dingdong

2008年10 月10日，一位美国读者在Economics in One Lesson（《一课经济学》）图书网购处留言到，“我昨天刚读完，爱不释手，急着与同事们分享。这本书每个人念中学的时候都该是必读。它谈到了最低工资法、房租管制、充分就业、稳定物价等许多与民生息息相关的经济问题。尤其是‘抨击储蓄’那一章，正中时下次贷危机和金融动荡的要害……”。

《一课经济学》第一版于1946年推出，那时正值罗斯福新政成效卓著的年代。第二版于1979年推出，一课经济学所阐述的政府干预经济的教训被一一应验。 1992年，98高龄的作者黑兹利特还写了一篇<我如何写就一课经济学>的文章，而当年，该书英文版销量已经突破100万册。针对那些广为流传的经济理论或学说中存在的谬误，黑兹利特进行了毫不留情的揭露、批驳，从而帮助社会大众更了解经济世界运作的法则。本书以浅显的文字取代了高深的经济学术语与复杂的公式，为经济学入门提供了一种最为迅捷和有效的方式。该书利用经济生活中的实例，从经济学中最基本的问题讲起，一直讲到最复杂最艰深的问题。我们会借助这些例证，先学会如何察觉和避开那些最粗浅最明显的谬误，直至学会发现和避开那些最复杂最难以捉摸的谬误。

“一课”说来很简单，也就是经济学的首要教训。教训是一句话就说完了。对于不守教训的政府干预经济的政策，要一条条批下去，这样才能让人醒豁。

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。

附：中文版v200807.pdf 中英文对照版v20090305.doc 中英文对照v200907

了解奥地利学派的出发点对于把握本书很有帮助，即： 

如果尊重个人的自由选择，一项公共政策很难有把握去激发人们的“利他心理”；反之，致力于激发人们“利他心理”的公共政策，很容易滑向限制个人的自由选择。

分工与协作，往往可以让自己以更小的投入获得更大的回报，这是符合“利己心理”的。分工与协作带来了人与人之间的依赖性和难以替代性，为了利己，每个人会权衡得失，并作出取舍。

可见，极度的自由主义经济学必须被放到分工与协作中去考察才行。至于公权在禁止暴力和欺诈方面的作用，那肯定是不可或缺的。 至于限制国家行政权力和司法权力滥用对公民基本权利的侵害，宪法要能为公民所用，同样是不可或缺的。

转自寻正邮件090331 

The Curse of Machinery机器之祸【原意应为机器的诅咒，意即使用了机器带来的灾难与诅咒，太长，不如这个标题简洁达意。】

AMONG THE MOST viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment.在所有的经济学谬论中，相信机器在总体上导致失业最为阴魂不散。

Destroyed a thousand times, it has risen a thousand times out of its own ashes as hardy and vigorous as ever.这种谬论曾经被无数次驳倒过，但总能死灰复燃，并且和以往一样张狂。

The first chapter of this remarkable book is called “Of the Division of Labor,” and on the second page of this first chapter the author tells us that a workman unacquainted with the use of machinery employed in pin-making “could scarce make one pin a day, and certainly could not make twenty,” but with the use of this machinery he can make 4,800 pins a day.这本巨著的第一章叫做“论分工”，在这一章的第二页上，作者告诉我们，一个劳工，如果不知道如何使用制造扣针的机器，“也许一天也做不出1枚扣针，要做20枚，就绝无可能了”，但是使用机器，他一天能做4 800枚扣针。

So already, alas, in Adam Smith’s time, machinery had thrown from 240 to 4,800 pin-makers out of work for every one it kept.这样看来，很不幸，在亚当•斯密时代，每出现一个操作机器的劳工，就得有240到4 800名做扣针的劳工丢掉饭碗。

In the pin-making industry there was already, if machines merely throw men out of jobs, 99.98 percent unemployment. Could things be blacker?如果机器只会让人失业的话，那么扣针制造业的失业率就已经有了99.98%，还有什么比这更糟的吗？

Things could be blacker, for the Industrial Revolution was just in its infancy的确还有更糟的，毕竟工业革命那时正处于萌芽期。〖删去不必要的添加，手工被机器所替代的情形显得尤为惨烈。〗

