紐時賞析／歐巴馬經濟理念還適用嗎？ 民主黨意見分歧

Democrats’ Divide: Should Obama-Era Economic Ideas Prevail in 2021？

歐巴馬經濟理念還適用嗎？ 民主黨意見分歧

Over the past dozen years, there has been a sea change in how economists view many crucial questions related to deficits, public debt and the long-term payoffs of social spending.

過去十多年來，對於許多跟赤字、公共債務與社會支出的長期回報相關的重要問題，經濟學家的看法發生了巨大變化。

Most Democratic elected officials have embraced this new thinking, and it permeates the Biden domestic agenda. But a handful of Democrats are unpersuaded, holding to a view that was more widespread in the early Obama years, focusing on the risks of debt and spending.

大多數民主黨民選官員都接受這個新思維，它滲透到拜登的國內政策中，但少數民主黨人並未被說服，他們堅持歐巴馬執政初期較為普遍的觀點，關注債務與支出的風險。

That tension, and how it resolves itself — or doesn’t — will be central to the evolution of the Biden presidency and U.S. economic policy for years to come. On the surface, there is a clash between lawmakers with different political instincts. But there is also a clash over whether a more traditional view will prevail over a newer approach that has become mainstream among economists — especially those who lean left, but with some acceptance among center-right thinkers.

這種緊張關係，以及它如何自行解決或無法解決，將是拜登總統任期與未來幾年美國經濟政策演變的核心。表面上看，有著不同政治直覺的議員之間存在衝突，但更傳統的觀點是否會壓過在經濟學家之間已成主流的新路線，這個問題也存在著衝突，尤其是那些左傾但也被中間偏右派思想家所接受的人。

In the older view, it is irresponsible to increase long-term budget deficits because it will curtail private investment and risk a fiscal crisis. Social policies should be seen as a zero-sum trade-off between alleviating poverty and encouraging work. And any major new spending should be coupled with enough revenue-raising measures that the number-crunchers at the Congressional Budget Office conclude the numbers will balance over the next 10 years.

較早期的觀點認為，增加長期預算赤字是不負責任的，因為這將削減私人投資，並可能引發財政危機。社會政策應被視為減少貧困和鼓勵工作之間的零和權衡。任何重大新支出均應跟足夠的提高歲入措施結合，以便國會預算辦公室的會計能得出這些數字將在未來十年保持平衡。

This was the approach that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats took in passing the Affordable Care Act, a process made lengthier and more complex by these self-imposed constraints.

這就是歐巴馬政府與國會民主黨人通過《平價健保法案》時採取的方法，這些自我施加的限制令過程變得更漫長、更複雜。

But since those days, the intellectual ground has shifted in important ways.

但從那時候開始，知識領域發生了重大變化。

For one, long-term interest rates have fallen precipitously, even as very large budget deficits have become the norm. That implies the United States can maintain higher public debt than once seemed possible without excessively constraining private investment or facing excessive interest costs.

首先，儘管巨額預算赤字已成常態，但長期利率卻急劇下降。這意味著美國可在不過度限制私人投資，或面臨過高利息成本情況下，維持高於以往可能水準的公共債務。

“The long-term downward move in interest rates is the most important macroeconomic development that has occurred over the last couple of decades,” said Karen Dynan, a former official at the Federal Reserve and at the Obama Treasury Department who now teaches at Harvard.

曾在聯準會與歐巴馬政府的財政部擔任官員、目前在哈佛大學任教的凱倫．戴南說：「利率的長期下降，是過去數十年發生的最重要宏觀經濟發展。」

“Lower rates make deficit-financed spending less costly in budget terms and lowers the economic cost, because you can think of lower rates as a signal that the private sector has less demand for that money,” Dynan said.

戴南說：「從預算的角度來看，較低的利率會降低赤字融資支出成本，並會降低經濟成本，因為你可以把較低的利率，看成是私人部門對這些金錢需求所減少的信號。」

文／Neil Irwin 譯／陳韋廷