人，生來就不是平等的
摘錄自：天下雜誌 經濟學人電子報 2013/1/3
2014-01-07 Web only 作者：經濟學人
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| 圖片來源：劉國泰 |
財富不均是資本主義最具爭議性的特質。工業革命初期，薪資停滯和財富集中促使李嘉圖（David Ricardo）和馬克思（Karl Marx）質疑資本主義的永續性。財富不均於現代再次興起，也讓新一代經濟學家開始思考，是什麼力量讓資本主義的果實無法更廣泛地分配。
巴黎經濟學院的皮凱提（Thomas
Piketty）的《二十一世紀資本論》（Capital
in the Twenty-First Century），是這個問題的權威指南。本書指出，部分20世紀的傳統看法嚴重錯誤；財富不均並不會在經濟體成熟之時消退，收入流往資本的比例亦非大致不變。皮凱提認為，實在沒理由認定資本主義會「自然地」扭轉財富不均加劇。
皮凱提的分析核心，即為經濟中的資本（或曰其財富）與年產出之比例。自1700年至第一次世界大戰，西歐的財富貯存約為國家收入的700％，1914年前的經濟也非常不均。1914至1950年間，戰爭和蕭條大幅拉低了財富。但從1970年代開始，財富對國家收入之比例即與收入不均同步成長，財富集中的程度亦再次靠近戰前時代。
在皮凱提的論述中，生產力大增或人口增加帶來的快速成長，是股帶動經濟收斂的力量。快速成長會讓舊有財富的經濟和政治影響力下滑。人口成長亦是經濟成長的關鍵之一；美國在19世紀的人口和GDP成長極高，不但削弱了舊富的力量，也不斷創造新富。
皮凱提預估，人口成長減低會讓財富集中程度回到維多利亞時代的水準。在義大利、日本等問臨人口問題的國家，財富對國家收入之比例也最高；有趣的是，皮凱提認為這是比較「正常」的狀態，而在這些地方，資本報酬率會持續高於成長。
報酬率長期高於成長似乎有些不切實際；資本越多，報酬率應該就會越低。但令人意外的是，長期來看，資本報酬率相當穩定。部分原因在於科技；就算人口減少，讓GDP成長降至接近零，但革新和人均生產力上升，還是會創造投資機會。
新科技也可以讓機器更能替代人類，使得資本獲得更大比例的國家收入，進而提高其報酬。自動化熱潮之際，財富集中和財富不均可能會到達前所未見的高點，為現代帶來那個相當19世紀的問題。（黃維德譯）
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2014
The Economist
Free exchange
All men are
created unequal
By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: January 07, 2014
Jan 4th 2014 | From the print edition
Revisiting an old argument about the impact of capitalism.
INEQUALITY is one of the most controversial attributes of capitalism.
Early in the industrial revolution stagnant wages and concentrated wealth led
David Ricardo and Karl Marx to question capitalism's sustainability.
Twentieth-century economists lost interest in distributional issues amid the
"Great Compression" that followed the second world war. But a modern
surge in inequality has new economists wondering, as Marx and Ricardo did,
which forces may be stopping the fruits of capitalism from being more widely
distributed.
"Capital in the Twenty-First Century" by Thomas Piketty, an
economist at the Paris School of Economics, is an authoritative guide to the
question. Mr Piketty's book, which was published in French in 2013 and will be
released in English in March 2014, self-consciously builds on the work of
19th-century thinkers; his title is an allusion to Marx's magnum opus. But he
possesses an advantage they lacked: two centuries' worth of hard data.
The book suggests that some 20th-century conventional wisdom was badly
wrong. Inequality does not appear to ebb as economies mature, as Simon Kuznets,
a Nobel-winning economist, argued in the 1950s. Neither should we expect the
share of income flowing to capital to stay roughly constant over time: what another
economist, Nicholas Kaldor, labelled a key fact of economic growth. Mr Piketty
argues there is no reason to think that capitalism will "naturally"
reverse rising inequality.
The centrepiece of Mr Piketty's analysis is the ratio of an economy's
capital (or equivalently, its wealth) to its annual output. From 1700 until the
first world war, the stock of wealth in Western Europe hovered at around 700%
of national income. Over time the composition of wealth changed; agricultural
land declined in importance while industrial capital—factories, machinery and
intellectual property—gained prominence. Yet wealth held steady at a high
level.
Pre-1914 economies were very unequal. In 1910 the top 10% of European
households controlled almost 90% of all wealth. The flow of rents and dividends
from capital contributed to high inequality of income; the top 10% captured
more than 45% of all income. Mr Piketty's work suggests there was little sign
of any natural decline in inequality on the outbreak of the first world war.
The wars and depressions between 1914 and 1950 dragged the wealthy back
to earth. Wars brought physical destruction of capital, nationalisation,
taxation and inflation, while the Great Depression destroyed fortunes through
capital losses and bankruptcy. Yet capital has been rebuilt, and the owners of
capital have prospered once more. From the 1970s the ratio of wealth to income
has grown along with income inequality, and levels of wealth concentration are
approaching those of the pre-war era.
Mr Piketty describes these trends through what he calls two
"fundamental laws of capitalism". The first explains variations in
capital's share of income (as opposed to the share going to wages). It is a
simple accounting identity: at all times, capital's share is equal to the rate
of return on capital multiplied by the total stock of wealth as a share of GDP.
The rate of return is the sum of all income flowing to capital—rents, dividends
and profits—as a percentage of the value of all capital.
The second law is more a rough rule of thumb: over long periods and
under the right circumstances the stock of capital, as a percentage of national
income, should approach the ratio of the national-savings rate to the economic
growth rate. With a savings rate of 8% (roughly that of the American economy)
and GDP growth of 2%, wealth should rise to 400% of annual output, for example,
while a drop in long-run growth to 1% would push up expected wealth to 800% of
GDP. Whether this is a "law" or not, the important point is that a
lower growth rate is conducive to higher concentrations of wealth.
In Mr Piketty's narrative, rapid growth—from large productivity gains
or a growing population—is a force for economic convergence. Prior wealth casts
less of an economic and political shadow over the new income generated each
year. And population growth is a critical component of economic growth,
accounting for about half of average global GDP growth between 1700 and 2012.
America's breakneck population and GDP growth in the 19th century eroded the
power of old fortunes while throwing up a steady supply of new ones.
Victorian values
Tumbling rates of population growth are pushing wealth concentrations
back toward Victorian levels, in Mr Piketty's estimation. The ratio of wealth
to income is highest among demographically challenged economies such as Italy
and Japan (although both countries have managed to mitigate inequality through
redistributive taxes and transfers). Interestingly, Mr Piketty reckons this
world, in which the return to capital is persistently higher than growth, is
the more "normal" state. In that case, wealth piles up faster than
growth in output or incomes. The mid-20th century, when wealth compression
combined with extraordinary growth to generate an egalitarian interregnum, was
the exception.
Sustained rates of return above the rate of growth may sound
unrealistic. The more capital there is, the lower the return should be: the
millionth industrial robot adds less to production than the hundredth. Yet
somewhat surprisingly, the rate of return on capital is remarkably constant
over long periods (see chart, second panel). Technology is partly responsible.
Innovation, and growth in output per person, creates investment opportunities
even when shrinking populations reduce GDP growth to near zero.
New technology can also make it easier to substitute machines for human
workers. That allows capital to gobble up a larger share of national income,
raising its return. Amid a new burst of automation, wealth concentrations and
inequality could reach unprecedented heights, putting a modern twist on a very
19th- century problem.
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2014
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