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第12章 拉动出口

（接前面部分）

Yet among the arguments put forward in favor of huge foreign lending one fallacy is always sure to occupy a prominent place. It runs like this. Even if half (or all) the loans we make to foreign countries turn sour and are not repaid, this nation will still be better off for having made them, because they will give an enormous impetus to our exports.

可是，在主张对外大量贷款的论调中，“拉动出口”这个谬论始终占有重要位置。其说法是：即使放到国外贷款有一半（或者全部）变成呆账，得不到偿还，国家仍然可以由这种贷款而获益，因为它们将强劲地拉动我们的出口。

It should be immediately obvious that if the loans we make to foreign countries to enable them to buy our goods are not repaid, then we are giving the goods away. A nation cannot grow rich by giving goods away. It can only make itself poorer.

那些用于帮助外国购买我们产品的贷款，要是拖欠不还，就等于我们拿产品去白送，这是明摆着的事实。一个国家不可能靠无偿的商品输出而变得富有，这样做只会使这个国家变得更穷。

No one doubts this proposition when it is applied privately. If an automobile company lends a man $5,000 to buy a car priced at that amount, and the loan is not repaid, the automobile company is not better off because it has “sold” the car. It has simply lost the amount that it cost to make the car. If the car cost $4,000 to make, and only half the loan is repaid, then the company has lost $4,000 minus $2,500, or a net amount of $1,500 It has not made up in trade what it lost in bad loans.³

把这种说法用在私营企业身上，没人质疑其正确性。如果一家汽车公司贷款5,000美元给一个人买等价的车子，而这个买家最后没有偿清贷款，那么这家汽车公司不可能因为“售出”这辆车子而增加收益。它损失的是生产这辆车的所有成本。如果这辆车的生产成本是4,000美元，而买家只还一半的贷款，那么这家汽车公司的净损失是4,000美元减去2,500美元，也就是1,500美元。坏账造成的损失，并没有从它的销售业绩中赚回来。{endnotes:黑兹利特用的5 000美元这个数字并不确切。现在一辆新车的平均价格要20 000美元左右。（戴维·亨德森（David R. Henderson）的〈同通胀娱乐与博弈〉（Fun and Games With Inflation），刊于《财富》1996年3月18日，第36页）}

If this proposition is so simple when applied to a private company, why do apparently intelligent people get confused about it when applied to a nation? The reason is that the transaction must then be traced mentally through a few more stages. One group may indeed make gains—while the rest of us take the losses.

对于私人公司来说如此简单的事实，为什么用于国家，那些聪明人却会犯糊涂呢？原因在于，要认清这种交易的实质，需要人们把放宽眼界多看几步。某个群体确实可以从中获益，而其他所有的人则蒙受了损失。

It is true, for example, that persons engaged exclusively or chiefly in export business might gain on net balance as a result of bad loans made abroad. The national loss on the transaction would be certain, but it might be distributed in ways difficult to follow. The private lenders would take their losses directly. The losses from government lending would ultimately be paid out of increased taxes imposed on everybody. But there would also be many indirect losses brought about by the effect on the economy of these direct losses.

例如，专门或是主要从事出口贸易的人，可能会从政府海外贷款坏账中得到净收益，这是真的。整个国家因此而蒙受损失是肯定的，只不过难以追踪哪些人遭受了多少损失。私人放贷损失由放贷者自己直接承受，而政府贷款的损失，最后则必须靠加重税负来解决。此外，这些直接的损失会对经济造成不良影响，从而造成更多间接损失。

In the long run business and employment in America would be hurt, not helped, by foreign loans that were not repaid. For every extra dollar that foreign buyers had with which to buy American goods, domestic buyers would ultimately have one dollar less. Businesses that depend on domestic trade would therefore be hurt in the long run as much as export businesses would be helped. Even many concerns that did an export business would be hurt on net balance. American automobile companies, for example, sold about 15 percent of their output in the foreign market in 1975. It would not profit them to sell 20 percent of their output abroad as a result of bad foreign loans if they thereby lost, say, io percent of their American sales as the result of added taxes taken from American buyers to make up for the unpaid foreign loans.

