The Most Important Economic Schools of Thought | Economics Explained
发布时间 2020-09-10 12:54:07 来源
An economy is a collection of production and consumption processes that are all working towards solving the central economic problem. The problem is that we only have access to a finite amount of resources, but the potential for human consumption of goods and services is pretty much limitless. This is the foundation of economics. Every study, every paper, every theory, economic policy or experiment is ultimately an attempt to find a solution to a problem that bites very nature has no solution. Economics is considered a social science, and although some other scientists from more rigorous fields don't always welcome it into their little club, it still follows the same processes to explore the world around us.
经济学是一组旨在解决中心经济问题的生产和消费过程的集合。问题是我们只有有限的资源，但人类消费商品和服务的潜力几乎是无限的。这是经济学的基础。每项研究、每篇论文、每个理论、经济政策或实验都是最终试图找到一个既无法解决的问题的解决方案的尝试。经济学被认为是社会科学，尽管一些来自更严格领域的科学家不总是欢迎它加入他们的小俱乐部，但它仍然遵循相同的过程来探索我们周围的世界。
And as with science or anything that is extremely complex for that matter, there are disagreements between practitioners at all levels of academia and throughout the entire history of the subject. The economic schools of thought are very broad ways that economists are clumped into basic groups.
就像科学或其他极其复杂的事情一样，不论在学术界的哪个层面，也无论在该学科的整个历史中，从业者之间都存在分歧。经济学派别是经济学家被聚合为基本群体的广泛方式。
Now the first thing to know about these schools of thought is that they agree with each other on most issues. In the same way that two physicists will obviously agree with one another that an object at rest will remain at rest, but might disagree about string theory, two economists will obviously agree that there are opportunity costs for every unit of production, but they might disagree on long-term implications of consumption taxes.
这些学派的第一件事情是要知道它们在大多数问题上都是相互一致的。就像两个物理学家显然会一致认为静止的物体将保持静止，但可能会对弦理论持不同意见一样，两位经济学家显然会一致认为每一单位生产都有机会成本，但他们可能会对消费税的长期影响持不同意见。
But the reason you are so much more likely to hear about disagreements in economics rather than physics are threefold. One, the foundation of economics is an unanswerable question, so there is a certain element of philosophy and morality in this academic pursuit, no matter how much economists attempt to sterilise it with mathematics and statistics. Two, economies are really hard to experiment on. If there is some radical new theory about effective taxation, the only real way to see if it will work is to get that tax law passed in a country and study the results. If the experiment doesn't work, then well you just destroyed a nation. This difficulty and testing also means that a lot of fringe ideas are hard to disprove in the same way that they would be in a chemistry lab. And three, economics is something that we all know. All feel day in and day out.
经济学中的争议比物理学中的争议更常见，这是由于三个原因。首先，经济学的基础是一个无法回答的问题，所以无论经济学家尝试用数学和统计学将其“消毒”，这一学术探究仍存在一定的哲学和道德元素。其次，经济是很难进行实验的领域。如果有一种关于有效税收的新理论，唯一确定其效果的真正方法是在一个国家通过该税法并研究结果。如果这种实验失败了，那就意味着摧毁了一个国家。这种难度和测试也意味着许多边缘理论很难像在化学实验室中一样被证明是错的。第三，经济是我们所有人每天都感知到的东西。
The economy impacts our financial situations, our governments, retirements, environments, crime rates and basically anything else that is going to make news headlines. As with anything that people are invested in, they form opinions about it. And those opinions that help buy everyone from Nobel laureate career economists to that crazy guy advocating for a seed based economy. If this contention wasn't enough, there is one other issue that makes these schools of thought difficult to deal with.
经济对我们的财务状况、政府、退休、环境、犯罪率和基本上所有可能成为新闻头条的事情都产生影响。与人们投资的任何事情一样，他们对它形成了意见。而这些意见帮助所有人，从诺贝尔奖得主经济学家到那些主张种子经济的疯子购买。如果这个争议还不够，还有一个问题使这些派别的思想更难处理。
And that is that there is no strong borders between them. There are plenty of economists that agree with some principles of one school of thought and disagree wildly with some other areas, which is actually a great thing. No researcher in any field should feel aligned to a certain way of thinking. But for now, to try and make sense of this world, we're going to look at three major schools, classical, Austrian and Keynesian. To show the differences between these schools, we're going to look at the way they suggest solving the central economic problem in key areas.
