《資本在21世紀》系列之四

Thomas Piketty』s best-selling new book, 「Capital in the Twenty-First Century,」 argues incomeinequality is going to worsen. Ed Alcock for The New York TimesPARIS — Thomas Piketty turned 18 in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, so he was spared the tortured, decades-long French intellectual debate about the virtues and vices of communism. Even more telling, he remembers, was a trip he took with a close friend to Romania in early 1990, after the collapse of the Soviet empire.1989年，柏林牆倒塌。那一年，托馬斯·皮凱蒂剛好18歲，這使得他有幸沒有被捲入在法國知識界持續了數十年之久的有關共產主義善與惡的折磨人的討論。然而，在他的記憶中，比這些討論更有說服力的是，他在蘇聯崩潰之後的90年代早期同一位好朋友的羅馬尼亞之旅。「This sort of vaccinated me for life against lazy, anticapitalist rhetoric, because when you see these empty shops, you see these people queuing for nothing in the street,」 he said, 「it became clear to me that we need private property and market institutions, not just for economic efficiency but for personal freedom.」「這種旅行讓我對懶散的生活和反對資本主義的言論有了免疫力。因為，當你看到那些空蕩蕩的商店，看早那些在街上為了不存在的東西而排隊的人時，」他說，「它們讓我明白了一個道理：我們需要私有產權和市場制度，不僅僅是為了經濟效率，更是為了個人的自由。」But his disenchantment with communism doesn"t mean that Mr. Piketty has turned his back on the intellectual heritage of Karl Marx, who sought to explain the 「iron laws」 of capitalism. Like Marx, he is fiercely critical of the economic and social inequalities that untrammeled capitalism produces — and, he concludes, will continue to worsen. 「I belong to a generation that never had any temptation with the Communist Party; I was too young for that,」 Mr. Piketty said, in a long interview in his small, airless office here at the Paris School of Economics. 「So it"s easier in a way to reopen these big issues about capitalism and inequality with a fresh eye, because I was too young for that fight. I don"t have to justify myself as being pro-communist or pro-capitalist.」但是，對共產主義不再抱有幻想，並不意味著皮凱蒂已經背叛了曾經試圖去解釋資本主義「鐵律」的卡爾·馬克思的學術衣缽。他同馬克思一樣，也對不受約束的資本主義所帶來的經濟的和社會的不平等的提出了有力的批判，並得出結論認為，這種不平等會變得越來越嚴重。「我屬於從不對共產黨抱有幻想的那代人；當時我還太年輕，共產主義還打動不了我。」皮凱蒂在巴黎政治經濟學院的辦公室空間狹小，而且空氣流通不好。我們對他的專訪就是在這裡進行的。「由於在進行那場論戰時，我還太年輕。因此，對我來說，用一種新的眼光去再次審視有關資本主義和不平等這些大問題就比較容易了。我沒有必要去證明自己是站在共產黨一邊，還是站在資本主義一邊。」In his new book 「Capital in the Twenty-First Century」 (Harvard University Press), Mr. Piketty, 42, has written a blockbuster, at least in the world of economics. His book punctures earlier assumptions about the benevolence of advanced capitalism and forecasts sharply increasing inequality of wealth in industrialized countries, with deep and deleterious impact on democratic values of justice and fairness.今年42歲的皮凱蒂已經憑著他的新書《資本在21世紀》（哈佛大學出版社出版）引起了轟動——至少在經濟學界是如此。該書不僅揭穿了之前「發達資本主義是樂善好施」的假設，並且還預測說工業國家的財富不平等會大幅上升，民主價值觀的正義和公平會因此而受到深遠的和有害的影響。Branko Milanovic, a former economist at the World Bank, called it 「one of the watershed books in economic thinking.」 Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel in economic science and a columnist for The New York Times, wrote that it 「will be the most important economics book of the year — and maybe of the decade.」 Remarkably for a book on such a weighty topic, it has already entered The New York Times"s best-seller list.世行前經濟學家布蘭克·米蘭諾維奇稱這本書是「經濟思想領域的標誌性著作之一」，諾貝爾獎經濟學獎得主、《紐約時報》專欄作家保羅·克魯格曼說，這本書「將成為本年度乃至當今這個10年最重要的經濟類書籍」。該書早已進入《紐約時報》暢銷書排行榜，這對一本以如此沉重的話題為其主要內容的書來說是一個了不起的成就。