dingdong

[转自寻正邮件090724]

One of the worst results of the retention of the Keynesian myths is that it not only promotes greater and greater inflation, but that it systematically diverts attention from the real causes of our unemployment, such as excessive union wage-rates, minimum wage laws, excessive and prolonged unemployment insurance, and overgenerous relief payments.
抱持凯恩斯迷信的一个最坏结果是，不仅促使通货膨胀率急剧上升，而且用系统的手段，将人们的注意力从失业的真正成因上转移开，比如工会工资过高、最低工资法规、过度的长期失业保险，以及过分慷慨救济金。

These include, to give a random list: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, veterans’ benefits, farm subsidies, subsidized housing, rent subsidies, school lunches, public employment on make-work jobs, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and direct relief of all kinds, including aid to the aged, the blind, and the disabled. The federal government has estimated that under these last categories it has been handing federal aid benefits to more than 4 million people—not to count what the states and cities are doing.
这些措施，随便列举一些：社保、老年医保、医疗补助、失业保险、食品券、退伍补助、农业补贴、住房补贴、租金补贴、学校午餐、创造工作机会的再就业计划、抚养子女的家庭援助，以及针对老人、盲人、残疾人等实施的各种直接救助。联邦政府统计表明，单单最后这类人，联邦财政救助对象超过400万，这还不 包括接受各州、市财政救助的人数。

Nearly every other Western country has been administering a similar assortment of aid programs—though sometimes a more integrated and less haphazard collection. And in order to do this they have been resorting to more and more Draconian taxation.
几乎每个西方国家都实施了类似的组合福利计划——有时整合化程度比较高，具有更少的随机性。无论如何，为了实施那些福利计划，各国只有征收越来越多的苛捐杂税。

Should it be surprising that it has discouraged work and investment and so profoundly discouraged production and employment?
这种税率直接打击工作和投资的积极性，如此全面地抑制了生产和就 业，有什么令人吃惊呢？

Farmers are still “striking” for “parity prices.”
农民仍旧在为“等位价格”而努力。

Most politicians continue to ignore the necessity of profits, to overestimate their average or total net amount, to denounce unusual profits anywhere, to tax them excessively, and sometimes even to deplore the very existence of profits.
大多数政治人物仍在忽视利润的必要性，夸大雇主们的平均利润或净收入总量，反对任何非正常利润，并对它们课以重税。有的时侯，他们甚至对利润本身的存在感到深恶痛绝。

for those who have already been getting the highest salaries receive the highest dollar benefits.
因为，那些已经领取最高工资的人得到了最高水平的保险收益。

More and more people are becoming aware that government has nothing to give them without first taking it away from somebody else—or from themselves.
越来越多人开始意识到，政府不会无中生有给他们什么东西，而不需要把那些东西从别人——或者他们自已——手中抢过来。

[转自寻正邮件090724]

It is the science of tracing the effects of some proposed or existing policy not only on some special interest in the short run, but on the general interest in the long run.
它研究的是某些现行政策或者政策建议的后果，不仅仅限于比较短的时期某些特殊利益集团，而且是在长期内对整体的后果。

This is the lesson that has been the special concern of this book. We stated it first in skeleton form, and then put flesh and skin on it through more than a score of practical applications.
这便是本书所特别关注的教训。我们首先给出了其骨架结构，然后以各种实际应用的例子，使之有血有肉。

What is true of this elementary equation is true of the most complicated and abstruse equations encountered in mathematics.
这个简单的方程式所蕴含的道理就是数学中其它最复杂、最深奥的方程式也要遵循的。

It must, it is true, be “worked out.”
 因此，必须把它“解出来”。

The result, it is true, may sometimes come to the man who works out the equation as a stunning surprise. He may even have a sense of discovering something entirely new—a thrill like that of “some watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken.” His sense of discovery may be justified by the theoretical or practical consequences of his answer. Yet the answer was already contained in the formulation of the problem. It was merely not recognized at once. For mathematics reminds us that inevitable implications are not necessarily obvious implications.
的确，出现的结果有的时候出乎解题的人的意料，甚至有一种感觉，好象发祥了某 种全新的东西——那种兴奋 战栗，就象“天文观测者猛然发现一颗新行星游入了他的视野”。对其答案进行理论的和实际的分析所得到的结果而言，他的这种创造感也名至实归。然而，答案的确早已蕴含在问题的陈述里了，只不过并非一目了然。数学的研究告诉我们：必然的结果未必是显然的结果。

It would not occur to anyone unacquainted with the prevailing economic half-literacy that it is good to have windows broken and cities destroyed; that it is anything but waste to create needless public projects; that it is dangerous to let idle hordes of men return to work; that machines which increase the production of wealth and economize human effort are to be dreaded; that obstructions to free production and free consumption increase wealth; that a nation grows richer by forcing other nations to take its goods for less than they cost to produce; that saving is stupid or wicked and that squandering brings prosperity.
不了解当今流行经济观点的“半文盲”们也根本不会想到，橱窗被砸破、城市毁于战火是件好事；或者兴建一些并不需要的公共工程不算纯粹浪费；或者政府裁撤冗员让闲人重回劳动市场非常危险；或者添置能增进财富创造、让工作更省 力的机器会令人不寒而栗；或者对自由生产和自由消费设置障碍就可以增加财富；或者迫使其它国家以低于生产成本的价格，购买我们的产品，可以让我们变得更加富裕；或者储蓄是既愚蠢又邪恶的行为以及挥霍享用才能带来繁荣。

But lesser men get lost in complications.
但不智者就在复杂关系中迷失了。

They do not reexamine their reasoning even when they emerge with conclusions that are palpably absurd.
即使他们得出来的结论看上去就很荒唐，他们也不会重新检查自己的推导过程。

For depth in economics consists in looking for all the consequences of a policy instead of merely resting one’s gaze on those immediately visible.
因为通达的经济学在于向人们揭示一项经济政策的全部后果，而不是仅仅引导人们把目光停留在那些显而易见的现象上。

But those who look only at the wheat farmers will see a gain, and miss the more than offsetting loss.
但那些只将目光放在麦 农身上的人，看得到麦农因此获得的利益，却没看到其他所有人因此遭受更多的损失。

And what applies to changes in supply applies to changes in demand, whether brought about by new inventions and discoveries or by changes in taste.
适用于供给变化的原理，也会适用于需求发生的变化，无是此变化是由新发明或新发现引起的，还是消费者品味发生了改变。

The further development of nuclear power, though it can confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells.
进一步开发核能发电，可以谋巨福于人类，但煤矿和油井的业主却会因此烦恼忧愁。

Just as there is no technical improvement that would not hurt someone, so there is no change in public taste or morals, even for the better, that would not hurt someone. An increase in sobriety would put thousands of bartenders out of business. A decline in gambling would force croupiers and racing touts to seek more productive occupations. A growth of male chastity would ruin the oldest profession in the world.
没有一种技术改进不会伤害某个人，同样的道理，大众的品味与道德的变化，即使是更高雅更好，不会伤害到某个人。若更多人都变得清醒克制， 无数酒吧间招待员将因此失业。若赌风日衰，在赌场和赛马场营生的人就只好另谋更有效率的职业。男人更懂得洁身自爱，世界上最古老的行业就会陷入绝境。

reformers would lose their causes; 社会改革家再也没了动力

the demand for their services and contributions for their support would decline.
人们对他们的服务的需求减弱了，对他们的财经支持也就没了。

Advance occurs now in this branch of production and now in that.
经济增长只可能是在不同领域以不同的步调增长，此起彼伏。

Now it is often not the diffused gain of the increased supply or new discovery that most forcibly strikes even the disinterested observer, but the concentrated loss.
但是即使公正无私的观察者，也总是注目在最显眼的集中的损伤，而非因为增产或新发明而带来的广为扩散的好处。