这就是它们之间没有强烈的边界。有许多经济学家同意某些学派的原则，但在其他领域则完全持不同意见，这实际上是很好的事情。任何领域的研究人员都不应该感到归属于某种思维方式。但现在，为了试图理解这个世界，我们将看看三个主要的学派，古典派、奥地利学派和凯恩斯学派。为了展示这些学派之间的差异，我们将看看它们建议在关键领域解决中央经济问题的方式。
What they suggest the role of government is? What do they think the role of an individual is? What do they propose doing during an economic crisis? And finally, what it is they argue is the key to delivering a wealthier, happier economy.
他们认为政府的角色是什么？他们认为个人的角色是什么？他们在经济危机中建议做什么？最后，他们认为实现更富裕、更幸福的经济的关键是什么。
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Now, economies have always been a thing. Before people even knew what they were doing, they were attempting to satisfy their desires with the limited resources they had available to them. This went on for an extremely long time, and great empires rose and lived and died, or while harboring economies that they didn't think too specifically study. Everybody from Aristotle to Jesus presented an answer to the question, but nobody had yet thought to ask what the question was. Ah, yeah, can I have how to satisfy unlimited demands with limited resources for 1000 Alex?
经济一直以来都是一个存在。即使在人类还不知道自己在做什么的时候，他们也努力利用有限的资源满足自己的需求。这种情况持续了很长一段时间，伟大的帝国兴起、繁荣和灭亡，而他们所拥有的经济体系也并没有被具体研究过。从亚里士多德到耶稣，每个人都提出了自己的答案，但却还没有人想到问这个问题到底是什么。嗯，那么我可以用1000阿雷克斯币来换取如何在资源有限的情况下满足无限的需求吗？
This all turned around though, in the 18th century, with a man called Adam Smith, who gave birth to economics and formed the foundation of what is now known as the classical school.
然而，18世纪时，这一切发生了逆转，因为有一个名叫亚当·斯密的人诞生了经济学，并奠定了现今所称的古典学派的基础。这标志着人们对经济学进行了深入的研究和探究。
The classical school of economics, as the name would suggest, was the first incarnation of economics as a separate academic pursuit, distinct from finance, government and philosophy.
正如其名称所示，古典经济学派是经济学最初的体现，它与金融、政府和哲学分立开来，成为独立的学术追求。
The early practitioners of economics, namely Adam Smith, started writing and studying about how the world was operating to increase the wealth of nations.
早期的经济学家，即亚当·斯密等人，开始撰写和研究如何使国家财富增加的运作方式。
They found that the world at that time was ruled by a theory that went on to be known as mechanicalism, which could realistically be its own economic school of thought, had it not been so fundamentally flawed.
他们发现当时的世界被一种后来被称为“机械主义”的理论所统治，这种理论如果不是如此根本性的缺陷，很可能成为独立的经济学派别。
This system relied on nations just desperately trying to hoard as much gold as they could, by either exporting more than they imported, mining more of it within their borders or their colonies, or by plundering it through hostile conflict.
这个系统依赖于国家拼命地试图囤积尽可能多的黄金，无论是通过出口大于进口、在本国或殖民地开采更多的黄金，还是通过敌对冲突掠夺黄金。
Now we have explored mechanicalism and Adam Smith before on this channel, so if you want more insight on that, go and watch those videos.
在这个频道上，我们之前已经探讨了机械主义和亚当·斯密，所以如果你想进一步了解，可以去观看那些视频。
But the big takeaway here is that mechanicalism was realistically just fine for most nations throughout history.
这里的主要结论是，机械论在历史上大多数国家来说实际上是可以接受的。
These nations were extremely basic, and their economic success primarily revolved around the strength of their harvest and the given year, and later turned into how many colonies they could claim.
这些国家非常基本，它们的经济成功主要围绕着当年收成的强度，后来转变成能够索取多少殖民地。
More or less, it was a zero sum game. If someone or some country was getting richer, it was because someone else or some other nation was getting poorer, and mechanicalism perfectly mirrored this reality.
在某种程度上，这是一个零和游戏。如果一个人或一个国家变得更富有，那就是因为另一个人或另一个国家变得更贫困，机械论完美地反映了这一现实。
Having a perfectly run fiscal and monetary policy would not have meant very much to the overall prosperity of these types of basic nations.
在这些基本国家中，拥有完美的财政和货币政策并不会对整体繁荣产生太大影响。
It would have been like putting nitrous oxide on a horse-drawn carriage. It wasn't going to do anything, and it would probably just make everyone very confused with its needless complexity.
这就像在马车上加上笑气一样，没有任何作用，反而会因不必要的复杂性让所有人感到困惑。
This was all starting to change though, when Adam Smith was putting pen to paper to write the world of nations. The first steam powered factories had sprung into existence, and for the first time ever, wealth was not being grown or mined, it was being created on mass.
