意识形态与投资：为什么美国不搞基础设施建设 -保罗·克鲁格曼

【美国基础设施日渐破败，令诺贝尔经济学奖得主克鲁格曼追忆起当年的好时光。他认为，两党政治中的意识形态斗争是拖累美国基建的主要原因，共和党控制众议员后，美国政府的投资步履维艰。美国中期选举已近，许多观察者判断共和党有望拿下参议院，使奥巴马政府彻底跛脚。美国基础设施建设的前景可能更为黯淡。】

前人栽树，后人乘凉。曾几何时，美国也懂得这个道理。过去，政府直接出资建设了伊利运河、州际公路系统等公共工程，为经济增长打下了坚实的基础。除此之外，政府还向私人部门提供激励政策，比如拨地修建铁路等。无论以哪种方式，政府都对有益民生的投资给予了大力支持。

但现在，即使投资的需求已迫在眉睫，即使上佳的机会摆在面前，我们也不会投资。不要再用“政治机能障碍”之类模棱两可的词语诡辩，为罪魁祸首开脱责任。美国无法投资，不是华盛顿方面出了问题；破坏性的意识形态已在共和党占据主流，这才是根本原因。

先了解一点背景资料：自房地产泡沫破灭至今，已过去七年有余，美国已变得储蓄泛滥——或者更准确地说，合意储蓄（desired savings）无处可去。房贷市场虽稍有恢复，但仍然低迷。企业虽赚取巨额利润，但疲软的消费需求使它们不愿投资，所以它们选择积累现金或回购股票。银行持有的超额准备金已近2.7万亿美元，这部分本可借出的资金处于闲置状态。

合意储蓄过高，投资意愿太低，这种失调造成美国经济持续低迷。要知道，你的支出就是我的收入，而我的支出则是你的收入。因此，如果大家同时削减支出，那么每个人的收入都会下降。

显而易见，针对这一情况，最恰当的政策是加大公共投资。美国对基础设施的需求十分庞大，尤其是在水利和运输方面。联邦政府借贷的利息低得令人难以置信 ——事实上，在大部分时间里，通胀保值债券的利率为负（目前也仅为0.4%）。因此，政策制定者不用脑子也能想到应该借贷修建公路，维护下水道系统以及改善其他基础设施。但实际情况却完全相反。公共建设开支仅在奥巴马刺激政策生效初期短暂上升，接着便大幅萎缩。原因何在？

表面看来，各州政府和地方政府的财政困境是造成公共投资下降的直接原因，因为它们在公共投资中占据着主要地位。

总的来说，根据法律规定，各州地方政府必须保持预算平衡。但在当前不景气的经济环境下，政府决策者们看到收入下跌、开支上升，便推迟或取消了许多建设项目，以节省现金支出。

然而，这种情况本可避免。联邦政府只需举手之劳，便能帮各州政府打开紧捂着的钱袋子——实际上，2009年的经济刺激法案就包括了这样的援助，正因如此，公共投资才出现了短暂的上升。但一旦大老党（观察者网注：共和党别称大老党，Grand Old Party）控制了众议院，基建项目就别想拿到一分钱。共和党人嘴上偶尔也会提及增加支出，但他们在行动上封杀了奥巴马政府的所有提案。

任何形式的政府支出都将遭遇压倒性的敌视，这就是美国两党的意识形态之争。一开始，共和党反对的是那些社会民生项目，尤其是接济穷人的项目，但随着时间的推移，反对面越扩越大。如今，不管什么形式，不管多么必要，也不管经济状况，只要是支出，共和党就反对。

只要翻翻众议院的共和党人在预算委员会主席保罗·瑞恩的领导下签署的文件，你就能大致感受到这种意识形态的尖锐对立。例如，2011年，他们发布了“节流减债发展经济”的宣言，无视高失业率，号召大幅削减开支，把“减少政府基建支出将缩减政府投资”这一说法斥为“凯恩斯主义”。（我以为这只是算术，但我懂什么啊？）同年，《华尔街日报》发表题为“分配不当”的社论，声称政府每多花一分钱，私人部门的资源便多流失一分，而私人部门总能够更好地利用这些资源。