It is altogether proper—it is, in fact, essential to a full understanding of the problem—that the plight of these groups be recognized, that they be dealt with sympathetically, and that we try to see whether some of the gains from this specialized progress cannot be used to help the victims find a productive role elsewhere.
诚然，我们应该从总体上认识到这些群体的困境并且富有同情心地帮助他们解决问题，努力去分析能否 利用在这一特殊进程中得到的收益去帮助这些人，使他 们得以另谋更具生产意义的职业，事实上，这还是对问题获得全面的了解所必须的。

This is the insane doctrine of wealth through scarcity.
这种通过制造短缺来创造财富的信条，实在是疯狂透顶。

[转自寻正邮件090724]

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.
远古先哲就在诵赞储蓄是一种美德，而警告挥霍浪费带来的种种恶果。这个古老的智慧，反映了我们常识性的道德判断，以及人类未雨绸缪的明智抉择。

The classical economists, refuting the fallacies of their own day, showed that the saving policy that was in the best interests of the individual was also in the best interests of the nation. They showed that the rational saver, in ma king provision for his future, was not hurting, but helping, the whole community. But today the ancient virtue of thrift, as well as its defense by the classical economists, is once more under attack, for allegedly new reasons, while the opposite doctrine of spending is in fashion.
正统经济学家勇于驳斥他们那个时代的种种谬论，证明了符合个人最佳利益的储蓄政策，也符合国家的最佳利益。他们指出，懂得长远打算的理性储蓄者， 对整个社会不会有害，反而有益。但当今社会，古老的节俭美德连同正统经济学家的证明再次受到了抨击，许多人搬出反对节俭的新理由，提倡支出的论调蔚然成风。

he loads his wife down with diamond bracelets and fur coats; he gives expensive and useless presents to his friends.
他给太太买钻石项链和皮裘大衣；送朋友贵重却派不上用场的礼物。

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.
而一旦这笔钱以一种资本投资的形式出现时，人们就会把它用来购买或是生产资本类产品 ——房屋、写字楼、工厂、轮船、卡车、机器。

“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.
总之，现代世界中的“储蓄”，只是支出的另一种形式。通常的区别在于，货币被转交给了其他的人，并被他们用于扩大生产。

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
他们惟一说对的一点是：任何突然的变化都可能是引起混乱，就象消费者突然把他们的需求从一种商品转向另一种商品时所表现出的混乱一样，而倘若原来的储蓄者将他们对资本品的需求一下子转向了 对消费品的需求，那么由此而来的经济生活的混乱则会更为严重。

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.
这样的描述显得幼稚无知。戳穿这种不实之说的最好办法，是用贴近现实的写照，把实际情况呈现出来。

Let us 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:
假设生产每年 增加2.5个百分点（为了简化计算，我们用百分点，不用百分增长率）。这样，我们可以用下列指数数字来表示我们所要考察的11年间的大致情况。如下表所示：
年份 总产量 消费品产量 资本品产量
第1年 100 80 20[†]
第2年 102.5 82 20.5
第3年 105 84 21
第4年 107.5 86 21.5
第5年 110 88 22
第6年 112.5 90 22.5
第7年 115 92 23
第8年 117.5 94 94 23.5
第9年 120 96 24
第10年 122.5 98 24.5
第11年 125 100 25

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.
不错，“蛋糕”会越做越大（这一点很奇怪，也有人反对）；每一年做出来的蛋糕，的确不会全部吃掉。然而，这里并不存在什么不合理的或是累加的限制。其实，每年吃掉的蛋糕越来越多；到了第11年 底，该年单单消费者吃掉的蛋糕，就等于第一年消费者吃掉的蛋糕和生产者吃掉的蛋糕的总合。而且，资本设备和生产产品的能力本身与第一年相比也已增加了 25%。

The fact that 20 percent of the national income goes each year for saving does not upset the consumers’ goods industries in the least.
每年有20%的国民收入用于储蓄，一点都没有扰乱消费品工业的运行。

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.
如果它们在第一年生产的产品只卖出80个点（假设没有未获满足的需求使价格上涨），它们在拟定第二年生产计划的时候，当然不会笨到设想能够卖出100个点。

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.
但是，正如我们已经注意到的，假如储蓄额突然锐减，那么它将同样导致资本品工业的混乱。

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.
但是，在作出这种区别之后，他们又把储蓄和投资看作成了两个完全独立的变量，好象这两个变量能够彼此相等纯属偶然。

These writers paint a portentous picture.
这些经济作者勾勒出一幅奇特的画面。

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.
它甚至不具备通常的累积效果— —行为古怪的隐居者生前蓄藏的现金被人找到，拿出来花光用光，可能就跟新出现的蓄藏现金额度相当。事实上，这方面的总金额都可能对经营活动的影响微不足道。

They cannot afford to have idle funds.
银行付不起让资金闲置的代价。

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.
惟有当人们担心 产品的价格下跌、当银行担心投资风险太大时，人们才会增加持有现金，银行让资金闲置。

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.
这整个主题，在近年来被复杂的诡辩、被糟烂的政府政策如此过分愚蠢地混淆在一起，让人对人们是不是能够重拾常识和理性感到失望。

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.
毫无疑问，人为压低利率，就鼓励借贷。而实际上，这倾向于鼓励了高投机风险的经济活动，这种经济活动除非在类似人为造就的低利率条件下是无法存在的。

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.
它会减低资本的累积、放慢了劳动生产率的增速，与阻碍实现那种如此急切想要催生的 “经济的增长”与“改良”的许诺。

The money rate can, indeed, be kept artificially low only by continuous new injections of currency or bank credit in place of real savings.
的确可以人为压低资金利率，但只有靠持续不断注入新资金、不断扩张银行信贷，以替代实质储蓄。

This can create the illusion of more capital just as the addition of water can create the illusion of more milk.
这么做会制造资本供给增加的假象，就象多掺点水，会让人觉得牛奶更多了一样。

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.
但这是一种持续的通货膨胀政策。显然这是一个累积危险的过程。倘若通货膨胀得到了逆 转，或者仅仅是被控制住，甚至只是膨胀速度放慢的话，资金利率就会上涨，并爆发经济危机。

It remains to be pointed out that while new injections of currency or bank credit can at first, and temporarily, bring about lower interest rates, persistence in this device must eventually raise interest rates.
还有一点要指出，新注入的货币或银行信贷，虽然能在开始带来短期的利率降低，但持续注水最终将使利率上升。

Italian government bonds yielded 16 percent in 1977; 1977年意大利 政府公债的盈利率高达16%；

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.
由于新增资本使得单位生产成本稳定下降，它可以在两个方面单独或者一起发挥作用：即减低消费者购买商品的成本，或者提高使用新设备获得增产能力的劳工领得的工资。 

[转自寻正邮件090724]

The Mirage of Inflation
第23章 通货膨胀的幻景

The most obvious and yet the oldest and most stubborn error on which the appeal of inflation rests is that of confusing “money” with wealth. “That wealth consists in money, or in gold and silver” wrote Adam Smith more than two centuries ago “is a popular notion which naturally arises from the double function of money, as the instrument of commerce, and as the measure of value…. To grow rich is to get money, and wealth and money, in short, are, in common language, considered as in every respect synonymous.
通货膨胀之所以吸引人，最明显、最古老、最顽固的错误，在于把“货币”与财富混为一谈。亚当•斯密两个多世纪前 写道：“财富就是货币，或者说就是金钱，这是一个普遍为人接受的观念。很自然，它是因为货币具有双重功能——即作为 流通的手段和作为价值的尺度——而产生的……成为富裕的人就是去得到货币。按照通俗的说法，财富和 货币从各方面来看都是同义词。”

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.
然而，混淆货币与财富的语意含糊的作用是如此之大，以致于那些有时可以认识到这种混淆的人在他们的推理过程 中也不知不觉地滑回这种错误中。