然而，当亚当·斯密开始写《国富论》时，一切都开始发生变化。第一批蒸汽动力工厂已经涌现，有史以来，财富不再是通过增长或开采而来，而是大规模地创造出来。
Which was a chance for all people to become wealthier. No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
这是一个让所有人都有机会变得更富有的时代。如果社会的大部分成员都是贫穷和苦闷的，那么它无法繁荣和幸福。
It is but equity besides that they, who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves, tolerably well-fed, clothed and lodged. Now this sounds like some comming nonsense, but what Smith was trying to say here is that there is an optimal distribution of wealth creation for all members of society.
这句话的意思是，让那些养活、给人民提供食物、衣服和住所的人，能使用自己的劳动成果，过上相对体面的生活，这是公平的。这可能听起来像一些混混的话，但是史密斯在这里想说的是，有一种最优的财富分配方式适用于社会的所有成员。
It definitely should not be completely equal, but it shouldn't be a swelling peasant class holding up a tiny nobility either.
这绝对不应该完全平等，但也不应该是一个庞大的农民阶级支持着一个微小的贵族阶层。这句话想表达的意思是，在社会中应该避免出现极端的阶级分化，同时也不应该完全消除不平等。
The reason for this was not some virtuous quest to feed the poor, but rather it was to develop markets and divide labour.
这并不是为了做些什么高尚的事情去喂养穷人，而是为了发展市场和分工。
To show the importance of this, Smith used the example of a pin, a small, sharp, pokey metal stick, which sounds like an extremely simple product, but if a single worker was to wake up in the morning and dedicate themselves entirely to making one single pin, they probably wouldn't be able to do it because they would need to mine the materials, refine the steel, forge it and sharpen it just to make one pin.
为了展示这一点的重要性，史密斯举例说明了一根小针头的重要性。这听起来可能是一个极其简单的产品，但如果一个工人早上起床，全身心地致力于制作一根小针头，他们可能无法完成，因为他们需要开采材料、精炼钢材、锻造并磨尖才能制作一根小针头。
Of course, if all of these tasks were done by separate workers, then they could just focus on their individual role and producing pins would become a lot easier, so much so that there would be an abundance of pins that they could then share around between all of them and everyone would have more for having contributed to this process.
当然，如果所有这些任务都由不同的工人完成，那么他们可以专注于自己的角色，制作别针将变得更加容易，以至于他们可以分享大量的别针给所有人，并且每个人都会因为对这个过程的贡献而拥有更多。
Now this example of one person making a pin sounds pretty silly to us, but for a long time, this was effectively how economies operated.
现在，对我们来说，这个制作别针的例子听起来非常愚蠢，但很长一段时间以来，这实际上是经济运作的方式。
Local villagers would produce pretty much everything they needed and even individual households would be more or less self-sufficient.
当地村民会自给自足地生产他们所需要的几乎所有东西，甚至个别家庭也能自给自足。
The reason why people did this is they didn't have any real alternative. Village markets were basic at best and most peasant workers didn't even receive an income as you or I might know it today, but by moving into factories and earning a cash wage, individuals now have the ability to make purchases which gave the entire economy the ability to specialize.
人们这样做的原因是因为他们没有其他选择。乡村市场在最好的情况下也很基本，大多数农民工甚至没有像你我今天所知道的收入，但是通过进入工厂并赚取现金工资，个人现在有能力进行购买，这为整个经济提供了专业化的能力。
The Manuel Kant, a legendary philosopher of all people, may have said at best in his 1785 book, The Groundwork of Metaphysics and Morals, where he quoted that all crafts, trades and arts have profited from the division of labour.
曼努埃尔·康德是历史上伟大的哲学家之一，他在1785年的著作《形而上学和伦理基础》中提到：所有手艺、贸易和艺术都受益于分工，这可能是他最好的论述。
For when each worker sticks to one particular kind of work that needs to be handled differently from all others, he can do it better and more easily than one person who does everything.
当每个工人专注于一种特定需要与其他工作不同处理的工作时，他比一个做所有事情的人可以更好、更轻松地完成工作。
The work is not thus differentiated and divided, where everyone is a jack of all trades, the crafts remain at an utterly primitive level.
