風蕭蕭_Frank
以文會友
新自由主義者的時代已經到來，民主需要新的、進步的資本主義。
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/13/stiglitz-captialism-economics-democracy-book/
作者：約瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨 2024 年 5 月 13 日
（華盛頓郵報的克裏斯·加什）
約瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨是哥倫比亞大學經濟學教授，2001年諾貝爾經濟學獎獲得者。 他的最新著作是《自由之路：經濟學與美好社會》。
在另一個選舉季節，我們通過單一政治視角辯論美國民主的衝動是可以理解的。 但我們也最好考慮一下第二個密切相關的問題：哪種經濟體係為最多的人服務？
經濟辯論的一方麵是那些相信基本上不受約束的市場的人，在這個市場中，公司可以聚集市場力量或汙染或剝削。 他們認為，公司應該最大限度地提高股東價值，盡其所能，因為更大的利潤服務於共同利益。
這種低稅收/低監管、以股東為中心的經濟（通常被稱為新自由主義）在 20 世紀最著名的支持者是米爾頓·弗裏德曼（Milton Friedman）和弗裏德裏希·哈耶克（Friedrich Hayek）。 這些獲得諾貝爾獎的經濟學家將這一想法超越了經濟範疇，聲稱這種經濟體係對於實現政治自由是必要的。
他們擔心大蕭條後政府的發展，當時在約翰·梅納德·凱恩斯的影響下，國家承擔起了穩定經濟的新責任。 弗裏德曼在《資本主義與自由》中指出，“自由市場”對於確保政治自由是不可或缺的。 用哈耶克的話說，政府的過度幹預將導致我們走上“通往奴役之路”。
從羅納德·裏根和瑪格麗特·撒切爾開始，我們現在已經進行了四十年的新自由主義“實驗”。 結果很明顯。 新自由主義擴大了企業和億萬富翁為所欲為並積累巨額財富的自由，但它也付出了高昂的代價：社會其他人的福祉和自由。
新自由主義者的政治分析甚至比他們的經濟分析更糟糕，甚至可能帶來更嚴重的後果。 弗裏德曼和他的追隨者未能理解自由的一個基本特征：自由有兩種，積極的和消極的； 做事的自由和免受傷害的自由。 “自由市場”本身無法提供經濟穩定或安全，以應對其造成的經濟變幻莫測，更不用說讓大部分人口發揮其潛力。 政府需要同時提供這兩方麵的服務。 在此過程中，政府以多種方式擴大自由。
通向威權主義的道路不是政府做得太多，而是政府做得太少。
對民粹主義，尤其是醜陋的民族主義的支持激增，有很多原因。 如果僅僅將其歸咎於經濟學，那就過於簡單化了。 盡管如此，民粹主義民族主義在以色列、菲律賓和美國等國家所構成的威脅比在瑞典、挪威和丹麥更為嚴重，這並非巧合，因為在這些國家，高質量的免費公共教育、豐厚的失業救濟金和健全的公共醫療保健都是免費的。 他們的公民擺脫了美國人對如何支付孩子的教育或醫療費用的普遍焦慮。
在麵臨未解決的經濟壓力的地方，不滿情緒不斷蔓延，人們感到失去了對自己命運的控製； 在解決失業、經濟不安全和不平等問題上做得太少。 這為民粹主義煽動者提供了肥沃的土壤——他們在任何地方都有充足的供應。 在美國，這給我們帶來了唐納德·特朗普。
我們關心免於饑餓、失業和貧困的自由——正如羅斯福強調的那樣，我們關心免於恐懼的自由。 那些勉強糊口的人並沒有自由——他們為了生存而不得不做一些事情。 我們需要專注於讓更多的人能夠自由地發揮自己的潛力、蓬勃發展和發揮創造力。 如果議程會增加貧困兒童的數量，或者增加擔心如何支付醫療費用的父母的數量——這是最基本的自由，即生活的自由所必需的——就不是自由議程。
此外，新自由主義秩序的擁護者常常無法認識到一個人的自由就是另一個人的不自由——或者，正如以賽亞·柏林所說，狼的自由往往意味著羊的死亡。 攜帶槍支的自由可能意味著那些在美國幾乎每天都會發生的大規模殺戮中被槍殺的人的死亡。 不接種疫苗或不戴口罩的自由可能意味著其他人失去生活的自由。
權衡是存在的，而權衡是經濟學的基礎。 氣候危機表明我們在治理汙染方麵做得還不夠； 給予企業更多的汙染自由會減少我們其他人過健康生活的自由——對於那些患有哮喘的人來說，甚至會減少生活的自由。 將銀行家從他們的困境中解放出來
據稱過於繁重的監管措施使我們其他人麵臨經濟衰退的風險，其嚴重程度可能與 2008 年銀行體係崩潰時的 1930 年代大蕭條一樣。這迫使社會向銀行提供了數千億美元的有史以來最大規模的救助 。 社會其他人在很多方麵都麵臨著自由的減少——包括免於失去房子、工作以及健康保險的恐懼。
有時，如何進行這些權衡是顯而易見的：我們應該限製企業剝削工人、消費者和社區的自由。 有時，權衡更為複雜； 如何評估它們是比較困難的。 但僅僅因為它們很困難，就沒有理由回避解決它們，假裝它們不存在。
某些不自由的情況可以使整個社會受益，擴大所有或至少大多數公民的自由。 停車燈——它限製了我穿過路口的自由——就是一個很好的例子。 沒有他們，就會出現僵局。 他們對我的自由的侵犯增強了我們所有人的自由——從根本上講，甚至是我的自由。