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.”
他们意识到这么干肯定会出问题；所以他们希望通过某种方式限制政府发行新增货币的数量。他们提倡政府增印货币不多不少、刚好足够弥补所谓的“不足 ”或“缺口”。

Purchasing power is chronically deficient, they think, because industry somehow does not distribute enough money to producers to enable them to buy back, as consumers, the product that is made. There is a mysterious “leak” somewhere. One group “proves” it by equations. On one side of their equations they count an item only once; on the other side they unknowingly count the same item several times over. This produces an alarming gap between what they call “A payments” and what they call “A+B payments.” So they found a movement, put on green uniforms, and insist that the government issue money or “credits” to make good the missing B payments.
购买力是长期不足的，他们觉得，因为那些产业不知怎么回事，不让生产者分得足够的货币以使他们作为消费者可以购买回他们所生产的全部产品。在某个地方存 在着一个神秘的“漏洞”。一些人用数学方程来“证明”了这一点。在方程式的一边，他们对某个项只计数一 次，而在方程式的另一边，他们却莫名其妙地把同样的项重复计数好几次。于是这在他们称之为“付款款项A”和他们所说的 “付款款项A+B”之间，制造出惊人的缺口。于是，他们发起一场运动，披上钞票马甲，坚持政府应该发行货币或 “信用”，以弥补失落的付款款项B。

The cruder apostles of “social credit” may seem ridiculous; but there are an indefinite number of schools of only slightly more sophisticated inflationists who have “scientific” plans to issue just enough additional money or credit to fill some alleged chronic or periodic deficiency, or gap, which they calculate in some other way.
那些头脑简单的“社会信用”宣传家看起来太过于荒谬可笑，但是有无数的稍胜一畴的通货膨胀支持者，他们有“科学 ”计划，能够发行刚好足够的额外货币或信用，弥补所谓的长期或定期发生的，他们以某种另外的方程式计算出来的，不足或缺口。

The war contractors and their employees, then, will have higher money incomes. They will spend them for the particular goods and services they want. The sellers of these goods and services will be able to raise their prices because of this increased demand. Those who have the increased money income will be willing to pay these higher prices rather than do without the goods; for they will have more money, and a dollar will have a smaller subjective value in the eyes of each of them.
这么一来，战时承包商和他们的员工便得到了更高的货币收入。他们会把这些钱拿去买自己想要的商品和服务。为他们提供产品和服务的商家，因为需求增加 了，可以抬高价格。因为这些买主口袋里有更多的钱，他们不在乎增高的价格，而是要买到所需产品。因为在有钱人眼里，每一块钱的主观价值已经降低 了。

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.
此外，我们不可能控制通货膨胀下的货币价值。前面谈过，因果关系绝不是机械性的。

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.
它假设通货膨胀能带来新的“购买力 ”，而且这一新购买力将在良性循环中使其自身成倍的增加，好比一颗石头丢到池塘里，掀起层层扩散的涟漪那样。然而，我们已经知道，对特 定产品的实质购买力是由其他许多产品组成的，它不可能只靠印刷更多我们称之为美元的纸张来使其神奇地增加。交易经济的基本运作方式，是甲拿自己生产的东西交换乙生产的东西。

What inflation really does is to change the relationships of prices and costs. The most important change it is designed to bring about is to raise commodity prices in relation to wage rates, and so to restore business profits, and encourage a resumption of output at the points where idle resources exist, by restoring a workable relationship between prices and costs of production.
通货膨胀的真正作用是改变价格和成本之间的关系。它所带来的最大改变，是提高相对于工资率的商品价格，借此来恢复价格和生产成本之间可以持续经营的关系，进而恢复商业利润，鼓励资源闲置的企业重新达到某一种产出水平。

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.
在达到一定程度后，这些失调化解了生产的动力，甚至使得生产无法继续；并通过交易经济的有机关联，使这种不景气向外扩散。

Inflation is the opium of the people.
通货膨胀就是大众的鸦片。

When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has even been brought about at all, has always been brought about by a bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretended payment.
当一国的债务一旦累积到某一程度时，我相信，这个国家就几乎不会公平地而且彻底地偿清债务，历来如此。清偿公共债务，如果真的实现了的话，那通常也是以政府破产来了结的；有的时候是通过公开的破产，但更常见的是通过一种虚假的支付来偿还的事实上的破产。

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，经济衰退或者 “通货紧缩”的时期，然后在否则会过度扩张或者是 “通货膨胀”的时期及时地偿 还其债务。这是一个引人入胜的传说，可惜大权在握的政治人物，从来不如此行事。考虑到政治运作的压力变化莫测、经济预测难以捉摸， 政府不可能有机会那样做。赤字支出一旦启动，就会产生强大的既得利益者，他们会不顾一切维持此种政策。

If no honest attempt is made to pay off the accumulated debt, and resort is had to outright inflation instead, then the results follow that we have already described. For the country as a whole cannot get anything without paying for it. Inflation itself is a form of taxation. It is perhaps the worst possible form, which usually bears hardest on those least able to pay. On the assumption that inflation affected everyone and everything evenly (which, we have seen, is never true), it would be tantamount to a flat sales tax of the same percentage on all commodities, with the rate as high on bread and milk as on diamonds and furs.
如果政府不打算偿还累积的债务，而借助通货膨胀来应对，其结果就是我们前面所叙述的情形。国家作为一个整体不可能无中生有。通货膨胀本身就是一种 税收，而且可能是最邪恶的一种，支付能力最低的人，负担通常最重。假设通货膨胀对每个人和每样东西的影响均等（我们已经证明这绝不可能），那就相当于对 所有的商品征收单一税率的销售税，对面包牛奶与钻石皮裘征收相同税率。

[转自寻正邮件090724] 

The indignation shown by many people today at the mention of the very word profits indicates how little understanding there is of the vital function that profits play in our economy.
每当提到利润这个词，很多人所表现出来的愤慨表明了对利润在经济中所起的致关重要的功能的理解是多么的缺乏。

Profits actually do not bulk large in our total economy. The net income of incorporated business in the fifteen years from 1929 to 1943, to take some illustrative figures, averaged less than percent of the total national income. Corporate profits after taxes in the five years from 1956 to 1960 averaged less than 6 percent of the national income. Corporate profits after taxes in the five years 1971 through 1977 also averaged less than 6 percent of the national income (in spite of the fact that, as a result of insufficient accounting adjustment for inflation, they were probably overstated). Yet profits are the form of income toward which there is most hostility. It is significant that while there is a word profiteer to stigmatize those who make allegedly excessive profits, there is no such word as “wageer”—or “losseer.” Yet the profits of the owner of a barbershop may average much less not merely than the salary of a motion picture star or the hired head of a steel corporation, but less even than the average wage for skilled labor.
实际上，利润在国民经济总量中所占份量并不大。一些统计数字足以说明这一点。从1929年到1943年这15年间，注册企业的净利润占国民收入的比 率，平均低于5%[哪里来的？原书是不是印脱了？]。从1956年到1960年，公司的税后利润占国民收入的比率，年均低于6%。从1971年到1975年，这个比率年平均也低于6%（事 实上，由于通货膨胀因素的会计调整不够充分，这个比率可能被高估）。然 而利润却是最招致敌意的一种所得。我们用奸商（profiteer）一词，来贬斥那些获取所谓暴利的人，但是找不到“奸工”（wageer）或 “奸赔”（losseer）等名 词。不过，理发店老板的平均利润，不仅远不如电影明星的片酬或者钢铁公司经理人的年薪，甚至可能不如熟练工人的平均工资。

Yet governmental policy almost everywhere today tends to assume that production will go on automatically, no matter what is done to discourage it.
但是现在不论在什么地方，政府在推行其政策时都倾向于认为，无论采取任何抑制生产的举措，生产都会自动进行。