这项工作没有因此区分和分割，每个人都是个门门精通，手艺仍然停留在非常原始的水平上。
简单理解就是，这项工作没有明确分工和专业化，每个人都是什么都做，所以手艺水平比较低。
So with this new understanding of how to build a better world, these were the prescriptions of these early philosophers and financiers turned economists. Markets should be free, because the more that people are allowed to trade freely with one another, the more they can specialise and count on others to specialise to deliver all of the goods that they may need. Markets should also do the same thing, stop trying to hoard all the gold and instead take note of who does what well, once this is known, trade amongst other nations to increase overall wealth. Production is the most important part of an economy and great efforts should be made to making this more efficient so that more wealth can be created from turning raw materials into complex products. Government intervention into free markets should be limited exclusively to making sure that contracts are upheld and fraud is not allowed to take place and of individuals.
因此，早期哲学家和金融家转型的经济学家们提出了以下建议，借此了解如何建立更美好的世界。市场应该是自由的，因为人们被允许自由交易，他们就可以更加专业化，并依靠其他人的专业化来提供他们所需的所有商品。市场也应该停止试图囤积所有黄金，而是注意到谁做得好，一旦知道了这些情况，就在其他国家之间进行贸易，以增加整体财富。生产是经济的最重要部分，应该尽力使其更为高效，以便从原材料转化为复杂产品中创造更多财富。政府对自由市场的干预应该仅限于确保遵守合同和不允许个人欺诈行为。
Classical economics assumes that everybody buying and selling and working is a perfectly rational individual and will always make the most logical decision possible to forward their own selfish interests. More or less, classical economics argues that we could all work together to make the world a better place by being extremely selfish. I guess Gordon Gecko was probably a classical economist. Now these theories worked very well and when applied to the age of industries, they were the guiding force behind the development of jobs, companies and markets as we know them today, but these ideas weren't perfect. And now that the foundation was set, the great thinkers from around the world got stuck in on how to improve it.
古典经济学假设所有购买、销售和工作的人都是完全理性的个体，总是会做出最合理的决策来推动自身的自私利益。或多或少，古典经济学认为，我们可以通过极度自私来共同创造一个更美好的世界。我想高顿·格柯可能就是一位古典经济学家。现在这些理论非常成功，在工业时代的应用下，它们成为了我们今天所知道的工作、公司和市场发展的指导力量，但这些想法并不完美。现在基础已经奠定，世界各地的伟大思想家开始思考如何改进它。
The first to really shake up this new way of thinking were a collection of economists from Vienna who went on to form the Austrian school. The Austrian school shares a lot of similarities with classical economics and most of the economists that have now gone on to define this particular school of thought didn't even know that they were forming one in the same way that Adam Smith probably didn't even know he was creating the discipline of economics.
最先真正动摇这种新思维方式的是一群来自维也纳的经济学家，他们随后形成了奥地利学派。奥地利学派与古典经济学有很多相似之处，大多数现在已经定义了这种思想流派的经济学家甚至不知道他们正在以与亚当·斯密创建经济学学科的方式形成一个学派。
Rather, these early academics were trying to fix up some loose ends of classical economics primarily by realizing that an economy wasn't some amorphous blob of production, but rather, it was a collection of individuals. With this, these scholars started adding in more allowances for how individuals acted and specifically how they valued things. Karl Manger was the father of the Austrian school of economics and is credited with contributing to the theory of marginal utility alongside his student Friedrich von Weisser.
早期的学者并不是试图彻底修改古典经济学，而是通过意识到经济不是一团模糊的生产物，而是由个体组成来补上一些细节。这些学者开始增加更多关于个体行动及其价值观的规定。卡尔·曼格尔是奥地利学派经济学之父，与其学生弗里德里希·冯·韦瑟一起为边际效用理论做出了贡献。
The theory of marginal utility was an extremely important contribution to economics as a whole. It argued that goods provide a utility, but the utility is decreased for every extra unit of good that there is. For example, the extra utility someone gets from having one kettle, as opposed to zero kettle is pretty big. Suddenly, they can boil water and make tea or coffee where they wouldn't have otherwise been able to in the past without their kettle. Something from one kettle to two kettle also has some benefits. You can now boil more water at any given time, and if one breaks down, you have a spare there ready to go for redundancy, ready tea and coffee making duties. But three kettle, four kettle, twenty kettle, there is only so much tea and coffee a household really needs. And eventually, these items start taking up so much space that people want less of them, meaning that at extreme levels, an item can have a negative marginal utility value to a consumer.
