资本主义骗局 让政府借钱 大紧缩骗局
大紧缩骗局 The great austerity shell game
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/04/great-austerity-shell-game
Richard Wolff 2013 年 11 月 4 日星期一
资本主义骗局是这样运作的：让政府借钱来应对危机，然后坚持削减开支来支付。猜猜谁会输
英国和德国的中右翼政府这样做。法国和意大利的中左翼政府也是如此。奥巴马和共和党也这么做。他们都在必要时对经济实施“紧缩”计划，以摆脱自 2007 年以来困扰他们的危机。政客和经济学家现在实施紧缩政策，就像医生曾经在病人的皮肤上贴芥末膏一样。
紧缩政策假定当今的主要经济问题是增加国家债务的政府预算赤字。紧缩政策主要通过削减政府开支来解决这些问题，其次是通过限制增税。削减支出、增加收入确实会减少政府的赤字和借贷需求。
国家债务的减少或下降取决于每个政府的支出减少多少和税收增加多少。奥巴马在 2013 年的紧缩政策始于 1 月 1 日，当时他将每个人的年收入工资税提高到 113,700 美元。然后，在 3 月 1 日，“自动减支”降低了联邦支出。因此，2013 年的美国赤字将比 2012 年大幅下降。
奥巴马可能会实施更多紧缩政策：削减社会保障和医疗保险福利，以与共和党妥协。同样，欧洲各国政府也维持其“紧缩”计划。即使是官方上“反紧缩”和“社会主义”的法国政府，也有一份新预算，其中社会支出也进行了典型的紧缩削减。
积累的证据表明，紧缩计划通常会加剧经济衰退。那么，为什么它们仍然是大多数资本主义政府的首选政策呢？
当资本主义经济崩溃时，大多数资本家会要求——政府也会提供——信贷市场救助和经济刺激。然而，企业和富人反对对他们征收新税来支付刺激和救助计划。相反，他们坚持认为政府应该借入必要的资金。自 2007 年以来，世界各地的资本主义政府都为这些昂贵的计划大量借款。因此，他们出现了巨大的预算赤字，国家债务飙升。
因此，大量借贷是资本家应对其系统最新危机的首选政策。这对他们很有帮助。
借贷支付了政府对银行、其他金融公司和其他选定大公司的救助费用。借贷使刺激支出得以恢复对商品和服务的需求。借贷使政府能够支出失业补偿、食品券和其他抵消危机引发的痛苦的措施。
通过这些方式，借贷有助于减少那些被解雇、被赶出家门、被剥夺工作保障和福利等人群的批评、怨恨、愤怒和反体制倾向。政府借贷对资本家产生了这些积极的影响——同时还使他们免于纳税以获得这些结果。
这还不是全部。企业和富人利用他们通过阻止政府向他们征税而节省下来的资金来提供政府所需的巨额贷款。中低收入人群几乎无法向政府提供任何贷款。企业和富人实际上是用贷款代替向政府贷款，而不是支付更多的税。对于这些贷款，政府必须支付利息并最终偿还。
政府借贷给企业和富人带来了相当丰厚的回报。这对资本家来说是一笔非常划算的交易。
然而，这笔划算的交易又带来了一个新问题。政府从哪里找到资金，首先，支付所有借款的利息，其次，偿还贷款人？企业和富人担心他们可能仍需纳税来提供这些资金。他们决心避免缴纳此类税款——就像他们一开始就避免被征税来支付刺激和救助计划一样。
因此，紧缩政策是资本家首选的第二项政策，是在政府努力应对经济危机时避免提高税收的第二种方法。企业和富人通过大声坚持当今的主要经济问题不是失业、失去工作保障和福利、房屋止赎以及创纪录的收入和财富不平等来提倡紧缩政策。相反，关键问题是政府赤字和不断上升的国家债务。必须削减这些。
要做到这一点，应该适度提高税收或根本不加税（以避免“伤害”经济）。因此，关键的解决方案是削减政府在就业、社会福利和社会服务方面的支出。通过这些削减节省下来的资金应该用来支付国家债务的利息并减少债务。
因此，资本主义应对其反复出现的危机的方式是一个了不起的两步走。第一步，大规模借贷为刺激和救助计划提供资金。第二步，澳大利亚
资本家为借贷买单。
这种忙碌将资本主义危机的大部分成本转嫁到中低收入人群身上。这种转移通过紧缩计划实现的失业率上升、工资下降和政府服务减少而实现。持续减少税收增长也同样如此——尤其是对企业和富人的税收增长。
除了少数例外，世界各地的主要政党都实施了资本主义的两步忙碌。只有当中低收入人群的大规模反对足够有组织，可能威胁到资本主义本身时，资本家才会在借贷和紧缩政策上动摇和分裂。一些资本家随后与反对派合作，支持“新政”，而不是紧缩政策。
即便如此，一旦度过了眼前的危机，资本家就会恢复到他们偏爱的借贷和紧缩政策。美国从 1929 年到现在的历史很好地教会了我们这个教训。
