Buttonwood
梧桐树专栏

Tied to the mast
自缚桅杆

Jun 25th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Coping with the politics of austerity
面对节俭政策



TAXES are unpopular, and so are public-spending cuts. Democracies may thus have an innate tendency to run up budget deficits. How to control the politicians’ urge to splurge? In Greek mythology the song of the Sirens was so seductive that enraptured sailors let their ships run on to the rocks. Odysseus stopped his sailors’ ears with wax and had himself tied to his ship’s mast so he could hear the song without endangering his vessel.

税收总是不受欢迎的，削减公共支出亦是如此。因此，民主天生便有催生预算赤字的趋势。那如何才能控制政客们挥霍无度呢？希腊神话中，诱人的塞壬之歌能使水手癫狂，诱使他们驾船撞向岩礁。奥德赛用蜡封住水手们的耳朵，而将自己捆缚在船的桅杆之上，这样他即使听到了歌声，也不会危害到自己的航船。

Various attempts through history have been made to tie politicians to the mast and prevent them from ruining the public finances. The gold standard was one. By anchoring the value of money, the rights of creditors were protected. Spendthrift governments were forced to cut back.

历史上曾有许多尝试，试图将政客们束缚在桅杆之上，以防止他们摧毁公共财政。金本位制度便是其中之一。锚定了货币的价值，债权人的利益便受到了保护。而大手大脚的政府则被迫削减支出。

But the gold standard and its successor, the Bretton Woods system, eventually fell apart. In their place came the “bond-market vigilantes”. The idea was that investors would boycott the debt issues of offending countries and force governments to bring fiscal policy back into line. That discipline was undermined by the investment policies of Asian and Middle Eastern central banks, which recycled their surpluses into government bonds and kept countries’ cost of borrowing down.

然而，金本位制度以及其替代者，布雷顿森林体系，最终都崩溃了。取代他们的是“债券市场义务警员”。支撑他的理论是，投资者能够杯葛不安分国家的国债发行，而这能够迫使政府的财政政策回归平衡。然而这一制度却因亚洲及中东各国央行的投资政策而积重难返了，他们手中的大量外汇盈余都回流购买政府债券，使得发行国债的成本一直得以运行于低位。

Now German politicians are attempting to impose their own discipline. In May they voted to restrict the ability of the federal government to run deficits of more than 0.35% of GDP from 2016. Compare that with a forecast deficit of 6% (including the Länder) next year. Even though the rule distinguishes between structural and cyclical deficits, it could still require Germany to raise taxes and slash spending in a recession—the mistake governments made in the early 1930s.

现在，德国政客们正尝试制定他们自己的新规则。五月，他们投票准备，自2016年起，联邦政府的赤字水平将被限制在年生产总值的0.35%以下。而预计明年政府（包括联邦州政府）的赤字将达到6%。即使该规定区分了结构性以及周期性赤字，但这依旧迫使德国要在萧条时提高税收，大量削减支出，而这正是20世纪30年代早期政府所犯的错误。

Perhaps the proposal will not stick. After all, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act of 1985, designed to balance the American budget, was eventually overridden. And just look at California to see how well-meaning measures can lead to fiscal disaster. A two-thirds majority in the state legislature is needed to change taxes, and voters have used their referendum powers to block reforms. The result is that the state is drifting towards bankruptcy. Moody’s warned on June 19th that it may downgrade California’s credit rating by several notches, which could turn America’s most populous state into a junk-bond issuer.

或许该提议并不会持久。毕竟，1985年为平衡美国预算而制定的葛兰姆法案也最终被撤销了。同时，若能了解下加州，你便会明白好心措施是如何导致财政灾难的。其州需要2/3多数的立法机构批准才能调整税收，同时选民还能利用请愿书以组织改革。其结果是，该州政府已濒临破产。摩迪于6月19日警告将调低加州数个信用等级，而这将使美国人口最大州成为垃圾债券发行人。

The California example is a sharp rejoinder to the superior attitude taken by Americans and Europeans during the Latin American and Asian crises of the 1980s and 1990s. Developing countries, it was assumed, were simply too immature to take control of their finances. But developed-country voters may be equally unwilling to swallow the medicine of austerity.

加州的例子是对北美与欧洲人对于20世纪八九十年代拉丁美洲，亚洲危机时居高临下态度的鲜明反驳。发展中国家简单的被认为是不够成熟，以致无法掌控自己的财政。然而，发达国家的选民或许也一样不愿意服下节俭这剂苦口良药。

The politicians best placed to tackle their deficits may be those that are relatively free of legal restraint. In Britain, which has been described as an “elective dictatorship”, the next government, likely to be the Conservative party, will inherit a fiscal mess. But it will be able to slash spending and raise taxes without hindrance, albeit at the cost of staggering unpopularity.

政客处理这些赤字的最佳环境或许是拥有相对宽松立法限制。处于所谓“民选专政”下的英国，其保守党很有可能组阁下一届政府，从而接手一团乱麻的财政系统。然而他的政府有能力在不受阻挠的情况下，削减支出，提高税收。尽管这是以触犯众怒为代价的。

To switch from Greek myth to Roman history, this might be called the Cincinnatus approach, after the Roman general who was summoned from his farm to deal with enemy attack and returned to the plough once his duty was done. The Conservatives can do the right thing, at the cost of being a one-term government. The temptation, of course, will be to fudge the choice: announce a plan to cut waste in public spending, raise a few stealth taxes and hope that the economy recovers sufficiently to solve the problem.

讲完希腊神话，让我们将目光转向罗马历史。保守党做的这一切或许能被称为罗马执政官的行为，即像罗马时的将领那样，敌人来袭时，接受命令投锄从戎，出战义务完成后，卸甲归田。以无法执政连任为代价，保守党能够做出正确的措施。当然，他们可以尝试迂回而行：宣布公共支出削减浪费的计划，巧立名目的征税，同时期望经济充分回复以解决问题。

But this crisis may be different. First, tax revenues seem to have become very volatile. This may be due to economies’ dependence on the financial sector and the taxes on traders’ bonuses, investment-bank profits, capital gains on rising stockmarkets and all the rest. The shrinking of the financial sector may have caused a permanent dent in the public finances. Second, the long-term fiscal problems of ageing populations (health care, pension costs) will start to make themselves felt over the next decade.

然而，这次危机可能会有所不同。首先，税收收入貌似会变得很不稳定。这是源于经济对于金融产业以及对交易报酬，投资银行利润，股市上扬时的资本收益及其他税收的依赖。金融产业的缩水可能永久创伤公共财政。其次，人口老龄化的长期财政问题（卫生保健，养老金花销）将在下时代开始浮现。

It is true that governments have recovered from enormous deficits in the past, notably after large wars. But post-war economies have a natural tendency to rebound, as soldiers return to more productive work, factories switch from making tanks to building cars, and so forth. No such automatic boosters will kick in this time. The kind of patriotic spirit that encourages consumers to put up with austerity is not yet in evidence either. There could instead be a long decade of political turbulence as voters find that the champagne has run out, and all they have left to drink is castor oil.

政府确实曾经从巨额赤字中恢复元气，尤其是大型战争之后。但战后经济存在反弹的自然趋势。因为士兵们回归到产出更高的产业，工厂从生产坦克变为制造汽车，诸如此类。自动化的拥护者在这时并不会出声抱怨。爱国主义鼓励消费者忍受节俭在当时也未大行其道。而当选民发现香槟已尽，仅剩蓖麻油可供饮用时，取而代之的将会是长期的政治混乱。

 

 

Lily与Sunson合作翻译
http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=20280&page=1&extra=