边际效用理论是经济学领域的一个极其重要的贡献。该理论认为商品提供了一定的效用，但每增加一单位的商品效用会下降。例如，拥有一个水壶与零个水壶相比，对于某个人来说所得到的额外效用是相当大的。突然之间，他们可以煮水泡茶或咖啡，而在过去没有水壶的情况下是无法做到的。从一个水壶到两个水壶也有一些好处。你现在可以在任何时间煮更多的水，如果一个水壶坏了，你就有一个备用水壶可用于备份，以进行茶和咖啡制作。但是，三个水壶、四个水壶、二十个水壶，一个家庭真正需要的茶和咖啡数量是有限的。并且最终这些物品会占据很多空间，人们希望拥有更少的物品，这意味着在极端情况下，一个物品对消费者的边际效用价值可能是负数。
This ran contrary to the classical school of economics which simply advocated for making as much stuff as possible, and then letting the free market decide where that stuff went. Now again, this might sound obvious to us now, but you have to remember two important things. The first was that this theory made huge contributions towards solving the central economic problem. Sure, they still had unlimited desires and only limited resources in which to fulfill those desires, but they added the asterisks that actually some specific desires can be over-satisfied, so an economy must avoid these at all costs where there is more left over to satisfy other desires that haven't yet been met.
这与古典经济学流派的理论截然相反，后者主张尽可能生产更多产品，然后让自由市场决定产品去向。现在再看这个理论可能显得显而易见，但你必须记住两件重要的事情。第一，这个理论对解决中心经济问题做出了巨大贡献。当然，人类依然有无限的欲望，只有有限的资源来满足这些欲望，但他们提出了这个星号说明，实际上一些特定的欲望可以被过度满足，因此一个经济系统必须努力避免这些，并确保有更多的资源用于满足尚未得到满足的其他欲望。
The second was that this was the first inkling of an economic theory adapting to a world of genuine sustained growth. For the 1800s, the idea that anybody could have too much of something was pretty bizarre, but with factories all across Europe working day and night to produce all manner of everything, the decision that everybody was making was starting to shift from, can I afford this to, would I rather have this or that?
第二点是，这是第一个适应真正持续增长世界的经济理论的预兆。在19世纪，任何人可能拥有太多某物的想法还是相当奇怪的，但是随着欧洲各地的工厂日夜生产各种物品，人们开始转变开始转向“我能负担得起这个吗”到“我宁愿选择这个还是那个”这样的决策。
This deeper understanding in a world that was becoming more and more plentiful eventually culminated in the subjective theory of value, this theory argues that an item is not worth the sum of the materials and labour that go into making it, but rather it is a function of how important it is.
这个世界变得越来越丰富，更深刻的理解最终在主观价值理论中得到体现。这个理论认为，一个物品的价值不是由制造它的材料和劳动成本决定的，而是由它的重要程度决定的。
For example, a worker could spend their entire life digging the deepest hole in the ground the world has ever seen, but that hole is going to have less actual value than one that is dug three feet deep and hit a solid gold nugget. Or as it relates to industry, a factory could build a car out of titanium, and sure, it would probably be a better car than one made out of steel, but it would take ten times the man hours and ten times the cost of materials to make that same car, and it might only be 20% lighter and stronger.
举个例子，一名工人可能会花费他们的一生挖掘世界上最深的洞，但那个洞的实际价值会比挖了三英尺深度的并找到一块固体金块的洞少得多。或者在工业方面，一家工厂可以用钛制造一辆汽车，当然，这辆汽车可能比一辆用钢制造的汽车更好，但制造这辆汽车需要花费十倍的人工和十倍的材料成本，而且它可能只比原来的车轻20%并更加强壮。
Now since people are not going to pay $300,000 for a titanium addition Toyota Camry, these types of subjectively inferior goods don't get made. Who is at the decides that these goods don't get made? Rational consumers. So suddenly, the Austrian School of Economics added a second role for the free market. Not only was it a medium of exchange that let people specialize and produce more, it also decided what it is that would be produced and what it is that would not.
现在，由于人们不会为一辆钛合金版的丰田凯美瑞支付30万美元，这些主观上劣质的商品就不会生产出来。谁决定了这些商品不会被生产出来呢？是理性的消费者。因此，奥地利经济学派突然增加了自由市场的第二个角色。它不仅是让人们专门化和生产更多的交换媒介，而且还决定了将会生产什么和不会生产什么。
Suddenly, the most important thing in the world was not how much you could manufacture, but how carefully you could decide what to manufacture. Consumers were no longer units of labour. No no. Consumers were now king.
突然间，世上最重要的不再是你能制造多少，而是你能谨慎地决定制造什么。消费者不再只是劳动力单位。不不，消费者现在是国王。
简单易懂地表达，说明在以前，制造商们只关心自己的生产情况，而现在，他们必须紧紧抓住消费需求，让消费者成为自己的重要目标客户。
Austrian economics is today seen by most conventional economists as a very fringe ideology for a few reasons. The first real reason is because as we will see soon, consumers can be really dumb and irrational. It's no good to just give them free reign and hope for the best. And secondly, it is very controversial because it relies very heavily on conjecture, rather than rigorous mathematics or statistics.
