Op-Ed Columnist
Osborne and the Stooges
December 24, 2013
专栏作者
英国的紧缩政策赢了政治输了经济
保罗·克鲁格曼 2013年12月24日
There was, I’m
pretty sure, an episode of “The Three Stooges” in which Curly kept
banging his head against a wall. When Moe asked him why, he replied,
“Because it feels so good when I stop.”
《活宝三人组》(The Three Stooges)里有一集，我记得相当清楚，科里(Curly)不停地用脑袋撞墙。莫(Moe)问他为什么那样，他回答：“这样一停下来感觉就特别好。”
Well, I thought it
was funny. But I never imagined that Curly’s logic would one day become
the main rationale that senior finance officials use to defend their
disastrous policies.
我觉得这很好笑。但我从来没想过，有朝一日高级财政官员在为自己的灾难性政策辩护时，科里的逻辑会成为他们的主要理据。
Some background: In
2010, most of the nation’s wealthy nations, although still deeply
depressed in the wake of the financial crisis, turned to fiscal
austerity: slashing spending and, in some cases, raising taxes in an
effort to reduce budget deficits that had surged as their economies
collapsed. Basic economics said that austerity in an already depressed
economy would deepen the depression. But the “austerians,” as many of us
began calling them, insisted that spending cuts would lead to economic
expansion, because they would improve business confidence.
说一点背景：2010年，尽管仍处在金融
危机制造的一派严重萧条景象中，多数的富国选择了财政紧缩：削减开支，在有些地方还要提高税收，以期把经济崩溃时暴涨的预算赤字降下来。经济学基本知识告
诉我们，在经济萧条时采取紧缩政策会加剧萧条。但这些人，我们开始称他们为“紧缩党人”，坚称削减开支能带来经济扩张，因为它们能提升商业信心。
The result came as
close to a controlled experiment as one ever gets in macroeconomics.
Three years went by, and the confidence fairy never made an appearance.
In Europe, where the austerian ideology took hold most firmly, the
nascent economic recovery soon turned into a double-dip recession. In
fact, at this point key measures of economic performance in both the euro area and Britain are lagging behind where they were at this stage of the Great Depression.
其结果，仿佛与一场宏观经济学的对照实验并无二致。三年过去了，信心的童话始终没有显现。在欧洲这个紧缩党意识形态大行其道的地方，初现端倪的经济复苏很快变成了二次衰退。事实上，欧元区和英国在此刻的经济表现关键数据，相比大萧条时期的对应阶段是滞后的。
It’s true that the
human cost has been nothing like what happened in the 1930s. But that’s
thanks to government policies like employment protection and a strong
social safety net — the very policies austerians insisted must be
dismantled in the name of “structural reform.”
如今对于民生的代价的确跟上世纪30年代不可同日而语。但那是拜一些政府政策所赐，比如就业保护和一张强大的社会安全保障网——而这些正是紧缩党人打着“结构改革”的旗号坚决要求废除的。
Was it really austerity that did the damage? Well, the correlation is very clear: the harsher the austerity, the worse the growth performance. Consider the case of Ireland, one of the first nations to impose extreme austerity, and widely cited in early 2010 as a role model. Three years later, after repeated declarations that its economy had turned the corner, Ireland still has double-digit unemployment, even though hundreds of thousands of working-age Irish citizens have emigrated.
这些破坏真的是紧缩造成的吗？两者的相关性是显而易见的：紧缩越严厉，增长成绩越差。以爱尔兰为例，那是最早开始实施极端紧缩政策的国家之一，在2010年初被作为楷模广为传颂。三年后，反复宣告经济已经扭转颓势的爱尔兰仍然有两位数的失业率，尽管已经有成千上万正值工作年龄的爱尔兰公民移居海外。
The depressing
effect of austerity in a slump is, in short, as clear a story as
anything in the annals of economic history. But the austerians were
never going to admit their error. (In my experience, almost nobody ever
does.) And now they’ve seized on the latest data to claim vindication,
after all. You see, some austerity countries have started growing again.
Britain appears to be experiencing a significant bounce; Ireland has
finally had a decent quarter; even Spain’s economy is showing faint signs of life. And the austerians are holding victory parades.
