废除富人的谬误案例

经济学人：

Two new books argue for doing away with the rich. Not in the Pol Pot sense of murdering them all, for the writers—a Dutch professor of ethics and the director of a left-wing British think-tank—are impeccably nice. Rather, they favour policies that would make it impossible to have “too much” money.

有两本新书主张废除富人。不是波尔布特意义上的谋杀他们所有人，因为作家——一位荷兰伦理学教授和一家英国左翼智囊团的负责人——都无可挑剔。相反，他们赞成那些不可能拥有 “太多” 资金的政策。

How much is too much? Ingrid Robeyns of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, the author of “Limitarianism”, thinks the state should prevent anyone from accumulating more than $10m (or pounds, or euros; it is a rough figure). In addition to this hard “political limit”, she thinks there should be a much lower “ethical limit”. In countries where the state pays for health care and pensions, no one should amass more than $1m in savings, and society should scorn anyone who does.

多少才算太多？荷兰乌得勒支大学的英格丽德 · 罗宾斯（Ingrid Robeyns）是《限制主义》（Limitarianism）一书的作者，她认为国家应该阻止任何人积累超过 1000 万美元（或英镑或欧元; 这是一个粗略的数字）。除了这个硬性的 “政治限制” 之外，她认为应该有一个低得多的“道德限制”。在国家支付医疗保健和养老金的国家，任何人都不应该积累超过 100 万美元的储蓄，社会应该鄙视任何这样做的人。

Luke Hildyard, who runs the High Pay Centre in London and whose book is called “Enough”, stops short of an “absolute cap” but suggests something close to it. No one should earn more than the current threshold for entering the top 1% of taxpayers, he believes. (In Britain that was over £180,000 a year in 2021-22; in America it was about $330,000 in 2021). Redistributing additional income or wealth beyond this point, or enacting policies so that such riches never accrue in the first place, “has no real downsides”, he claims.

卢克 · 希尔德亚德（Luke Hildyard）在伦敦经营着高薪中心（High Pay Centre），他的书名为《够了》（Enough），他没有提出 “绝对上限”，但提出了一些接近它的东西。他认为，任何人的收入都不应该超过目前进入前 1% 纳税人的门槛。（在英国，2021-22 年每年超过 180,000 英镑; 在美国，2021 年约为 330,000 美元）。他声称，在此之后重新分配额外的收入或财富，或制定政策，使这些财富从一开始就不会累积，“没有真正的坏处”。

The authors offer many reasons for loathing the loaded. They are bad for the environment, with their private jets and occasional holidays in space. They aggravate housing shortages by owning multiple homes. Some of them buy political influence. Some acquired their wealth corruptly. A pragmatist might tackle these problems directly, by taxing carbon emissions, allowing more homes to be built, tightening campaign-finance laws or cracking down on corruption. But for Ms Robeyns and Mr Hildyard, everything depends on cutting the rich down to size.

作者提供了许多讨厌加载的理由。他们对环境有害，有私人飞机，偶尔在太空度假。他们通过拥有多套房屋加剧了住房短缺。他们中的一些人购买了政治影响力。有些人通过腐败获得财富。实用主义者可以通过对碳排放征税、允许建造更多房屋、收紧竞选资金法或打击腐败来直接解决这些问题。但对罗宾斯和希尔德亚德来说，一切都取决于把富人的规模缩小到一定程度。

They make the reasonable point that the marginal benefit of an extra $1,000 is greater for the poor than the rich. A hungry family could buy food for months; a banker might blow it on a single dinner, not including wine. The authors go further, though, blaming rising inequality for a host of ills. A radically more equal society would be less stressed, they argue (no rat race!) and more cohesive (less envy!). The money hoarded by the rich could be used to uplift the poor and improve public services.

