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英国金融时报专栏作家塞缪尔.布里坦在去年十月发表了一篇题为《消灭不平等不可能》的文章。在该文中，作者着重分析了主张绝对平等的不可能性，并再度强调他在2004年撰写的另一篇文章《要再分配，不要平等》里的主张。由于作者主要是针对英国社会的具体情况而言，与美国的现实比照还有一点距离，但是，作者提出的许多观点仍然是值得借鉴的。（文章标题略有改动）

消灭“不平等”，可能吗？

文/塞缪尔.布里坦

信用紧缩发生之前，有个很流行的说法是，右翼在经济论战中取胜，左翼则赢得了文化辩论。然而，左翼似乎还赢得了第三种争论——语言学争论。我指的是，他们使用“不平等”这个词语来表述收入和财富的差距。这里暗含的意思是，平等应是常态，如偏离了平等，就需要找出其中的原因。

如今这个问题再度引起热议。许多富有的商人，包括基金经理沃伦•巴菲特(Warren Buffett)，似乎对自己的收入怀有负罪感，而且还呼吁政府向他们所属的群体征收更高的税款。官方统计人员不断发布有关不平等变化情况的研究报告。上届工党政府留下了一部骇人的《平等法》(Equalities Act)。根据某些解读，该法主要是为了打击种族与性别歧视；但根据另一些解读，该法的干预性更强。如果我对社会民主党派的朋友们说，实质性的平等只会出现在坟墓中，有时甚至在那里也不平等——莫扎特(Mozart)就被埋进了一座乞丐的坟墓——他们脸上就会流露出厌恶的神色，让人看了很不舒服。

来自另一方的反驳有些不够上心，他们的火力集中在英国最高50%的边际税率上。这一税率被称为一种无效且有害的政治作态——这说的没错，却未必是发起反击的最佳出发点。

不过，还是让我来驳斥一些反对追求实质平等的糟糕观点吧。第一种观点是，平等主义立法将导致稀有人才移民。以这种立法为基础就会将道德高地拱手相让于人。这样一来,非平等主义立场便只能依赖划分各国的边境线，在任何认真促进平等的国际性努力面前都会土崩瓦解。另一个糟糕的观点是，现有的收入和财富差距反应了个人的价值。即便果真如此,这也是一种不充分的反应。“至于自己的才华是世间罕有，还是稀松平常，个人即使想要改变也几乎无计可施。美好的心灵或甜美的嗓音，美丽的面孔或灵巧的双手，敏捷的头脑或迷人的性格，在很大程度上和个人的努力无关. . .在上述所有方面，一个人为我们提供的服务（他也借此获得报偿）所具有的价值，与我们所称的道德品行或‘美德’关系甚小。”你觉得这段话的作者是谁？卡尔•马克思(Karl Marx)？列宁(Lenin)？还是埃德•米利班德(Ed Miliband)？都不是。这段话的作者是反社会主义著作《通往奴役之路》(The Road to Serfdom)的作者、玛格丽特•撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher)最喜欢的经济学家F•A•哈耶克(F.A. Hayek)。

唯一令人信服的反对平等主义政策的观点，其出发点是否认所有收入和财富最初都归国家所有。哈佛(Harvard)哲学家罗伯特•诺齐克(Robert Nozick)对此阐述得很清晰：“我们不是孩子，等着分得一块馅饼。没有集中分配这一说。每个人所得到的东西，都是别人为了交换另一样东西而给他的，或是赠送给他的礼物。在自由社会里，不同的人拥有不同的资源，获得新资源的方式是人们的自愿交换或者行动。”

换言之，我们不是把一个固定的数量分配给每个人；每个人都通过各自的活动使馅饼增大。但这绝不是：其他人应把增大的馅饼当作公共利益的一部分。诺齐克说得有点过。财产权的真正内容，以及规范财产权转让和保护的规则，都是集体强制原则和决定的产物，而我们可以自由地改变这些原则和决定。然而，这种资格赋予国家的是影响收入分配的权利，而不是所有收入都属于国家的主张。

我已经能够听到有人在说，这种强词夺理都逃不开一个事实：在过去三十年里，大多数英语国家的收入和财富向最顶层人口集中的速度一直在加快，同时，最底层人口的地位（至少是相对地位）在下降。声称巴菲特等人愿意捐出多少财富是他们的自由，并不是一种令人满意的说法。巴菲特完全有理由这么说：“我将自愿捐赠x，但如果有一种机制能保证其他有钱人按比例捐赠的话，我会捐赠x+y。”

