为什么贫穷的国家不直接印更多的钱呢？ [美国媒体]

Why don’t poorer countries just print more money? – Clementine, age 12, London, UK

伦敦12岁的Clementine提问，为什么贫穷的国家不直接印更多的钱呢？

Thanks for the question, Clementine. When a whole country tries to get richer by printing more money, it rarely works. Because if everyone has more money, prices go up instead. And people find they need more and more money to buy the same amount of goods.

谢谢你的提问，Clementine。当一个国家试图通过印刷更多的钱而变得更富有时，它很少起作用。因为如果每个人都有更多的钱，价格就会上涨。人们发现他们需要越来越多的钱来购买同样数量的商品。



This happened recently in Zimbabwe, in Africa, and in Venezuela, in South America, when these countries printed more money to try to make their economies grow.

这种事情最近在非洲的津巴布韦和南美洲的委内瑞拉已经发生了，这些国家印制了更多的钱，试图使经济增长。

As the printing presses sped up, prices rose faster, until these countries started to suffer from something called “hyperinflation”. That’s when prices rise by an amazing amount in a year.

随着印刷机的加速，价格上涨得更快，直到这些国家开始遭受所谓的“恶性通货膨胀”。那是一年内物价上涨幅度惊人的时候。

When Zimbabwe was hit by hyperinflation, in 2008, prices rose as much as 231,000,000% in a single year. Imagine, a sweet which cost one Zimbabwe dollar before the inflation would have cost 231m Zimbabwean dollars a year later.

当津巴布韦在2008年受到恶性通货膨胀的打击时，价格在一年内上涨了多达2.31亿%。试想一下，在通胀发生之前，一块糖需要一个津巴布韦元，一年后就要花掉2.31亿津巴布韦元。

This amount of paper would probably be worth more than the banknotes printed on it.

这张纸可能比印在纸上的钞票更值钱。



（说明：中间那张钱是100万亿）

Rising prices

物价上涨

To get richer, a country has to make and sell more things – whether goods or services. This makes it safe to print more money, so that people can buy those extra things.

为了变得更富有，一个国家必须制造和销售更多的东西-无论是商品还是服务。这使得印刷更多的钱是安全的，这样人们就可以购买那些额外的东西。

If a country prints more money without making more things, then prices just go up. For example, think of those special vintage Star Wars toys from the 1970s, which can be worth a lot of money.

如果一个国家印更多的钱而不生产更多的东西，那么价格就会上涨。举个例子，想想上世纪70年代那些特别的老式星球大战玩具，它们可以值很多钱。

No one is making any more of these models. So even if everyone gets more money to spend, it won’t mean that more people can afford to buy them. The sellers will just put the price up.

没有人再制造这些模型了。因此，即使每个人都有更多的钱可以花，但这并不意味着更多的人可以买得起。卖家只会抬高价格。



Venezuela tried to protect its people from hyperinflation by passing laws to keep a low price on things people need most, like food and medicines. But that just meant that the shops and pharmacies ran out of those things.

委内瑞拉试图通过法律来保护人民免受恶性通货膨胀的影响，以使人们最需要的东西(如食品和药品)的价格保持在较低的水平。但这只是意味着商店和药店的这些东西都会卖光。



（说明：委内瑞拉一家超市的空货架。）

The dismal science

沉闷的科学

But it’s not true that a country can never get richer by printing money. This can happen, if it doesn’t have enough money to start with. If there’s a shortage of money, businesses can’t sell enough, or pay all their workers. People can’t even borrow money from banks, because they don’t have enough either.

但是，一个国家不可能通过印钞票而变得更富有的观点是不正确的。如果它没有足够的钱来开始，通过印钱致富是可能的。如果资金短缺，企业就无法销售足够的产品，也不能支付所有工人的工资。人们甚至不能向银行借钱，因为他们也没有足够的钱。



Author
Alan Shipman
Lecturer in Economics, The Open University

作者
Alan Shipman
开放大学经济学讲师

Stephen R Hopkins
logged in via Google
There are other views. Read Mary Mellor:
“As its history demonstrates, money is a social and political construct. It is the privatization of money—and not money itself—that has fueled social exploitation and environmental destruction. Money could, by contrast, help advance a Great Transition—but only if it is reclaimed for the public. Contrary to neoliberal assertions, the state can create money free of the debt that drives destructive growth and fosters inequality. Such public money can facilitate the provision of economic security and sustainable livelihoods for all. But for such a system of public money to work, there must be robust democratic control over monetary decision-making along with vigorous oversight of its implementation…