他们提出了一个合理的观点，即对穷人来说，额外 1 000 美元的边际收益比富人更大。一个饥饿的家庭可以买几个月的食物; 一个银行家可能会在一顿晚餐上吹它，不包括葡萄酒。然而，作者走得更远，将一系列弊病归咎于不平等的加剧。他们认为，一个更加平等的社会将受到更少的压力（没有老鼠赛跑！）和更有凝聚力（更少的嫉妒！）。富人囤积的钱可以用来提升穷人的生活水平，改善公共服务。

Mr Hildyard makes these points more concisely—and with flashes of wit. His riff about how many banknotes it would take to cover every floor in Britain—£1.7trn ($2.1trn) in fivers—made this reviewer smile, as did his musing on the relative prices of pointless luxuries. A one-hour guest appearance at your birthday party from James Corden, a British comedian who likes to sing karaoke in cars, is about as costly as a half-kilo of cocaine, apparently.

希尔德亚德先生更简洁地阐述了这些观点，并带有机智的闪光。他关于覆盖英国每层楼需要多少张钞票的即兴表演——1.7 万亿英镑（2.1 万亿美元）——让这位评论家笑了，他对毫无意义的奢侈品的相对价格的思考也让这位评论家笑了。喜欢在车里唱卡拉 OK 的英国喜剧演员詹姆斯 · 科登（James Corden）在生日派对上客串一小时，显然与半公斤可卡因一样昂贵。

When it comes to practicalities, however, both books lose their grip. How, exactly, can one abolish the rich? Mr Hildyard favours a maximum wage and a hefty wealth tax, among other measures. Professor Robeyns says it will require a patchwork of policies and is irritated by those who try to oversimplify her idea by describing it as a marginal tax rate of 100%. But if she is serious when she says that $10m should be “as hard a limit as possible”, that implies something very close to a marginal tax rate of 100%.

然而，当谈到实用性时，两本书都失去了控制力。究竟如何才能废除富人？希尔德亚德先生赞成最高工资和高额财富税等措施。罗宾斯教授说，这将需要一系列政策，并对那些试图将她的想法描述为 100% 的边际税率而过度简化她的想法的人感到恼火。但是，如果她是认真的，她说 1000 万美元应该是 “尽可能严格的限制”，那就意味着非常接近 100% 的边际税率。

Such a policy would provoke tax-avoidance on an epic scale. Brainy advisers would strain every synapse to help rich folk hide their wealth or shift it to friendlier jurisdictions. If, against the odds, a government managed to thwart such tricks, many rich folk would emigrate. And if governments all adopted similar wealth-banning policies and enforcement was tight, as the authors desire, the effects would be even worse.

这样的政策将引发史诗级的避税行为。聪明的顾问会竭尽全力帮助富人隐藏他们的财富或将其转移到更友好的司法管辖区。如果政府克服重重困难，成功挫败了这种伎俩，许多富人就会移民。如果政府都采取类似的财富禁令政策，并且像作者所希望的那样严格执行，那么效果会更糟。

Imagine a world where any gain above £180,000 a year, or $10m over a lifetime, was forfeit. Highly productive people—such as surgeons and engineers, never mind word wizards like J.K. Rowling—would have no financial incentive to keep working after that point was passed. Perhaps some would carry on toiling out of altruism or for the love of the job. But many would be tempted to kick back, relax and deprive the world of their exceptional skills, drive and imagination.

想象一下，在这样一个世界里，任何超过 18 万英镑的收益，或一生中超过 1000 万美元的收益，都会被没收。高生产力的人——比如外科医生和工程师，更不用说像 J.K. 罗琳这样的文字奇才了——在那个时候过去后，就没有经济动力继续工作了。也许有些人会出于利他主义或对工作的热爱而继续辛勤工作。但许多人会想放松一下，剥夺世界的特殊技能、动力和想象力。

Consider, too, the incentives such a system would create for entrepreneurs. You have an idea for a better mousetrap. Under the old system, you might mortgage your house to raise cash to build a mousetrap factory, in the hope of making a fortune. Under the new system, you must shoulder the same risks (such as losing your home), for a small fraction of the rewards.

