Milton Friedman
米爾頓·弗裡德曼
A heavyweight champ, at five foot two
身高5英尺2英寸的重量級冠軍
The legacy of Milton Friedman, a giant among economists
Nov 23rd 2006 from the Economist
譯者：老狒狒
IN 1946 two American economists published a pamphlet attacking rent controls. 「It was」, recalled one of them many years later, 「my first taste of public controversy.」 In the American Economic Review, no less, a critic dismissed 「Roofs or Ceilings」 as 「a political tract」. The same reviewer gave the pair a proper savaging in a newspaper: 「Economists who sign their names to drivel of this sort do no service to the profession they represent.」
1946年，兩名美國經濟學家出版了一本攻擊租金控制的小冊子。其中一人在多年後回憶道：「那是我第一次嘗試公眾關心的問題。」恰恰就是《美國經濟評論》上的一篇評論將《屋頂還是天花板》貶低為「一本政治小冊子」，而且其作者還在一家報紙上對這兩位經濟學家給出了毫不客氣的批評：「在這種廢話連篇的文章上署名的經濟學家，根本沒有對他們所代表的職業做出貢獻。」
The reminiscing author was Milton Friedman, who died on November 16th, aged 94. In the wake of the Great Depression 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 the Depression had shown that markets were not to be trusted? The state, it was plain, should be master of the market; and, equipped with John Maynard Keynes's 「General Theory」, governments should spend and borrow to keep the economy topped up and unemployment at bay.
這位追憶中的作者就是已於11月16日以94歲高齡去世的米爾頓·弗裡德曼。在大蕭條之後到第二次世界大戰之間的那段時間裡，由於凱恩斯革命尚處壯年，縱然是在（或者尤其是）經濟學家當中，鼓吹自由市場理論也是非常不受待見的。弗裡德曼同那些志同道合之人——如《通向奴役之路》的作者費雷德裡希·哈耶克——都被看做是怪人。難道大蕭條之可怕不是已經證明了市場是不值得可信賴的嗎？一個顯而易見的道理是，政府應當是市場的主人；配備了凱恩斯《通論》政府應當開支和借貸，以保持經濟體蓬勃向上，失業率處於低位。
That economists and policymakers think differently now is to a great degree Mr Friedman's achievement. He was the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century (Keynes died in 1946), possibly of all of it. In 1998, in 「Two Lucky People」, the memoir he wrote with his wife, Rose, he could claim to be 「in the mainstream of thought, not, as we were 50 years ago, a derided minority」, and no one could dispute it.
當今經濟學家和決策者的想法已經於當時截然不同，這在很大程度上應歸功於弗裡德曼的成就。他是20世紀後半期（凱恩斯已於1946年去世）最有影響力的經濟學家，甚至還有可能是整個20世紀最有影響力的經濟學家。他在1998年與妻子共同撰寫的回憶錄《一對幸運之人》中能夠自稱是：「思想界的主流。不再像50年前那樣，是遭人嘲笑的少數派。」對此，無人可以反駁。
Perhaps Mr Friedman became not only a great economist but also an influential one because he had a love of argument. As a boy he liked to make himself heard. He claimed to have had few memories of a school which he attended in Rahway, the New Jersey town his family had moved to when Brooklyn-born Milton was 13 months old, but he remembered getting a nickname. 「I tended to talk very loud, indeed shout」; so when someone mentioned the proverb 「Still water runs deep」, he was dubbed 「Shallow」.
弗裡德曼之所以能成為一個偉大而且有影響力的經濟學家，這可能同他喜歡與人辯論不無關係。孩提時代，他就喜歡發表意見。據他自己說，除了同學給他起的外號，他對自己曾經學習過的新澤西州Rahway鎮上那所學校幾乎沒有任何記憶。（弗裡德曼出生在紐約的布魯克林區，在他13個月大的時候就隨父母搬到新澤西州的Rahway居住）。他說：「那時，我常常好抬高了嗓門同別人說話。說實話，那根本就是喊叫。」因此，他的同學們就借用「靜水深流」這句格言時，給他起了個「淺水深流」的綽號。
His classmates could scarcely have chosen a less apt moniker. Directly or indirectly, Mr Friedman brought about profound changes in the way his profession, politicians and the public thought of economic questions, in at least three enormously important and connected areas. In all of them his thinking was widely regarded at the outset as eccentric or worse.
