案实行起来又会怎样呢？第一个同时也是最明显的后果将是增加了生产成本。假设员工以前每周工作40小时，所得的工资低于“生产成本-价格-利润关系”允许的工资水准，那么不必缩短每周工时，小时工资率也有可能提高。换句话说，他们每周工作与从前相同的时数，周薪就可能提高三分之一。而不是象他们在新的30小时工作制下那样仅仅得到与以前相同的收入。然而，如果在每周工作40小时的办法下，员工所领工资已经达到了“生产成本-价格-利润关系”可容忍的上限（失业率可能表明，工资已经是成本偏高的原因），那么小时工资率提高33.33%所造成生产成本上升的幅度，将进一步超出目前的“生产成本-价格-利润关系”能够忍受的程度。

The result of the higher wage rate, therefore, will be a much greater unemployment than before. The least efficient firms will be thrown out of business, and the least efficient workers will be thrown out of jobs. Production will be reduced all around the circle. Higher production costs and scarcer supplies will tend to raise prices, so that workers can buy less with the same dollar wages; on the other hand, the increased unemployment will shrink demand and hence tend to lower prices. What ultimately happens to the prices of goods will depend upon what monetary policies are then allowed. But if a policy of monetary inflation is pursued, to enable prices to rise so that the increased hourly wages can be paid, this will merely be a disguised way of reducing real wage rates, so that these will return, in terms of the amount of goods they can purchase, to the same real rate as before. The result would then be the same as if the working week had been reduced without an increase in hourly wage rates. And the results of that have already been discussed.

由此可知，进一步提高工资水平的结果，将是出现更为严重的失业。那些效率最差的公司会被淘汰出局，那些效率最差的员工会被炒鱿鱼。整个行业的生产将缩减。生产成本上升、供应减少，这些将迫使产品的价格上涨，劳工以同样的工资能买的东西因而更少了；另一方面，失业率回升会削弱消费需求，导致产品价格下跌。价格是涨是跌，取决于当时的货币政策。若是通货膨胀政策，使价格能长得上去，从而支付得起上涨后的工资。但实际上，通货膨胀只不过是掩盖了实际工资率的下降，若以劳工能够买到的产品来衡量，劳动报酬和以前相比不会有起色。最终的结果必然是相同的，即周工时减少了，但小时工资率并没有提高。这种情况我们已经讨论过了。

The spread-the-work schemes, in brief, rest on the same sort of illusion that we have been considering. The people who support such schemes think only of the employment they might provide for particular persons or groups; they do not stop to consider what their whole effect would be on everybody.

可见，分散工作机会的方案，还是错在经济谬论产生的根源上。支持这种方案的人，只考虑到他们能够向特定个人或群体提供就业机会，他们并没有静下心来思量，对于社会上的每个人来讲其总体影响将是什么。

The spread-the-work schemes rest also, as we began by pointing out, on the false assumption that there is just a fixed amount of work to be done. There could be no greater fallacy. There is no limit to the amount of work to be done as long as any human need or wish that work could fill remains unsatisfied. In a modern exchange economy, the most work will be done when prices, costs and wages are in the best relations with each other. What these relations are we shall later consider.

正如我们在本章开头所指出的那样，分散工作机会的方案源于一个错误的假设：社会上可做的工作是有限的。恐怕再也找不出比这更荒谬的论调了。只要还有人的需要或愿望还没有获得满足，能做的事就没有止境。在现代的交换经济中，当价格、成本和工资彼此之间呈现最佳的关系时，市场所创造的工作机会最多。至于这些关系是什么，我们将在后面的章节中专门讨论。

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