대중을 위한 경제학

 

요즘 정부는 시민들이 버는 돈을 철저히 감시하고 쥐어짤 수 있는 마지막 한 푼까지 세금으로 걷어간다. 그래서 나는 신용카드 대신 현금을 사용하고, 또 현금영수증을 받지 않는 게 오히려 경제에 이롭다는 결론에 도달했다. 세금으로 악착같이 모은 돈을 관료들과 정치가들이 흥청망청 다 낭비해 버리는 것보다는, 그 돈을 벌고 있는 주인이 (탈세를 통해) 갖는 게 더 효율적으로 관리할 거라고 믿게 되었다.

 

그런데 마침 John Tamny가 쓴 <Popular Economics>이라는 책이 소개되었다. 서평을 읽어보니 아주 평이하게 쓴 경제 입문서이다. 아래는 George Leef의 서평이다.

 

 

What LeBron Can Teach You About Economics

 

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

 

 

 

In Popular Economics, John Tamny, editor of RealClearMarkets, sets out to refute bad economic ideas and replace them with sound ones. Many books have tried to do that, but what sets Tamny’s apart is how he goes about making the “dismal science,” well, popular. His subtitle is revealing: “What the Rolling Stones, Downton Abbey, and LeBron James can teach you about economics.”

 

Quite a bit, as it turns out.

 

To educate is to build a bridge from what a person knows to things he doesn’t yet understand. Tamny does that brilliantly by using sports and popular culture to convey key economic truths. That’s why this book is so useful for those of us who want as many Americans as possible to comprehend fundamental economic principles. Tamny ably demonstrates why laissez-faire is essential to prosperity and progress — and along the way he shows interventionist ideas to be absurd.

 

Tamny takes dead aim at the mistaken ideas that prop up big government.

 

On taxation, the conventional wisdom is that high taxes on businesses are necessary to make them pay “their fair share.” Most people also believe that the money extracted from them goes to the government where it is spent “for the public good.”

 

In his first chapter, Tamny argues that taxes are merely “a price placed on work” by the government. To demonstrate how, he doesn’t start with an economist or a chart, but instead with Keith Richards, the lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones. Richards explained that the band decided to leave England because of the high taxes: “We didn’t know if we would make it, but if we didn’t try, what would we do? Sit in England and they’d give us a penny out of every pound we earned.”

 

Progressive taxes (in England, the United States, and everywhere) are more of an impediment to people who are trying to become wealthy than to those who are already wealthy.

 

And what happens with all the money the government rakes in? Largely, it is squandered by politicians who want to buy popularity. Rock musicians make wiser use of money — the money they’ve earned — than do politicians who dip into the vast pot of tax dollars taken by force.

 

What about regulation? Aren’t government officials more knowledgeable and interested in the public welfare than market participants? No — just the opposite.

 

“Regulation does not just routinely fail; it cannot work,” he writes. “What it can do, however, is weaken business by forcing them to pour their resources into compliance with government rules and regulations rather than let shareholders and customers profit.”

 

Tamny relates a number of stories that will appeal to readers' real experiences, such as the role that antitrust rules played in the demise of Blockbuster Video and the rise of Netflix.

 

On trade, he does a superb job of explaining the law of comparative advantage and how government interference with free trade inevitably makes consumers worse off. He refers to basketball star LeBron James, the world’s top player, and asks readers to ponder what would happen if James decided to play another sport where he’d no doubt also be quite good, such as receiver on a pro football team.

 

If James did that, he’d be turning away from the talent where he has a comparative advantage and toward a role where he’d be more marginal. He’d be worse off. Basketball would be worse off. Fans would be worse off. Once readers understand that point, they’ll see why governments should not get in the way of producers specializing in what they do best.

 

Tamny also sweeps away the confusion that often arises when people think of one country trading with another. Countries do not trade, he explains — individuals do. “A country’s economy,” he reminds us, “is just a collection of individuals.” That is why it is foolish to fret about trade deficits between countries.