他的同學可能難以找到一個更合適的綽號了。弗裡德曼在至少三個非常重要而且相互關聯領域中，給他的職業、政客和公眾看待經濟問題的方式，直接地或間接地，帶來了深遠的變革。在一開始的時候，他有關這三個領域的觀點都被當成是奇談怪論。
The first of those areas is summed up by 「Capitalism and Freedom」, the title of a book published in 1962 (see our review). To Mr Friedman, the two were inextricably intertwined: without economic freedom—capitalism—there could be no political freedom. Governments, he argued, should do little more than enforce contracts, promote competition, 「provide a monetary framework」 (of which more below) and protect the 「irresponsible, whether madman or child」.
第一個領域可用他在1962年出版的同名著作，概括為「資本主義和自由」。在弗裡德曼看來，兩者不可分割，相互交織。沒有經濟自由——即資本主義——就不會有政治自由。他指出，政府的職責就是保護合同，促進競爭，「提供貨幣政策框架」，為「無責任能力的人，不管是瘋子還是孩子」提供保護。除此之外，別無可做。
Freedom fighter
自由鬥士
To show where Mr Friedman thought the limit of the state should lie, the book lists 14 activities, then undertaken by government in America, 「that cannot...validly be justified」 by the principles it lays out. These include price supports for farming; tariffs and import quotas; rent control; minimum wages; 「detailed regulation of industries」, including banks; forcing pensioners to buy annuities; military conscription in time of peace; national parks; and the ban on carrying mail for profit.
為了展示弗裡德曼眼中的政府界限，書中列出了14種被當時的美國政府所採納而又不能用美國政府給自己所規定的原則，「來判斷是否完全正確的」行為。這14種行為包括：農業價格補貼，關稅和進口配額，租金控制，最低工資，對包括銀行業在內的「繁瑣的行業監管」，強迫領養老金之人購買年金，和平年代的徵兵制，國家公園，禁止盈利性的郵政業務。
Although the state still does a lot of this, it does less than it did; and little if any goes unquestioned. For the abolition of the draft, in particular, Mr Friedman could claim some credit: a surprise, perhaps, to those who saw him as a right-wing ideologue. Conscription—「an army of slaves」, as he put it to William Westmoreland, the army chief of staff—was illiberal: in peacetime, there was no justification for not hiring volunteers at a market wage.
儘管政府仍在從事其中的許多行為，但已經比原來少了，並且不再從事毫無爭議的行為。尤其可以應歸功於弗裡德曼的是徵兵制的取消。因為，這是讓那些把他看作是保守派理論家的人大吃一驚的事情。正如他用「奴隸大軍」來稱呼美軍越戰總司令威廉·威斯特摩蘭所帶領的那支軍隊一樣，在他看來，徵兵制是反自由的：在和平年代，沒有任何正當理由不以市場工資僱傭志願兵。
Soon after becoming president, Richard Nixon set up a commission, on which Mr Friedman sat, to examine the argument for abolishing the draft. (Nixon had already been persuaded that it should go.) Conscription was ended in 1973, by which time the Vietnam war had anyway turned public opinion against it. Mr Friedman wrote, 「No public-policy activity that I have ever engaged in has given me as much satisfaction as the All-Volunteer Commission.」
理察·尼克森當選總統後不久就建立了一個由弗裡德曼坐鎮指揮的委員會，以梳理出支持取消徵兵制的草案。（尼克森早就被應當進行這項工作的理由所說服）1973年，就在越戰促使輿論轉而反對徵兵制之際，這項制度被終結了。弗裡德曼寫道：「在我這一生曾經致力過的公共政策行為中，最令我滿意的就是全志願兵委員會。」
Second, Mr Friedman revolutionised how economists and policymakers treated money and inflation. Until he showed otherwise, post-war governments seemed able to trade off unemployment and inflation: a long-term statistical link between the two, known as the Phillips curve after the New Zealander who noted it, appeared to prove as much. By loosening monetary policy, governments could apparently buy a reduction in unemployment at the price of a little more inflation.
其次，弗裡德曼徹底改變了經濟學家和決策者對待貨幣和通脹的方式。直到他展示其他方式之前，戰後的各國政府似乎是能夠權衡失業和通脹的。這是因為，事實證明，由一位紐西蘭人提出並以他的名字而命名的、用以描述兩者之間一種長期統計聯繫的菲利普斯曲線似乎也同樣管用。政府顯然可以通過放寬貨幣政策的方式，以輕微的通脹為代價，換取失業率的降低。
This, said Mr Friedman, addressing the American Economic Association as its president in 1967, was an illusion. Pumping up demand pushed down unemployment only by fooling workers into thinking that wages had risen relative to prices, making them more willing to offer their labour. Once the truth dawned and they demanded more pay, unemployment would rise back to its 「natural」 rate. If governments tried to push unemployment below this rate, in the long run they would succeed only in pushing inflation ever higher. Edmund Phelps, winner of this year's Nobel Prize in economics, made a similar observation at around the same time.
