削減政府開支無損美國經(jīng)濟增長
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????雖然上周國會投票使美國勉強逃過了債務(wù)違約的厄運,但開支削減的幅度未能讓標準普爾(Standard & Poor's)滿意。美國通過法案,決定削減政府開支2.1萬億美元,但標準普爾公司認為,這一目標與給予3A評級所需要的4萬億美元相去甚遠,因此降低了美國的主權(quán)信用評級。 ????但債務(wù)上限的提案只不過是美國向財政緊縮進行必要轉(zhuǎn)變的開始。不過,目前經(jīng)濟學(xué)家和權(quán)威人士已經(jīng)紛紛提出警告,在增長毫無起色的情況下,現(xiàn)在減少政府開支是大錯特錯。他們認為,按照經(jīng)濟學(xué)理論,很明顯,降低聯(lián)邦開支將使GDP嚴重縮水。 ????持這種論調(diào)的人包括《紐約時報》(New York Times)專欄作家保羅?克魯格曼,以及他在普林斯頓的同行阿蘭?布蘭德爾,和美聯(lián)儲(Fed)主席本?伯南克。近期,他們警告,過快、過于劇烈的政府開支削減將成為就業(yè)市場和經(jīng)濟增長的殺手。而奧巴馬總統(tǒng)的支持者,包括《赫芬頓郵報》(Huffington Post)霍華德?法恩曼在內(nèi),均擔(dān)心如果財政削減政策在2012年確定下來,將不可避免地導(dǎo)致經(jīng)濟增速放緩,進而可能威脅奧巴馬總統(tǒng)的連任大計。 ????凱恩斯學(xué)派認為,降低政府開支將不可避免地阻礙GDP的增長。雖然這種說法的支持者在不停地鼓吹這種觀點,但眼下這一點遠不確定。目前,包括芝加哥大學(xué)(University of Chicago)的尤金?法瑪和卡內(nèi)基?梅隆大學(xué)的阿蘭?梅爾澤在內(nèi),許多優(yōu)秀的經(jīng)濟學(xué)家的觀點就與之截然相反。美國為推動經(jīng)濟穩(wěn)健復(fù)蘇而推出的8,620億美元“刺激計劃”已經(jīng)徹底失敗。因此,美國人應(yīng)該仔細聽取一下這些人的觀點。他們認為,在過去兩年內(nèi),增加政府開支對于增加GDP沒有任何作用。因此,削減政府開支肯定同樣不會阻礙經(jīng)濟增長的步伐。 ????達特茅斯塔克商學(xué)院(Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business)的肯尼斯?弗朗斯教授認為:“過去三年,我們進行了大量的嘗試,并且付出了高昂的代價。盡管刺激政策絲毫未能產(chǎn)生凱恩斯主義支持者們預(yù)想的結(jié)果,但他們始終固執(zhí)地堅持該學(xué)派的政策路線。而且,他們的觀點日益獲得媒體和公眾的追捧。不經(jīng)讓人懷疑,究竟什么樣的證據(jù)才能促使人們質(zhì)疑政府增加開支將改善經(jīng)濟環(huán)境這一論調(diào)?!?/p> ????其實,人們之所以對“凱恩斯主義的擁護者”有如此執(zhí)著的信心,主要有兩個原因。首先是因為刺激計劃糟糕的效果。其次,盡管凱恩斯建議臨時提高政府開支和赤字來結(jié)束經(jīng)濟衰退,但他從未提倡過在現(xiàn)有龐大的結(jié)構(gòu)性預(yù)算赤字基礎(chǔ)上,大幅增加政府開支。 ????理解“支出等于增長”論調(diào)背后的邏輯,這一點至關(guān)重要。GDP由四個部分組成:消費性開支、個人投資、政府開支和進出口貿(mào)易逆差。凱恩斯主義支持者對“乘數(shù)效應(yīng)”深信不疑。這種理論認為,與新增借貸和開支相比,政府借貸和支出的每一美元,都能更大幅度增加GDP。例如,如果支出新增加1萬億美元,而乘數(shù)效應(yīng)為1.2——這一理論的擁護者,包括政府部門都信誓旦旦地表示乘數(shù)超過1——GDP將額外增加1.2萬億美元。在這種情況下,美國人可以擁有更多的教育資源,更多的太陽能補貼和橋梁,而且,這一切根本不需要企業(yè)或者消費者多花一分錢。 錢“轉(zhuǎn)”錢,何其難! ????然而,這種算法根本就是一種騙人的鬼話,完全是一種錯誤的理論。在物理學(xué)中,能量既不能被創(chuàng)造,也無法被銷毀,而是僅僅改變了存在的形式。所以,政府真的可以通過借貸和開支創(chuàng)造出本來不存在的錢嗎? ????對刺激計劃的懷疑者分為兩類。我們將第一類稱為強硬派。其中包括過去半個世紀最有影響力的金融經(jīng)濟學(xué)家法瑪,還有他在芝加哥大學(xué)的同事、著名的宏觀經(jīng)濟學(xué)家約翰?柯克蘭。法瑪與柯克蘭認為,乘數(shù)根本不存在,通過簡單的會計計算就可以看出,美國政府花的每一塊錢,必然會使GDP其他部分減少相同的數(shù)額。最終,錢“轉(zhuǎn)”錢只能成為一種騙人的把戲。 ????柯克蘭認為:“借給政府的錢肯定得有出處,不會憑空冒出來。刺激計劃只是在把這筆錢搬來搬去?!?/p> ????強硬派認為,如果美國國民購買政府公債,那么他們自己的支出和存款必然會等額下降。政府在發(fā)放給各州的撥款或高速鐵路中的大肆花費必然可以通過降低汽車或叉車開支來抵消??驴颂m強調(diào),目前存款已經(jīng)全部花光。它們被企業(yè)投資于廠房或工作場所,或招聘新員工。將本該用于私營部門投資的存款轉(zhuǎn)移給政府,用于支付工資和津貼,這對產(chǎn)出沒有任何影響。 ????但如果政府從國外大舉借貸呢?強硬派們認為,原理都是一樣。如果日本人購買美國國債,我們可以用日元購買更多日本產(chǎn)的半導(dǎo)體或其他日本產(chǎn)品,從而導(dǎo)致進口增加,GDP降低。但其實所有借貸的初衷都是為了促進增長。 ????實際上,強硬派主張,政府開支根本不會增加GDP,即便短期內(nèi)也不會。另外一類經(jīng)濟學(xué)家被稱為“生產(chǎn)率鷹派”。他們承認,提高借貸和開支能臨時促進增長。但他們認為產(chǎn)出的短期增長效果遠遠達不到刺激政策支持者們主張的水平,而大舉借貸和加大開支的長期影響則非常具有破壞性。 ????諾貝爾獎獲得者、芝加哥大學(xué)的羅伯特?盧卡斯和哈佛大學(xué)(Harvard)的羅伯特?巴若均對乘數(shù)效應(yīng)的有效性進行了批判,并強烈譴責(zé)借貸對未來增長造成的負擔(dān)。盧卡斯稱:“刺激政策和乘數(shù)效應(yīng)被過分夸大。德國和英國都在削減開支,他們的經(jīng)濟表現(xiàn)比我們好得多?!?/p> ????另外一位持懷疑觀點的是梅爾澤。這位著名的貨幣主義者認為,依賴開支將使美國走向完全相反的方向,在應(yīng)該儲蓄并把存款投入新廠房和物流系統(tǒng)時卻在鼓勵消費。梅爾澤表示:“美國目前需要加大對資本設(shè)備的開支,但借貸卻降低了這些開支的成效。我們需要提高競爭力,成為出口主導(dǎo)型經(jīng)濟,增長的推動力應(yīng)該是儲蓄和投資,而不是借貸和消費。” ????在這場辯論中,懷疑者們令人印象深刻,他們的觀點值得重視。如果說這些人搞錯了——鼓吹增加開支的人正是這么看的——為什么此前的開支并沒有帶來更好的增長和更多的就業(yè)崗位?答案很有可能是,美國人正被一套虛構(gòu)的理論所迷惑,而它的擁護者們現(xiàn)在又開始鼓吹另外一套謊言。 ????(翻譯 劉進龍) |