至关重要的问题是，“谁是受益者？”仅仅想要羞辱富人一番，反映出的是羡慕和嫉妒。大多数不平等指数，无论是听上去挺有技术含量的基尼系数(Gini coefficent)，还是体现最顶层10%人口和最底层10%人口收入之比的“90/10”比例，都会显示出对富人的没收性税赋明显增多，哪怕由此增加的收入被抛进大海。无论我们提出什么建议，是提高对富人征税额、还是以其它方式惩罚富人，都应该明确指出这么做如何能让最底层的10%民众、甚至是中间阶层市民收益。多年以来，我一直在重印一篇名为《要再分配，不要平等》(Redistribution: Yes. Equality: No.)的文章。或许现在这篇文章能引起某些人的注意了。

以下是《要再分配，不要平等》的原文，供有兴趣的朋友参考。

Redistribution yes, equality no
Samuel Brittan: Financial Times: 13/08/04

A subject which has been preoccupying those people who are still within access of newspapers this August is the hoary one of "inequality". The Institute for Public Policy Research has just published an investigation (The State of the Nation),which has elicited a predictable span of responses: ranging from left-wing commentators who are indignant that so much "inequality" remains, despite seven years of Labour government, to others who think the whole discussion misconceived and harmful.

The IPPR is following this study up with research on what it calls the "new politics of ownership". Among other things this project is concerned with finding revenue sources to reinforce the "baby bonds" which are are to be given to each British child at birth with a top-up for those from the poorest households.

Preliminary investigations with focus groups showed a deeply ingrained hostility to taxation of inheritance. The articulate middle class person who tends to dominate in such groups was convinced that people had the right to leave money to their children - and that, as their earnings were already taxed, any kind of death duties amounted to double taxation. There was also the cynical feeling, which I am afraid I share, that estate duties of any kind were largely a levy on the conscientious middle class, as the working classes would fall behind the threshold and the really rich find ways and means of avoiding such taxes.

The best bet seems to be an effective land tax, which has a very respectable pedigree. The underlying ideas were developed by the classical economist, David Ricardo and might have been implemented by Lloyd George had not World War 1 arrived and "elevated" him from being chancellor to war minister. Postwar Labour governments made a mess of trying to extract a "betterment levy". But there is still mileage in the land tax idea if implemented properly. Optimists even hope that such a tax could finance both expanded baby bonds and make a contribution to local government finance. In the meanwhile the auction of planning permission would be an attractive replacement for the hole-in-the-corner deals between developers and local authorities to provide public amenities in exchange for that permission.

But I want to go behind these specifics into the debate on whether we need a public policy affecting income and wealth. This has been polarised between those who espouse the ideal of equality and those who believe in the sanctity of the existing distribution. Like that earlier radical, prime minister William Gladstone, I am an "out-and-out inegalitarian". True equality is attainable only in the grave - if even there, remembering where Mozart was buried. Moreover, the whole concept of the "degree of inequality" is inherently ambiguous once m,ore than two people are being compared.

But my main irritation is reserved not for egalitarians as such but for economists, many of whom are to the "right" of myself on most specifics, who still treat the absence of "inequality", as a yardstick for measuring economic progress. This is mainly because the term has now entered into the coinage of so many respectable economic writers.

On the other hand I cannot see any sanctity in the distribution which arises from the luck of the market and inheritance. My own slogan has long been "redistribution yes, equality no." The test always seems to be attitudes to the peaks of the income and property distribution. An attack on peak earnings which cannot be seen to benefit directly the poor and the unfortunate, is nothing more than jealousy and envy, however much the charge is resented.

The late John Rawls, the Harvard philosopher used a tool called "the veil of ignorance". This was to ask what rules we would like to see adopted if we had no idea of our own place in society and we tried to forget our own particular possessions and abilities. This tool seems to be much more promising than the two principles - which can now be found in many political and economic texts - which Rawls purported to derive from it. Even under the veil of ignorance people will differ quite a lot in the rules they would advocate.

Unfortunately both Rawls and too many of his critics have regarded the investigation as one for armchair reasoning. This seems a typical closed-shop idea to confine the discussion to academic philosophers. Such actual inquiries as have been made have been confined mainly to US students. For what they are worth they show a Churchillian desire to have a safety net for everyone above which there should be few limits. This leaves the all-important question of how high this net should be.

Here would seem to lie an ideal subject for focus groups to investigate. Normal opinion polls would be useless here as they show a belief neither in equality nor in market rewards, but in rewarding "merit". The latter is judged in an absurd and stereotyped way with politicians and journalists competing for the bottom position and nurses nearly always coming out on top.

By contrast, no less an economic philosopher than Friedrich Hayek, whom Margaret Thatcher loved to cite, pointed out that there is no particular merit in possessing the properties and abilities that have a scarcity value in the market place; nor is there a demerit in possessing skills, such as that of the handling weavers or coal miners and steel workers whom the market has passed by. He believed that any defence of capitalism based on the idea that it rewarded merit was doomed to fail.