还有其他观点。请读Mary Mellor的观点：
“正如其历史所表明的那样，金钱是一种社会和政治结构。正是金钱的私有化-而不是金钱本身-助长了社会剥削和环境破坏。相比之下，金钱可以帮助推进伟大的转变-但前提是它是为公众所再生的。与新自由主义的主张相反，国家可以创造出无债务的货币，这些债务会推动破坏性的增长，并助长不平等。这些公共资金可以促进为所有人提供经济安全和可持续的生计。但要使这种公共货币体系发挥作用，就必须对货币决策实行强有力的民主控制，同时对货币决策的实施进行有力的监督……



Stephen Ferguson
Causality is all wrong.
Zimbabwe etc. got into trouble not because they decided to “print money” in order to “get richer”, but because their productive capacity was essentially destroyed.
In that situation goods/services can’t be had for love nor money. Hence hyperinflation.
PS Its important to understand that all money is ‘printed’ (be that electronically or as physical cash/coins).

因果关系都是错误的。
津巴布韦等国家之所以陷入困境，并不是因为他们决定“印钞票”来“变得更富”，而是因为他们的生产能力基本上被摧毁了。在这种情况下，不能因为有了爱情或金钱就能够获得商品/服务。因此产生了恶性通货膨胀。
PS重要的是要明白所有的钱都是“印刷”的(不管是电子的还是实物的现金/硬币)。

medi alaxis
“But it’s not true that a country can never get richer by printing money. This can happen, if it doesn’t have enough money to start with.”
No. Printing money never makes a country richer. How could it? All wealth comes from land and labour, not money. Printing money might make it easier to trade, but the money doesn’t have to come from a Central Bank, nor form the state. People have managed very well will Shell Money in the past. It has the advantage of not suffering from year on year inflation.

“但是，一个国家不可能通过印钞票而变得更富有的观点是不正确的。如果它没有足够的钱来开始，通过印钱致富是可能的。”
这个观点不对。印钞票永远不会使一个国家更富有。怎么可能呢？所有的财富都来自土地和劳动，而不是金钱。印钞可能会使交易变得更容易，但这些钱不一定来自中央银行，也不一定来自国家。过去人们将贝壳货币管理得很好。它的优点是不受年复一年的通货膨胀之苦。

“In 2008, there was the Global financial crisis, when banks lost a lot of money, and couldn’t let their customers have it. Luckily, most countries have central banks, which help to run the other banks, and they printed extra money to get their economies moving again. ”
That’s right, and all countries that joined in this printing of billions (essentially to the benefit of the very banks that “lost” it) have seen the wealth of all their citizens, sorry I mean consumers, increase equally. Haven’t they.

“2008年，发生了全球金融危机，当时银行损失了大量资金，这让他们的客户也没有钱。幸运的是，大多数国家都有中央银行，它们帮助管理其他银行，它们还印制了额外的钱，以使它们的经济重新运转。”
这个说法是对的，所有参加印钞数十亿美元的国家都看到了他们所有公民的财富（对不起，我是说消费者）在平均增长。不是吗？

“Too little money makes prices fall, which is bad. ”
Why is it bad? Things getting cheaper is what ought to happen naturally. Think about it (instead of spouting dogma). We get better at producing stuff the more we do it, we get more productive, which means we are able to produce the same amount of stuff more economically (isn’t that why it’s called economics?). Thus the cots of production goes down, as too should prices (and we can all work fewer hours).

“钱太少会导致价格下跌，这是很糟糕的。”
为什么是糟糕的？东西变得越来越便宜是自然会发生的事情。想一想吧。我们做的越多，生产的效率就越高，这意味着我们能够更经济地生产同样数量的东西。因此，生产成本会下降，价格也会下降（我们都可以减少工作时间）。



Chris Saunders
In reply to mark kinnear
As well as that Zimbabwe also had US sanctions imposed on her, as did Venezuela. I appreciate the author wanting to emphasise how alarming hyperinflation can be but there is usually extenuating circumstances and inflation per say should not be demonised. 10% is usually considered still ok and most governments are in a stable enough position to act when necessary.

此外，津巴布韦有美国实施的制裁，委内瑞拉也是如此。我理解作者想要强调恶性通胀有多么令人震惊，但通常情况下是可以减轻的，而且通胀不应该被妖魔化。10%的通胀通常被认为仍然可以接受，大多数政府都处于足够稳定的地位，可以在必要时采取行动。
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