這一推理具有廣泛的適用性。 俄羅斯對烏克蘭的入侵提醒我們，如果我們要擺脫對外部傷害的恐懼，我們就需要防禦，而這必須付出代價。 我們還需要資金為 21 世紀經濟進行必要的社會投資——基礎研究和技術、基礎設施、教育和健康。 （這個國家的成功很大程度上源於我們大學所做的初步研究，這些大學要麽是國家支持的，要麽是非營利組織。）這一切都需要稅收。 正如我們所知，稅收需要強製措施，以防止某些人搭便車搭其他人的捐款。
因此，新自由主義資本主義就其自身的經濟而言是失敗的：它沒有帶來增長，更不用說共享繁榮了。 但它也未能兌現讓我們走上一條通往民主和自由的安全道路的承諾，反而讓我們走上了一條民粹主義路線，增加了 21 世紀法西斯主義的前景。 這些潛在的獨裁民粹主義者減少了我們的自由，同時又未能兌現他們的承諾，正如特朗普提供的裙帶資本主義形式所表明的那樣。 取消奧巴馬醫改或通過對我們其他人增稅來部分資助億萬富翁和企業減稅，將會降低普通美國人的安全、福祉和自由。 特朗普的第一屆政府讓人們對第二屆政府可能會是什麽樣子有了一絲了解。
還有一個替代方案。 21 世紀的經濟隻能通過權力下放來管理，需要建立一係列豐富的機構——從營利性公司到合作社、工會、積極參與的民間社會、非營利組織和公共機構。 我將這套新的經濟安排稱為“進步資本主義”。 核心是政府法規和公共投資，由稅收資助。 進步資本主義是一種經濟體係，不僅會帶來更高的生產力、繁榮和平等，而且有助於讓我們所有人走上更大自由的道路。
Time is up for neoliberals，Democracy requires a new, progressive capitalism.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/13/stiglitz-captialism-economics-democracy-book/
(Chris Gash for The Washington Post)
Amid another election season, our impulse to debate American democracy through a single political lens is understandable. But we’d be better served considering a second closely related question too: Which economic system serves the most people?
The most famous 20th-century proponents of this low-tax/low-regulation shareholder-centric economy, often referred to as neoliberalism, are Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. These Nobel Prize-winning economists took the idea beyond the economy, claiming this kind of economic system was necessary to achieve political freedom.
They worried about the growth of government in the aftermath of the Great Depression, when under the influence of John Maynard Keynes, the state was taking on new responsibilities to stabilize the economy. In “Capitalism and Freedom,” Friedman argued that “free markets” were indispensable to ensure political freedom. In Hayek’s words, government overreach would lead us down “The Road to Serfdom.”
We’ve now had four decades of the neoliberal “experiment,” beginning with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The results are clear. Neoliberalism expanded the freedom of corporations and billionaires to do as they will and amass huge fortunes, but it also exacted a steep price: the well-being and freedom of the rest of society.
