MiltonFriedman

Aheavyweight champ, at five foot two

身高五英尺二英寸的巨人

Nov23rd 2006
From The Economist print edition

Thelegacy of Milton Friedman, a giant among economists

经济学人中的巨擎密尔顿·弗里德曼的遗产

Corbis

IN1946 two American economists published a pamphlet attacking rent controls. “Itwas”, recalled one of them many years later, “my first taste of publiccontroversy.” In the American Economic Review, no less, a criticdismissed “Roofs or Ceilings” as “a political tract”. The same reviewer gavethe pair a proper savaging in a newspaper: “Economists who sign their names todrivel of this sort do no service to the profession they represent.”

1946年， 两名美国经济学家出版了一本小册子攻击租金管制制度。“那是我第第一次尝试参与公共讨论。”其中一位在多年之后这样说。在《美国经济评论》，一位评论者甚 至只是将“内表面积还是屋顶”一书当作一本“政治小册子”。同样的评论者在一份报纸上送出了第二份恰当的讽刺：“在这类没什么价值的文章上签上自己名字的 经济学家无益于他们所代表的专业。

Thereminiscing author was Milton Friedman, who died on November 16th, aged 94. In the wake of the GreatDepression and the second world war, with the Keynesian revolution still young,championing the free market was deeply unfashionable, even (or especially)among economists. Mr Friedman and kindred spirits—such as Friedrich von Hayek,author of “The Road to Serfdom”—were seen as cranks. Surely the horrors of theDepression had shown that markets were not to be trusted? The state, it wasplain, should be master of the market; and, equipped with John Maynard Keynes's“General Theory”, governments should spend and borrow to keep the economytopped up and unemployment at bay.

那文章的作者便是11月16日去世，享年94岁 的密尔顿·弗里德曼。在大萧条的复苏期和二次世界大战期间，凯恩斯革命仍然生气勃勃，他们将自由市场经济学打入冷宫，甚至（或者说特别是）在经济学家中盛 行。弗里德曼先生和具有同宗思想的人物——比如《通往奴役之路》的作者，弗里德里希·冯·哈耶克——都被视作异教徒。诚然，大萧条的教训确实显示出了市场 并不完全可信赖？清楚的是，国家应该做市场的干预者；并且根据约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯的《通论》（全称是《就业、利息与货币通论》），政府应该支出并且借款 以保持经济的额外支出达到期望的数量，并把失业率保持在警戒线以内。

Thateconomists and policymakers think differently now is to a great degree MrFriedman's achievement. He was the most influential economist of the secondhalf of the 20th century (Keynes died in 1946), possibly of all of it. In 1998, in “Two LuckyPeople”, the memoir he wrote with his wife, Rose, he could claim to be “in themainstream of thought, not, as we were 50 years ago, a derided minority”, andno one could dispute it.

现在，之所以经济学家和政策制定者们改变了思考问题的方式，在很大程度上要归功于弗里德曼先生的成就。他恐怕是20世纪后半叶最具影响力的经济学家（恰好凯恩斯在1946年去世），至少也是最可能获此评价的人。1998年，在他和妻子Rose二人合著的回忆录《两个幸运的人》中，他能够宣称他们“已经置身于一个伟大的思想传统之中，而不是像我们在50年前那样，仅仅是一撮被多数人嘲笑的小群体”，今天已经没人能质疑这种说法了。

PerhapsMr Friedman became not only a great economist but also an influential onebecause he had a love of argument. As a boy he liked to make himself heard. Heclaimed to have had few memories of a school which he attended in Rahway, theNew Jersey town his family had moved to when Brooklyn-born Milton was 13 monthsold, but he remembered getting a nickname. “I tended to talk very loud, indeedshout”; so when someone mentioned the proverb “Still water runs deep”, he wasdubbed “Shallow”.

