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The Fetish of Full Employment

第10章 盲目崇拜充分就业

THE ECONOMIC GOAL of any nation, as of any individual, is to get the greatest results with the least effort. The whole economic progress of mankind has consisted in getting more production with the same labor. It is for this reason that men began putting burdens on the backs of mules instead of on their own; that they went on to invent the wheel and the wagon, the railroad and the motor truck. It is for this reason that men used their ingenuity to develop a hundred thousand labor-saving inventions.

任何国家的经济目标，与任何个人的经济目标相同，在于以最小的努力取得最大的结果。人类全部的经济进步，在于以同样的劳力得到更多的产出。也正是由于这一原因，人们着手用畜力代替人力负重，并且进一步发明了轮子和四轮马车，发明了铁路和载货汽车。正是由于这一原因，人类才运用自己的聪明才智，发展了无数节省劳动的发明。

All this is so elementary that one would blush to state it if it were not being constantly forgotten by those who coin and circulate the new slogans. Translated into national terms, this first principle means that our real objective is to maximize production. In doing this, full employment—that is, the absence of involuntary idleness—becomes a necessary byproduct. But production is the end, employment merely the means. We cannot continuously have the fullest production without full employment. But we can very easily have full employment without full production.

所有这些实在是太基本了，如果不是因为那些杜撰和传播新口号的人一再忘记这些的话，在这里都不好意思再提。当我们从国家的角度来分析时，这一原则首先意味着：追求生产最大化才是我们的真正目标。要达成这个目标，充分就业，即不存在非自愿失业的情况，就会成为必然的副产品。不过，就业只是手段，生产才是目的。少了充分就业，我们无法连续不断地达到充分生产这个目标。不过，就算不是为了充分生产，要举实现充分就业却是很容易的事。

Primitive tribes are naked, and wretchedly fed and housed, but they do not suffer from unemployment. China and India are incomparably poorer than ourselves, but the main trouble from which they suffer is primitive production methods (which are both a cause and a consequence of a shortage of capital) and not unemployment. Nothing is easier to achieve than full employment, once it is divorced from the goal of full production and taken as an end in itself. Hitler provided full employment with a huge armament program. World War II provided full employment for every nation involved. The slave labor in Germany had full employment. Prisons and chain gangs have full employment. Coercion can always provide full employment.

原始部落的成员赤身露体，吃、住条件都很可怜，不过他们没有失业的痛苦。中国和印度远比美国贫穷，但它们的主要问题也不是失业问题，而是生产方式太落后（这既是资本短缺的原因，也是资本短缺的结果）。充分就业一旦偏离了充分生产这个目标，并被当作一个目的的话，恐怕没有什么东西会比它更容易达到了。希特勒推动庞大的扩军备战计划，实现了充分就业；第二次世界大战让每个参战国都实现了充分就业；德国的苦役都充分就业；监狱和戴镣铐的囚徒都充分就业。高压统治总能实现充分就业。

Yet our legislators do not present Full Production bills in Congress but Full Employment bills. Even committees of businessmen recommend “a President’s Commission on Full Employment,” not on Full Production, or even on Full Employment and Full Production. Everywhere the means is erected into the end, and the end itself is forgotten.

然而，议员们在国会提出的不是“充分生产”议案，而是“充分就业”议案。就连工商业联合会呼吁成立的也是“总统充分就业委员会”，而非“充分生产”委员会、或“充分就业与充分生产”委员会。在任何地方，手段反而成了目的，而目标本身却被遗忘了。

Wages and employment are discussed as if they had no relation to productivity and output. On the assumption that there is only a fixed amount of work to be done, the conclusion is drawn that a thirty-hour week will provide more jobs and will therefore be preferable to a forty-hour week. A hundred make-work practices of labor unions are confusedly tolerated. When a Petrillo threatens to put a radio station out of business unless it employs twice as many musicians as it needs, he is supported by part of the public because he is after all merely trying to create jobs. When we had our WPA, it was considered a mark of genius for the administrators to think of projects that employed the largest number of men in relation to the value of the work performed—in other words, in which labor was least efficient.

人们讨论起工资和就业，就好像它们与生产力和产出没有什么联系。在仅仅存在一个固定量的工作可做这一假设下，所得出的结论是：30小时周工作制将提供更多的工作职位，因此比40小时周工作制要好。工会变着花样“制造工作机会”的做法仍一再被稀里糊涂地容忍。美国专业音乐人工会领袖皮特里洛（Petrillo）扬言，若某广播电台不加倍雇用音乐工作者，就要该广播电台关门。一部分民众支持他，认为他的出发点只是想要创造更多的工作机会。当美国推行工作促进计划（WPA）之际，大家便以为，官员们竟然能想出这种根据工作所能创造的价值雇用最大数量的人力的项目，确实是当官天才的一个标志——换句话说，那些官员总是有办法相出那些最没有效率地使用劳动力的方案。

It would be far better, if that were the choice—which it isn’t—to have maximum production with part of the population supported in idleness by undisguised relief than to provide “full employment” by so many forms of disguised make-work that production is disorganized. The progress of civilization has meant the reduction of employment, not its increase. It is because we have become increasingly wealthy as a nation that we have been able virtually to eliminate child labor, to remove the necessity of work for many of the aged and to make it unnecessary for millions of women to take jobs. A much smaller proportion of the American population needs to work than that, say, of China or of Russia. The real question is not how many millions of jobs there will be in America ten years from now, but how much shall we produce, and what, in consequence, will be our standard of living? The problem of distribution on which all the stress is being put today, is after all more easily solved the more there is to distribute.

采取生产最大化政策，同时光明正大地救济一部分失业人口，远比打着“充分就业”的幌子，用“制造工作机会”来扰乱生产要好得多。文明的进步其实体现在就业人口的减少上，而不是体现在增加上。这是因为当国家变得日益富裕之后，我们得以禁止使用童工，得以实现老有所养，大多数妇女也能如愿专职照料家庭。又如，在美国必须出去工作的人口的比例，远低于中国或俄罗斯。真正的问题并不在于10年后美国还能提供多少就业机会，而在于我们的产出能达到多少，我们的生活水平能因此提高多少？只要有更多的产品可供分配，今天人们极力强调的分配问题便能够更容易得到解决。

We can clarify our thinking if we put our chief emphasis where it belongs—on policies that will maximize production.

我们如能把强调的重点放在真正该放的地方——也就是放在生产最大化的政策上——那么，我们的头脑就会更加醒豁。

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