奥地利学派经济学现在在大多数传统经济学家看来被视为一种非常边缘的意识形态，原因有几个。首先，正如我们很快将看到的那样，消费者可能非常愚蠢和不理性。仅仅给他们自由支配是不好的，这种方法并不能带来最好的结果。其次，它非常具有争议性，因为它非常依赖猜测，而不是严谨的数学或统计学。
This makes a lot of their theories non-fulsifiable, which in plain English means impossible to prove wrong, which sounds great. But in reality, it just means that because there are no rigorous models drawn or prescription set, it's very hard to say that this outcome here proves something contrary to your theory.
这使得他们的很多理论无法被证伪，以简单的英语来说就是不可能被证明错误，听起来很棒。但实际上，这意味着因为没有建立严格的模型或规定，很难说这里的结果证明了与你的理论相反的事情。
Now because economics is a science, it is extremely important that all theories have a robust framework for being tested. You write a hypothesis, you conduct an experiment, measure the results and then record them. If you can't do that, then it's not science. For this reason, people like Paul Krugman have noted that Austrian economics is more a branch of philosophy rather than economics.
现在，由于经济学是一门科学，所有的理论都需要一个强有力的框架来进行测试非常重要。你需要写一个假设，进行实验，测量结果并记录下来。如果你不能做到这一点，那么它就不是科学。因此，像保罗•克鲁格曼这样的人指出，奥地利经济学更像是哲学的一个分支，而不是经济学。
Ouch. Outside of academics, the Austrian school remains really popular in part because of its simple logical nature and in part because it tends to support free market principles, in part because it just does away with a lot of the modelling and mathematics that can make economics boring, and in part because it contributed a lot to our modern understanding of how the world works.
哦，除了学术界之外，奥地利学派之所以如此流行，一方面是因为它的逻辑简明，一方面是因为它倾向于支持自由市场原则，另一方面是因为它废除了很多可能让经济学变得无聊的模型和数学公式，还有一方面是因为它对我们现代对世界的理解做出了很大的贡献。
Just because modern academic economists snob this school and its pundits does not mean that its contributions were any less important. Today, things like marginal utility, consumer choice and opportunity cost are the first things that students will learn in their introductory economics classes. But there are still ways to improve upon this and turn these understandings and insights into a workable framework for how to run a nation. Outside of let people do what they do, which is where John Maynard Keynes came in.
现代学术经济学家蔑视这个学派及其专家，并不意味着它的贡献任何减少。今天，边际效用、消费者选择和机会成本等内容是学生在他们的初级经济学课程中会学到的第一批课。但是，还有方法可以改进这些观点和见解，并将它们转化为一个可行的框架，用于如何治理一个国家。除了让人们做他们所做的事，这就是约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯介入的地方。
If a regular person has heard of any economist it would be Keynes. He is touted as the most influential economist of the 20th century and has today defined the way that almost all governments around the world manage their economic affairs. These contributions were plentiful and too extensive to explore in a single video, but one theory that was of particular importance during his lifetime was the introduction of countercyclical fiscal policy.
如果一个普通人听说过任何经济学家，那一定是凯恩斯。他被誉为20世纪最有影响力的经济学家，并已经定义了几乎所有国家政府管理经济事务的方式。他的贡献丰富而广泛，无法在一段视频中详细探讨，但在他有生之年，其中一个特别重要的理论是引入了反周期的财政政策。
Since the rollout of classical economics and the wealth of nations, economies have become many, many times more complex. Factories, markets, advanced financial systems, consumer debt, public corporations were all now commonplace, and the ebbs and flows of national prosperity were no longer determined by the harvest, but rather by the business cycle.
自古经济学与《国富论》问世以来，经济已经变得比以前复杂了很多倍。工厂、市场、先进的金融系统、消费者债务和公共公司现在都是常见的，国家繁荣的起伏不再由农作物收成决定，而是由商业周期决定。
Around the early 1800s, economies started experiencing ups and downs that could no longer be explained exclusively by outside forces, but rather by the sentiment of the people within the nation. Since consumers were now the centre of modern economies, their feelings impacted the economy as much, if not more so, than real forces like natural disasters, wars or plagues. This again shows that this school of economic thought was the product of its time.