也许弗里德曼先生本来就不想仅仅做一个伟大的经济学家，而是一直就想做一个有影响力的人，因为他爱好辩论。当他还是一个男孩的时候，他就开始追求声名了。他13个月大的时候随全家从他出生的纽约布鲁克林区搬到新泽西郡，他说过他对在Rahway就读的学校记忆很少，但他记得他得到了一个绰号。“我习惯高声谈论问题，说我是在“嚷”也不为过；所以当有些人提到一种说法形容某人安静而学识渊博，称作“高深莫测”时，正相反，他就被起了个绰号叫“浅水沟”。

Hisclassmates could scarcely have chosen a less apt moniker. Directly orindirectly, Mr Friedman brought about profound changes in the way hisprofession, politicians and the public thought of economic questions, in atleast three enormously important and connected areas. In all of them histhinking was widely regarded at the outset as eccentric or worse.

他的同学们很少会获得这种难得的昵称。直接或间接地，弗里德曼先生就给他的专业领域带来了深具影响力的改变，包括经济问题的政策面和公共思想层面，至少涵盖了三个极为重要而且密切相关的领域。在所有这些领域中，他的思想都被广泛的看作是异议甚至是通往更糟地步的开端。

Thefirst of those areas is summed up by “Capitalism and Freedom”, the title of abook published in 1962 (see our review). To Mr Friedman, thetwo were inextricably intertwined: without economic freedom—capitalism—therecould be no political freedom. Governments, he argued, should do little morethan enforce contracts, promote competition, “provide a monetary framework” (ofwhich more below) and protect the “irresponsible, whether madman or child”.

这些领域的其中之一，在一本题为《资本主义与自由》的书中得到汇总，这本书出版于1962年。在弗里德曼看来，两个问题是紧密连联系的：没有经济自由——资本主义——就没有政治自由。他认为，政府应该尽量减少制定强制性规定，鼓励竞争，“提供一个价格机制”（下文会详细讲述）并且保护受忽视的群体，不论精神病患者还是儿童。

Freedom fighter自由斗士

Toshow where Mr Friedman thought the limit of the state should lie, the booklists 14 activities, then undertaken by government in America, “thatcannot...validly be justified” by the principles it lays out. These includeprice supports for farming; tariffs and import quotas; rent control; minimumwages; “detailed regulation of industries”, including banks; forcing pensionersto buy annuities; military conscription in time of peace; national parks; andthe ban on carrying mail for profit.

对于弗里德曼先生所认为的国家干预的界限在哪里的问题，那本书罗列了14种行为，而后为美国政府所接受，根据它所阐释的原则“它还不能被充分地评价”。它包括以价格机制为农产品市场的基础；关税和进口配额；租金控制；最低工资；“规定产业政策”包括银行业；强制个人购买养老保险；和平时期的兵役制；建立国家公园；禁止有偿邮递。

Althoughthe state still does a lot of this, it does less than it did; and little if anygoes unquestioned. For the abolition of the draft, in particular, Mr Friedmancould claim some credit: a surprise, perhaps, to those who saw him as aright-wing ideologue. Conscription—“an army of slaves”, as he put it to WilliamWestmoreland, the army chief of staff—was illiberal: in peacetime, there was nojustification for not hiring volunteers at a market wage.

虽 然国家在这些方面仍然在采取措施，但是比起那个年代却少多了；而且几乎没有一个方面可以说做到了无可挑剔。尤其在对待取消强制兵役方面，弗里德曼先生的主 张，或许都令那些视他为右倾意识形态代表的人们惊讶。兵役——“强制兵役”，是一种侵权行为：在和平时期，不按照劳动市场的工资标准雇佣志愿者的行为是不 公平的。他把这些意见发给了WilliamWestmoreland将军——军队征兵负责人。

Soonafter becoming president, Richard Nixon set up a commission, on which MrFriedman sat, to examine the argument for abolishing the draft. (Nixon hadalready been persuaded that it should go.) Conscription was ended in 1973, bywhich time the Vietnam war had anyway turned public opinion against it. MrFriedman wrote, “No public-policy activity that I have ever engaged in hasgiven me as much satisfaction as the All-Volunteer Commission.”