Now it is important to bear in mind that insofar as the rioters were thinking of their own immediate or even longer futures their opposition to the machine was rational现在，我们应该记住，从暴动者们角度来看，想到他们的明天乃至于后天时，他们抵制机器的行动是理性的。

For William Felkin, in his History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery Manufactures (1867), tells us (though the statement seems implausible) that the larger part of the 50,000 English stocking knitters and their families did not fully emerge from the hunger and misery entailed by the introduction of the machine for the next forty years.威廉•费尔金（William Felkin）在《机器针织和花边织制商历史》（A History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures；1867年）中告诉我们（尽管他的陈述听上去令人难以置信），在采用机器后的40年里，英格兰的50 000名做针织长袜的手工工人和他们的家庭，大多数最终都没能从饥寒交迫的悲惨境地中解脱出来。

But insofar as the rioters believed, as most of them undoubtedly did, that the machine was permanently displacing men, they were mistaken, for before the end of the nineteenth century the stocking industry was employing at least a hundred men for every man it employed at the beginning of the century.然而，暴动者们相信，无疑地他们中大部分持此看法，机器会持续地取代人力，他们却是错的， 因为到了19世纪末，针织袜业所雇用的劳工人数，比该世纪初的时候反而增长了至少100倍。

technophobes恐惧科技的人＝＝》科技恐惧症患者

During the ten years from 1870 to 1880, inclusive, the British mercantile marine increased its movement, in the matter of foreign entries and clearances alone, to the extent of 22,000,000 tons…从1870年到1880年这十年间，包括首尾两年，英国商船运量增加，光是进口清关吨数就增至2 200万吨……

Within the same time the annual production capacity of a Bessemer converter has been increased fourfold, with no increase but rather a diminution of the involved labor.同期，贝塞麦转炉的年产能翻了四番，而所用的人工比从前不增反降。

韦尔斯先生先生＝＝》韦尔斯先生

Within a few months the doctrines of a group calling themselves the Technocrats had spread through the country like a forest fire.短短几个月内，一群自称技术统治论者的人提出的理论象森林大火一样席卷了全美。

I shall not weary the reader with a recital of the fantastic figures put forward by this group or with corrections to show what the real facts were.我不打算在这里复述这些人罗列的怪诞数字，或是修正其数据而揭示实情来使读者为此疲倦发腻。

It is enough to say that the Technocrats returned to the error in all its native purity that machines permanently displace men—except that, in their ignorance, they presented this error as a new and revolutionary discovery of their own. It was simply one more illustration of Santayana’s aphorism that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.读者们只需要知道技术统治论者鼓吹机器会永远取代人力是老调重弹就够了，而这些人竟然无知地以为这个论调是他们新创的革命性的真知灼见，再次印证了作家乔治•桑塔亚纳（George Santayana）那句格言——“忘记历史，就意味着重蹈覆辙”。

The Technocrats were finally laughed out of existence; but their doctrine, which preceded them, lingers on. It is reflected in hundreds of make-work rules and featherbed practices by labor unions; and these rules and practices are tolerated and even approved because of the confusion on this point in the public mind.技术统治论者最终在人们的嘲笑声中销声匿迹；但是在他们之前早已存在的信条却阴魂不散。它反应在成百上千的工会所设计创造的制造工作机会的规定及闲职就业的实践中，此类规定与实践之所以得到容忍乃至于赞同，是因为公众还没有弄清楚这个问题。

Testifying on behalf of the United States Department of Justice before the Temporary National Economic Committee (better known as the TNEC) in March 1941, Corwin Edwards cited innumerable examples of such practices. 1941年3月，科温•爱德华（Corwin Edwards）代表美国司法部在美国临时经济委员会（TNEC）作证时，围绕此类实践列举了大量实例。

stand-in musicians替身音乐人＝＝》占位音乐家；后面可为占位管弦乐队。（跟中文的蜂王替身还是不一样，这些人就只占位，不做什么事。）

As late as 1970, a book appeared by a writer so highly regarded that he has since received the Nobel Prize in economics.直到1970年还出了一本这样的书，其作者受到了高度评价，并荣获了诺贝尔经济学奖。