大约在19世纪初，经济开始经历波动，这不能仅仅解释为外部力量所致，而是由国内民众的情绪影响。由于消费者现在是现代经济的中心，他们的感受对经济的影响同样重要，甚至可能比自然灾害、战争或瘟疫等真实力量还要大。这再次表明，这种经济思想流派是其时代的产物。
Kane started writing his most widely recognised work, the general theory of employment interest and money during the Great Depression. Now, these types of ups and downs could be very unsettling and could impact the health of an economy in the long term. For example, who would want to invest in a company if they knew a devastating recession was going to come about every 10 years, which would probably send that business bankrupt? Well, nobody, but businesses need funding to continue to grow and contribute to the economy.
凯恩在大萧条期间开始撰写他最广为人知的作品《就业、利息和货币的一般理论》。现在，这种起伏可能会非常不稳定，对经济的长期健康产生负面影响。例如，如果人们知道每10年会发生一次毁灭性的经济衰退，可能会使公司破产，那么谁还想投资一家公司呢？很明显，没有人想做。但企业需要资金来继续发展和为经济做出贡献。
The solution was to try and smooth out the business cycle by artificially influencing the spending of consumers. Nations would do this through fiscal policy, which called for taxing people more and spending less government money during economic booms and then taxing less and spending more during an economic downturn. Fire taxation effectively forces people into having less money, which means they can't go quite as crazy with their spending and taking on of debt, making the good times not quite as crazy, conspicuous and gatsby-esque. On the flip side, when that tax is lowered and the government starts spending lots and lots of money, well, suddenly you have a whole lot of extra money in your pocket that you can go out and spend to make the economy not as terrible during a recession.
该解决方案是通过人为干预消费者支出来使商业周期平稳。国家会通过财政政策来实现这一点，即在经济繁荣时征收更多税收，减少政府开支，经济萧条时减少税收，增加政府开支。抑制税收有效地迫使人们拥有更少的钱，这意味着他们不能像疯狂地花钱和负债那样疯狂了，好时机也不会太疯狂、显眼和浮华。另一方面，当税收降低并且政府开始大量支出时，你会突然有大量额外的钱，可以去花钱，使经济在经济衰退期间不那么糟糕。
Payns' plan was not to completely remove the business cycle, but to make it go from looking like this to like this. The benefits of doing this are kind of hard to see. Sure, the bad times are not as bad, but the good times are not as good. So what gives? Well, the argument is that by making both of these less severe, the economy was more consistent and people could plan for long-term growth rather than just surviving the next catastrophic downturn. The Austrian school hated this idea because it was tampering with the free market, which would limit efficiency. These disagreements often saw canes at odds with his Austrian contemporary Friedrich Hayak, culminating in some fantastic debates and cringe-inducing rap battles, which you should definitely go and watch after this.
Payns的计划不是完全消除经济周期，而是让它从这样的形态变成这样的形态。这样做的好处有点难以看出来。当然，糟糕的时期不会那么糟糕，但好时期也不会那么好。那么为什么要这样做呢？论点是通过减轻这两种情况的严重程度，经济更加稳定，人们可以规划长期增长，而不仅仅是生存下一次灾难性的经济下滑。奥地利学派反对这个主意，因为这会干预自由市场，从而降低效率。这些分歧经常使Payns与他的奥地利同代人弗里德里希·哈耶克产生矛盾，最终导致了一些精彩的辩论和令人尴尬的说唱对决，你一定要在看完这篇文章后去观看。
Now, you can see canes in economics in practice pretty much everywhere today. In response to the economic fallout of the coronavirus, governments around the world have dropped their taxes and rolled out massive government stimulus packages, all in an attempt to make the downturn a little less severe. The one critique that most modern economists give this practice is that governments are very quick to roll out canesian fiscal stimulus during a downturn, but normally forget about higher taxation and lower spending during the good times.
现在，在经济实践中，你几乎可以随处看到凯恩斯主义的影子。为了应对新冠疫情带来的经济影响，全球各国政府纷纷降低税收并推出大规模的经济刺激计划，旨在减轻经济下行压力。现代经济学家对这种做法最常见的批评是，政府在经济下行时很容易推出凯恩斯式的财政刺激措施，但通常会忘记在经济好转时进行更高的税收和更低的支出。
Economics is a very diverse study that is founded on an unanswerable question. By its very nature, it is going to cause some disagreements, conflicting ideologies, yes, even some controversy. Now this is not that much different from any other scientific pursuit. If you ask any group of scientists about a new theory in their respective fields, they are all going to have very different opinions on it. It's just that the opinions of economists garner a lot more attention because in many ways it is us who is being experimented on.