成为总统后不久，理查德·尼克松建立了一个委员会，弗里德曼先生被邀加入，这个委员会旨在考察关于取消兵役制的争论。（尼克松其实在这个问题上已经被说服了。）强制征兵制终于在1973年终结了，当时越南战争已经转变为被公众所反对的行动。弗里德曼先生写道，“再没有一个我所参与的公共政治运动能够像联合志愿军委员会这样给我如此大的满足感了。”

Second,Mr Friedman revolutionised how economists and policymakers treated money andinflation. Until he showed otherwise, post-war governments seemed able to tradeoff unemployment and inflation: a long-term statistical link between the two,known as the Phillips curve after the New Zealander who noted it, appeared toprove as much. By loosening monetary policy, governments could apparently buy areduction in unemployment at the price of a little more inflation.

第 二，弗里德曼先生革新了经济学家和政策制定者们应该如何看待货币和通货膨胀的问题。直到他发表了不同的见解之前，战后的美国政府似乎有能力平衡失业和通货 膨胀（这对矛盾）：一个长期的两者的统计相关性为此提供了显见的证明，在一位新西兰人对此进行了计量分析之后，该理论得名菲利普斯曲线，从此为大众所知 晓。通过放松货币政策，政府能够在表面上用高一些的通货膨胀的价格换来一个失业率的下降。

This,said Mr Friedman, addressing the American Economic Association as its presidentin 1967, was an illusion. Pumping up demand pushed down unemployment only byfooling workers into thinking that wages had risen relative to prices, makingthem more willing to offer their labour. Once the truth dawned and theydemanded more pay, unemployment would rise back to its “natural” rate. Ifgovernments tried to push unemployment below this rate, in the long run theywould succeed only in pushing inflation ever higher. Edmund Phelps, winner ofthis year's Nobel Prize in economics, made a similar observation at around thesame time.

弗 里德曼出任美国经济学联合会会长时说，这是个错觉，扩大需求能降低了失业率只是通过愚弄劳动者，使他们以为工资已经随物价上涨而提高，使他们更愿意出卖自 己的劳动力。一旦真相暴露，他们要求更高的报酬，失业率又会修正到它的“自然”水平。如果政府试图降低失业率，在长期看来他们只应该设法使通货膨胀率更高 一些。今年诺贝尔经济学奖得主埃德蒙·菲尔普斯在同一时期做过一个相似的考察。

MrFriedman's work was embellished by others, who modelled firms' and workers'expectations in a more sophisticated way. What really counted, though, was thathe had spotted a flaw in economic orthodoxy before it was made obvious byevents. In the 1970s rich economies suffered rising inflation and higher, notlower, unemployment, despite governments' efforts to inflate their way out of trouble.Mr Friedman said this was futile: governments simply had to adopt a stablemonetary framework. By this he meant setting a target for the growth of themoney supply, a rule known as monetarism.

弗里德曼先生的工作其实被许多其他人充实丰富着，他们中包括那些用更加高级的方法为公司和劳动者的预期建立模型的人。这些数学模型的演绎帮助他发现原有经济学理论中的一些不完美的问题，而那恰好在一些重要事件发生证明这些问题的存在之前。在1970年代富裕的美国经济承受着增加的通货膨胀和更高的而不是更低的失业率的压力，尽管美国政府采取一些措施去消除麻烦，但弗里德曼先生说这是徒劳的：政府只是被迫去采取一种稳定的货币政策。据此，他提出应设定一个货币供给量的增加目标，这一法则就是众所周知的货币主义。

Hisdiagnosis of monetary ills and prescriptions for monetary policy long predatedthat presidential address. In 1963, with Anna Schwartz, he published “AMonetary History of the United States, 1867-1960”, a monumental labour.The book traced a causal relationship between the rate of monetary growth andthe price level. Most eye-catching was its analysis of the Great Depression—or,as the authors called it, the Great Contraction.