1967年，時任美國經濟學會主席的弗裡德曼在演講中指出，這種理論不過是一種幻覺。刺激需求壓低失業率只能通過一種方式才能實現，那就是：欺騙工人，讓他們誤以為工資已經相對於物價出現了上漲，使他們更願意提供勞動力。但是，一旦真相大白，他們就會要求增加工資，失業率也會隨之反彈至「自然」的水平。也就是說，倘若政府試圖把失業率壓制在這個水平之下，從長期來看，他們只有在將通脹推至更高的水平時才能成功。同一年的諾貝爾經濟學獎得主埃德蒙·費爾普斯也在大約同一時間表達過類似的看法。
Mr Friedman's work was embellished by others, who modelled firms' and workers' expectations in a more sophisticated way. What really counted, though, was that he had spotted a flaw in economic orthodoxy before it was made obvious by events. In the 1970s rich economies suffered rising inflation and higher, not lower, unemployment, despite governments' efforts to inflate their way out of trouble. Mr Friedman said this was futile: governments simply had to adopt a stable monetary framework. By this he meant setting a target for the growth of the money supply, a rule known as monetarism.
弗裡德曼的工作已被那些用更複雜的方式將公司和工人的期望模型化的人給美化了。然而，他真正的貢獻是在其事件使之變得明顯之前就發現了正統經濟學中存在的一個缺陷。上世紀70年代，儘管富裕國家政府曾嘗試利用推高通脹的方法走出困境，但是仍然承受了通脹日漸嚴重和失業率不斷上升而不是下降的痛苦。弗裡德曼說，這種努力是徒勞的。其實，政府必須只需採取一種穩定的貨幣政策框架即可解決問題。他說這話的意思是，為被稱為貨幣供應的增加設定一個目標，這就是通常所說的貨幣主義法則。
His diagnosis of monetary ills and prescriptions for monetary policy long predated that presidential address. In 1963, with Anna Schwartz, he published 「A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960」, a monumental labour. The book traced a causal relationship between the rate of monetary growth and the price level. Most eye-catching was its analysis of the Great Depression—or, as the authors called it, the Great Contraction.
弗裡德曼有關貨幣之惡的診斷和為貨幣政策開出的藥方早於那次主席演講。1963年，他同安娜·施瓦茨合作出版了不朽巨著《1867年-1960年美國貨幣史》。該書追朔了貨幣增長速度與價格水平之間的因果關係。最引人注目的是對大蕭條或者按照作者的說法，大收縮的分析。
The American economy shrank so much between 1929 and 1933, they argued, not because Wall Street crashed, because governments put up trade barriers or because under capitalism slumps are inevitable. No: trouble was turned into catastrophe by the Federal Reserve, which botched monetary policy, tightening when it should have loosened, thus depriving banks of liquidity when it should have been pumping money in.
他們指出，美國經濟在1929年-1939年間之所以出現大萎縮，其原因不在於華爾街的崩潰，也不在於政府設置的各種貿易障礙，或者是資本主義制度下不可避免的危機。不。問題之所以會轉變為災難，是因為搞砸了貨幣政策的美聯儲，它在應該放寬貨幣供應之際收緊了銀根，因而在銀行本應被注入資金的時候，令銀行喪失了流動性。
Hence Mr Friedman's mistrust of independent central banks: 「To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is too important to be left to the Central Bankers.」 He thought they should limit inflation by targeting the rate of growth of the money supply. Aiming for inflation directly, he thought, was a mistake, because central banks could control money more easily than prices.
弗裡德曼在這個問題上對獨立的中央銀行產生了誤解。他說：「按照克列孟梭的說法，正因為貨幣十分重要，因此才不能將它交給中央銀行家。」在他看來，央行應當通過為貨幣供應增長設定目標的方式來限制通脹。他說，直接以通脹為目標是錯誤的。因為，對於中央銀行來說，控制貨幣供應比控制物價更容易。
Brilliant as his monetary diagnoses were, on the details of the remedy he came out on the wrong side. Controlling the money supply proved far harder in practice than in theory (notably in Britain in the 1980s: Mr Friedman grumbled that the British authorities were going about it in the wrong way). These days many central banks are not only independent of government but also have inflation targets—to which, by and large, they get pretty close. The Federal Reserve has even stopped publishing M3, a broad measure of the money supply. Writing in the Wall Street Journal when Alan Greenspan stood down as Fed chairman in January this year, Mr Friedman did admit that he had underestimated central bankers' abilities—or Mr Greenspan's, anyway.