「Capital in the Twenty-First Century,」 with its title echoing Marx"s 「Das Kapital,」 is meant to be a return to the kind of economic history, of political economy, written by predecessors like Marx and Adam Smith. It is nothing less than a broad effort to understand Western societies and the economic rules that underpin them. And in the process, by debunking the idea that 「wealth raises all boats,」 Mr. Piketty has thrown down a challenge to democratic governments to deal with an increasing gap between the rich and the poor — the very theme of inequality that recently moved both Pope Francis and President Obama to warn of its consequences.從書名上來看，《資本在21世紀》呼應了馬克斯的《資本論》；從內容上來看，該書意在回歸經濟學歷史上由馬克斯和亞當·斯密等前輩開創的政治經濟學。該書試圖從廣泛的視角去理解西方社會和作為其基礎而存在的經濟規律。在這一過程中，皮凱蒂打碎了「財富水漲船高」的觀點，並以此為武器對民主政府發起了挑戰，要求他們採取措施，應對日益拉大的貧富差距，而這種差距正是最近打動了教宗方濟各和總統奧巴馬，並讓他們去警示其後果的主題。Mr. Piketty — pronounced pee-ket-ee — grew up in a political home, with left-wing parents who were part of the 1968 demonstrations that turned traditional France upside down. Later, they went off to the Aude, deep in southern France, to raise goats. His parents are not a topic he wants to discuss. More relevant and important, he said, are his generation"s 「founding experiences」: the collapse of Communism, the economic degradation of Eastern Europe and the first Gulf War, in 1991.皮凱蒂出生在一個政治家庭中，父母是左翼人士，都曾參加過給法國帶來了翻天覆地影響的1968年遊行。在那之後，他們離開巴黎，搬到了法國南部的奧德省去養羊。父輩不是皮凱蒂想談論的話題。他說，對他影響更直接更重要的是奠定他這一代人基礎的「奠基經歷」，也就是在1991年發生的三件大事：共產主義的倒塌，東歐的經濟惡化和第一次海灣戰爭。Those events motivated him to try to understand a world where economic ideas had such bad consequences. As for the Gulf War, it showed him that 「governments can do a lot in terms of redistribution of wealth when they want.」 The rapid intervention to force Saddam Hussein to unhand Kuwait and its oil was a remarkable show of concerted political will, Mr. Piketty said. 「If we are able to send one million troops to Kuwait in a few months to return the oil, presumably we can do something about tax havens.」這些事件促使他去設法理解一個經濟思想已經對其產生了如此之壞的影響的世界。就拿海灣戰爭來說。那場戰爭讓他明白了這樣一個道理：「只要他們想做，政府就能夠以財富再分配的名義做很多事情」。皮凱蒂說，迫使薩達姆交出科威特和科威特油田的快速介入是共同政治意願的強有力表現。「如果我們能夠在幾個月的時間裡把上百萬的部隊派往科威特去收回油田，想必我們也能夠對避稅天堂做點什麼。」Would he want to send troops to Guernsey, the lightly populated tax haven in the English Channel? Mr. Piketty, soft-spoken, barely laughed. 「We don"t even have to do that — just simple basic trade policy, trade sanctions, would do the trick right away,」 he said.他是否想把軍隊派到根西島，這個位於英吉利海峽中的居民寥寥無幾的避稅天堂呢？皮凱蒂忍住笑，細聲慢語地說：「何必如此興師動眾呢？只要動用基本貿易政策和貿易制裁，就可以簡單地搞定了吧。」A top student, Mr. Piketty took a conventional path toward the French elite, being admitted to the rarefied école Normale Supérieure at 18. His doctoral dissertation on the theory of redistribution of wealth, completed at 22, won prizes. He then decamped to teach economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning two years later to France, disappointed with the study of economics in America.作為一個尖子生，皮凱蒂選擇了一條通往法國精英基層的傳統道路。18歲考入專門培養精英人才的巴黎高等師範學院；22歲完成學業，其獲獎博士論文的主題就是有關財富的再分配理論；之後，他悄悄離開法國，來到麻省理工學院教授經濟學；兩年後，出於對美國經濟研究的失望，他又回到了法國。「My Ph.D. is mostly about pure economic theory because that was the easiest thing to do, and I was hired at M.I.T. as a young assistant professor doing economic theory,」 he said. 「I was young and successful at doing this, so it was an easy way. But very quickly I realized that there was little serious effort at collecting historical data on income and wealth, so that"s what I started doing.」