他关于货币病症的诊断和货币政策的建议都远远超前于总统演说。在1963年与AnnaSchwartz合著的《美国货币史1867-1960》，是一个里程碑式的成果。该书探寻了货币增长率和价格水平间的因果关系。其焦点是它对于大萧条——或者按照权威人士的称呼：大紧缩——的分析。

TheAmerican economy shrank so much between 1929 and 1933, they argued, not becauseWall Street crashed, because governments put up trade barriers or because undercapitalism slumps are inevitable. No: trouble was turned into catastrophe bythe Federal Reserve, which botched monetary policy, tightening when it shouldhave loosened, thus depriving banks of liquidity when it should have beenpumping money in.

美国经济在1929年到1933年间陷入大萧条的原因，在他们看来，不是因为华尔街的崩盘，也不是因为政府建立了贸易壁垒或者资本主义脆弱性的必然。都不是：而是制定那些糟糕货币政策的美联储将一场麻烦变成了大灾难，应该放松（银根）的时候却紧缩，在银行恰恰需要注入资金的时候却非要降低银行的流动性。

HenceMr Friedman's mistrust of independent central banks: “To paraphrase Clemenceau,money is too important to be left to the Central Bankers.” He thought theyshould limit inflation by targeting the rate of growth of the money supply.Aiming for inflation directly, he thought, was a mistake, because central bankscould control money more easily than prices.

因此，弗里德曼先生对央行的独立性深表怀疑：“借用Clemenceau的话，货币是个过于严重的问题，不能把决定权它交给央行。”他认为他们应该通过制定货币供给增长率目标来限制（政府）干预。他认为，追求直接干预是错误的，因为央行能比价格机制更容易地控制货币。

Brilliantas his monetary diagnoses were, on the details of the remedy he came out on thewrong side. Controlling the money supply proved far harder in practice than intheory (notably in Britain in the 1980s: Mr Friedman grumbled that the Britishauthorities were going about it in the wrong way). These days many centralbanks are not only independent of government but also have inflation targets—towhich, by and large, they get pretty close. The Federal Reserve has evenstopped publishing M3, a broad measure of the money supply. Writing in the WallStreet Journal when Alan Greenspan stood down as Fed chairman in Januarythis year, Mr Friedman did admit that he had underestimated central bankers'abilities—or Mr Greenspan's, anyway.

尽管他对货币疾病的诊断是睿智的，但是在治疗的细节上他也会犯错。控制货币供给量在现实中要比在理论上困难得多（典型的案例是1980年代的英国：弗里德曼先生曾抱怨说英国执政者正走在错误的道路上）。当时各国的央行不仅独立于政府而且都有干预目标——通常这些目标还都非常类似。联储停止发布广义货币供给量M3。在华尔街日报上，弗里德曼先生终于撰文承认他低估了央行的能力或者格林斯潘的能力，艾伦·格林斯潘是在那年1月就任美联储出席的。

Third,Mr Friedman laid the foundation of modern theories of consumption. Keynes hadposited that as income rose, so would the proportion that was saved. Economicdata bore this out only up to a point: though the rich had higher saving ratesthan the poor, aggregate saving rates did not rise as countries became richer.

第三，弗里德曼先生是现代消费理论的奠基人。凯恩斯已经宣称过，当收入增加时，更高的比例会用于储蓄。经济数据只证明了一点：富人比穷人有更高的储蓄率，但是一国的总储蓄率并不会随着国家变富而升高。

MrFriedman resolved this apparent paradox with a theory known as the permanentincome hypothesis, set forth in 1957. People, he suggested, did not spend onthe basis of what their income happened to be that year, but according to their“permanent income”—what they expected to have year in and year out. In a badyear, therefore, they might dip into their savings; when they had a windfall,they would not spend the lot. He called the hypothesis “embarrassinglyobvious”; but in hindsight, many of the best ideas are. It was good enough,with his work on monetary analysis and stabilisation policy, to win him a NobelPrize in 1976.