资本家知道他们的制度是不稳定的。他们从来没有阻止过危机的复发。相反，他们依靠政策来“管理”危机。两步走的策略——借钱刺激经济和救助，然后紧缩政策——通常能起到作用。凯恩斯主义者提倡借钱，当紧缩政策随之而来时，他们似乎感到惊讶，甚至愤怒。
企业和富人本来就不应该逃避税收，因为他们帮助引发了危机；他们在危机前的几十年里致富最多；他们最有能力支付克服危机的费用。如果他们被征税来支付刺激和救助的费用，就不需要借钱或紧缩政策了。
对企业和富人征税也会产生后果，但它们产生的社会成本要小得多，而且主要落在那些最有能力应对这些后果的人身上。
但任何有组织的反对派，只要足够强大，让企业和富人为资本主义的危机买单，也可能会质疑资本主义本身。在经历了近六年的危机后，人们提出了一个问题：“我们难道不能比资本主义做得更好吗？”推动，要求讨论、辩论和民主决策。
事实不容辩论
《卫报》认为，获取可靠信息对民主至关重要，特别是在美国大选之前，这可能会对全世界产生重大影响。
在坏人、极端媒体和专制政客传播错误信息日益增多的时代，真实、可靠的新闻报道从未如此重要——我们很自豪能够广泛分享我们的新闻报道，这要感谢像您这样的加拿大读者的慷慨支持。
通过今天帮助资助《卫报》，您可以在打击那些散布谎言以破坏民主和煽动全球政治分裂的人的恶意和私利方面发挥重要作用。
The great austerity shell game
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/04/great-austerity-shell-game
Richard Wolff Mon 4 Nov 2013
Austerity policies presume that the chief economic problems today are government budget deficits that increase national debts. Austerity policies solve those problems mainly by cutting government spending, and secondarily, by limited tax increases. Reducing expenditures while raising revenues does cut governments' deficits and their needs to borrow.
National debts grow less or drop depending on how much each government's expenditures decrease and its taxes increase. Obama's austerity policies during 2013 started 1 January, when he raised payroll taxes on everyone's annual incomes up to $113,700. Then, on 1 March, the "sequester" lowered federal expenditures. Thus, 2013's US deficit will drop sharply from 2012's.
Obama will likely impose more austerity: cutting social security and Medicare benefits to compromise with Republicans. Similarly, European governments maintain their "austerity" programs. Even France's government, officially "anti-austerity" and "socialist", has a new budget with typical austerity cuts in social expenditures.
The accumulated evidence shows that austerity programs usually make economic downturns worse. Why, then, do they remain the preferred policy for most capitalist governments?