????Congress may have narrowly escaped a debt debacle last week, but it couldn't agree on enough cuts to satisfy Standard & Poor's, which downgraded U.S. sovereign debt after the deal's $2.1 trillion in proposed cuts came in below the $4 trillion the rating agency felt was necessary to warrant a triple-A rating. ????Still, it's the beginning of a much needed shift towards fiscal austerity. But now economists and pundits are warning that curbing government spending now, with growth in a rut, is a major mistake. It's totally obvious by pure economic math, they argue, that lower federal outlays will shrink GDP. ????Americans are hearing this argument from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, his Princeton colleague Alan Blinder, and Fed chief Ben Bernanke, who recently cautioned that quick, severe reductions in government outlays could prove a job and growth killer. Supporters of President Obama, including Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post, worry that when the cuts take hold in 2012, the slowdown they'll inevitably produce could endanger the President's prospects for reelection. ????But the Keynesian argument that lower government spending automatically hampers GDP growth, right now, is far from the sure thing its champions keep trumpeting. Many eminent economists, from Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago to Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon, take a totally different view. And the utter failure of the $862 billion "stimulus" to produce a robust recovery should encourage Americans to listen carefully to the view that more spending did little or nothing to raise GDP in the past two years, and lowering it will no virtually nothing to hamper expansion going forward. ????We have been running an enormous and very expensive experiment for the last three years," says Kenneth French, a professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. "Although the stimulus seems to have produced none of the effects predicted by its Keynesian advocates, they remain as adamant as ever about their policy prescriptions. And more and more of the press and the public seem to be buying their arguments. One wonders what evidence would make people question the conclusion that more government spending will improve economic conditions." ????Indeed, the persistent overconfidence of the "Keynesians" is remarkable for two reasons. The first is the poor results of the stimulus plan. The second is that although Keynes recommended temporarily higher spending and deficits to exit a recession, he never even remotely advocated big increases in government outlays on top of existing, gigantic structural budget deficits. ????It's crucial to understand the logic behind the "spending-equals-growth" argument. GDP has four components: consumer spending, private investment, government outlays, and the excess, or deficit, of exports over imports. The Keynesians believe in something called the "multiplier effect." It states that every dollar the government borrows and spends raises GDP by more than it would increase in the absence of the new borrowing and spending. For example, if new outlays rise by $1 trillion, and the multiplier effect is 1.2 -- and advocates, including the administration, swear the multiple is over 1 -- GDP will jump by an extra $1.2 trillion. In that scenario, Americans can have more teachers, solar energy subsidies and bridges without sacrificing a dime in corporate investments or consumer spending. Moving money around ????But that math could be bunk. It certainly