弗里德曼先生用众所周知的永久收入假说理论解决了这个明显的矛盾，发表于1957年。 他认为，人们并不是基于他们当年的收入多少来消费的，而是根据他们的“永久收入”——即他们预期他们在该年和该年以外的时间里所获得的收入。因此，在坏年 景，他们可能调低他们的储蓄水平；当有意外所得时，他们也不会消费更多。他称此假说为“尴尬的显而易见”；但许多最好的思想都是被人们后知后觉的。它就属 于这种足够好的思想，他凭借货币分析与稳定政策的贡献获得了1976年诺贝尔奖。

Spreading the word传播理念

Gettingfellow economists to accept your ideas is one thing; transmitting them to thelaity in plain English is another. He was a gifted communicator, like manyprominent economists from Keynes to Paul Krugman. For 18 years he had a columnin Newsweek. He and Mrs Friedman wrote a bestselling book, “Free toChoose”, published in 1980, based on a television series of the same name. MrsFriedman, whom he met when they were graduate students in Chicago, was a fineeconomist too and a sharp editor of her husband's work. She survives him after68 years of marriage.

让经济学家们接受你的思想是一回事；把她们用浅显的英语传播给信徒们是另外一回事。从凯恩斯到保罗·克鲁格曼，像他们一样，弗里德曼也是位天才的传播者。18年来，他保持为《新闻周刊》撰写专栏文章。他和夫人写了一本畅销书，《自由选择》，出版于1980年，该书是基于一个同名电视系列片。弗里德曼夫人是他在芝大读研究生时认识的，她也是一位非常好的经济学家，并且是她丈夫著作的一个敏锐的编辑。他们共同度过了68年的婚姻生活。

Politicianswere keen to listen—most obviously Ronald Reagan. Although Mr Friedman metMargaret Thatcher and her government's policies bore a monetarist mark, she wasprobably influenced more directly by Hayek than by him. Mr Friedman washeartened by Reagan's willingness to support the Fed's tight monetary policy inthe early 1980s and by his pro-market, small-government instincts, borne out inless regulation and the tax reform of 1986. He was disappointed by developmentsafter Reagan left office. He would have preferred Donald Rumsfeld, not GeorgeBush senior, as Reagan's vice-president and successor. An appraisal of theRumsfeld presidency must be left to counterfactual historians.

政治家们对此感兴趣——最明显的是罗纳德·里根。虽然弗里德曼和玛格利特·撒切尔会过面，并且她的政府的政策都留有货币主义的烙印，但她或许更直接地受到哈耶克的影响要甚于他。弗里德曼先生按照里根的意愿被安放于核心位置上以支持联储在1980年代早期的推行的紧缩货币政策，并且按照他大市场，小政府的基本理念，倡导更少的规制和1986年的税收改革。他对里根卸任后的发展表示失望。他也对唐纳德·拉姆斯菲尔德有所倾向，希望他做里根总统的副总统或者继任者，而不是老布什。至于拉式是否适合接总统的班只能留给爱为历史做假设的学者们思考了。

Hismost controversial listener was neither Reagan nor Lady Thatcher, but AugustoPinochet. The Chilean dictator combined ruthless repression with a taste forfree markets and monetarism. In the latter, he was advised by the “Chicagoboys”, economists educated at the university where Mr Friedman was the leadinglight. He thought they had the economics right, but insisted that his ownconnection with Chile was much exaggerated by those who took him to task atdemonstrations and in print. In 1975 he spent six days there, met GeneralPinochet once and wrote to him afterwards with his economic prescription—aconclusion, he believed, that the Chicago boys had already reached.

