【短小文献翻译】经济学是悲观的科学吗？-经管之家官网！

我在论坛苦钱不易，但撒钱大方，哈。以下小文一共撒钱200论坛币。撒钱规则：首译者100币，修改者100币。
具体规则：（1）可分段落翻译，一共9个段落，除了第5段20币之外，其余8段每段10币。若翻译多个段落，则将段落币数累加。总计100个币。（2）为了鼓励筒靴积极参与，首译者翻译质量若得到本人认可，计算币数方法见（1）；其余筒靴可在你认为翻译比较好的基础上进行修改，修改之处要用红笔涂抹，若有实质性改进，每一处可得2币，上限为每段10币（第5段20币）。
这篇小文原载于《华尔街日报》2003年某期（见附件），作者为（美国）达拉斯市联邦银行前CEO，现德州农工大学CFO。该文是作者根据自己在德州大学经济系研究生毕业典礼致辞改编。该文观点明确，广为流传，曼昆教材《经济学原理》曾摘选该文。
这篇小文实为一份大餐，筒靴在翻译后，我敢保证你得到的收获不仅是论坛币，还有课堂中学习不到的知识（英文和经济学素养都得到了提高）。你在报纸媒体上经常见到中国经济学家的下列谬论：中国洪灾、地震促进了经济增长；公款吃喝拉动了经济增长；交通堵塞是经济繁荣的表现等等。这篇小文告诉你这些观点近乎胡扯。
筒靴在翻译后，知识产权归你，使用权归我，哈，我也只会将其贴在论坛《真实世界经济学》版块。另外，我的这种做法也希望得到版主和坛主的认可，它对论坛发展有一定借鉴意义{:soso_e100:}。

The Dismal Science? Hardly!

by Robert D. McTeer, Jr.

【1】My take on training in economics is that it becomes increasingly valuable as you move up the career ladder. I can't think of a better major for corporate CEOs, congressmen or American presidents. You've learned a systematic, disciplined way of thinking that will serve you well. By contrast, the economically challenged must be perplexed about how it is that economies work better the fewer people they have in charge. Who does the planning? Who makes decisions? Who decides what to produce?

【2】For my money, Adam Smith's invisible hand is the most important thing you've learned by studying economics. You understand how we can each work for our own self-interest and still produce a desirable social outcome. You know how uncoordinated activity gets coordinated by the market to enhance the wealth of nations. You understand the magic of markets and the dangers of tampering with them too much. You know better what you first learned in kindergarten: that you shouldn't kill or cripple the goose that lays the golden eggs.

【3】You've learned other useful things as well. You understand why free trade is a good thing, even though you have difficulty convincing your dads and uncles. You know from Irving Fisher's example the hazards of forecasting the stock market, or anything else for that matter. Especially if it's about the future. The public looks askance at economists because they think of them primarily as forecasters. Don't let yourself be labeled a forecaster.

【4】Economics training will help you understand fallacies and unintended consequences. In fact, I'm inclined to define economics as the study of how to anticipate unintended consequences. Most economic fallacies are probably fallacies of composition: What's true of the individual may not be true of the whole. You may be able to see better if you stand up–but not if everyone stands up. John Maynard Keynes' paradox of thrift provides a currently relevant example: Individually, most consumers need to save more. But, if all or many consumers start trying to save more, the economy will be in deep trouble.

【5】However, little in the literature seems more relevant to contemporary economic debates than what usually is called the broken window fallacy. Whenever a government program is justified not on its merits but by the jobs it will: create, remember the broken window: Some teenagers, being the little beasts that they are, toss a brick through a bakery window. A crowd gathers and laments, "What a shame." But before you know it, someone suggests a silver lining to the situation: Now the baker will have to spend money to have the window repaired. This will add to the income of the repairman, who will spend his additional income, which will add to another seller's income, and so on. You know the drill. The chain of spending will multiply and generate higher income and employment. If the broken window is large enough, it might produce an economic boom! (Other catalysts to such booms might be a hurricane, a tornado or just about any government spending boondoggle.)

【6】Most voters fall for the broken window fallacy, but not economics majors. They will say, "Hey, wait a minute!" If the baker hadn't spent his money on window repair, he would have spent it on the new suit he was saving to buy. Then the tailor would have the new income to spend, and so on. The broken window didn't create net new spending; it just diverted spending from somewhere else. The broken window does not create new activity, just different activity. People see the activity that takes place. They don't see the activity that would have taken place.

【7】The broken window fallacy is perpetrated in many forms. Whenever job creation or retention is the primary objective I call it the job-counting fallacy. Economics majors understand the non-intuitive reality that real progress comes from job destruction. It once took 90% of our population to grow our food. Now it takes 3%. Pardon me, Willie, but are we worse off because of the job losses in agriculture? The would-have-been farmers are now college profs and computer gurus or singing the country blues on Sixth Street.

【8】If you want jobs for jobs' sake, trade in bulldozers for shovels. If that doesn't create enough jobs, replace shovels with spoons. Heresy! But here will always be more work to do than people to work. So instead of counting jobs, we should make every job count: We will occasionally hit a soft spot when we have a mismatch of supply and demand in the labor market. But that is temporary. Don't become a Luddite and destroy the machinery, or become a protectionist and try to grow bananas in New York City.

【9】Labor productivity is growing rapidly and substituting in the short run for employment growth. But when businesspeople get their animal spirits back and take advantage of historically low interest rates to invest in America's future, we'll have employment growth in addition to productivity growth. That's a recipe for prosperity. In the meantime, just think what Michael Dell and Bill Gates could have accomplished if they'd gotten degrees in economics.