弗裡德曼對貨幣政策的診斷非常出色，但是他為之所開列藥方的細節卻是錯誤的。事實證明，在控制貨幣供應方面，實際操作要比理論難得多。（最突出的就是上世紀80年代的英國。當時，弗裡德曼曾抱怨英國當局走錯了方向。）如今，不僅許多央行是獨立於政府的，而且還都有大致相同的通脹目標。美聯儲甚至還停止了公布衡量貨幣供應廣義指標——M3。當艾倫·格林斯潘於今年1月從美聯儲主席的位置上退下來的時候，弗裡德曼曾在《華爾街日報》上發表文章，承認自己低估了了央行官員的能力，或者更確切地說是格林斯潘的能力。
Third, Mr Friedman laid the foundation of modern theories of consumption. Keynes had posited that as income rose, so would the proportion that was saved. Economic data bore this out only up to a point: though the rich had higher saving rates than the poor, aggregate saving rates did not rise as countries became richer.
第三，弗裡德曼奠定了當代消費理論的基礎。凱恩斯曾提出這樣一個假設：隨著收入的增加，儲蓄也會增加。經濟數據顯示，這也會帶來一種結果。那就是：儘管富人的儲蓄率高於窮人，但總儲蓄率是不會隨著國家的富裕而增長的。
Mr Friedman resolved this apparent paradox with a theory known as the permanent income hypothesis, set forth in 1957. People, he suggested, did not spend on the 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 bad year, therefore, they might dip into their savings; when they had a windfall, they would not spend the lot. He called the hypothesis 「embarrassingly obvious」; 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 Nobel Prize in 1976.
弗裡德曼在1957年提出了著名的「永久收入」假設理論，解決了這個明顯的悖論。他認為，民眾的支出不是以某一年的具體收入為基礎的，而是以他們的「永久收入」——他們所期望的年均收入——為基礎的。因此，在收入不好的年景，他們可能會減少儲蓄；在收入大幅下滑的年代，他們可能不會花銷很多。他說「這是個淺顯得讓人不好意思提出來的」假設。但是事後來看，其中的許多想法有時最好的。正是因為這個假設足夠好，加之他對於貨幣分析和穩定政策方面的貢獻，為他贏得了1976年的諾貝爾經濟學獎。
Spreading the word
傳播自由
Getting fellow economists to accept your ideas is one thing; transmitting them to the laity in plain English is another. He was a gifted communicator, like many prominent economists from Keynes to Paul Krugman. For 18 years he had a column in Newsweek. He and Mrs Friedman wrote a bestselling book, 「Free to Choose」, published in 1980, based on a television series of the same name. Mrs Friedman, whom he met when they were graduate students in Chicago, was a fine economist too and a sharp editor of her husband's work. She survives him after 68 years of marriage.
讓同輩經濟學家接受你的觀點是一回事；把這些觀點用平白的語言傳遞給外行是另外一回事。就像從凱恩斯到保羅·克魯格曼的許多傑出經濟學家一樣，弗裡德曼也是一個天生的傳播者。他在《新聞周刊》上開設專欄有18年之久。1980年，他曾同妻子一起，以同名電視系列節目為藍本，出版了一本名為《自由選擇》的暢銷書。弗裡德曼的妻子是兩人同在芝加哥大學讀研時結識的，她也是一位傑出的經濟學家，同時還是她丈夫著作的嚴厲編輯。兩人的婚姻長達68年，她目前仍然健在。
Politicians were keen to listen—most obviously Ronald Reagan. Although Mr Friedman met Margaret Thatcher and her government's policies bore a monetarist mark, she was probably influenced more directly by Hayek than by him. Mr Friedman was heartened by Reagan's willingness to support the Fed's tight monetary policy in the early 1980s and by his pro-market, small-government instincts, borne out in less regulation and the tax reform of 1986. He was disappointed by developments after Reagan left office. He would have preferred Donald Rumsfeld, not George Bush senior, as Reagan's vice-president and successor. An appraisal of the Rumsfeld presidency must be left to counterfactual historians.