doesn't sound right. In physics, energy can be neither created nor destroyed, it simply changes form. So is it really possible for the government to create money that wouldn't otherwise exist by borrowing and spending? ????The stimulus skeptics come in two categories. The first we'll call the hard-liners. They include Fama, one of the most influential financial economists of the past half-century, and his University of Chicago colleague John Cochrane, a prominent macroeconomist. Fama and Cochrane essentially argue that the multiplier doesn't exist, and that by simple accounting, every dollar in government spending must reduce another part of GDP by an equal amount, resulting in a wash. ????"The money you lend the government has to come from somewhere," says Cochrane. "The stimulus is just moving the same money around." ????The hard-liners argue that if Americans buy government bonds, their own spending and savings must fall by an equal amount. What the government lavishes on grants to the states or high-speed trains is precisely offset by lower spending on cars or forklifts. Cochrane emphasizes that savings are all spent. They flow into corporate investments in plants or workstations, or to hire new workers. Simply transferring savings that would be spent on private investment to the government to spend on salaries and subsidies has zero impact on output. ????What if the government borrows the money from abroad? It's the same story, say the hard-liners. If the Japanese buy our bonds, we will use their yen to purchase more Japanese semiconductors or other Japanese products, increasing imports and hence lowering GDP at the same time all the borrowing is supposed to be raising growth. ????In effect, the hardliners maintain that government spending doesn't raise GDP at all, even in the short-term. The second group of economists, call them the "productivity hawks," acknowledge that higher borrowing and outlays may temporarily raise growth. But they claim that the immediate bump in output is far weaker than its advocates maintain, and that the longer-term effects of the big borrowing and spending are extremely damaging. ????Both Robert Lucas, a Nobel Prize winner from the University of Chicago, and Robert Barro of Harvard debunk the power of the multiplier effect, and decry the burden borrowing imposes on future growth. Says Lucas: "The stimulus and multiplier effect were way oversold," says Lucas. "Germany and Britain are cutting spending, and they're doing better than we are." ????Another prominent skeptic is Meltzer. For this distinguished monetarist, the reliance on spending is moving America in precisely the wrong direction, boosting consumption when we should be saving far more and plowing those savings into new plants and logistics system. "The borrowing lowers the productive types of spending on capital equipment America needs now," says Meltzer. "We need to raise our competitiveness and become an export-led economy driven by savings and investment rather than borrowing and consumption." ????The skeptics are an impressive group, and they deserve a prominent place in the debate. If these folks just don't get it, as the spending advocates loudly proclaim, why hasn't all the spending resulted in better growth and more jobs? It's highly probable that Americans were sold a myth, and its champions are now selling still another myth. |