为什么我们的经济依赖福利国家？
英国《金融时报》专栏作家 约翰?凯
2012年09月29日 06:23 AM
 
 
30多年前，我第一次参加了一场关于全球福利危机的会议。从此以后，我几乎每隔几个月就会收到一张出席这类会议的邀请。上周，美国自由派人士汤姆?帕尔默(Tom Palmer)来到伦敦，谴责“跨越世界的带动偷窃、堕落、操纵和社会控制等各种现象的火车头——我们称之为福利国家”。

这番咆哮的内容我们耳熟能详。现在提供的福利水平已到了负担不起的地步，政府财政是一场巨大的“庞氏骗局”。一个常见的结论是，如果当前某项可恶的政府开支将无限延续，那么就有必要估算这项成本的贴现值。帕尔默声称，美国医疗和社会保障项目的无资金准备负债的现值达到137万亿美元。

社会保障是代际转移的一种方式。唯一适于食用的面包是今天烤的面包：但为什么今天的面包师要供养已经退休的往日的面包师？我们为什么要照顾不能再为我们做贡献的老人？

答案可从伊曼努尔?康德(Immanuel Kant)的“绝对命令”理论中找到：如果人人都这么做，那么对所有人（包括我们自己年老时）都有好处。我们赡养我们的父辈和祖父辈，是期望后代人效仿，为我们做同样的事情。

然而，这种安排的后果的确具有庞氏骗局的特征。有一天，当世界毁灭时，最后一代劳动者安逸退休的希望将会破灭。同时，计算无资金准备债务的巨大规模是可能的，不过这并不重要。这些债务的价值将被后代的隐性承诺所抵消。

半个世纪前，伟大的经济学家保罗?萨缪尔森(Paul Samuelson)对这个问题进行了精彩的分析。如果这项分析不是用数学方式表达并且取了一个不吸引眼球的标题的话，可能会受到更广泛的关注。萨缪尔森的这篇文章叫做《在有或没有社会货币条件下一个精确的消费贷款利率模型》(An exact consumption-loan model of interest with or without the social contrivance of money)。

要用个人方式解决年老以后的问题，唯有储存起面包，等你老了、面包也已变味的时候，或者自己吃，或者拿出去卖。或者趁着年轻时贿赂更加年轻的人，让他们在你年老时照顾你。萨缪尔森证明，对于每代人而言，这些方法的结果都不如社会保障契约的结果——但活到审判日的那代人例外。

如果后代子孙同意承认前人创造的金融债权，抱着他们的后人也会这么做的期望，那么社会契约就能得以执行。这就是萨缪尔森所指的“社会发明的货币”(social contrivance of money)。货币不仅仅发挥交换媒介的作用，还是一种价值贮藏手段。

执行这一黄金定律的另一种方式是建立一个社会保障体系，在该体系中，每一代纳税人都同意赡养上一代。

这些类型的社会安排都会失败，也往往已经失败过。通货膨胀会阻碍货币发挥价值贮藏的功能。如果宣称以前理解的承诺如今负担不起了，社会契约就会遭到违背。贬值和违约都会使当代人受益，而牺牲前人和后人的利益。

如果有一代人要求享受比前代或者后代更高的生活标准，代际社会契约就岌岌可危。如果预期寿命增加，社会契约只有在工作年限和退休生涯同步延长的情况下才能维系。

医疗成本上涨（主要由老年人消耗掉）在任何地方都是一个问题。

但这些问题是经济基本面的产物，与处理这些问题的特定社会安排及制度安排无关。即使奥托?冯?俾斯麦(Otto von Bismarck)和威廉?贝弗里奇(William Beveridge)这些算不上恶棍的人从未发明福利国家的概念，这些问题也会存在。

如果夸大其词是为了吸引人们注意一个没有得到足够关注的问题，有时是可以原谅的。但如果这么做威胁到了经济安全所依赖的脆弱社会安排，那就不能轻易谅解了。

译者/倪卫国

 
September 25 2012 5:08 pm

The welfare state’s a worthy Ponzi scheme
 By John Kay
It is more than 30 years since I first attended a conference on the global welfare crisis. Rarely have a few months passed without an invitation to another. Last week Tom Palmer the American libertarian came to London to denounce the “world-straddling engine of theft degradation manipulation and social control we call the welfare state”.

The content of these rants is familiar. Levels of welfare provision are unaffordable; government finance is a huge Ponzi scheme. A common conclusion is to provide an estimate of the discounted value of the cost of some hated item of expenditure if its current provision were continued into the indefinite future. Mr Palmer reported that the present value of unfunded liabilities of US medicine and social security is $137tn.

Social security is a means of inter-generational transfer. The only bread fit to eat is bread baked today: but why should today’s bakers feed the retired bakers of yesteryear? Why should we look after old people who can no longer do anything for us?

The obvious answer invokes Kant’s categorical imperative: it would be good for everyone (including ourselves when we are old) if everyone acted in this way. We feed the generations of our parents and grandparents in the expectation future generations will come along and do the same for us. But the consequences of this arrangement do have the character of a Ponzi scheme. One day the world will end and the last generation of workers will have been cheated of their expectation of a peaceful retirement. In the meantime it is possible to calculate enormous measures of unfunded obligations and it doesn’t matter. The value of these obligations is offset by the implied commitments of future generations.

A brilliant analysis of the issues was provided half a century ago by Paul Samuelson the great economist – an analysis that might have received wider attention had it not been written in mathematics and published under the uninviting title of “An exact consumption-loan model of interest with or without the social contrivance of money”.

The only individualistic solutions to the problem of ageing are to store bread to eat or sell when it is stale and you are old; or to take the opportunity when young to bribe younger people to look after you in your dotage. Samuelson showed these outcomes were inferior to the outcome of the social security contract for every generation except the one alive on judgment day.

That social contract can be implemented if future generations agree to recognise the financial claims created by their predecessors in the expectation that their successors will do the same. That is what Samuelson meant by the “social contrivance of money”. Money acts not just as a medium of exchange but as a store of value. The other means of implementing this golden rule is a social security system through which successive generations of taxpayers agree to support their elders.

Both these types of social arrangement can fail and often have done. Inflation can prevent money acting as store of value. Or the social contract can be reneged on through an announcement that previously understood commitments are now unaffordable. Both debasement and default benefit a current generation at the expense of its predecessors and successors.

If one generation asserts for itself a higher relative standard of living than it offers to those before or after it the social contract between generations is threatened. If life expectancy rises that social contract can be sustained only if working lives and the length of retirement move in parallel. The rising cost of medical care largely consumed by the elderly is a problem everywhere.

But these issues are the product of economic fundamentals not the particular social and institutional arrangements used to handle them. They would be problems even if those improbable villains Otto von Bismarck and William Beveridge had never invented the welfare state.

Exaggeration can sometimes be forgiven when it is used to draw attention to a problem that has received insufficient attention. It is less easy to excuse when it threatens the fragile social arrangements on which economic security depends.

johnkay@johnkay.com