（美）保罗 克鲁格曼

纽约时报 2010-08-17

    美国全国未来将失去光明——字面意义上，我们完全可以这样讲。Colorado Springs登上了头条新闻，因为其拼命想要省钱，关闭了1/3的街灯。但是相同的情况正在，或是即将在全美国发生，从费城到弗雷斯诺无不是如此。

    同时，美国这个曾经一度以其在交通上的视觉投资（从伊利运河到州际公路系统）让世界赞叹的国家，现在正在经历逆向发展的过程：很多州政府，当地政府都在砸开他们无力继续维护的公路，让这些路重新变成砂砾路。 而且，曾经珍视教育的美国（是首先向所有的孩子提供基础教育的国家之一），现在所做的就是拼命削减经费。教师们被解雇了，教育项目被取消了；在夏威夷，连学年本身的时间都缩短了。而所有的迹象都表明，进一步的削减还在前头。

    美国人被告知说，我们是别无选择的，基本政府职能——那些几十年来一直提供的服务——已经不再是可支付得起的了。而且的确，受到衰退重创的州和地方政府，都是捉襟见肘，囊中羞涩。但是，只要这些政府的政客们愿意考虑以下一些税收的增加，这种极端局促的情况可能就会有所减轻。

    而正在以1.04%的低利率卖防通胀长期债券的联邦政府，却一点也不资金匮乏。联邦政府完全有能力，也应该给地方政府提供援助，保护美国基础设施，以及美国儿童的未来。

    但是华盛顿提供的援助却是少之又少，吝啬至极。共和党人和“中间派”的民主党人说，我们必须将赤字放在首要解决的问题位置上。刚转过脸，这些人又宣布说，我们必须保护极其富有人的税收削减，而其预算成本在未来10年中将会达到7000亿美元。

    实际上，很多美国的政客都显示了他们优先考虑的事情：是让最富有的2%的人继续按克林顿时期的税率交税，还是让美国的地基崩溃——字面上说，就是让美国的道路崩溃，比喻意义上说，就是在教育方面让美国失去发展的基础。他们这些政客选择了后者。

    不管从短期还是从长期看，这都是毁灭性的选择。 短期来看，这些州和地方政府的缩减是阻碍经济的最主要原因，使得破坏性的高失业率居高不下。

    当今人们对奥巴马总统领导下的支出失控的政府颇有怨言，还要考虑到的就是州和地方政府的情况，这一点十分重要。是的，联邦政府支出增加，虽然幅度可能没有一般认为的那么大。但是州和地方政府正在作的事情就是削减开支。而且如果你将这两方面放在一起考虑，就会发现唯一支出增加的领域就是安全网项目，比如失业保险（由于衰退的严重性，失业保险成本激增）。

    也就是说，关于失败的刺激措施，我们做了太多的评论，但是如果你将政府的支出作为整体来看，你几乎看不到什么刺激措施。而且随着联邦支出的逐渐减少，而州和地方政府持续大幅削减，我们面临的问题恰恰是反向的。 但是，让富人的税收保持在低水平也是刺激措施的一种形式吗？你会发现，并不是这样的。当我们保住了一个教师的工作，很明显就是帮助了就业，但是当我们给百万富翁们更多钱的时候呢，很可能这些钱的大部分还是虚置，不会起到任何帮助作用。

    那么美国经济的未来呢？我们所知晓的所有经济增长的知识都说，受过良好教育的人口，和高质量的基础设施是至关重要的因素。新兴国家都在大力加强其公路系统，港口和学校。但是，在美国，我们却在走回头路。

    美国怎么走到了今天这一步？这些都是30多年来反政府政治辞令的必然结果。30年来的政治辞令一直都在说服投票人说，税收而得一美元，通常就是浪费一美元，公共部门啥事都干不对。 反政府运动的言辞一向是反对浪费和欺诈的，揭露社会的腐败，政府的无能。但是，当然很多其实都是误解。现在这些运动已经取得了成就，就像我们看到的这些岌岌可危的东西：除了最富有的人外，每个美国人的需要；政府必须提供的服务（就像有灯的街道），可以驾驶的道路，还有总体上说像样的学校教育。所以，反政府运动最终的结果是，我们的方向出现了灾难性的错误。美国现在暗淡无光，挖掘道路，以致无路可走。

America Goes Dark

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

And a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.

We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions — essential services that have been provided for generations — are no longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases.

And the federal government, which can sell inflation-protected long-term bonds at an interest rate of only 1.04 percent, isn’t cash-strapped at all. It could and should be offering aid to local governments, to protect the future of our infrastructure and our children.

But Washington is providing only a trickle of help, and even that grudgingly. We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and “centrist” Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade.

In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter.

It’s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.

In the short run, those state and local cutbacks are a major drag on the economy, perpetuating devastatingly high unemployment.

It’s crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear people ranting about runaway government spending under President Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, although not as much as you might think. But state and local governments are cutting back. And if you add them together, it turns out that the only big spending increases have been in safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, which have soared in cost thanks to the severity of the slump.

That is, for all the talk of a failed stimulus, if you look at government spending as a whole you see hardly any stimulus at all. And with federal spending now trailing off, while big state and local cutbacks continue, we’re going into reverse.

But isn’t keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus? Not so you’d notice. When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.

And what about the economy’s future? Everything we know about economic growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality infrastructure are crucial. Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we’re going backward.

How did we get to this point? It’s the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can’t do anything right.

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.