政客都是熱衷於傾聽之人，其中最為突出要數隆納·雷根。儘管弗裡德曼曾經與瑪格麗特·柴契爾見過面，而且她的政府的政策也帶有貨幣學派的標記，但是她所受的影響可能更直接地來源於哈耶克而不是弗裡德曼。弗裡德曼曾被裡根在上世紀80年代早期支持美聯儲收緊貨幣政策的意願以及他在減少監管和在1986年的稅務改革中所帶有的支持市場、支持小政府的本能所感動。他也曾因裡根卸任之後的進展而感到失望。他本來是傾向於由唐納德·拉姆斯菲爾德，而不是由老布希作為裡根的副總統和接班人的。對於拉姆斯菲爾德出任總統的評價必須留待歷史學家去考證。
His most controversial listener was neither Reagan nor Lady Thatcher, but Augusto Pinochet. The Chilean dictator combined ruthless repression with a taste for free markets and monetarism. In the latter, he was advised by the 「Chicago boys」, economists educated at the university where Mr Friedman was the leading light. He thought they had the economics right, but insisted that his own connection with Chile was much exaggerated by those who took him to task at demonstrations and in print. In 1975 he spent six days there, met General Pinochet once and wrote to him afterwards with his economic prescription—a conclusion, he believed, that the Chicago boys had already reached.
在他的傾聽者中，最有爭議的既不是裡根也不是柴契爾夫人，而是奧古斯都·皮諾切特。這位智利獨裁者身上兼具鎮壓的無情和對自由市場和貨幣學派的青睞。在後一個問題上，他接受了「芝加哥學派」的建議。在弗裡德曼看來，作為一個以他為指路明燈的大學中接受過教育的經濟學家組成的知識分子土團體，「芝加哥學派」的經濟理論是正確的。但是，他堅持認為，他同智利之間的關聯被那些在遊行示威和出版物中指責自己的人給誇大了。他曾於1975年在那個國家呆過6天，並同皮諾切特有過一面之交，之後還曾把自己的經濟藥方寫成書信寄給過皮諾切特。他相信，他的那些政策只是對芝加哥學派早已涉及到的問題的一個總結。
If Mr Friedman had a favourite economy, it was Hong Kong. Its astonishing economic success convinced him that although economic freedom was necessary for political freedom, the converse was not true: political liberty, though desirable, was not needed for economies to be free. Why, he asked, had Hong Kong thrived when Britain, which controlled it until 1997, was so statist by comparison? He greatly admired Sir John Cowperthwaite, the colony's financial secretary in the 1960s, 「a Scotsman...a disciple of Adam Smith, his ancient countryman」. And how much more, Mr Friedman wondered, might America have thrived had it kept its government as small, relative to its economy, as the island entrepot had done?
如果說弗裡德曼對哪個經濟體青睞有加，那麼這個經濟體就是香港。香港令人驚訝的經濟成就讓他相信，對於政治自由來說，儘管經濟自由是必要的，但如果把反過來說就錯了——即，對於想獲得自由的經濟體來說，政治自由，儘管人人渴望，但不是必需的。他問道：為什麼香港在相對信奉中央經濟統制論的英國的管理下直到1997年都會如此繁榮呢？他非常欽佩20世紀60年代的香港財政司司長郭伯偉爵士。在他看來，郭伯偉爵士，「作為一個蘇格蘭人，是他的古代同鄉亞當·斯密的信徒」。令弗裡德曼感到困惑的是：如果美國也能夠讓其政府，相對於其經濟規模來說，保持的像這個自由貿易港一樣小，美國是否會更加繁榮呢？
That lament showed that Mr Friedman, brilliant and influential though he was, did not win all the fights he picked. Far from it. Education vouchers, which he and Mrs Friedman pushed for many years, have gained intellectual respectability but made limited headway in practice. Government spending, as a share of GDP, did not 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 that greater state intervention in Hong Kong would mean that the place 「would no longer be such a shining example of economic freedom.」
這種悔恨顯示，儘管弗裡德曼是一個傑出而且有影響的人物，但是他沒有贏得他所參與的所有戰鬥。他離這個目標還差很遠。他與妻子推動了多年的教育券得到了知識界的尊敬，但是實踐中的成就是有限的。作為佔GDP一部分的政府開支在裡根時期沒有實現平衡，在裡根離任後還是同原來一樣多。弗裡德曼只是在上個月曾在《華爾街日報上》對香港政府的更多介入表示了擔心。他寫道：這意味著，這意味著香港不再是自由經濟的傑出例子。
Rent control, the subject of that 「drivel」 in 1946, is still being argued over, not least 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 on the Chicago campus, no doubt discussing how to make the world a freer and happier place.
作為1946年那本小冊子的主題，租金控制仍是一個各方爭議的焦點，而且也不僅僅是只在紐約才是如此。如果你對與弗裡德曼一同撰寫那本小冊子的作者感興趣的話，不妨看看上面的這張照片。站在弗裡德曼身邊的那個身材高大之人是1982年諾貝爾經濟學獎得主喬治·斯蒂格勒。作為朋友和同事，當時兩人正在芝加哥大學校園中散步。而他們所談論的話題，毫無疑問地是：如何讓這個世界變成一個更加自由更加快樂的地方。
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