即使支撑这些言论的经济模式已在现实中一败涂地；发布这种言论的人年复一年错误地预测通胀失控、利率飙升，但对这些无视现实证据的人来说，一切都不重要。显而易见，从地方公路到排水系统，大多数基建项目是私人部门现在不做，未来也不会做的。但在对私人部门的赞歌和对政府部门的骂声当中，一切也都不重要了。

如此种种，导致今天美国已经背弃了自己的历史。我们需要公共投资；在利率极低的今天，我们完全承担得起这样的投资。但我们就是不会这样做。

（本文原载于《纽约时报》，原题“意识形态与投资”，观察者网杨晗轶译。点击下一页，查看英文原文）

Ideology and Investment

America used to be a country that built for the future. Sometimes the government built directly: Public projects, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, provided the backbone for economic growth. Sometimes it provided incentives to the private sector, like land grants to spur railroad construction. Either way, there was broad support for spending that would make us richer.

But nowadays we simply won’t invest, even when the need is obvious and the timing couldn’t be better. And don’t tell me that the problem is “political dysfunction” or some other weasel phrase that diffuses the blame. Our inability to invest doesn’t reflect something wrong with “Washington”; it reflects the destructive ideology that has taken over the Republican Party.

Some background: More than seven years have passed since the housing bubble burst, and ever since, America has been awash in savings — or more accurately, desired savings — with nowhere to go. Borrowing to buy homes has recovered a bit, but remains low. Corporations are earning huge profits, but are reluctant to invest in the face of weak consumer demand, so they’re accumulating cash or buying back their own stock. Banks are holding almost $2.7 trillion in excess reserves — funds they could lend out, but choose instead to leave idle.

And the mismatch between desired saving and the willingness to invest has kept the economy depressed. Remember, your spending is my income and my spending is your income, so if everyone tries to spend less at the same time, everyone’s income falls.

There’s an obvious policy response to this situation: public investment. We have huge infrastructure needs, especially in water and transportation, and the federal government can borrow incredibly cheaply — in fact, interest rates on inflation-protected bonds have been negative much of the time (they’re currently just 0.4 percent). So borrowing to build roads, repair sewers and more seems like a no-brainer. But what has actually happened is the reverse. After briefly rising after the Obama stimulus went into effect, public construction spending has plunged. Why?

In a direct sense, much of the fall in public investment reflects the fiscal troubles of state and local governments, which account for the great bulk of public investment.

These governments generally must, by law, balance their budgets, but they saw revenues plunge and some expenses rise in a depressed economy. So they delayed or canceled a lot of construction to save cash.

Yet this didn’t have to happen. The federal government could easily have provided aid to the states to help them spend — in fact, the stimulus bill included such aid, which was one main reason public investment briefly increased. But once the G.O.P. took control of the House, any chance of more money for infrastructure vanished. Once in a while Republicans would talk about wanting to spend more, but they blocked every Obama administration initiative.

And it’s all about ideology, an overwhelming hostility to government spending of any kind. This hostility began as an attack on social programs, especially those that aid the poor, but over time it has broadened into opposition to any kind of spending, no matter how necessary and no matter what the state of the economy.

You can get a sense of this ideology at work in some of the documents produced by House Republicans under the leadership of Paul Ryan, the chairman of the Budget Committee. For example, a 2011 manifesto titled “Spend Less, Owe Less, Grow the Economy” called for sharp spending cuts even in the face of high unemployment, and dismissed as “Keynesian” the notion that “decreasing government outlays for infrastructure lessens government investment.” (I thought that was just arithmetic, but what do I know?) Or take a Wall Street Journal editorial from the same year titled “The Great Misallocators,” asserting that any money the government spends diverts resources away from the private sector, which would always make better use of those resources.

Never mind that the economic models underlying such assertions have failed dramatically in practice, that the people who say such things have been predicting runaway inflation and soaring interest rates year after year and keep being wrong; these aren’t the kind of people who reconsider their views in the light of evidence. Never mind the obvious point that the private sector doesn’t and won’t supply most kinds of infrastructure, from local roads to sewer systems; such distinctions have been lost amid the chants of private sector good, government bad.

And the result, as I said, is that America has turned its back on its own history. We need public investment; at a time of very low interest rates, we could easily afford it. But build we won’t.