 

When he turns to the subject of money, Tamny is all for restoring America to a sound monetary standard. “Just as the foot is never long or short, money should be neither strong nor weak. The foot is a standardized tool to measure things and money should have the same constancy,” he writes.

 

Gold used to give us that constancy, but when President Nixon decided to drop the dollar’s connection to gold, that ushered in great problems for Americans. Mostly, those problems are unseen, however, such as the constant erosion of the dollar’s value.

 

Another unseen aspect of our unstable monetary system Tamny illuminates is the waste of brainpower in currency and commodity trading markets. “Fluctuating money has led a great deal of human capital to migrate to Wall Street in order to trade the chaos,” he states. It’s necessary to deal with the uncertainty caused by floating exchange rates, but bright people are merely doing “facilitator work.” We lose out on the productive things they would otherwise have done.

 

I recommend this jaunty read to everyone but especially younger people who have been brainwashed into believing that free markets are dangerous. Tamny’s book would be an ideal introduction to hook them on the need for freedom, to be followed by Hazlitt, Friedman, and other luminaries of free markets.

 

 

George C. Leef

 

 

 

 

George Leef is the former book review editor of The Freeman. He is director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education

 

 

 

 

 

 

아래는 데이빗 고든의 서평

 

Economics: It's Simpler Than You Think

 

 

03/30/2016• David Gordon

 

In the view of John Tamny — an editor at Forbes and RealClearMarkets — economics as it is usually studied and taught in universities is unnecessarily complicated. The basic truths of economics are simple and require no difficult mathematics to understand. Readers will be reminded of Hazlitt’s great Economics in One Lesson.

 

Entrepreneurs vs. Bureaucrats

 

The book is animated by a controlling vision. A successful economy depends on innovative entrepreneurs who are willing to take large risks in return for the chance at great profits. It is essential to prosperity not to hamper the efforts of these entrepreneurs through governmental efforts to tax and regulate the economy. Tamny illustrates his thesis with many stories about famous persons, as the subtitle of the book suggests.

 

The government, Tamny emphasizes, produces nothing on its own. It operates by taking resources away from the productive. To the objection that the government may itself use money it takes in taxes for purposes beneficial to the economy, Tamny answers that people successful in business are highly likely to be better judges of what is beneficial than bureaucrats in the government. If the bureaucrats were better able to discern profit-making opportunities, they themselves would be entrepreneurs. High level bureaucrats may earn substantial salaries, but the wealth of those in business is far greater. “If you’re so smart, why are you a bureaucrat?”

 

To this, one can imagine someone objecting: Even if it is right that successful entrepreneurs will raise economic productivity, does this not bring with it a great danger? What about inequality? What if the successful entrepreneurs do so well that they accumulate vastly more wealth than others? Thomas Piketty has notoriously made much of this point; but Tamny has an effective and simple answer to it. Great accumulations of wealth are desirable: the rich will invest their money, and everyone will benefit. “When the rich ‘hoard’ their wealth, it is loaned to those who need money for cars, clothes, and college tuition, not to mention the next generation of Bill Gateses, full of ideas but in need of the capital that will abound if some of society’s richest keep their wealth intact so it can pass to future generations.”

 

If high investment is the key to prosperity, the capital gains tax is especially to be deplored. “Investors who might risk their capital in the private sector know they might lose it all, and they face a 20 percent tax on whatever return they do get on their investment. Those same investors have the option of buying government bonds, and, though the returns are small, they’re reliable and, in the case of municipal bonds, tax-free. ... Our tax code ... puts entrepreneurs at an enormous disadvantage when they compete with the government for investors.”

 

Taxation is of course not the only way the government hampers the free market. Attempts by government to regulate the economy face exactly the problem that Tamny finds with taxation. Antitrust laws, for example, purport to prevent companies from gaining monopoly control of important commodities; but are not those on the scene better qualified than government “experts” to assess whether market conditions make mergers desirable? Once more, it is entrepreneurs, not government officials, who are skilled at anticipating future demand. “Mergers are ultimately about survival. Companies must adjust to an uncertain future business climate, and restraining the ability of larger businesses to act in the best interests of shareholders is counter-productive. Antitrust regulation does not foster competition so much as it reduces successful companies to sitting ducks.”

