财税茶座

经济学人： SHOULDN’T OIL PRICES be surging? War has returned to the Middle East. Tankers in the Red Sea—through which around 12% of seaborne crude is normally shipped—are under attack by Houthi militants. And OPEC, a cartel of oil exporters, is restricting production. Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, has invoked the spectre of 1973, when the Yom Kippur war led to an Arab oil embargo that quadrupled prices in just three months. But oil markets have remained calm, trading mostly in the range of $75 and $85 per barrel for much of last year. 油价不应该飙升吗？战争又回到了中东。红海的油轮 - 通常通过红海运输约 12% 的海运原油 - 受到胡塞武装分子的袭击。石油输出国组织（OPEC）是一个石油出口国的卡特尔，正在限制产量。美国国务卿安东尼 · 布林肯（Antony Blinken）援引了 1973 年的幽灵，当时赎罪日战争导致阿拉伯石油禁运，在短短三个月内使油价翻了两番。但石油市场一直保持平静，去年大部分时间交易价格大多在每桶 75 美元至 85 美元之间。 Chart: The Economist 图：《经济学人》 There have been exceptions. Brent crude, a global benchmark, ticked above $85 per barrel last spring after OPEC+, a larger organisation which includes Russia, said it would cut production. When Saudi Arab

经济学人： The approach was fun, but has fallen out of favour 这种方法很有趣，但已经失宠了 “Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.” So starts Alfred Marshall’s “Principles of Economics”, a 19th-century textbook that helped create the common language economists still use today. Marshall’s contention that economics studies the “ordinary” was not a dig, but a statement of intent. The discipline was to take seriously some of the most urgent questions in human life. How do I pay my bills? What do I do for a living? What happens if I get sick? Will I ever be able to retire? “经济学是一门研究人类日常生活的学科。”阿尔弗雷德 · 马歇尔（Alfred Marshall）的《经济学原理》（Principles of Economics）就是这样开始的，这是一本 19 世纪的教科书，帮助创造了经济学家今天仍在使用的通用语言。马歇尔关于经济学研究 “普通” 的论点不是挖掘，而是一种意图的陈述。这门学科是认真对待人类生活中一些最紧迫的问题。我如何支付账单？我靠什么谋生？如果我生病了怎么办？我能退休吗？ In 2003 the New York Times published a profile of Steven Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago, in which he expressed a very different perspective: “In Levitt’s view,” the article read, “eco

经济学人： The group that claimed responsibility for the Crocus City Hall attack is a growing threat to Russia—and the West 声称对番红花市政厅袭击事件负责的组织对俄罗斯和西方的威胁越来越大 TWO WEEKS before gunmen stormed the Crocus City Hall near Moscow, killing at least 137 people, American intelligence warned that “extremists” had “imminent plans” to attack large events in the city. On March 7th Russian security services said they had foiled an attack by Islamic State (IS), a jihadist outfit, on a synagogue in Moscow. So it was little surprise that, hours after the Crocus City attack, the group claimed responsibility. On March 25th four suspects, reportedly from Tajikistan, appeared in court. American officials believe they are part of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). What is this outfit, and what threat does it pose? 在枪手袭击莫斯科附近的番红花市政厅，造成至少 137 人死亡的两周前，美国情报部门警告说，“极端分子”有 “迫在眉睫的计划” 袭击该市的大型活动。3 月 7 日，俄罗斯安全部门表示，他们挫败了圣战组织伊斯兰国（IS）对莫斯科一座犹太教堂的袭击。因此，毫不奇怪，在番红花城袭击事件发生数小时后，该组织声称对此负责。3 月 25 日，据报道来自塔吉克斯坦的四名嫌疑人出庭。美国官员认为他们是

经济学人： T wo 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

经济学人： Patriotism revolutionised a classic dish 爱国主义彻底改变了一道经典菜肴 IN 1821 GREEK revolutionaries rose up against the Ottomans, setting off years of bloodshed that culminated in the creation of a free state in 1829. On March 25th each year Greeks celebrate Independence Day with parades and abundant feasts of bakaliaros skordalia, delicately battered cod with garlic dip. 1821 年，希腊革命者起义反对奥斯曼帝国，引发了多年的流血事件，最终在 1829 年建立了一个自由国家。每年的 3 月 25 日，希腊人都会举行游行和丰盛的 bakaliaros skordalia 盛宴来庆祝独立日，这是一种精致的鳕鱼配大蒜蘸酱。 And yet it is moussaka—sloppy squares of richly flavoured mince, oil-slicked aubergines and indulgent béchamel sauce—that many consider Greece’s national dish. Its entry into the pantheon of Greek gastronomy came about a century after Greek independence. The country’s embrace of the dish is a lesson in how traditions are forged and how a nation’s cuisine evolves. 然而，许多人认为希腊的国菜是穆萨卡（moussaka）——由味道浓郁的肉末、油榨的茄子和放纵的贝沙梅尔酱组成的邋遢方块。它进入希腊美食的万神殿是在希腊独立大约一个世纪后。这个国家对这道菜的接受是一个教训，说明传统是如何形成的，以及一个国家的美食是如何演变的。 Nikolaos