I have been putting my emphasis on the tendency to reduce costs of production because this is the function of profit-and-loss that seems to be least appreciated.
我一直强调降低生产成本这个问题，因为这正是损益分析的最不为人所理解的作用。

Greater profit goes, of course, to the man who makes a better mousetrap than his neighbor as well as to the man who makes one more efficiently.
显然，更多的利润要给那比邻居制造出更好更经济的捕鼠器的人。

But the function of profit in rewarding and stimulating superior quality and innovation has always been recognized.
至于利润在回报、在激励人们生产优质产品和创新方面的功能，则通常是人所共知的。

[转自寻正邮件090723] 

Amateur writers on economics are always asking for “just” prices and “just” wages. These nebulous conceptions of economic justice come down to us from medieval times. The classical economists worked out instead, a different concept—the concept of functional prices and functional wages. Functional prices are those that encourage the largest volume of production and the largest volume of sales. Functional wages are those that tend to bring about the highest volume of employment and the largest real payrolls.
业余的经济学作家总是呼吁订立出“公正”价格和“公正”工资。这些有关经济公正性的含混概念是从中世纪流传下来的。与此不同，正统经济学家则代之以有效价格和有效工资的概念。有效价格是指能够鼓励最大产量和最大销售量的价格。有效工资是指能带来最大就业量和最大的实际工资支付额的工资。

The concept of functional wages has been taken over, in a perverted form, by the Marxists and their unconscious disciples, the purchasing-power school. Both of these groups leave to cruder minds the question whether existing wages are “fair.” The real question, they insist, is whether or not they will work. And the only wages that will work, they tell us, the only wages that will prevent an imminent economic crash, are wages that will enable labor “to buy back the product it creates.” The Marxist and purchasing-power schools attribute every depression of the past to a preceding failure to pay such wages. And at no matter what moment they speak, they are sure that wages are still not high enough to buy back the product.
有效工资的概念，被马克思主义者极其未列入门墙的信徒，购买力学派，曲解并使用。他们把工资是否“公平” 这个问题留给了头脑简单的人，而真正的问题，他们坚称，是目前的工资是否有效。他们说，惟一有效的工资，要能让劳工“买回他们所生产的产品”，这是惟一能够防止 经济立即崩溃的工资。马克 思学派及购买力学派将以往的每一次经济萧条，归咎于此前没能支付这种工资，并且不论什么时候，他们都认定工资还没有高到足以买回产品的地步。

The doctrine has proved particularly effective in the hands of union leaders. Despairing of their ability to arouse the altruistic interest of the public or to persuade employers (wicked by definition) ever to be “fair,” they have seized upon an argument calculated to appeal to the public’s selfish motives, and frighten it into forcing employers to grant union demands.
这套信条在工会领袖手里被证明特别有用。他们深知自己没有能力去激发公众的利他心理，也没有能力去说服雇主这类邪恶的人“公正”对待劳工，他们抓住一个刻意迎合民众的自私动机的说法，危言耸听，进而迫使雇主接受工会的要求。

were demanding a 30 percent increase so that they might, according to one of their spokesmen, “bolster our fast-shrinking ability to absorb the goods which we have the capacity to produce.”
他们却要求进一步调高工资30%。其发言人说， “提升保持正快速下降的我们对所生产的产品的购买能力”。

What, then, of the average factory worker and the average retail worker? If, under such circumstances, the automobile workers needed a 30 percent increase to keep the economy from collapsing, would a mere 30 percent have been enough for the others? Or would they have required increases of to 160 percent to give them as much per capita purchasing power as the automobile workers?
那么，产业工人和零售业工人的平均工资应该涨多少呢？在那样的经济环境下，如果汽车业工人需要调高30%才能阻止不景气，其他行业的劳工仅仅调高 30%就够了吗？或者，政府是否应当使他们的工资得到160%的增长，以达到同汽车业工人相仿的人均购买力水平呢？

(We may be sure, if the history of wage bargaining even within individual unions is any guide, that the automobile workers, if this last proposal had been made, would have insisted on the maintenance of their existing differentials; for the passion for economic equality, among union members as among the rest of us, is, with the exception of a few rare philanthropists and saints, a passion for getting as much as those above us in the economic scale already get rather than a passion for giving those below us as much as we ourselves already get. But it is with the logic and soundness of a particular economic theory, rather than with these distressing weaknesses of human nature, that we are at present concerned.)
（如果工资谈判史，以及个别工会内部为工资讨价还价的史料还有某种指导价值的话，那么，我们可以确信，要是有人提出后一个建议（即其他行业的工会要求大幅调高工资与汽车工人持平），汽车业工人一定会坚持现有的工资差距。因为，除 去那些少见的慈善家和圣人之外，工人以及其余的人，对于经济平等的强烈要求，事实上是追求得到同现有经济规模中比我们收入更高的人一样收入水平的热情；而不是努力帮助那些工资水平比我们目前的收入还低的人，使之与我们看齐的热情。不过，我们在这里所讨论的是有关某一特殊经济理论的逻辑与合理性问题， 而不是人类天性中的这些弱 点。）

The argument that labor should receive enough to buy back the product is merely a special form of the general “purchasing-power” argument. The workers’ wages, it is correctly enough contended, are the workers’ purchasing power. But it is just as true that everyone’s income—the grocer’s, the landlord’s, the employer’s— is his purchasing power for buying what others have to sell. And one of the most important things for which others have to find purchasers is their labor services.
劳工应当获得足够买回产品的工资的说法，只是一般“购买力论调”的一种特殊形式。认为劳工的工资就是劳工的购买力，这种认 识没有错。但是同样没错的是每个人的收 入，包括杂货店老板、房东、雇主的收入，都是他用于购买别人的产品的购买力。别人不得不为之寻找到买主最重要的东西之一，是他们的劳务。

And it is unlikely that labor will compensate for the absolute drop in production by getting a larger relative share of the production that is left. For Paul H. Douglas in America and A. C. Pigou in England, the first from analyzing a great mass of statistics, the second by almost purely deductive methods, arrived independently at the conclusion that the elasticity of the demand for labor is somewhere between 3 and 4. This means, in less technical language, that “a 1 percent reduction in the real rate of wage is likely to expand the aggregate demand for labor by not less than 3 percent.” Or, to put the matter the other way, “If wages are pushed up above the point of marginal productivity, the decrease in employment would normally be from three to four times as great as the increase in hourly rates” so that the total incomes of the workers would be reduced correspondingly.
不太可能出现劳工在剩余产品中相对份额增加，从而弥补产量绝对值减少的损失。美国的保罗•道格拉斯（Paul H. Douglas）通过分析大量的统计数字，英国的庇古（A. C. Pigou）通过纯理论推导，各自独立地得出同一结论——劳动力的需求弹性介于3和4之间。通俗地说，这表示“实际工资每下降1%，将使对劳动力的总体 需求至少上升3%”。换种方式来说，“如果工资被推升到高于边际生产力那一点，那么就业率的减幅通常是工资增幅的三到四倍”。所以，劳工的总收入肯定会相应的减少。

If we assume that the previous relationship between wages and prices was itself a “normal” long-run relationship, then it is altogether probable that a forced increase of, say, 30 percent in wage rates will ultimately lead to an increase in prices of approximately the same percentage.
如果我们假设调资前的工资与物价之间的关系本身是一种长期的“正常”关系，那么工资调增，比如30%后，物价必然上升一个大约与之相当的百分比。

If we take the lower of these two estimates, and assume also that dollar profit margins would be unchanged, it is clear that an increase of 30 percent in wage costs all around the circle would mean an increase of nearly 20 percent in prices.
我们取其中较低的估计值，并且同样假设以货币衡量的边际利润是不变的，那么工资成本全面升高30%， 价格显然会上涨20%左右。

