As government balance sheets and national debt grow each year, some are fretting that government activism is stifling global capitalism. But look closer and you see that it's quite the opposite.

    Thomas Piketty, the French economist whose work informs much of the public debate over income and wealth inequality in the developed world, will release the English translation of his groundbreaking study, Capital in the 21st Century next month.

    As you can probably glean from the title, Piketty is mostly concerned with the study of capital and how its concentration has changed over time. In the economic press, we're used to hearing a lot about income, which, on a national scale, is gross domestic product (GDP). One of the fascinating things about Piketty's book, however, is that it supplements our understanding of the global economy with exhaustive data about the world's stock of capital, too.

    By looking at capital, we can get a much different picture of the health and well being of capitalism in the rich world today than we do by simply looking at GDP. Most American conservatives claim that the government is gaining more control of the U.S. economy by pointing to the growing share of government spending as a percentage of GDP. Here's a chart from Nate Silver that shows this statistic for the U.S. over time:

    随着政府资产负债规模和国家债务逐年增长，有人开始担心政府行动主义（government activism）正在全球范围内扼杀资本主义。但进一步观察就会发现，情况刚好相反。

    法国经济学家托马斯•皮凯蒂的论述涵盖了大量有关发达国家收入和财富不均的公开讨论，他的开创性研究著作《21世纪的资本》（Capital in the 21st Century）英文译本将在下个月面市。

    也许大家从题目中可以看出，皮凯蒂的研究重点是资本以及随着时间的推移资本的集中发生了怎样的变化。我们已经习惯于听到大量有关收入的经济新闻。就国家而言，它的收入就是国内生产总值（GDP）。皮凯蒂的这本书一个引人入胜的地方就是，它通过详尽的全球资本存量数据让我们对世界经济有了更完整的认识。

    从资本这个角度出发，我们会了解到目前资本主义在富裕国家的健康情况和状态，这和只看GDP所得到的结论会有很大不同。大多数美国保守派人士都表示，通过提高政府开支占GDP的百分比，美国政府正在加强对国内经济的控制。下图由统计学家、作家内特•希尔提供，它展示的就是这个百分比的长期走势（其中蓝色为权益性项目支出、红色为国防支出、绿色为基础设施和服务支出、橙色为利息支出）：

    In countries like Britain and France, the share of GDP made up of government spending is much higher, at 48.5% and 56.1% of GDP, respectively.

    But Piketty's capital data paints a much different picture, especially of economies like France's. If you look at the value of total privately owned capital relative to GDP, you see a country in which the value of private capital has increased significantly over the past two generations:

    在英国和法国这样的国家，政府支出占GDP的比重要高得多，分别为48.5%和56.1%。

    但皮凯蒂的资本数据所描绘的情况和上图大相径庭，特别是就法国等经济体而言。如果按私有资本总量占GDP的百分比计算，大家就会发现，在过去的50-60年里，私人资本的价值经历了大幅度增长。

    The same trend is present in all wealthy countries since World War II: the value of privately owned wealth has increased relative to national income by a factor of roughly two. The definition of capitalism is an economic system in which property and the means of production are controlled by private individuals, so it's hard to see how one could argue the wealthy world has become less capitalistic in recent years.

    Surely, there was a time when France was much more averse to private ownership of property. Here's how Piketty explains it:

    Not only in France, but in countries around the world, faith in private capitalism was greatly shaken by the economic crisis of the 1930s and the cataclysms that followed ... a quarter of the working population in the United States, Germany, Britain and France found themselves out of work. The traditional doctrine of "laissez faire," or nonintervention by the state in the economy ... was durably discredited....

    In France this general climate of distrust toward private capitalism was deepened by the fact that many members of the economic elite were suspected of having collaborated with the German occupiers and indecently enriched themselves during the war. It was in this highly charged post-Liberation climate that major sectors of the economy were nationalized, including in particular the banking sector, the coal mines and the automobile industry. The Renault factories were punitively seized after their owner, Louis Renault, was arrested as a collaborator in September 1944. The provisional government nationalized the firm in January 1945.... In 1950, the government of France owned 25-30 percent of the nation's wealth, and perhaps a little more.

    It was in this environment that the French economy, badly damaged by the war, embarked on nearly 30 years of rapid economic growth. Once that post-war catch-up period was over, however, the French actually embraced private ownership of property with great enthusiasm:

    What is distinctive about the French trajectory is that public ownership, having thrived from 1950 to 1980, dropped to very low levels after 1980, even as private wealth -- both financial and real estate -- rose to levels even higher than Britain's: nearly six years of national income in 2010, or 20 times the value of public wealth. Following a period of state capitalism after 1950, France became the promised land of the new private-ownership capitalism of the twenty-first century.

    As Piketty points out, this trend in France is hardly mentioned when economic commentators compare France to the U.K. and the U.S. We remember the 1980s in the U.K. and the U.S. as a time of enthusiastic privatization and deregulation, but forget that the same thing occurred, sometimes even more intensely, across the rest of the rich world too.