「我的哲學博士學位的主攻方向是純經濟理論，因為這對我來說是最容易的，而麻省理工也是以研究經濟理論的年輕助教身份僱用我的，」他說。「那時我還年輕，並且還取得了一些成績。因此，走這條路還是比較容易的。但是，我很快就意識到了一個問題。那就是，在收集收入和財富的歷史數據方面，沒有人做過認真的嘗試。既然如此，那我就開始做了。」Academic economics is so focused on getting the econometrics and the statistical interpolation technique correct, he said, 「you don"t really think, you don"t dare to ask the big questions.」 American economists too often narrow the questions they examine to those they can answer, 「but sometimes the questions are not that interesting,」 he said. 「Trying to write a real book that could speak to everyone meant I could not choose my questions. I had to take the important issues in a frontal manner — I could not escape.」他說，經濟學學術研究過於強調計量經濟學和統計內插技術的正確性，這使得「你根本不敢提出重大的問題。」美國經濟學家總是把自己的研究範圍縮小到自己可以回答的問題上。「但是，人們並不是總是對這些問題感興趣，」他說。「試著寫出一本讓人都感興趣的真正的書，意味著我沒有選擇。我只能以正面的姿態，去選擇那些重要的問題。我不能逃避。」He hated the insularity of the economics department. So he decided to write large, a book he considers as much history as economics, and one that is constructed to lead the general reader by the hand.他討厭經濟學術研究領域那種狹隘的心胸。於是，他決定從大處著眼，寫出一本他認為既是歷史的又是經濟的書，一本其內容可以吸引普通讀者的書。He is also not afraid of literature, finding inspiration in the descriptions of society in the realist novels of Jane Austen and Balzac. Wealth was best achieved in these stories through a clever marriage; everyone knew that inherited land and capital was the only way to live well, since labor alone would not produce sufficient income. He wondered how that assumption had changed.他也不擔心這本書沒有文學性，因為他是在簡·奧斯丁和巴爾扎克的現實主義小說中有關社會的描寫中找到靈感的。在那些小說中，獲取財富的最佳方式是通過一次巧妙的婚姻；而且小說中的每個人都知道，繼承資本和土地是過上好日子的唯一方式。因為，僅僅靠勞動是不能給你帶來足夠的收入的。讓他感興趣的是這種假設的演變過程。As he extended his work on France to the United States in collaboration with Emmanuel Saez, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, he saw that the patterns of the early 20th century — 「the top 10 percent of the distribution was full of rental income, dividend income, interest income」 — seemed less prevalent from the 1970s through the early 1990s.當他聯合加州大學伯克利分校的經濟學教授伊曼紐爾·賽斯，把自己的研究從法國延展到美國後，他發現了這樣一個事實：到上世紀70年代至90年代早期的時候，20世紀早期那種模式——「處於分配頂層10%的人的所得主要來自租金、分紅和利息」——似乎已經不再那麼盛行。「It took me a long time to realize that in effect we were returning slowly in the direction of the previous equilibrium, and that we were part of a long transitory process,」 he said. When he started working on the issue in the late 1990s, 「there was no way this could be understood so clearly — having 20 additional years of data makes a big difference to understanding the postwar period.」「我花了很多時間才搞明白：實際上，我們正緩慢地向以前那種平衡回歸，這是一個長期演變過程，當前只不過是其中一個很短暫的時期而已，」他說。當他在上世紀90年代後開著手研究這些問題時，「把這些問題都搞明白是不可能的。但是，如果你手裡又多出來20年的數據。這時候再來理解戰後那段時期，就大不一樣了。」His findings, aided by the power of modern computers, are based on centuries of statistics on wealth accumulation and economic growth in advanced industrial countries. They are also rather simply stated: The rate of growth of income from capital is several times larger than the rate of economic growth, meaning a comparatively shrinking share going to income earned from wages, which rarely increase faster than overall economic activity. Inequality surges when population and the economy grow slowly.The reason that postwar economies looked different — that inequality fell — was historical catastrophe. World War I, the Depression and World War II destroyed huge accumulations of private capital, especially in Europe. What the French call 「les trentes glorieuses」 — the roughly 30 postwar years of rapid economic growth and shrinking inequality — were a rebound. The American curve, of course, is less sharp, given that the fighting was elsewhere.