他 的最富争议的听众既不是是罗纳德·里根，也不是撒切尔夫人，而是奥古斯都·皮诺切特。这个智利的独裁者把残酷的镇压与自由市场和货币主义的尝试结合到一 起。在不久之后，他采纳了“芝加哥小子”（那些在弗里德曼引领的芝加哥大学接受过教育的经济学家）的建议，他认为他们在经济方面做的很恰当，但是他坚持认 为他和智利的联系被那些把他放进游行口号和出版物中的人们夸大了许多。1975年他花了6天时间在智利，见了皮诺切特一面，并在之后把带有他经济学观点的信发给皮——他得出一个结论，芝加哥小子们已经做到了。

IfMr Friedman had a favourite economy, it was Hong Kong. Its astonishing economicsuccess convinced him that although economic freedom was necessary forpolitical freedom, the converse was not true: political liberty, thoughdesirable, was not needed for economies to be free. Why, he asked, had HongKong thrived when Britain, which controlled it until 1997, was so statist bycomparison? He greatly admired Sir John Cowperthwaite, the colony's financialsecretary in the 1960s, “a Scotsman...a disciple of Adam Smith, his ancientcountryman”. And how much more, Mr Friedman wondered, might America havethrived had it kept its government as small, relative to its economy, as theisland entrepot had done?

如 果弗里德曼有一个最爱的地方的话，那就是香港。它惊人的经济成功使他相信，虽然经济自由对于政治自由来说是必须，但是反过来却并不一定：政治自由，虽然是 美好愿望，但是对于经济自由来说它并不是必要条件。他问道，为什么当英国如此信奉中央计划经济的时候，香港（英国统治它到1997年）却如此成功？他非常推崇乔治·郭伯伟，1960年代殖民地的财政司长，“苏格兰人的他是他的古代的同乡亚当·斯密的追随者”。进一步说，弗里德曼想知道，美国是否能够像那个海岛的贸易中心所做的那样，保持政府相对小于经济的状态下获得巨大成功？

Universityof Chicago

Thatlament showed that Mr Friedman, brilliant and influential though he was, didnot win all the fights he picked. Far from it. Education vouchers, which he andMrs Friedman pushed for many years, have gained intellectual respectability butmade limited headway in practice. Government spending, as a share of GDP, didnot budge much even under Reagan and is much as it was when he left office.Only last month, Mr Friedman worried in the Wall Street Journal thatgreater state intervention in Hong Kong would mean that the place “would nolonger be such a shining example of economic freedom.”

令人悲伤的是，虽然弗里德曼先生才智过人并且深具影响力，但他参与的每一次斗争却未必都能获胜。恰恰相反，他经常受挫。教育券虽然是他和他的夫人长期推动的计划，也获得了一些知识界的尊重，但在实际中只有很有限的实施。政府支出，作为GDP的一部分，在里根任期内并没有多少改变而在他卸任后却改变了很多。仅仅在上个月，弗里德曼先生在华尔街日报上撰文对更强的国家干预可能使香港失去自由经济体的光环表示忧虑。

Rentcontrol, the subject of that “drivel” in 1946, is still being argued over, notleast in New York City. Should you be curious about Mr Friedman's co-author,look at the photograph above. Towering next to Mr Friedman is George Stigler,the Nobel economics laureate in 1982: friends and colleagues, they stroll onthe Chicago campus, no doubt discussing how to make the world a freer andhappier place.

租金控制，那个1946年的“胡言乱语”的话题，至今还在争论，而且不仅仅在纽约城。你应该好奇那位联合作者是谁了吧，看上面的照片，比弗里德曼高一大头的那位就是乔治·施蒂格勒，1982年诺贝尔经济学奖的获得者：他们是朋友和同事，他们一起漫步于芝大的校园里，没人会怀疑，他们一定又在讨论如何使世界变得更加自由和幸福。