    So, what about that growing share of GDP coming from government spending? The fact that private wealth is growing much more quickly than overall income shows that government spending isn't keeping up with private wealth accumulation, and that both trends should be acknowledged when discussing a nation's economy. Furthermore, the growth of government spending after World War II is likely the result of two forces:

    1) The growing concentration of private wealth, as shown by the chart above and Piketty's book in general. As wealth and income grow more unequal within a given nation's population, voters turn to the government to help compensate for the real feeling that they're falling behind.

    2) Baumol's cost disease: This is the theory that government spending will naturally grow to be a greater percentage of yearly output because government mostly provides services like education that cannot become more efficiently administered in the same way as products and services provided by the private sector can.

    For instance, the U.S. produces a lot more food in 2014 for a lot less money than it did in 1914. Yet in a field like education, technology isn't able to reduce the number of teachers needed for a fixed amount of students to learn algebra or reading (at least not yet). Governments are often heavily involved in the fields that are most resistant to automation.

    The usefulness of economics is determined by the quality of data at our disposal. Piketty's new volume offers a fresh perspective and a wealth of newly compiled data that will go a long way in helping us understand how capitalism actually works.

    二战以来，所有富裕国家的趋势都是如此——私有财富的价值相对于国民收入的比重大约增长了两倍。资本主义的定义就是财产和生产要素由个人控制的经济体系，所以很难理解怎么会有人说近些年来富裕国家的资本主义色彩变淡了呢？

    有一段时间，法国对财产私有的厌恶程度确实要高得多。对此皮凯蒂这样解释：

    20世纪30年代的经济危机以及随后的惨痛经历极大地动摇了人们对私人资本主义的信心，不仅是在法国，世界上所有国家都是如此……美国、德国、英国和法国的失业者占到了全部劳动力的四分之一。传统的“自由主义”教条，或者说政府不干涉经济的原则……遭到了持续的质疑……

    在法国，人们怀疑许多经济界精英曾和德国占领者合作，在战争期间依靠不体面的手段发了财，这种观念加深了不相信私人资本主义的大趋势。巴黎解放后，在这种高度紧张的氛围之下，法国经济中的主要行业都实行了国有化，特别是银行、煤矿和汽车制造业。1944年9月，雷诺公司（Renault）所有人路易斯•雷诺因为曾经与德国占领者合作而被捕，雷诺公司也被政府接管，以示惩罚。1945年1月，当地政府将雷诺国有化……1950年，法国政府掌握了全国财富的25%-30%，实际比例可能还要更高。

    在这种环境下，遭到战争重创的法国经济出现了近30年的快速增长。但是，战后的赶超阶段结束后，法国实际上又以极大的热情接受了财产私有制度。

    在这个过程中，法国的独特之处在于，1950-1980年间大行其道的政府所有制在1980年以后降到了非常低的水平，甚至是在包括金融资产和房地产的私人财富超过了英国的情况下——按2010年国民收入计算，法国的私人财富相当于近六年的国民收入，或者政府财富的20倍。始于1950年的国家资本主义阶段过后，法国成了21世纪新型私人资本主义的乐土。

    正如皮凯蒂指出的那样，经济评论人士拿法国和英美做比较时很少提到这个趋势。在我们的记忆中，20世纪80年代的英国和美国都热衷于私有化和放松管制。但我们忘了，其他富裕国家的情况和英美如出一辙，有时甚至更胜一筹。

    那么，政府开支占GDP的比重不断上升又是怎么回事呢？私人财富的增长速度远高于整体收入，表明政府支出的上升速度不及私人财富的积累，而且在讨论一个国家的经济时应该承认这两种趋势。此外，二战后政府开支的增长可能有两股推动力：

    1）私人财富的集中程度不断提高，上图和皮凯蒂的这本书都表明了这一点。随着一个国家国民财富和收入的增长变得越来越不均衡，选民就会寻求政府的帮助，从而抵消落后于人的切身感受对自己的影响。

    2）鲍莫尔成本病：这个理论认为，政府支出占年度产出的百分比自然会上升，原因是类似教育这样的服务主要由政府提供，而这些服务都无法像私营行业提供的产品和服务那样得到比较有效的管理。

    举例来说，2014年美国的食品加工量远远超过1914年，但在这方面花的钱远少于1914年。而在教育等领域，技术手段还没办法减少一定数量的学生学习代数或阅读所需要的教师人数（至少现在还不行）。政府经常深度参与的领域对自动化的抵抗力都很强。

    经济学有多大作用取决于我们手中数据的质量。皮凯蒂的新书为我们提供了一个崭新的视角和大量新近编辑整理的数据，将极大地帮助我们理解资本主义的实际运作情形。（财富中文网）

    译者：Charlie