《资本在21世纪》系列只六————《经济学人》社论

Capitalism and its critics
资本主义和它的批评者
A modern Marx
当代的马克思

Thomas Piketty's blockbuster book is a great piece of scholarship, but a poor guide to policy
从学术方面来讲，托马斯·皮凯蒂的畅销书可谓巨著。但是，如果把它当做政策指南，这本书就不怎么样了。

May 3rd 2014 | From the print edition

WHEN the first volume of Karl Marx's “Das Kapital” was published in 1867, it took five years to sell 1,000 copies in its original German. It was not translated into English for two decades, and this newspaper did not see fit to mention it until 1907. By comparison, Thomas Piketty's “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” is an overnight sensation. Originally published in French (when we first reviewed it), Mr Piketty's vast tome on income-and-wealth distribution has become a bestseller since the English translation appeared in March. In America it is the top-selling book on Amazon, fiction included.

当年，卡尔·马克思的《资本论》第一卷在1867年出版后，其最初的德文版用了5年的时间才卖出了1000册。在这之后又过了20年，这本书才被翻译成英文，而当本报认为应该提及这本书时，已经是1907年了。相比之下，托马斯·皮凯蒂的《资本在21世纪》则是一夜成名。这部有关收入和财富分配的大部头著作最初是用法文出版的（当时，我们第一个对其进行了评论），自其英文版于今年3月问世后，目前已成为一本畅销书。在美国，它是包括小说类书籍在内的亚马逊第一畅销书。

The book's success has a lot to do with being about the right subject at the right time. Inequality has suddenly become a fevered topic, especially in America. Having for years dismissed the gaps between the haves and have-nots as a European obsession, Americans, stung by the excesses of Wall Street, are suddenly talking about the rich and redistribution. Hence the attraction of a book which argues that growing wealth concentration is inherent to capitalism and recommends a global tax on wealth as the progressive solution.

该书的成功，与其在正确的时间探讨了正确的问题有很大的关系。“不平等”成为一个热门话题是最近突然才出现的，这在美国表现的尤其明显。在这之前，美国人多年来一直不把贫富差距当成是一个问题，认为它不过就是困扰欧洲的一个问题罢了。但是，当他们受到华尔街穷奢极欲的刺激后，美国人也突然陷入了贫富差距与再分配问题的讨论之中，而这本书之所以对美国人具有如此之大的吸引力，其原因就在于该书所提出的主要论点：财富的日益集中是资本主义本身所固有的一个属性；而作为解决这一题的进步性方案，就是在全球范围内对财富收税。

“Capital” has duly enraptured the left, infuriated the right and spiced up the dismal science in the popular mind (see article). But if Mr Piketty does set the tone of debate on inequality, the world will be the poorer for it. For like its 19th-century namesake, “Capital” contains some marvellous scholarship, but as a guide to action, is deeply flawed.

因此，自该书出版以后，左派为之而狂喜，保守派为之而恼怒。而在普通人看来，它不过就是给沉闷的科学增添了一道佐料而已。但是，如果皮凯蒂不将其论调设定为不平等的话，这个世界或许会因此而更加贫穷。因为，就像与其同名的19世纪的那部巨著一样，从学术方面来讲，《资本在21世纪》堪称杰作。但是，如果把它当成是行动的指南的话，他是有很深的缺陷的。

“Capital” makes three big contributions in its 577 pages. First, Mr Piketty, a pioneer in using tax statistics to measure inequality, painstakingly documents the evolution of income and wealth over the past 300 years, particularly in Europe and America. In doing so, he shows that the period from about 1914 to the 1970s was an historical outlier in which both income inequality and the stock of wealth (relative to annual national income) fell dramatically. Since the 1970s both wealth and income gaps have been rising back towards their pre-20th-century norms. There are surely a few snafus in these statistics, but this work has transformed understanding of the history of wealth, with eye-popping results. Who knew, for instance, that the annual value of inheritances in France has tripled from less than 5% of GDP in the 1950s to about 15%, not all that far from the 19th-century peak of 25%? As a piece of empirical sleuthing, the book is indisputably brilliant.

《资本在21世纪》用577页的篇幅贡献出三大成就。第一，作为利用税务数据来衡量不平等的先行者，皮凯蒂以其艰苦细致的研究，纪录了财富和收入在过去300年间的演变，尤其是在欧洲和美国的演变，并由此提出这样一个结论：从1914年开始一直到上世纪60年代结束的这段时间，是一段历史的异常期。在这段时间内，收入的不平等和相对于年均国民收入的财富总量，双双出现大幅下降；但是，自上世纪70年以来，财富的差距和收入的差距，又一起开始向着20世纪之前的水准回升。这些统计数据中肯定存在着不少混乱之处，但是这种工作已经改变了对财富历史的理解，其结果令人大开眼界。比如说，[在此之前,]谁知道遗产的价值在法国年均GDP中所占的比例已经上升了三倍，从上世纪50年代不到5%上升到如今的25%左右，离19世纪的巅峰值25%没有多远了呢？因此，作为一部经验研究之作，该书之杰出是无可争议的。

Mr Piketty's second contribution is to come up with a theory of capitalism that explains these facts and offers a prediction of where wealth distribution is heading. His central claim is that the free-market system has a natural tendency towards increasing the concentration of wealth, because the rate of return on property and investments has consistently been higher than the rate of economic growth. Two world wars, the Depression and high taxes pushed down the return on wealth in the 20th century, while rapid productivity and population rises pushed up growth. But without such countervailing factors, Mr Piketty argues, higher returns on capital will concentrate wealth—especially when, as now, an ageing population means that growth should slow.