从长远来看，贷款收不回来对美国的企业和就业并没有好处，并且是有害的。对用于购买美国产品的贷款，外国买主的赖账每多一美元，国内买主终将损失一美元。因此，出口业获益的同时，依靠内销为主的行业将蒙受损失，长期下来，二者得失大体相当，甚至许多从事出口的企业，其净收益也会受损。例如，1975年美国的汽车公司约有15%的产量销往海外市场。假如给国外贷款，出口量可增加到20%。但如果贷款收不回来，导致美国消费者的税负加重，造成汽车公司的国内销售额减退10%，对这些汽车公司来说也是得不偿失。

None of this means, I repeat, that it is unwise for private investors to make loans abroad, but simply that we cannot get rich by making bad ones.

重申一下，这里并不是说私人投资者向海外贷款是不明智的，这里要说的是，我们不能靠收不回来的贷款变得富有。

For the same reasons that it is stupid to give a false stimulation to export trade by making bad loans or outright gifts to foreign countries, it is stupid to give a false stimulation to export trade through export subsidies. An export subsidy is a clear case of giving the foreigner something for nothing, by selling him goods for less than it costs us to make them. It is another case of trying to get rich by giving things away.

基于这个道理，那些靠对外贷款呆账，或者直接赠与外国的方式，制造出口大增的做法，才是愚蠢的。企图通过出口补贴的方式拉动出口的做法，同样愚不可及。出口补贴以低于生产成本的价格，出售产品给外国人，补贴部分等于白送。这是企图靠送人东西来发家致富的另一个例子。

In the face of all this, the United States government has been engaged for years in a “foreign economic aid” program the greater part of which has consisted in outright government-to-government gifts of many billions of dollars. Here we are interested in just one aspect of that program—the naive belief of many of its sponsors that this is a clever or even a necessary method of “increasing our exports” and so maintaining prosperity and employment. It is still another form of the delusion that a nation can get rich by giving things away. What conceals the truth from many supporters of the program is that what is directly given away is not the exports themselves but the money with which to buy them. It is possible, therefore, for individual exporters to profit on net balance from the national loss — if their individual profit from the exports is greater than their share of taxes to pay for the program.

美国政府不顾这些常识，多年来一直实施“对外经济援助”计划，主要是政府对政府的直接赠予，金额动辄高达数十亿美元。这里我们只对支持那些计划的一种说法感兴趣——他们相信这样可以“拉动出口”，相信这是维持美国的繁荣和就业的聪明做法，甚至是必要的措施。这依然是靠送东西能让国家致富的另一错觉。这一计划蒙蔽了许多的支持者，其关键在于：美国直接送出去的，不是出口商品本身，而是用来购买出口的钱。因此，个别出口商有可能从国家的损失中获利——如果他们从出口所得到的个人利益大于该计划分摊给他们的税负的话。

Here we have simply one more example of the error of looking only at the immediate effect of a policy on some special group, and of not having the patience or intelligence to trace the long-run effects of the policy on everyone.

只看某项政策对某个特殊群体产生的立即影响，而没有耐心或智慧去考察该政策对每个人造成的长远影响，这样的错误，我们在这里又多了一个实例。

If we do trace these long-run effects on everyone, we come to an additional conclusion—the exact opposite of the doctrine that has dominated the thinking of most government officials for centuries. This is, as John Stuart Mill so clearly pointed out, that the real gain of foreign trade to any country lies not in its exports but in its imports. Its consumers are either able to get from abroad commodities at a lower price than they could obtain them for at home, or commodities that they could not get from domestic producers at all. Outstanding examples in the United States are coffee and tea. Collectively considered, the real reason a country needs exports is to pay for its imports.

如果我们真的去考察每个人所受的长期影响，我们还可以得到另外一个结论。与几个世纪以来大部分政府官员所奉行的教条恰恰相反，这个结论正如约翰•穆勒所说：对外贸易对任何国家能有利益，最终并不在于其出口，而是在于其进口。是进口，让一个国家的消费者能以比国内更便宜的价格，买到外国的商品；是进口，让他们买到国内制造商不生产的商品（在美国尤为突出的是咖啡和茶叶）。总的来说，一个国家需要出口的真正理由，是赚钱来支付其进口。

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