But such a change would mean that the dollar profit margin representing the income of investors, managers and the self-employed, would then have, say, only 84 percent as much purchasing power as it had before. The long-run effect of this would be to cause a diminution of investment and new enterprise compared with what it would otherwise have been, and consequent transfers of men from the lower ranks of the self-employed to the higher ranks of wage-earners, until the previous relationships had been approximately restored. But this is only another way of saying that a 30 percent increase in wages under the conditions assumed would eventually mean also a 30 percent increase in prices.
然而，这样的一个变化意味着，代表投资人、职业经理人和个体工商户的人们收入的货币边际利润只相当于，嗯，从前购买力的84%（译者注：利润的相对购买力在假设以货币衡量不变的情况下相对下降为原业的83.33%，即1元钱的产品，现在要卖1.2元，而利润仍然是33分钱，33分钱占1.2元的份额只有原业33分钱占1元钱份额的83.33%）。这种状况的长 期影响，是导致投资和创业达不到应有的水准，准备创业的人会放弃创业：与其自己当小老板，不如去当高级打工仔；这种影响会延续到工资与物价的关系恢复到以 前的正常水平。以上我们只不过在用另一种表达方式，说明在那些假设的状况下，工资上升30%，最后也会使价格上涨30%。

So that while labor might get a wider slice of a smaller pie, during this period of transition and adjustment to a new equilibrium, it may be doubted whether this would be greater in absolute size (and it might easily be less) than the previous narrower slice of a larger pie.
因此，在经济调整到新均衡状态的过渡期间，劳工虽然可能从更 小的蛋糕分得更大的一块，但是和以前从更大的蛋糕分得更小的一块相比，现在的一块是不是比以前那一块大（多半要小一些）就值得怀疑了。

It is bought by everyone—by white collar workers, professional men, farmers, employers, big and little, by investors, grocers, butchers, owners of small drugstores and gasoline stations—by everybody, in short, who contributes toward making the product.
每个人，白领职员、专业人士、农民、大小雇主、投资人、杂货店主、肉贩、小药房老板、加油站业主，简单地说，每一个对产品生产有贡献的人，都在购买产品。

If we try to run the economy for the benefit of a single group or class, we shall injure or destroy all groups, including the members of the very class for whose benefit we have been trying to run it. We must run the economy for everybody.
倘若我们试图带着某一个集团或阶层的利益服务的目标运行经济，我们将会伤害或破坏所有的人的利益，包括经济政策想要照顾其利益的那些人。我们必须按为所有人谋利益的方式运行经济。

[转自寻正邮件090722] 

The belief that labor unions can substantially raise real wages over the long run and for the whole working population is one of the great delusions of the present age. 相信工会可以在长期内从根本上提高整个工业人口的实际工资，这种想法是当今时代重大的妄想之一。

This delusion is mainly the result of failure to recognize that wages are basically determined by labor productivity.
如此妄想的主要原因是在于没有认清工资从根本上说是由劳动生产力决定的。

In spite of the overwhelming evidence that labor productivity is the fundamental determinant of wages, the conclusion is usually forgotten or derided by labor union leaders and by that large group of economic writers who seek a reputation as “liberals” by parroting them. 尽管有压倒性的证据表明，劳动生产力是工资的根本决定因素，但这个结论常被工会领袖所忘记或者嘲笑，一大批跟在工会领袖屁股后面鹦鹉学舌的经济学作家也以此求得“自由主义经济学者 ”的名声。

But this conclusion does not rest on the assumption, as they suppose, that employers are uniformly kind and generous men eager to do what is right.这个结论并不是建立在如那些人所嘲弄的雇主们全都很和善慷慨与仗义疏财的假设上。

Why should he not prefer, for example, to make $1 a week out of a workman rather than see some other employer make $2 a week out of him? And as long as this situation exists, there will be a tendency for employers to bid workers up to their full economic worth.
雇主怎可能坐视别的雇主从一个员工身上每周赚取两美元（自己两手空空），而不自己（少赚一美元却）从他身上每周赚得一美元呢？只要这种状况存在，雇主们竞相出价招揽物超其价的劳工，将使劳工工资趋于他们的最大经济价值。

The central function they can serve is to improve local working conditions and to assure that all of their members get the true market value of their services.工会能起到的核心作用，是改善局部的工作条件，并且确保工会成员所提供的劳务能够得到实际市场价值。

For the competition of workers for jobs, and of employers for workers, does not work perfectly. 由于劳动力市场的工人求职与雇主择才的竞争并不完美，

An individual worker may not know the true market value of his services to an employer. 单个劳工也许不知道他对雇主提供的劳务的实际市场价值。

and he may employ a hundred or a thousand men. 但是，他雇用了成百上千的求职者。

His whole means of livelihood is involved. Not only may he fail to find promptly another job offering more; he may fail for a time to find another job offering remotely as much. And time may be the essence of his problem, because he and his family must eat. So he may be tempted to take a wage that he believes to be below his “real worth” rather than face these risks. When an employer’s workers deal with him as a body, however, and set a known “standard wage” for a given class of work, they may help to equalize bargaining power and the risks involved in mistakes.
他的谋生全赖一份工作。他不仅会发现自己无法很快找到待遇更好的工作，还有可能一时间连待遇低很多的工作也找不到。他最大的问题是时间上拖不起，他要吃饭，他的家人也要靠他吃饭。为避免这些风险，即便雇主开出的工资低于他心目中“ 实际市场价值”，他也可能接受。然而，当雇主的工人们形成一个整体与他打交道，并且为其中某一工种确定了一个大家都知道的“标准工资 ”时，他们会有助于均衡双方在讨价还价中的力量以及判断失误的风险。

But it is easy, as experience has proved, for unions, particularly with the help of one-sided labor legislation which puts compulsions solely on employers, to go beyond their legitimate functions, to act irresponsibly, and to embrace short-sighted and antisocial policies. TI do this, for example, whenever they seek to fix the wages of their members above their real market worth. Such an attempt always brings about unemployment. The arrangement can be made to stick, in fact, only by some form of intimidation or coercion.
历史经验却证明，工会很容易就做过了头，特别是当劳动法规偏向劳动者，单方面强制约束雇主时，工会会做出一些不负责任的行为，实行短视的、反社会的政策。例如，只要他们想把工会会员的工资固定于高出他们实际市场价值的水平，他们就在这么干。这样做一定会造成失业。事实上，要达到这个目的，工会还必定采取某种胁迫和强制手段。

One device consists in restricting the membership of the union on some other basis than that of proved competence or skill. restriction may take many forms: it may consist in charging new workers excessive initiation fees; in arbitrary membership qualifications; in discrimination, open or concealed, on grounds of religion, race or sex; in some absolute limitation on the number of members, or in exclusion, by force if necessary, not only of the products of nonunion labor, but of the products even of affiliated unions in other states or cities.
手段之一是订立歧视性的工会会员资格，在专长或技能的因素之外，设立各种限制条件。可以是对新工人收取过高的入会费、主观裁决会员资 格、以公开或隐秘的方式进行宗教、种族或性别歧视、采取某种绝对的会员人数限制，或是在需要的情况下，通过强制手段推行排他性政策：不仅排斥非工会劳工生产的产品，甚至排斥外地的工会生产的产品。

even though it is one that should be used rarely and as a last resort. 即便如此，罢工也应该是不得已才作为最后的手段。

If his workers as a body withhold their labor, they may bring a stubborn employer, who has been underpaying them, to his senses. 齐心协力的罢工，可以使一贯克扣员工的偏执老板得到教训清醒。

He may find that he is unable to replace these workers with workers equally good who are willing to accept the wage that the former have now rejected. 他可能会发现，他无法以罢工者拒绝的工资标准去雇到同样优秀的劳工。