藉助了當代計算機力量幫助的他的發現，不僅有發達工業國家在數個世紀中的財富累積和經濟增長數據為基礎，而且還相當簡單明確：資本收入的增長率數倍於經濟的增長率。也就是說，以增長几乎不可能快於總體經濟活動的工資名義而進入收入的份額是一個相對萎縮的份額。當人口和經濟增長放慢時，不平等會急劇增加。戰後的經濟體之所以會出現不平等減少的現象，其原因在於之前的幾次歷史性的大災難。第一次世界大戰，大蕭條和第二次世界大戰摧毀了龐大的私人資本積累，這在歐洲表現的尤為明顯。法國在戰後30年間出現的經濟快速增長和不平等急劇減少——即人們所常說的「光輝三十年」，其實是一次反彈。鑒於沒有直接經歷戰火，美國的曲線當然也沒有那麼陡峭。

Mr. Piketty』s work is a challenge both to Marxism and laissez-faire economics. The book』s core finding,based on centuries of data, is that the rate of growth of income from capital is several times larger thanthe rate of economic growth, meaning a shrinking share going to income earned from wages.Ed Alcock for The New York TimesA higher than normal rate of population and economic growth helped reduce inequality, along with higher taxes on the wealthy. But the professional and political assumption of the 1950s and 1960s, that inequality would stabilize and diminish on its own, proved to be an illusion. We are now back to a traditional pattern of returns on capital of 4 percent to 5 percent a year and rates of economic growth of around 1.5 percent a year.在人口和經濟增長率高於正常水平，如果再提高對富人稅收，不平等本來是有助於降低不平等的。但是，在上世紀50年代和60年代的時候，各種專業人士和政客們又提出了「不平等會自己穩定下來，並且逐漸自己消滅自己」的假設。如今，事實早已證明，這不過是一種幻想。我們正在回歸資本年均回報率為4%-5%，經濟年均增長率為1.5%的傳統模式。So inequality has been quickly gathering pace, aided to some degree by the Reagan and Thatcher doctrines of tax cuts for the wealthy. 「Trickle-down economics could have been true,」 Mr. Piketty said simply. 「It just happened to be wrong.」因此，不平等已然加快了腳步。從某種程度上來說，這是里根和撒切爾夫人堅持減低消減富人稅原則的結果。皮凱蒂明確表示：「滴入式經濟應該是正確的。它被當成是一種錯誤的政策，不過是人們沒有正確地認識它罷了。」His work is a challenge both to Marxism and laissez-faire economics, which 「both count on pure economic forces for harmony or justice to prevail,」 he said. While Marx presumed that the rate of return on capital, because of the system"s contradictions, would fall close to zero, bringing collapse and revolution, Mr. Piketty is saying the opposite. 「The rate of return to capital can be bigger than the growth rate forever — this is actually what we"ve had for most of human history, and there are good reasons to believe we will have it in the future.」他說，他的書是在同時挑戰馬克斯主義和自由放任的經濟學，「這兩種學說都指望純粹的經濟力量當成是和諧或者公平取得勝利的原因。」馬克斯的假設是：資本回報率會因為體系的內部矛盾而降至0附近，從而帶來崩潰和革命。但是，皮凱蒂對此持相反的看法。「資本回報率是可以永遠大於增長率的——實際上，這也正是我們在大部分的人類歷史中所看到的，並且有充足的理由認為，這種情況在未來還會出現。」In 2012 the top 1 percent of American households collected 22.5 percent of the nation"s income, the highest total since 1928. The richest 10 percent of Americans now take a larger slice of the pie than in 1913, at the close of the Gilded Age, owning more than 70 percent of the nation"s wealth. And half of that is owned by the top 1 percent.2012年，1%的美國家庭聚斂了22.5%的國民收入，這是自1928年以來最高的比例。同「鍍金時代」末期的1913年相比，如今，最富有的10%的美國人擁有的財富超過國民財富的70%。這其中，又有一半被頂層的1%所擁有。Mr. Piketty, father of three daughters — 11, 13 and 16 — is no revolutionary. He is a member of no political party, and says he never served as an economic adviser to any politician. He calls himself a pragmatist, who simply follows the data.已是三個女兒父親的皮凱蒂不是一個革命者。他說，他不是任何政黨的黨員，並且從未給任何政客當過經濟顧問。他說，他只是一個追隨數據的實用主義者。