His book opposed the introduction of laborsaving machines in the underdeveloped countries on the ground that they “decrease the demand for labor”!*在这本书中，该作者反对在经济欠发达国家使用省力机械，理由是机器会“减少对劳动力的需求”！【注:冈纳•缪尔达尔（Gunnar Myrdal）：《世界贫困的挑战》（The Challenge of World Poverty），(New York: Pantheon Books, 1970),400-401页及处处可见】

English Luddite rioters英国勒德分子（Luddite）＝＝》英国卢德暴乱分子们

Theories as false as this are never held with logical consistency, but they do great harm because they are held at all.类似这样的错误理论，在逻辑上从来都站不住脚，但一旦有人相信，就遗害无穷。

The details will vary in each instance, depending upon the particular conditions that prevail in a given industry or period. But we shall assume an example that involves the main possibilities. 视特定行业或特定时期而言，具体情况会有不同，但我们应当采用囊括各种主要的可能性的范例。

But the machine itself required labor to make it; so here, as one offset, are jobs that would not otherwise have existed.但是，机器本身需要人工去制造，由此带来原本不存在的工作机会，是冲抵损失的工作机会之一。

In other words, the manufacturer, as a result of his economies, has profits that he did not have before.换句话说，这位制衣商由于经济效益而获得了以前没有的利润。

furs皮草＝＝》皮裘

It is possible, of course, to push too far the argument that machines do not on net balance throw men out of work.反过来，那些认为机器总体而言不会让人失业的主张也有可能说过头。

They can certainly create enormously more jobs in particular trades.在某些特定行业中， 机器绝对能创造远多于从前的工作机会。
【注：经济学家迈克尔•考克斯 （W. Michael Cox）和理查德•阿尔姆（Richard Alm）在1992年为达拉斯联邦储备银行写了一篇文章，在文中，the authors
point out the constant process of job creation.这两位作者指出工作机会是一个不断创造的过程。经济学家熊彼特第一个提出“创造性破坏”，即科技创新能把劳动力从过时的工作中解放出来，进而创造新的就业机会。考克斯和阿尔姆考查了20世纪就业的迅猛增长的全过程。在这一过程中， 1900年美国有2 900万工人，在1991年工人人数已达1.16亿。（考克斯和阿尔姆的《流失》（The Churn），达拉斯联邦储备委员会年报，1992年）】

There is also an absolute sense in which machines may be said to have enormously increased the number of jobs.机器可以大幅度地增加就业数量的观点还有一种绝对正确性。

It is no trick to employ everybody, even (or especially) in the most primitive economy.要让人人都有活儿干，即使（或尤其是）在最原始的社会中，也易如反掌。

Full employment—very full employment; long, weary, backbreaking employment—is characteristic of precisely the nations that are most retarded industrially.全面就业——真正的全面就业，起早摸黑、全年无休、累死累活的就业状态——正是工业发展最落后的国家的特色。（Full employment应译为全面就业，以后均同）

They were too often inclined to minimize or to forget altogether the immediate effects of developments on special groups.他们往往低估经济发展对特殊群体的即时影响，甚至根本不放在心上。

We have seen, for example, that many of the English stocking knitters suffered real tragedies as a result of the introduction of the new stocking frames, one of the earliest inventions of the Industrial Revolution.例如，我们已 经看到，在工业革命最早期的发明之一新织袜机的应用，导致了许多英格兰手工织袜工人所遭遇的不幸。

the immediate effects即期影响＝＝》即时后果

Joe Smith is thrown out of a job by the introduction of some new machine. “Keep your eye on Joe Smith,” these writers insist. “Never lose track of Joe Smith.”由于某种新机器投入使用，张三失去了工作，那些学者坚决要求社会“关注张三”、“绝不要忘记张三”。

But what they then proceed to do is to keep their eyes only on Joe Smith, and to forget Tom Jones, who has just got a new job in making the new machine, and Ted Brown, who has just got a job operating one, and Daisy Miller, who can now buy a coat for half what it used to cost her.他们接下来所做的就是眼睛只看张三，而忘了李四刚得到制造新机器的新工作、王五刚得到操作新机器的工作，以及赵六现在只需要用过去一半的价钱就能买到大衣。

And because they think only of Joe Smith, they end by advocating reactionary and nonsensical policies.正因为他们只想到张三，他们鼓吹倒行逆施的荒谬政策。

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，同时认为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令人不安的画面。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。它甚至不具备累积性效果——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；总体上看，被耗用掉的旧蓄藏甚至可以多过被人蓄藏的新现金。事实上，这方面的总金额对经营活动影响可说微不足道。

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。因为资金闲置会让银行牺牲利息收入。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，银行宁可牺牲利息而让资金闲置。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.