But the moment workers have to use intimidation or violence to enforce their demands—the moment they use mass picketing to prevent any of the old workers from continuing at their jobs, or to prevent the employer from hiring new permanent workers to take their places—their case becomes suspect. 但是，一当罢工行动掺杂胁迫或暴力的手段——组织大批纠察队员阻止在职员工继续上班工作，或者阻止雇主招募新员工取代他们，罢工者的主张就难免令人生疑。

If the strikebreakers consist merely of professional thugs who themselves threaten violence, or who cannot in fact do the work, or if they are being paid a temporarily higher rate solely for the purpose of making a pretense of carrying on until the old workers are frightened back to work at the old rates, the hatred may be warranted. 如果罢工破坏者只是专职流氓，他们自己就用暴力威胁，或者无能其职，或者他们得到临时的高工资，其唯一目的是制造复工假象直到原有工人被吓到复工，领原先的微薄工资，人们仇视他们就是有道理的。

But if they are in fact merely men and women who are looking for permanent jobs and willing to accept them at the old rate, then they are workers who would be shoved into worse jobs than these in order to enable the striking workers to enjoy better ones. And this superior position for the old employees could continue to be maintained, in fact, only by the ever-present threat of force.
但如果 “罢工破坏 者”只是普通的男女劳工，目的不过是为了求得一分稳定的工作，而且愿意接受原有的工资标准，那么，他们就成了为了使那些罢工工人享受更好的工作条件而不得不被推到比此更坏的工作中去的工人了。事实上，也只有通过不断进行持续的暴力威胁，原有雇员的这一优越地位才有可能被维持下去。

Their wage rates, determined without any element of coercion, are not necessarily equal; but whatever they are, let us assign to each of them an original index number of 100 as a base. 他们的工资不由任何 强制因素决定，不一定必彼此相等，但不管工资是多少，我们直接给每一群劳工一个原始的指数，以100为基础。

For several reasons, including the fact that labor costs do not represent all costs, the price will not quite do that—certainly not in any short period. But the figures will nonetheless serve to illustrate the basic principle involved.)
由于好几个原 因，包括了劳动力成本并不能代表所有生产成本这一事实，价格不会那变动——短期内是肯定不会的。尽管如此，那样的数字仍然可以用来说明其中的基本原理。

The retail store workers, even though they have got an increase in money wages of 10 percent, will be worse off than before the race began. 零售商店店员的货币工资虽 然涨了10%，处境也比调资竞赛之前更糟。

But even such calculations rest on the assumption that the forced increase in wages has brought about no unemployment. 即使这样的简化计算，还要假设强行涨工资不会带来失业。

for unemployment will be shifted and distributed in relation to the relative elasticity of the demand for different kinds of labor and in relation to the “joint” nature of the demand for many kinds of labor. 因为，失业出现了转移和分配，跟对不同劳动力的需求弹性以及很多种劳动力的“联合需求”特点相关。

Such relief, in the first place, is paid for in large part, directly or indirectly, out of the wages of those who work. 首先，此种救济很大程度上是直接或间接地从那些就业者的工资中支付的。

When strong labor unions in the past made it their function to provide for their own unemployed members, they thought twice before demanding a wage that would cause heavy unemployment. 在过去，扶助失业会员是有影响的工会的一项基本功能，所以，它们在要求涨工资时，总是三思而后行，会充分衡量由此可能带来的失业。

But where there is a relief system under which the general taxpayer is forced to provide for the unemployment caused by excessive wage rates, this restraint on excessive union demands is removed. 而在现代失业救济制度下，政府强迫一般纳税人负担工资过高造成的失业救济支出，工会便失去此种针对提过份调资要求的约束。

Moreover, as we have already noted, “adequate” relief will cause some men not to seek work at all, and will cause others to consider that they are in effect being asked to work not for the wage offered, but only for the difference between that wage and the relief payment.
此外，我们说过，“充分的”救济会使一些人根本不想工作，而工作的人又觉得努力工作挣来的实际收入仅相当于工资和救济金两者的差额。

In the first place, in spite of the enormous legal and political encouragements (one might in some cases say compulsions) to unionization under the Wagner-Taft-Hartley Act and other laws, it is not an accident that only about a fourth of this nation’s gainfully employed workers are unionized. The conditions propitious to unionization are much more special than generally recognized. But even if universal unionization could be achieved, the unions could not possibly be equally powerful, any more than they are today. Some groups of workers are in a far better strategic position than others, either because of greater numbers, of the more essential nature of the product they make, of the greater dependence on their industry of other industries, or of their greater ability to use coercive methods. But suppose this were not so? Suppose, in spite of the self-contradictoriness of the assumption, that all workers by coercive methods could raise their money wages by an equal percentage? Nobody would be any better off in the long run, than if wages had not been raised at all.
首先，不论瓦格纳—塔夫脱—哈特利法（Wagner-Taft-Hartley Act）以及其他的法律条文怎样从法律上和政治上给予工会组织以极大的支持（人们可能会在某些情况下把这种做法称为强制），但美国仍然只有约四分之一的潜在受惠的劳工参加了工会。导致工会化的条件要比我们通常所认为的要特殊得多。即使人人参加工会，各工会的力量也不可能很均衡，一如今天的形式。某些种类的工人有远比他人更有利的策略性优势，要么是会员人多势众，要么是生产的产品不可或缺，要么其它行业对这一行业更为依赖，要么是更会使用暴力。但是，假如情况相反呢？撇开这一假设中自我矛盾之处不谈， 如果所有工人的货币工资都可以通过强迫手段等比例地提高，又能如何呢？可以肯定，从长期来看，没有人会过得比工资丝毫不变要好那怕一点点。

This may of course happen for short periods or in special circumstances. If wages are forced up in a particular firm, in such competition with others that it cannot raise its prices, the increase will come out of its profits. This is less likely to happen if the wage increase takes place throughout a whole industry. If the industry does not face foreign competition it may be able to increase its prices and pass the wage increase along to consumers. As these are likely to consist for the most part of workers, they will simply have their real wages reduced by having to pay more for a particular product. It is true that as a result of the increased prices, sales of that industry’s products may fall off, so that volume of profits in the industry will be reduced; but employment and total payrolls in the industry are likely to be reduced by a corresponding amount.
这种情况在特定条件下或者短期当然有可能发生。例如，某家公司的工资被迫调高，但为了跟同行竞争，产品无法涨价，那么调增那部分工资，只好从利润中扣取。比较少见的是整个行业全部调增工资。如果那个行业不担心外国货的竞争，该行业就可以通过提高价格把调资负担转嫁给消费者。考虑到消费者大多是劳工，必须付更多的钱购买商品，也就等于所有 实际工资会因此下降。那么由于商品提价，那个行业的销量会减少，从而利润基数会减少，而该行业从业员工人数和总工资也会相应减少。

The investors once had liquid funds. But they have put them, say, into the railroad business. They have turned them into rails and roadbeds, freight cars and locomotives. Once their capital might have been turned into any of a thousand forms, but today it is trapped, so to speak, in one specific form. The railway unions may force them to accept smaller returns on this capital already invested.
投资人曾经拥有很多流动资金，但是假设这些资金已经投资到铁路业了。他们的资金已经转变为了铁轨和路基、货车厢和火车机车。他们的资金曾经可以投到其他很多地方，现在却被套牢在一种特定形式上了。对于那些已经投资下去的资本， 铁路工会可以迫使投资人接受较低的投资回报。

but in the long run they will not even bother to replace items that fall into obsolescence or decay. 但是长期而言，他们想都不会想去追加投资对破旧落后的设备搞更新换代。
Even though labor for a time will have a greater relative share of the national income, the national income will fall absolutely; so that labor’s relative gains in these short periods may mean a Pyrrhic victory: they may mean that labor, too, is getting a lower total amount in terms of real purchasing power.
尽管劳动者收入占国民收入的相对比率会一度提高，绝对要下降；劳工相对获益，不仅是短期胜利，甚至是得不偿失的 胜利，因为从实际购买力看，劳动力的收入总量同样降低了。