还要考虑这样一个系统将为企业家创造的激励机制。你有一个更好的捕鼠器的想法。在旧制度下，你可能会抵押你的房子来筹集现金来建造一个捕鼠器工厂，希望能发财。在新制度下，您必须承担相同的风险（例如失去房屋），以获得一小部分回报。

Potentially big ideas would stay small. Even if your mousetrap is so good that the world might reasonably be expected to beat a path to your door, it would be irrational to borrow money to expand production. The financial risks of trying to build a global business fall on you. The rewards go to someone else. Only a mug would take such a bet.

潜在的大想法会保持小规模。即使你的捕鼠器非常好，以至于世界可以合理地期望你打败一条通往你家门口的道路，借钱扩大生产也是不合理的。试图建立全球业务的财务风险落在您身上。奖励归其他人所有。只有杯子才会下这样的赌注。

Or a politician, betting with other people’s money. Indeed, most ventures that required hefty capital upfront—from chip factories to offshore wind farms—would probably have to be owned or backed by the state. Since the record of state-run industries over the past century has been one of cronyism, sluggishness and inefficiency, this ought to have given the authors pause.

或者一个政客，用别人的钱打赌。事实上，大多数需要巨额前期资金的企业——从芯片工厂到海上风电场——可能都必须由国家拥有或支持。由于过去一个世纪国营企业的记录是任人唯亲、迟钝和效率低下的记录之一，这应该让作者停下来。

Like many on the left, they gloss over the huge fall in global poverty over the past few decades and focus on inequality within countries, which they are sure is rising inexorably thanks to the unfairness of capitalism. But is it? In March Maxim Pinkovskiy, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and his co-authors published new estimates suggesting that global inequality fell dramatically between 1980 and 2019 and that inequality within countries had barely budged since the 1990s. (Though an asset-price boom later increased wealth inequality.) 

像许多左翼人士一样，他们掩盖了过去几十年来全球贫困的大幅下降，并关注国家内部的不平等，他们确信由于资本主义的不公平，这种不平等正在无情地上升。但事实果真如此吗？今年 3 月，纽约联邦储备银行（Federal Reserve Bank of New York）经济学家马克西姆 · 平科夫斯基（Maxim Pinkovskiy）和他的合著者发表了新的估计，表明全球不平等在 1980 年至 2019 年间急剧下降，而国家内部的不平等自 1990 年代以来几乎没有改变。

There may still be a reasonable case for more redistribution, at least in some places. But in a study of 27 rich countries in 2017, Jacob Lundberg of Uppsala University in Sweden found that five (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Sweden) were already on the wrong side of the Laffer curve. That is, their top tax rates were so high—adding up to around 70% in Sweden, for example—that their governments would raise more money if they cut them.

至少在某些地方，可能仍然有合理的理由进行更多的再分配。但在 2017 年对 27 个富裕国家进行的一项研究中，瑞典乌普萨拉大学的雅各布 · 伦德伯格（Jacob Lundberg）发现，有五个国家（奥地利、比利时、丹麦、芬兰和瑞典）已经处于拉弗曲线的错误一侧。也就是说，他们的最高税率如此之高——例如，瑞典加起来约为 70%——以至于他们的政府如果削减税率，就会筹集更多的资金。

The idea that governments might find a lot more cash from tax rates higher than Sweden’s is delusional. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s finance minister, said that “the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to procure the largest quantity of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing.” He did not add: “unless it’s a big goose, in which case strangle it.” ■

认为政府可能会从比瑞典更高的税率中找到更多的现金的想法是妄想。路易十四的财政部长让 - 巴蒂斯特 · 科尔伯特（Jean-Baptiste Colbert）说：“征税的艺术在于拔鹅毛，以尽可能少的嘶嘶声获得最多的羽毛。他没有补充说：“除非是一只大鹅，在这种情况下，就把它勒死。