皮凯蒂的第二个贡献是提出了一个有关资本主义的理论，利用这个理论，既可以解释上述那些事实，也为财富分配将流向何处提供了一个预言。他的核心主张是：因为财产和投资的回报率一贯高于经济增长率，因此自由市场体系具有一种与生俱来的趋势，那就是：财富会日渐走向集中。发生在20世纪的两次世界大战、大萧条和高税收压低了财富的回报，而生产力的提高和人口的快速增加又推动了增长。但是，皮凯蒂指出，如果没有这两个作用力如此相反的因素的话，资本回报的提高会带来财富的日益集中，尤其是在像当前这样的情况下——人口的老龄化意味着增长应该放慢——更是如此。

Mr Piketty's expectation of rising wealth concentration is not outlandish. However, it is a prediction based on extrapolating from the past, not an inherent model of capitalism. He assumes that the returns to capital will not fall substantially even as the stock of wealth rises. That may prove to be true, but the Piketty prediction is a hypothesis, not an iron law.

皮凯蒂对财富日益集中的预期并不出人意料。然而，这种预期是建立在建立在过去基础上的一种推断，因而它不是资本主义固有的模式。根据他的假设，即便在财富总量增加的情况下，资本回报也不会有实质性的下降。这种假设可能会被证明是正确的，但是这种预期终归是一种假设，不能称之为“铁律”。

Nit-Piketty
幼稚的皮凯蒂

That is where the problems start, because Mr Piketty's third contribution is to offer policy proposals that assume this growing concentration of wealth is not only inevitable, but the thing that matters most. He prescribes a progressive global tax on capital (an annual levy that could start at 0.1% and hits a maximum of perhaps 10% on the greatest fortunes). He also suggests a punitive 80% tax rate on incomes above $500,000 or so.

这就是问题的所在。因为，作为该书的第三个贡献，皮凯蒂提出了基于下列假设的政策建议：财富的日益集中并不是不可避免的，但确实至关重要的事情。因此，治愈这一顽疾的药方就是在全球范围内征收资本累进税（对最大的财富，每年的征税标准，在开始时是其价值的0.1%，最高可达到10%）。另外，他还建议对收入超过500000美元（包括500000美元）的收入实施80%的惩罚性税率。

Here “Capital” drifts to the left and loses credibility. Mr Piketty asserts rather than explains why tempering wealth concentration should be the priority (as opposed to, say, boosting growth). He barely acknowledges any trade-offs or costs to his redistributionist agenda. Most economists, common sense and a lot of French businesspeople would argue that higher taxes on income and wealth put off entrepreneurs and risk taking; he blithely dismisses that. And his to-do list is oddly blinkered in its focus on taxing the rich. He ignores ways to broaden the ownership of capital, from “baby bonds” to government top-ups of private saving accounts. Some capital taxes could sit nicely in a sensible 21st-century policy toolkit (inheritance taxes, in particular), but they are not the only, or even the main, way to ensure broad-based prosperity.

至此，《资本在21世纪》开始转向左派，丧失了可信性。在解释为何应当把减少财富集中当做是首要问题（而不是像相反的那样，把提升增长作为首要问题）时，皮凯蒂只是坚持自己的观点，并没有给出原因。而对于他的再分配纲领，他也没有做出任何妥协或是讨价还价。对大多数经济学家，普通人和众多的法国商界人士来说，他们会认为提高对财富和收入的税收会打消企业家的创业精神，并且是一种冒险的行为；他草率地将这种观点置之一边。同时，他还把自己的待办事项心胸狭隘地集中在对富人收税方面，忽视了从小额债券到由政府担保的私人储蓄账户等扩大资本所有权的方法。有的资本税可能会乖乖地坐在合理的21世纪政策工具箱中（尤其是遗产税），但是它们不是确保大范围繁荣的唯一方式或者是主要的方式。

Mr Piketty's focus on soaking the rich smacks of socialist ideology, not scholarship. That may explain why “Capital” is a bestseller. But it is a poor blueprint for action.

皮凯蒂把注意力放在榨取富人的行为已经失去了其学术价值，更多的是一种社会主义者的意识形态。这或许就是《资本在21世纪》成为畅销书的原因。但是，如果将其作为行动的蓝图，这部著作就不能胜任了。