The belief that they do so rests on a series of delusions. One of these is the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, which sees the enormous rise in wages in the last half century, due principally to the growth of capital investment and to scientific and technological advance, and ascribes it to the unions because the unions were also growing during this period. 相信工会能够做到这一点的想法是以一系列错误认识为基础的。其中之一是“后发者因之而发” （post hoc ergo propter hoc）的巧合谬论。在过去的半个世纪以来，资本投资增长和科技进步工资大幅升高，因此工资稳步增长，但同期工会也不断成长，因此他们将工资增长归功于工会。

They have certainly been a force working to hold down or to reduce wages if their effect, on net balance, has been to reduce labor productivity; and we may ask whether it has not been so.如果工会造成的总体影响是降低了劳动生产率，那么工会肯定是阻碍工资上涨、甚至是降低劳工工资的一股力量；我们可以探索事实是否是这样？

With regard to productivity there is something to be said for union policies, it is true, on the credit side. 谈到生产力，不少工会政策还是可圈可点的，有贡献是真的。

And sometimes ignorant or shortsighted employers might even reduce their own profits by overworking their employees. 甚至有的雇主无知短视，不顾一切让员工操劳过度反而减少利润。

It was a gain to leisure, but not necessarily to production and income, to reduce a forty-eight-hour week to a forty-four-hour week. The value to health and leisure of reducing the working week to forty hours is much less, the reduction in output and income more clear. But the unions now talk about, and sometimes enforce, thirty-five and thirty-hour weeks, and deny that these can or need reduce output or income.
再从48小时减为44小时，对劳工的休闲生活有好处，但不一定能增加生产和收入。将每周的工作时数缩减为40小时，对劳工的健康和休 闲生活不会增加多少好处，而产出和收入将明显减少。但是现在的工会讨论甚至有时还强制实行35小时乃至于30小时的周工时制度，否认这样做会或者需要减少产出或者收入。

What A produces constitutes the demand for what B produces.甲所生产 的东西会产生对乙的产品的需求。

Their net effect, therefore, in the long run and for all groups of workers, has been to reduce real wages—that is, wages in terms of the goods they will buy—below the level to which they would otherwise have risen. 从长期 看来，工会政策的净影响对于所有工人来讲是减少了实际工资——也就是说，从他们能够购买的商品的角度来年的工资— —使之低于它们本可以提高到的水平。

[转自寻正邮件090722]

Thinking has become so emotional and so politically biased on the
subject of wages that in most discussions of them the plainest
principles are ignored. People who would be among the first to deny
that prosperity could be brought about by artificially boosting
prices, people who would be among the first to point out that minimum
price laws might be most harmful to the very industries they were
designed to help, will nevertheless advocate minimum wage laws, and
denounce opponents of them, without misgivings.
一说起工资，众人的思维就变得如此情绪化和政治化，以致于大多数讨论都忽略了最基本的原则。那些会马上站出来驳斥“
人为抬高商品价格可以带来繁荣”的说法的人，会马上站出来指出最低价格法规可能适得其反，给它们想要帮助的行业造成最大的伤害的人，仍然会力挺最低工资法，并且抨击持反对意见的人，连一丝疑虑也无。
Yet it ought to be clear that a minimum wage law is, at best, a
limited weapon for combatting the evil of low wages, and that the
possible good to be achieved by such a law can exceed the possible
harm only in proportion as its aims are modest.
然而应当明确的一点是，最低工资法至多不过是克服低工资弊端的一个有限的武器。由它所能得到的好处是否能够超过它所造成的损害，要取决于其目标有所克制的程度。
The first thing that happens, for example, when a law is passed that
no one shall be paid less than $106 for a forty-hour week is that no
one who is not worth $106 a week to an employer will be employed at
all. 举例来说，当政府通过一项法令，规定工人每周工作40小时的工资不得低于106美元，那么，首当其冲的是那些劳动价值够不上这106美元的劳工，他们将不会补雇佣。
You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for
anyone to offer him anything less.
法律可以规定雇主给雇员开的工资达不到某个标准就算违法，但法律并不能使雇来的人的劳动价值一定够得上这个标准。
You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his
abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive
the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of
rendering. In brief, for a low wage you substitute unemployment. You
do harm all around, with no comparable compensation.
你在阻止了社会享有他能提供的有限的力所能及的服务的时候，只不过是剥夺他能力与条件能挣到相应工资的权利。简单地说，你用失业取代低工资，损害了所有人的利益而没有相当的补偿。
The only exception to this occurs when a group of workers is receiving
a wage actually below its market worth. This is likely to happen only
in rare and special circumstances or localities where competitive
forces do not operate freely or adequately; but nearly all these
special cases could be remedied just as effectively, more flexibly and
with far less potential harm, by unionization.
针对上述情况的唯一例外是一群劳工的工资低于了市场价值。这种状况极为少见、情况非常特殊，或者是发生在竞争力量无法自由而充分地发挥作用的地区。但是几乎所有这些特殊的情况，都可以通过组织工会的方式予以解决，同样有效，却比法律条例更灵活，副作用也远比之为小。
Such shifts, however, are not easily made, nor are the consequences of
artificial wage-raising so easily escaped. 然而，这种转嫁是不易办到的，
就象人为地调高工资的后果也难以避免一样。
A higher price for the product may not be possible: it may merely
drive consumers to the equivalent imported products or to some
substitute. Or, if consumers continue to buy the product of the
industry in which wages have been raised, the higher price will cause
them to buy less of it.
产品提价的可能性可能不存在：因为消费者会转而去买同类进口产品或改用其它替代品。即便消费者继续购买提高工资行业的产品，但较高的价格将迫使他们买得比从前更少。
When such consequences are pointed out, there are those who reply:
“Very well; if it is true that the X industry cannot exist except by
paying starvation wages, then it will be just as well if the minimum
wage puts it out of existence altogether.”
在我们指出此类后果以后，有人会说：“行啊，如果X行业全靠低工资吊命，那么还不如用最低工资法把这个行业完全淘汰掉。”
But this brave pronouncement overlooks the realities. 这种大胆的说法忽视了现实。
It overlooks, first of all, that consumers will suffer the loss of
that product. 首先，它忽视了消费者将再也得不到此种产品。
Yet the higher we make the relief payment, the worse we make the
situation in other respects. 然而，提高救济金，越高，则其它方面的后果就会越糟。
Moreover, whatever the sum we offer for relief, we create a situation
in which everyone is working only for the difference between his wages
and the amount of the relief.
更进一步说，无论救济金标准高还是低，都会造成了这种局面，即：每个人努力工作，挣得的只是工资与救济金之间的差额。
Yet this would create political headaches of its own.可是这样做却会有政治麻烦。
To shorten the account, the minimum wage was raised to $1.40 in 1967,
to $1.60 in 1968, to $2.00 in 1974, to $2.10 in 1975, and to $2.30 in
1976 (when the average wage in all private nonagricultural work was
$4.87) 长话短说，1967年最低工资增为1.40美元，1968年为1.60美元，1974年为2.00美元，1975年为2.10美元，
1976年为2.30美元（那时所有私营非农业生产就业者的平均工资是4.87美元）。
Then in 1977, when the actual average hourly wage in nonagricultural
work was $5.26, the minimum wage was raised to $2.65 an hour, with
provision made for notching it up still further in each of the next
three years. 1977年，非农工人的平均工资达到每小时5.26美元，最低工资也提高到每小时2.65美元，附加条款规定在此后三年中要相继增长进一步提高。
Though the legislation follows the rise of the prevailing market wage
rate, the myth continues to be built up that it is the minimum wage
legislation that has raised the market wage.
尽管是最低工次在跟随市场工资进行提高，但总是有人构建最低工资立法提高了市场工资水平这一迷信。
Since Hazlitt added the footnote, the minimum wage has been increased
three times: in 1981 it was increased to $3.35, in 1990 to $3.80, and
in 1992 to $4.25.
在黑兹利特上述备注之后，最低工资又增加了三次：在1981年增至3.35美元，1990年为3.80美元，1992年为4.25美元。
Increases in unemployment (especially teenage minority unemployment)
and decreases in job creation followed each of these increases.
每一次最低工资的增加，随伴随着失业增加（尤其是少数族裔的年轻人失业）与新增就业机会的减少。
Thereafter it could theoretically fail to increase wage rates as much
as other industries, and so pay “substandard” wages for that
particular specialized skill. 形成垄断之后，从理论上讲，它可以向有其具体特殊技能的工人支付“低于应有水平
”的工资，而不是象其它行业一样大幅度地提高工资。
But this would be likely to happen only if that industry (or company)
was sick or shrinking; if it were prosperous or expanding, it would
have to continue to offer high wages to increase its labor force.
但是这种情况只有在该产业（或公司）病入膏肓或者龟缩时才有可能；如果它处于兴盛或扩张阶段，则必须继续用高工资才能吸引扩增其员工人数。
But all employers must pay enough to hold workers or to attract them
from each other.
但是无论公司大小，所有的雇主都必须支付够高的工资，才能留住员工，竞争人才。
This is perhaps as good a place as any to point out that what
distinguishes many reformers from those who cannot accept their
proposals is not their greater philanthropy, but their greater
impatience. 也许这是最佳时候，指出许多改革者与那些不能接受他们建议的人之间的区别，并不在于他们更有善心，而是他们更缺乏耐心。
And in trying to answer this we must never lose sight of a few
elementary truisms. We cannot distribute more wealth than is created.
We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces.
在回答这个问题时，请不要无视一些最基本的真理，我们没办法无中生有，让劳工报酬长期高出其创造的价值。
Real wages come out of production, not out of government
decrees.实际工资来源于产值，而不是来源于政府的法令。