 

“Capitalist Societies Can Rebound from Anything”

 

We have so far omitted a key part of Tamny’s argument. Skilled entrepreneurs succeed, but many in business fail. The market operates by sorting out of the successful from the failures by the test of profitability. Given this fact, it is as essential that the failures be allowed to fail as it is that those who succeed be allowed to keep their profits. Attempts to prop up failures disable the market.

 

This vital point can be used to answer a common objection to free trade. Many people object to free trade because, in some cases, foreign competition drives domestic companies out of business, causing unemployment. To the response that expanded trade creates jobs elsewhere in the economy, the reply oft en given is, what about the workers who do lose their jobs? They are often unable to secure new jobs as good as those they had previously. The fact that others are better off is small solace to them.

 

Tamny’s account of the way the free market works makes it impossible to accept the objection just given. “In a free economy, capital migrates to talented entrepreneurs eager to pursue profitable opportunities. Innovations like the automobile, computer, and online retail services destroy jobs, but the process leads to better, higher-paying jobs ... to create jobs in abundance, we must allow the free marketplace to regularly annihilate them.” Tamny acknowledges that “the progress of job creation through job destruction does not make losing your jobless agonizing. ... Yet getting laid off is not cause for despair. Good often comes from losing your job.” Workers, like capitalists, need to be alert to new opportunities.

 

In a manner showing great insight, Tamny applies the point about falling businesses to the financial crisis of 2008. According to Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and many others, only the massive bailouts of financial institutions in response to the collapse of the housing market saved the economy from disaster. Tamny reverses this contention. It was essential to the proper working of the market to allow the businesses that had acted recklessly to fail. Had this been done, the economy could have quickly readjusted. “Capitalist societies can rebound from anything. In particular, they can bounce back from bank failures that do not exterminate human capital or destroy their infrastructure. An interfering government is the only barrier to any society’s revival, and that is why the global economy cratered amid all the government intervention in 2008.”

 

Gold, Money, and the State

 

So far there has been little reason to dissent from the author’s principal arguments. In monetary theory though, he makes what seems to me an incorrect claim; but fortunately, his main policy prescription can be restated in a better way. Tamny rightly calls for sound money. He rejects as misguided inflationary efforts to reduce our “unfavorable” balance of trade. As he points out, a trade deficit is not at all to be feared. “All trade balances. Trade ‘deficits’ with producers from near and far away are the rewards for everyone’s productivity.”

 

So far, so good; but he errs when he compares the dollar to a measuring rod that must not change. “Just as the foot is never long or short, money should be neither strong nor weak. The foot is a standardized tool to measure actual things, and money should have the same constancy.” What is his argument for this view? As he points out, people want money, not for its own sake, but in order to purchase goods and services. (We set aside a few exceptions.) He thinks that from this fact, if the government follows the proper policy, the value of money can be kept constant. Relative prices of goods and services will change, to reflect changes in their supply and demand. Money can then serve as a measuring rod, to enable people to assess these changes in relative prices. It does not follow, though, that because money is demanded as a means to get other things, there is no independent demand for money at all. In the free market, money is a commodity whose price can change.

 

Even if Tamny is wrong on this point, though, his main message can be salvaged. It is entirely desirable that the monetary commodity be one unlikely to be subject to substantial fluctuations in price. The gold standard abundantly meets this requirement, and this gives Tamny all that he can reasonably want. To speak of measuring rods merely darkens counsel, as Mises long ago pointed out. “Although it is usual to speak of money as a measure of value and prices, the notion is entirely fallacious. So long as the subjective theory of value is accepted, this question of measurement cannot arise.” (Mises, Theory of Money and Credit, chapter 2.)

 

The book’s many insights far exceed in importance this disagreement about money as a measure of value. Popular Economics is an outstanding book that, if read widely, will greatly improve public understanding of basic economic truths.