But he accepts that his work is essentially political, and he is highly critical of the huge management salaries now in vogue, saying that 「the idea that you need people making 10 million in compensation to work is pure ideology.」不過，他承認這本書，從本質來說，是一本具有政治意義的書。同時他還對當前流行的管理層的高額薪水提出了嚴厲的批評。他說：「如果有人可以因為其工作而獲得100萬美元的補償，這種想法體現了一種純粹的觀念形態。」Inequality by itself is acceptable, he says, to the extent it spurs individual initiative and wealth-generation that, with the aid of progressive taxation and other measures, helps makes everyone in society better off. 「I have no problem with inequality as long as it is in the common interest,」 he said.他說，不平等本身是可以接受的，只要它還能夠激發個人創新並給你帶來財富，如果再配以累進稅和其他政策，它是有助於讓每一個人過上好日子的。只要它符合大眾的利益，我同不平等無冤無仇。」But like the Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, he argues that extreme inequality 「threatens our democratic institutions.」 Democracy is not just one citizen, one vote, but a promise of equal opportunity.但是，正如哥倫比亞大學經濟學家約瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨所說的那樣，在他看來，極端的不平等「會威脅我們的民主制度。」民主不僅僅是一位公民一張選票，她更是對平等機會的一個承諾。「It"s very difficult to make a democratic system work when you have such extreme inequality」 in income, he said, 「and such extreme inequality in terms of political influence and the production of knowledge and information. One of the big lessons of the 20th century is that we don"t need 19th-century inequality to grow.」 But that"s just where the capitalist world is heading again, he concludes.「如果收入的不平等發展到極端，而且其極端已到了可以用政治影響力以及知識和信息產品來衡量時，民主體系是很難運作下去的，」他說。「20世紀的一大教訓就是，我們不需要19世紀的不平等去生長。」但是，那正是資本家所嚮往的世界。他總結道。Mr. Saez, his collaborator, said that 「Thomas combines great perfectionism with great impatience — he both wants to do things well and do things fast.」 He added that Mr. Piketty has 「incredible intuition for economics."他的合作者賽斯說：「托馬斯身上體現著完美主義和耐心的完美結合。他同時既想把事情做好，也想快點做完。」在他看來，皮凱蒂「對經濟學有著令人那以置信的直覺」。The last part of the book presents Mr. Piketty"s policy ideas. He favors a progressive global tax on real wealth (minus debt), with the proceeds not handed to inefficient governments but redistributed to those with less capital. 「We just want a way to share the tax burden that is fair and practical,」 he said.皮凱蒂在書的結尾部分說出了他的政策觀點。他傾向於在全球範圍內，對扣除債務之後的真正財富徵收累進稅。由此而得到的收入不應該交給低效的政府，而是應當通過再分配，分給那些資本較少的人。「我們只是想要用一種既公平又實用的辦法來分擔稅收承擔稅，」他說。Net wealth is a better indicator of ability to pay than income alone, he said. 「All I"m proposing is to reduce the property tax on half or three-quarters of the population who have very little wealth,」 he said.他說，在決定支付能力時，相比單純用收入來衡量，凈財富是一個更好的指標。「我的建議歸結為一句話就是：在總人口中，有一半或者四分之三的人是沒收什麼財富的，我們需要把這些人的財產稅降下來。」Published a year ago in French, the book is not without critics, especially of Mr. Piketty"s policy prescriptions, which have been called politically na?ve. Others point out that some of the increase in capital is because of aging populations and postwar pension plans, which are not necessarily inherited.該書的法文版早在一年前就已出版，批評之聲也時常出現，主要是集中在他的政策建議方面。有人說，這些政策犯了「政治幼稚病」；也有人說，有些資本之所以會有增加，其原因在與老齡化和戰後的養老金計劃，而這些都不是繼承而來的。More criticism is sure to come, and Mr. Piketty says he welcomes it. 「I"m certainly looking forward to the debate.」更多的批評肯定會接踵而至。對此，皮凱蒂說，他歡迎。「我當然期望就此展開討論。」A version of this article appears in print on April 20, 2014, on page BU1 of the New York edition with the headline: Taking On Adam Smith (and Karl Marx).
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