拉里·埃利奥特关于右翼经济迷思如何制约安迪·伯纳姆政府的专栏文章，应当成为约翰·希利预算案发布前的必读材料。右翼经济迷思可能会让伯纳姆的计划功败垂成——要打破这些迷思，不妨回归凯恩斯。10月1日，我曾从事债券交易长达20年，因此同意“家庭预算”这一类比与英国政府的自我融资方式毫无关联。议会投票决定支出，财政部指示英格兰银行，而英格兰银行则向私营部门的账户注入资金。税收则是在此之后将资金抽离。
Larry Elliott’s column on the rightwing economic myths constraining Andy Burnham’s government should be required reading before John Healey’s budget Rightwing economic myths could derail Burnham’s project – to destroy them, look to Keynes, 1 October I spent 20 years trading bonds, and agree that the household budget analogy bears no relation to how the UK state finances itself. Parliament votes on the spending, the Treasury instructs the Bank of England and the Bank credits accounts in the private sector. Taxes withdraw money afterwards.
同样的会计逻辑也揭示了所谓的“黑洞”：政府每借入一英镑，最终都会成为家庭、企业和养老基金持有的金融资产。这笔钱并没有消失到任何黑洞之中，无论是黑孔还是其他什么。
The same accounting exposes the “black hole”: every pound of government borrowing ends up as a financial asset held by households, firms and pension funds. That money hasn’t disappeared into any hole, black or otherwise.
“三重保障”机制的争论焦点在于英国是否负担得起养老金支出，但一个发行英镑的政府绝不会因缺乏英镑而无法支付养老金。约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯和克莱门特·艾德礼都明白这一点，一位意想不到的盟友也是如此。2005年，当被问及美国“现收现付”式养老金是否安全时，时任美联储主席的艾伦·格林斯潘对国会表示：“没有任何因素能阻止联邦政府创造其所需数量的货币，并将其支付给任何人。”
The triple lock is debated as a question of whether Britain can afford its pensions, yet a government that issues sterling cannot run out of sterling to pay them. John Maynard Keynes and Clement Attlee understood this, and so did an unlikely ally. Asked in 2005 whether US pay-as-you-go pensions were secure, Alan Greenspan, then chair of the Federal Reserve, told Congress that there was “nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody”.
英镑的情况也是如此。他补充说，真正的问题在于经济能否创造那些养老金所购买的实际资产。而如何提供护理人员、住房以及药品，则属于民主制度本应解决的政治和道德问题。
The same is true of sterling. The real question, he added, was whether the economy creates the real assets those pensions are used to buy. Deciding how to provide the care workers, homes and medicines is a political and moral question of the kind democracies exist to settle.
埃利奥特警告称，伯纳姆可能会成为那位提出了正确问题却未能找到答案的首相。
Elliott warns that Burnham risks becoming the prime minister who asked the right questions without finding the answers.
终结财政部引发的衰退——我共同撰写的一份报告——提出了他需要推行的制度改革。他可以从放弃一个错误的问题开始：“我们该如何支付这笔费用？” Vince Gomez 99%组织 Larry Elliott说得对：伯纳姆政府需要挑战新自由主义理念，即“过去四十年中的那些陈词滥调”，例如将政府比作家庭这一说法，只有这样，才能修复保守党对我们社会服务造成的破坏。Elliott还提到了其他一些类似观点。
Ending Treasury-Induced Decline, a report that I co-wrote, sets out the institutional reforms he needs. He could start by dropping the wrong question: “How will we pay for it?”Vince Gomez The 99% Organisation Larry Elliott is right: Burnham’s government needs to challenge neoliberal ideas, “the nostrums of the past four decades”, like the one about the government being like a household, if it is to repair the damage done to our social services by the Tories. There are others which Elliott didn’t mention.
当公共服务的资金长期不足、濒临崩溃，而英国最富有的1%人口却拥有全部金融资产的36.5%，价值高达1.8万亿英镑时，政府绝不能接受拉弗曲线理论。我们必须拒绝那些反对将资本利得税与所得税统一、反对征收财富税——当然，在财政规则允许时也应提高所得税——的论点，因为这些论点正是基于保守党那个早已被证伪的过时经济神话。
Laffer curve cannot be accepted by a government when chronically underfunded public services are crumbling, and the richest 1% in the UK own 36.5% of all financial assets, with a value of £1.8tn. We must reject arguments against equalising capital gains and income tax and imposing wealth taxes – and of course increasing income tax when fiscal rules allow – which use this old and long-disproved Tory economic myth.
同样，在应对银行和公司利用战争影响获取超额利润的问题时，我们也必须摒弃“涓滴效应”这一荒谬观念。这种观念导致英格兰银行不可避免地归咎于工资上涨引发通货膨胀，却忽视了美国近期的一项研究：大多数物价上涨源于“企业试图维持利润空间”。Bernie Evans 利物浦 非常感谢Larry Elliott，他彻底打破了那种“我们绝不能将国家的信用卡刷到极限”的固有观念。
The same applies to the silly notion of trickle-down economics when tackling the excessive profits of banks and companies cashing in on the effects of war. That leads to the Bank of England’s inevitable blaming of wage increases for inflation, ignoring the relatively recent research in the US showing that that most price inflation comes from “companies seeking to maintain profit margins Bernie Evans Liverpool Grateful thanks to Larry Elliott for demolishing the conditioned belief that we must not “max out the nation’s credit card”. Producing and spending is fundamentally important to the ultimate revival of the UK economy and the restoration of industrialisation. My late husband always insisted that we could afford what we needed to and I didn’t believe him. I do now.
生产和消费对于英国经济最终复苏以及工业化进程的重建至关重要。我已故的丈夫总是坚持认为，我们负担得起所需的一切，而我当时并不相信他。但现在我相信了。Val Bynner 伦敦
Val Bynner London