经济学人中英对照文章 Northern lights

Northern lights

北极光

The Nordic countries are reinventing their model of capitalism, says Adrian Wooldridge 艾德里-伍尔德里奇（Adrian Wooldridge）指出北欧国家正在重塑它们的资本主义模式

THIRTY YEARS AGO Margaret Thatcher turned Britain into the world’s leading centre of “thinking the unthinkable”. Today that distinction has pas sed to Sweden. The streets of Stockholm are awash with the blood of sacred cows. The think-tanks are brimful of new ideas. The erstwhile champion of the “third way” is now pursuing a far more interesting brand of politics.

三十年前马格丽特-撒切尔（Margaret Thatcher）将英国转变成了一个在全世界首屈一指“敢于想不可想象之事”的中心。今天这项荣耀则移到了瑞典头上。斯德哥尔摩的大街上充满着打破禁忌局限所产生的新气象。智囊机构的好点子层出不穷。之前身为“第三条道路”[1]的拥护者，如今瑞典所追求的政治模式要比过去有趣得多。

Sweden has reduced public spending as a proportion of GDP from 67% in 1993 to 49% today. It could soon have a smaller state than Britain. It has also cut the top marginal tax rate by 27 percentage points since 1983, to 57%, and scrapped a mare’s nest of taxes on property, gifts, wealth and inheritance. This year it is cutting the corporate-tax rate from 26.3% to 22%.

瑞典政府开支占国民生产总值（GDP）的比例已从1993年的67%降到了今天的49%。很快其政府规模将会比英国更小。同时，瑞典的最高边际税率已降到了57%，比1983年整整低了27个百分点，而且瑞典政府也已取消了大量混乱不堪的财产税，馈赠税以及继承税。今年瑞典将会把企业所得税从26.3%下调到22%。

Sweden has also donned the golden straitjacket of fiscal orthodoxy with its pledge to produce a fiscal surplus over the economic cycle. Its public debt fell from 70% of GDP in 1993 to 37% in 2010, and its budget moved from an 11% deficit to a surplus of 0.3% over the same period. This allowed a country with a small, open economy to recover quickly from the financial storm of 2007-08. Sweden has also put its pension system on a sound foundation, replacing a defined-benefit system with a defined-contribution one and making automatic adjustments for longer life expectancy.

瑞典也披上了“黄金紧身衣”[2]——承诺会在这个经济周期内达到财政预算盈余。其政府债务占GDP的比例已从已从1993年的70%减少到了2010年的37%。同期瑞典政府预算也从11%的赤字转变至0.3%的盈余。所有这些行动使这个开放的小经济体迅速地从2007-08的金融风暴中恢复过来。瑞典同时也打稳了其退休金制度的基础，将约定提存制度改成了约定给付制度[3]，并让退休金根据平均寿命的增长自动进行调整。

Most daringly, it has introduced a universal system of school vouchers and invited private schools to compete with public ones. Private companies also vie with each other to provide state-funded health services and care for the elderly. Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist who lives in America, hopes that Swed en is pioneering “a new conservative model”; Brian Palmer, an American anthropologist who lives in Sweden, worries that it is turning into “the United States of Swedeamerica”.

瑞典政策中最大胆的一项要数引入普遍的学券制度[4]，使得私立学校和公立学校互相竞争。私人公司也会互相较劲争夺由政府出资支付的医疗和老年人看护服务业务。身居美国的瑞典经济学家安德

斯-阿斯朗德（Ander Aslund）期待瑞典开创“一种崭新的保守主义模式”，而身居瑞典的美国人类学家布莱恩-帕尔默（Brian Palmer）则担心瑞典正在转变成美国的翻版。

There can be no doubt that Sweden’s quiet revolution has brought about a dram atic change in its economic performance. The two decades from 1970 were a period of decline: the country was demoted from being the world’s fourth-richest in 1970 to 14th-richest in 1993, when the average Swede was poorer than the average Briton or Italian. The two decades from 1990 were a period of recovery: GDP growth between 1993 and 2010 averaged 2.7% a year and productivity 2.1% a year, compared with 1.9% and 1% respectively for the main 15 EU countries.

瑞典无声无息的改革已为其经济表现带来翻天覆地的变化，这是不容置疑的。1970年，瑞典是世界第四富有的国家，在其后的二十几年里，它在全世界国家富足程度排行榜上一路下跌，到1993年只能列居第十四位。当时，普通的瑞典人要比普通的英国人或是意大利人都更穷。1990年之后的二十年则迎来了一段复苏期，1993年至2010年间瑞典GDP年均增长率达到2.7%，生产力年均增长率则

为2.1%。同期在欧盟主要的15个国家里，这两个年均增长率分别是1.9%和1%。

For most of the 20th century Sweden prided itself on offering what Marquis Childs called, in his 1936 book of that title, a “Middle Way” between capitalism and socialism. Global companies such as Volvo and Ericsson generated wealth while enlightened bureaucrats built the Folkhemmet or “People’s Home”. As the decades rolled by, the middle way veered left. The government kept growing: public spending as a share of GDP nearly doubled from 1960 to 1980 and peaked at 67% in 1993. Taxes kept rising. The Social Democrats (who ruled Sweden for 44 uninterrupted years from 1932 to 1976 and for 21 out of the 24 years from 1982 to 2006) kept squeezing business. “The era of neo-capitalism is drawing to an end,” said Olof Palme, the party’s leader, in 1974. “It is some kind of socialism that is the ke y to the future.”

在20世纪的大多数时间里，瑞典都以自己的独特的政治路线为豪。马其斯-查尔兹（Marquis Childs）1936年所著的《中间路线》一书将这种模式称为介于资本主义和社会主义中间的一条道路。在这一模式下，如沃尔沃和爱立信之类的全球企业负责制造财富，而开明的官僚则专注于建立“人民之

家”[5]。几十年的时间过去了，这条中间路线开始逐渐偏左。政府规模越来越大：1960年至1980

年间，政府开支占GDP的比例几乎翻了一倍，并于1993年达到67%的高峰。税收一路攀升。瑞典社会民主党（从1932年至1976年连续执政44年，并在1982年至2006年间的24年中有21年处于执