简而言之，在经济史册中，经济低潮期实施
紧缩政策会产生的压制效应是再清楚不过的。但紧缩党人永远不会承认错误。（在我的经历中，几乎没见过有人这么做的。）结果，现在他们又要抓住最新的数据来
证明自己是对的。你看，有的紧缩国家已经开始恢复增长了啊。英国看起来正在出现有力的反弹；爱尔兰终于有了一个像样的季度；连西班牙的经济都开始有点微弱
的生命迹象了。紧缩党人开始举行胜利大游行。
Perhaps the most
brazen example is George Osborne, Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer,
and the prime mover behind his country’s austerity agenda. No sooner
had positive growth numbers appeared than Mr. Osborne declared that “Those in favor of a Plan B” — that is, an alternative to austerity — “have lost the argument.”
这其中最厚颜无耻的大概是英国财政大臣乔治·奥斯本( George Osborne)，该国紧缩大业的头号推动者。一等积极的增长数据出现，奥斯本先生立马宣布“那些支持B计划的人”——即紧缩党人的反对者——“输了这场辩论。”
O.K., let’s think
about this claim, above and beyond the general observation that
fluctuations over the course of a quarter or two generally don’t tell
you much.
好吧，且不提一两个季度的波动并不能说明多少问题这个常理，我们来看看他的说法。
First of all,
Britain’s recent growth doesn’t change the reality that almost six years
have passed since the nation entered recession, and real G.D.P. is
still below its previous peak. Taking the long view, that’s still a
story of dismal failure — as I said, a track record worse than Britain’s
performance in the Great Depression.
首先，英国近期的增长并没有改变过去将近六年来的现实，自国家陷入衰退后，真正的GDP仍然是低于此前的最高点的。往长远看，整个故事依然说的是令人沮丧的失败——如我所说，业绩记录上看还不如英国在大萧条时期的表现。
Second, it’s
important to understand the history of austerity in Mr. Osborne’s
Britain. His government spent its first two years doing big things:
sharply reducing public investment, increasing the national sales tax,
and more. After that it slowed the pace; it didn’t reverse austerity,
but it didn’t make it much more severe than it already was.
其次，必须要了解在奥斯本的英国，紧缩有一段怎样的历史。他的政府在最初的两年里一直在做大事：大幅削减公共投资，增加国家消费税等等。而后这个政府放满了脚步；它没有逆转紧缩的势头，但也没有采取比以往更严厉的紧缩措施。
And here’s the
thing: Economies do tend to grow unless they keep being hit by adverse
shocks. It’s not surprising, then, that the British economy eventually
picked up once Mr. Osborne let up on the punishment.
问题是这样：除非不停地被不利因素打击，经济本来就是倾向于增长的。那么奥斯本先生暂时停止惩罚后，英国的经济终于开始抬头，其实并不意外。
But is this a
vindication of his austerity policies? Only if you accept Three Stooges
logic, in which it makes sense to keep banging your head against a wall
because it feels good when you stop.
但这是他的紧缩政策生效的证明吗？除非你接受活宝三人组逻辑，按照那个逻辑，不停地拿脑袋撞墙是可以理解的行为，因为一旦停下来就舒服了。
Now, I’m well aware that the austerians may win political points all the same. Political scientists tell us
that voters are myopic, that they judge leaders based on economic
growth in the year or so before an election, not on overall performance
in office. So a government can preside over years of depression, yet win
re-election if it can engineer an uptick late in the game.
那么，我明白，紧缩党人也许还是会拿到政治分。政治学家告诉我们，选民是短视的，他们根据选举前一年左右的经济增长来选择领袖，不会去看一届政府执政期间的总体表现。所以一个政府可以不怕持续数年的萧条，因为只要在最后关头撺出一点增长，还是能赢得选举。
But that’s
politics. When it comes to economics, there’s only one possible answer
to the absurd triumphalism of the austerians: Nyuk. Nyuk. Nyuk.
但那是政治。至于经济学，在紧缩党人敲锣打鼓的荒诞庆典面前只会给出一个回应：吖咳。吖咳。吖咳。
Copyright © 2013 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.
沒有留言:
張貼留言