利率这个主题，在近年来被复杂的诡辩、被糟烂的政府政策搞得令人困惑，让人觉得人们是不是已经丧失了常识和清醒的头脑。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，也鼓励了高投机风险的经济活动，而这种经济活动在类似人为造就的低利率条件下是完全无法存在的。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，这就是减息政策急切想要的“经济的增长”和急切想要促进的“进步”。

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.

要想人为压低资金利率，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。这会制造资本供给增加的假象（或者说掩盖了实质资本供给减少的真相），就像多掺点水，会让人觉得牛奶更多了一样。但这是一种追求持续通货膨胀的政策。这个过程带来的危险，显然具有累积的效果。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，而且会爆发一场经济危机。

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.

有一点需要指出，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殖利率高达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，它可以在两个方面发挥作用：即减低消费者购买商品的成本，同时提高使用新设备的劳工领得的工资。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”。）

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.

先哲早已告诉我们，储蓄是一种美德，而挥霍浪费则会带来种种恶果。这个古老的智慧，反映了我们共同的道德判断，以及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.

古典经济学家勇于驳斥他们那个时代的种种谬论，他们认为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古典经济学家的警醒之言受到抨击，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”。{footnotes: 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草；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成品——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。它区别于直接消费之处在于，这时的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不确定的，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不确定性一样，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不稳定则会更为严重。

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。这样的想法显得幼稚无知。戳穿这种不实之说的最好办法，是用贴近现实的假设，把实际发生的事情呈现出来。

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。{footnotes: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：

（图表）{footnotes: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（这一点正是有人站出来反对储蓄的理由）；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大块；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，并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（假设未获满足的需求并未使价格上涨），它们在拟定第二年生产计划的时候，当然不会笨到假设能够卖出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不稳定现象。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）

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，这些失调消 除了生产的动机，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。通货膨胀也像鸦片，吸上一口，就觉得自己无所不能。

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。假如真的可以使这笔公共收入还之于民的话，那通常也是以政府破产来了结的；有的时候是通过公开宣称的破产，它更经常是通过一种虚假的支付来偿还，但没有一次不是实际的破产。

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。不幸的是，这只不过是一个令人发笑的故事罢了。大权在握的政治人物，从来不如此行事。考虑到这种运作的政治压力，考虑到经济预测如此难以捉摸， 这使得政府未必会象假设中那样做。赤字支出一旦启动，就会产生强大的既得利益，这种利益会促使赤字支出一直实施，而不会顾及由此造成何种负面影响。

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。国家作为一个整体不可能只获得而不付出。通货膨胀本身就是一种 税收形式，而且可能是最邪恶的形式，支付能力最低的人，负担通常最沉重。假设通货膨胀对每个人和每样东西的影响均等（我们知道这绝不可能），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、钻石、皮草征收的税率相同。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。

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，货币价值绝不是靠机械推导能得出的。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不断扩大的范围内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，是某甲拿自己生产的东西，用于交换某乙生产的东西。{footnotes: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）；安德生的〈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，进而恢复经营利润，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）

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点。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。染而，在混淆货币与财富这两个词上，词意含糊所起的作用非常大，这使得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陷入了这种错误。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，例如将其限制在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.

他们相信购买力是长期不足的。因为一个产业无论如何不可能让生产者所分得的货币多到足以使他们作为消费者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，以推广此发现为己任，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.

这些“社会信用”宣传家看似荒谬可笑，但是比他们好不了多少的通货膨胀支持者大有人在，他们提出一些“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不足或缺口；而缺口的数值，是他们用另外的方程式计算出来的。

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。{footnotes: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。{footnotes: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，可以大肆抬高价格。因为这些买主口袋里有很多钱，他们不在乎价格，而在乎自己想要什么就必须要得到什么。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）