经济学人： Some hikers believe that the last mile is the hardest: all the blisters and accumulated aches slow progress at the very end. Others swear that it is the easiest because the finishing line is in sight. For the Federal Reserve, the last mile of its trek to bring inflation back to its 2% target has been simultaneously easy and hard. Easy in the sense that the central bank has not budged on interest rates for eight months, instead letting its previous tightening do the work. Hard because the wait for inflation to recede has felt rather long. 一些徒步旅行者认为，最后一英里是最难的：所有的水泡和累积的疼痛都会在最后减缓前进速度。其他人则发誓这是最简单的，因为终点线就在眼前。对于美联储来说，将通胀率带回 2% 目标的最后一英里既容易又困难。从某种意义上说，这很容易，因为央行已经八个月没有在利率上让步，而是让之前的紧缩政策发挥作用。很难，因为等待通胀消退的时间相当长。 image: The Economist 图片来源： 《经济学人》 The slow easing of price pressures and America’s continued economic vigour have fuelled debate about whether the Fed might therefore chart a more aggressive course for the last mile of its anti-inflation journey. Policymakers had telegraphed that they

经济学人： WEIGHT-LOSS drugs called GLP-1 agonists help users shed fat, and with it the negative health effects of obesity. This can have life-changing effects for the people who take them. It is also increasingly affecting the lives of corporate citizens. Since June 2021, when Wegovy, the first GLP-1 slimming jab, was launched in America, the market value of WW (formerly Weight Watchers) has crashed by 90%. On February 28th Oprah Winfrey announced that she would leave the dieting firm’s board and sell all her shares in order to avoid a conflict of interest around her use of GLP-1s. Food giants such as Nestlé are already planning for a future where the drugs dampen demand for sugary snacks. Bosses of consumer-goods firms brought up weight-loss drugs twice as often in the last full set of quarterly earnings calls, in late 2023, as they had in the previous one (see chart 1). 称为 glp-1 激动剂的减肥药物可以帮助使用者减少脂肪，并消除肥胖对健康的负面影响。这会对服用它们的人产生改变生活的影响。它也越来越多地影响着企业公民的生活。自 2021 年 6 月首款 glp-1 减肥针 Wegovy 在美国上市以来

经济学人： Working out who earns what is surprisingly tricky. Both the very rich, who sometimes try to keep their wealth from the taxman, and the very poor, who are sometimes mistrustful of clipboard-wielding officials, are especially hard to pin down. Nevertheless, before the covid-19 pandemic, household surveys consistently found a fall in the number of people living in poverty. The World Bank counted 659m living on less than $2.15 a day in 2019, down from around 2bn in 1990. 弄清楚谁赚多少钱是非常棘手的。无论是非常富有的人（有时试图向税务员隐瞒自己的财富）还是非常贫穷的人（有时不信任挥舞着剪贴板的官员），都特别难以确定。然而，在 covid-19 大流行之前，家庭调查一致发现贫困人口数量有所下降。世界银行估计，2019 年有 6.59 亿人每天生活费不足 2.15 美元，低于 1990 年的约 20 亿。 Yet this progress came at a cost: a global “precariat” emerged, members of which were barely out of poverty and perilously exposed to shocks, while the top 1% got rich faster. That, at least, is the received wisdom. The World Inequality Database, a project associated with Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, two economists, combines tax data with other

经济学人： Hire a wealth manager, and one of their first tasks will be to work out your attitude to risk. If you are not sure exactly what this means, the questions are unlikely to help. They range from the inane (“How do you think a friend who knows you well would describe your attitude to taking financial risks?”) to the baffling (“Many television programmes now have a welter of fast whizzing images. Do you find these a) interesting; b) irritating; or c) amusing but they distract from the message of the programme?”). This is not necessarily a sign that your new adviser is destined to annoy you. Instead, it hints at something fundamental. Risk sits at the heart of financial markets. But trying to pin down precisely what it is, let alone how much of it you want and which investment choices should follow, can be maddening. 聘请财富经理，他们的首要任务之一就是了解您对风险的态度。如果您不确定这到底意味着什么，那么这些问题不太可能有帮助。它们的范围从空洞的（“你认为一个很了解你的朋友会如何描述你对承担金融风险的态度？”）到令人困惑的（“现在许多电视节目都有一堆快速的快速图像。你觉得这些是） 有趣的; b) 刺激性的；或者 c) 有趣，但它们分散了节目信息的注意力