When capitalist economies crash, most capitalists request – and governments provide – credit market bailouts and economic stimuli. However, corporations and the rich oppose new taxes on them to pay for stimulus and bailout programs. They insist, instead, that governments should borrow the necessary funds. Since 2007, capitalist governments everywhere borrowed massively for those costly programs. They thus ran large budget deficits and their national debts soared.
Heavy borrowing was thus capitalists' preferred first policy to deal with their system's latest crisis. It served them well.
Borrowing paid for government rescues of banks, other financial companies, and selected other major corporations. Borrowing enabled stimulus expenditures that revived demand for goods and services. Borrowing enabled government outlays on unemployment compensation, food stamps, and other offsets to crisis-induced suffering.
In these ways, borrowing helped reduce the criticism, resentment, anger, and anti-system tendencies among those fired from jobs, evicted from homes, deprived of job security and benefits, etc. Government borrowing had these positive results for capitalists – while saving them from paying taxes to get those results.
Nor is that all. Corporations and the rich used the money they saved by keeping governments from taxing them to provide the huge loans governments therefore needed. Middle- and lower-income people could lend little if anything to their governments. Corporations and the rich, in effect, substituted loans to the government instead of paying more in taxes. For those loans, governments must pay interest and eventually repay them.
Government borrowing rewards corporations and the rich quite nicely. It amounts to a very sweet deal for capitalists.
Yet, that sweet deal raises a new problem. Where will governments find funds, first, to pay interest on all the borrowing, and second, to pay back the lenders? Corporations and the rich worry that they might still be taxed to provide those funds. They are determined to avoid such taxes – just as they avoided being taxed to pay for stimulus and bailout programs in the first place.
Austerity is thus capitalists' preferred second policy, a second way to avoid higher taxes as governments struggle with economic crises. Corporations and the rich promote austerity by loudly insisting that today's key economic problems are not unemployment, lost job security and benefits, home foreclosures, and record-breaking inequalities of income and wealth. Rather, the key problems are government deficits and rising national debt. They must be cut.
To do that, taxes should be raised modestly or not at all (to avoid "hurting" the economy). The key solution is thus to cut government outlays on jobs, social benefits, and providing social services. Money saved by those cuts should be used instead to pay interest on the national debt and reduce it.
Capitalism's way of dealing with its recurring crises is thus a remarkable two-step hustle. In step one, massive borrowing funds stimulus and bailout programs. In step two, austerity pays for the borrowing.
This hustle shifts most of the costs of capitalist crises onto the backs of middle- and lower-income people. The shift occurs through the higher unemployment, lower wages, and reduced government services achieved by austerity programs. It occurs as well in the sustained minimization of tax increases – especially on corporations and the rich.
With few exceptions, major political parties everywhere have imposed capitalism's two-step hustle. Only when mass opposition from middle- and lower-income people is sufficiently organized to possibly threaten capitalism itself do capitalists waver and split over borrowing and austerity. Some capitalists then collaborate with that opposition to support "New Deals", instead of austerity.
Even then, once past the immediate crisis, capitalists revert to their preferred policies of borrowing and austerity. US history from 1929 to the present teaches that lesson well.
Capitalists know their system is unstable. They have never yet prevented recurring crises. They rely instead on policies to "manage" them. The two-step hustle – borrowing for stimulus and bailouts and then austerity – usually does the job. Keynesians promote the borrowing and then seem surprised, even outraged, when austerity follows.
Corporations and the rich should not have escaped taxation in the first place because they helped to cause the crisis; they enriched themselves the most in the decades before the crisis; and they can best afford to pay to overcome the crisis. Had they been taxed to pay for stimulus and bailout, no need would have arisen for borrowing or austerity.
Taxing corporations and the rich would have consequences too, but they would generate far fewer social costs and fall mostly on those best able to cope with them.
But any organized opposition strong enough to make corporations and the rich pay for capitalism's crises would likely also question capitalism itself. Emerging from nearly six years of crisis, the question "can't we do better than capitalism?" pushes forward, demanding discussion, debate, and democratic decision.
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