[转自寻正邮件090722] 

In addition, they, or those with capital from other sources, may fear that the government may at any time find an excuse for imposing rent controls even on the new buildings. And it often does.

此外，他们或其他具有资金来源的人们有钱也不敢投，因为担心政府随时另找借口，突然对新房屋实施房租管制。引事常有发生。

A common next step of legislatures, acting under merely political pressures or confused economic ideas, is to take rent controls off “luxury” apartments while keeping them on low or middle-grade apartments.

迫于压力或由于混乱不清的经济思想，下一个步骤通常是取消“高档”住宅的房租管制，而同时继续维持中低档住宅的房租管制。

The accommodations for the low-income groups, therefore, will deteriorate in quality, and there will be no increase in quantity. 因此，对于低收入群体来讲，其住房质量将会恶化，而且数量上也不会有什么增加。

They may actually abandon their property and disappear, so they cannot be held liable for taxes.他们可能当真抛弃房产，溜之大吉，从而避免纳税。

In recent years, in New York City, it has become a common sight to see whole blocks of abandoned apartments, with windows broken, or boarded up to prevent further havoc by vandals. Arson becomes more frequent, and the owners are suspected.

近年来，在纽约城区内，经常可见整段的街区都是废弃的公寓建筑，窗户破烂，或者用木板钉死以防遭人恣意毁坏。纵火案比以前增多，房主就有嫌疑。

They contend that private enterprise has “failed” again; that “private enterprise cannot do the job.” Therefore, they argue, the State must step in and itself build low-rent housing.

他们争辩说，私有制度再度 “失灵”，“私有产业解决不了问题”。因此，他们力陈，国家必须介入，一肩担起兴建廉租房的重任。

This has been the almost universal result in every country that was involved in World War II or imposed rent control in an effort to offset monetary inflation.

对于那些参与过二次世界大战国家，以及那些为了平抑通货膨胀而实施房租管制的国家来说，这几乎是统一的结局。

Another all but irreversible step is taken toward the total Welfare State.

这是向全面的福利国家迈进的另一个几乎不可逆的步骤。

Even the opponents of rent control are then disposed to concede that the removal of controls must be a very cautious, gradual, and prolonged process. Few of the opponents of rent control, indeed, have the political courage and economic insight under such conditions to ask even for this gradual decontrol.鉴于这种情况，甚至反对实施房租管制的人也会妥协，认为取消管制必须慎重、渐进、慢慢来。实际上，就是连这种逐步取消管制的方案，在房租管制的人中，也极少有人 怀有政治上的勇气和经济上的远见而敢于提倡。

The political excuses offered for continuing rent control pass credibility.

继续实施房租管制的政治借口毫无道理可言。（我的理解Pass这里是错过的意思。）

The injustice imposed on landlords is flagrant. They are, to repeat, forced to subsidize the rents paid by their tenants, often at the cost of great net losses to themselves.

强加于房东们的不公正待遇是公然的恶行。大家不要忘了，他们是被强制补贴租户的租金的，为此他们往往要自己承担很大的净亏损。

The politicians ignore this. Men in other businesses, who support the imposition or retention of rent control because their hearts bleed for the tenants, do not go so far as to suggest that they themselves be asked to assume part of the tenant subsidy through taxation.

政治家们忽视了这一点，而其他行业的人有可能因为同情租户的处境而支持实施或者维持房租管 制，但他们绝不会自找麻烦，建议通过纳税而自己也向租户提供部分的补贴。

Few words carry stronger obloquy than slumlord. 甚少有比“贫民窟主”（slumlord）更具有贬义的词汇了。

And what is a slumlord? 贫民窟主是什么样的人呢？

He is not a man who owns expensive property in fashionable neighborhoods, but one who owns only rundown property in the slums, where the rents are lowest and where payment is most dilatory, erratic and undependable. It is not easy to imagine why (except for natural wickedness) a man who could afford to own decent rental housing would decide to become a slumlord instead.

他并不拥有坐落在黄金地段的豪宅，而是只有位于贫民窟的破旧老屋，那里的房租是最便宜的，而租金的支付又是最拖拉、最不稳定、最靠不住的。很难想象，很难想像一个 人（除非天性邪恶）具有相当的经济条件，可以拥有像样的房屋出租的话，相反他选择了去作一个贫民窟主。

When unreasonable price controls are placed on articles of immediate consumption, like bread, for example, the bakers can simply refuse to continue to bake and sell it. 不合理的价格管制施加在日用消费品上的时候，比如面包，面包店只要停止烘焙、停止出售面包就行了。

It may take several years before tenants begin to feel the results of the discouragement to new building, and to ordinary maintenance and repair. 可能要住上好几年，寻租户才会开始感受到房东无力维修与扩建的苦果。

[转自寻正邮件090625]

Government Price-Fixing
政府价格管制
  
It is the wartime inflation that mainly causes the pressure for price-fixing. At the time of writing, when practically every country is inflating, though most of them are at peace, price controls are always hinted at, even when they are not imposed.
战时通货膨胀是产生政府启动价格管制压力的主要原因。本书撰稿时，大多数国家安享和平，但都存在着通货膨胀，各国政府总会萌发管制物价的念头，即便没有真正实施。

Because the black market, however, finally supplanted the legal price-ceiling market, it must not be supposed that no harm was done. 不过，并不因为黑市最终取代了法定限价市场，我们就可以认为这个过程没有任何伤害。

【本章内容应当为所有关心中国医疗卫生改革，所有中国医疗卫生体系的消费者所熟读，天上不会掉芡饼，但中国人天天都在吃天上掉下来的芡饼，然后满腔抱怨。寻正注】