Neoliberals’ political analysis was even worse than their economics, with perhaps even graver consequences. Friedman and his acolytes failed to understand an essential feature of freedom: that there are two kinds, positive and negative; freedom to do and freedom from harm. “Free markets” alone fail to provide economic stability or security against the economic vagaries they create, let alone allow large fractions of the population to live up to their potential. Government is needed to deliver both. In doing so, government expands freedom in multiple ways.
The road to authoritarianism is not paved by government doing too much but too little.
The surge in support for populism, especially of the ugly nationalist variety, has many causes. It would be overly simplistic to ascribe it just to economics. Still, it is no coincidence that populist nationalism is a graver threat in countries such as Israel, the Philippines and the United States than in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, where high-quality free public education, strong unemployment benefits and robust public health care free their citizens from the common American anxieties over how to pay for their children’s education or their medical bills.
Discontent festers in places facing unaddressed economic stresses, where people feel a loss of control over their destinies; where too little is done to address unemployment, economic insecurity and inequality. This provides a fertile field for populist demagogues — who are in ample supply everywhere. In the United States, this has given us Donald Trump.
We care about freedom from hunger, unemployment and poverty — and, as FDR emphasized, freedom from fear. People with just enough to get by don’t have freedom — they do what they must to survive. And we need to focus on giving more people the freedom to live up to their potential, to flourish and to be creative. An agenda that would increase the number of children growing up in poverty or parents worrying about how they are going to pay for health care — necessary for the most basic freedom, the freedom to live — is not a freedom agenda.
Champions of the neoliberal order, moreover, too often fail to recognize that one person’s freedom is another’s unfreedom — or, as Isaiah Berlin put it, freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep. Freedom to carry a gun may mean death to those who are gunned down in the mass killings that have become an almost daily occurrence in the United States. Freedom not to be vaccinated or wear masks may mean others lose the freedom to live.
There are trade-offs, and trade-offs are the bread and butter of economics. The climate crisis shows that we have not gone far enough in regulating pollution; giving more freedom to corporations to pollute reduces the freedom of the rest of us to live a healthy life — and in the case of those with asthma, even the freedom to live. Freeing bankers from what they claimed to be excessively burdensome regulations put the rest of us at risk of a downturn potentially as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s when the banking system imploded in 2008. This forced society to provide banks hundreds of billions of dollars in the largest bailout ever. The rest of society faced a reduction in their freedoms in so many ways — including the freedom from the fear of losing one’s house, one’s job and, with that, one’s health insurance.
Sometimes, how these trade-offs should be made is obvious: We should curtail corporations’ freedom to exploit workers, consumers and communities. Sometimes the trade-offs are more complex; how to assess them is more difficult. But just because they’re difficult is no reason to shirk addressing them, to pretend that they don’t exist.
Some cases of unfreedom can benefit a society as a whole, expanding the freedom of all, or at least most, citizens. Stop lights — which curtail my freedom to cross the intersection — provide a good example. Without them, there would be gridlock. Their intrusion on my freedom enhances that of all of us — in a fundamental sense, even my freedom.
This reasoning applies broadly. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reminded us that if we are to be free from the fear of harm coming from outside, we need defense, and that has to be paid for. We also need money to make the necessary social investments for a 21st-century economy — in basic research and technology, in infrastructure, in education, and in health. (Much of the country’s success evolves from initial research done at our universities, all either state-supported or nonprofits.) This all requires tax revenue. And taxation, as we know, requires compulsion to prevent the free-riding by some on the contributions of others.
Neoliberal capitalism has thus failed in its own economic terms: It has not delivered growth, let alone shared prosperity. But it has also failed in its promise of putting us on a secure road to democracy and freedom, and it has instead set us on a populist route raising the prospects of a 21st-century fascism. These would-be authoritarian populists reduce our freedom while failing to deliver on their promises, as the form of crony capitalism offered by Trump illustrates. The elimination of Obamacare or a tax cut for billionaires and corporations funded in part by a tax increase for the rest of us would decrease the security, well-being and freedom of ordinary Americans. Trump’s first administration gives a glimmer of what a second might look like.
There is an alternative. A 21st-century economy can only be managed through decentralization, entailing a rich set of institutions — from profit-making firms to cooperatives, unions, an engaged civil society, nonprofits and public institutions. I call this new set of economic arrangements “progressive capitalism.” Central are government regulations and public investments, financed by taxation. Progressive capitalism is an economic system that will not only lead to greater productivity, prosperity and equality but also help set all of us on a road to greater freedoms.