经济学是一门非常多元化的研究，建立在一个无法回答的问题上。由于它的本质，它会引起一些分歧、冲突的意识形态，甚至一些争议。现在这并不比其他科学追求有太大的区别。如果你问任何一组科学家有关他们各自领域的新理论，他们都会有非常不同的观点。只是经济学家的意见得到了更多的关注，因为在很多方面，我们就是被实验的对象。
These three schools of economic thought, classical, Austrian and Canesian agree on far more than they disagree on, but as with any competing ideologies, they are defined by their differences. Now, so far as we have seen, these have been more of an evolution on one another rather than a revolution. Now a revolution segues us nicely into the next video in this series. Marxism first lays a fair capitalism, but for now at least, remember that amongst all of these disagreements, economists are still working towards a common goal, solving the central economic problem.
这三种经济学派别，即古典派、奥地利派和凯恩斯主义者，在许多方面意见一致，但像任何竞争意识形态一样，它们的定义也在于其差异。目前我们看到，它们之间的关系更多是一种演化而不是一种革命。然而，革命为我们顺利地过渡到本系列的下一个视频开辟了道路。马克思主义首先建立了一个公平的资本主义，但至少目前，我们要记住，在所有这些分歧中，经济学家仍在朝着一个共同的目标努力工作，那就是解决中心经济问题。
They agree on far more than they disagree on, and one thing that everybody can agree on is the importance of investing in your future. That's because there are a few things in life that are scarier than reaching retirement and having to worry about having enough. Making matters worse, getting started with investing can be intimidating due to arcane words like ETFs, TDFs, smart beta, passive and active management, value-verse growth, volatility and momentum strategies to list just a few.
大家在很多方面都有共识，其中一个大家都同意的事情是重视未来的投资。这是因为生活中没有什么比退休时担心养老资金不够更可怕的事情了。更让人不安的是，由于 ETF、TDF、智能贝塔、被动管理和主动管理、价值与成长、波动率和动量策略等晦涩的术语，开始投资可能会让人感到令人生畏。
Fortunately, you have a friend in the investment business, one that we trust our money here with at economics explained, and that friend is Acorns. Acorns is your all-in-one financial services app that makes investing as easy as spending.
幸运的是，在投资业务中，你有一个朋友，我们在“经济学解释”信任他我们的钱，那个朋友是Acorns。Acorns是一款全功能金融服务应用程序，使投资就像消费一样容易。
Every time you use your debit or credit card, Acorns will automatically round up your purchase to the nearest dollar and set aside the spare change for you into a diversified portfolio. And naturally you might be thinking to yourself, well, rounding up a couple of cents here and there isn't going to amount to anything meaningful, right?
每次使用您的借记卡或信用卡时，Acorns将自动将您的购买金额四舍五入至最近的整数，并为您将其余的零钱存入一个多元化的投资组合中。当然，您可能会想，一次几美分的四舍五入不会有什么意义，对吧？
Well, not so fast. Consider this. The average Acorns user invests more than $30 a month through roundups, which if you extrapolate equates to around $360 per year.
好的，不要太急。请考虑这一点。平均来说，Acorns用户通过找零投资每月投资超过30美元，如果你推断一下，相当于每年约360美元。
Now, let's assume that you didn't start investing at age 11 like Warren Buffett, but instead you were 25 years old at the time of watching this video and you're finally ready to commit to becoming a long-term investor. By setting aside just $30 a month into a diversified portfolio, which for this hypothetical example grows at 7% per year, you'd have a whopping $79,406.91 by the time you reach retirement at age 65.
现在，我们假设你没有像沃伦·巴菲特一样在11岁时开始投资，而是在看完这个视频时已经25岁了，现在你准备长期投资。只要每月拿出30美元投资于分散组合，根据这个假设的例子，每年增长率为7%，到你退休时，也就是65岁时，你将拥有惊人的79406.91美元。
That's extremely impressive for money that you probably won't even realise is missing. You again said that rounding up coins would not amount to much. Here's something even more mind-blowing. You can accelerate the wonders of compound interest by using a tool like Acorns automatic recurring contributions feature.
对于你可能甚至不会意识到少了的钱而言，这是极其印象深刻的。你曾经说过，把零钱圆整起来并不会收获太多。这里有更令人惊叹的事情。你可以利用Acorns自动定期贡献功能等工具来加速复利的奇迹。
By investing just an extra $5 a day into this hypothetical portfolio, which is easily doable by foregoing your daily Starbucks venti-mocker whatever, you'd have a grand total of $476,441 by the time you retire at age 65.
如果每天只额外投资5美元到这个假想投资组合中，而放弃每天的星巴克大杯拿铁等饮品，到你65岁退休时，你将有总计476,441美元。这很容易做到。
If you're thinking now, well that's all great Mr. Economics explained, but I'm not 25 years old and I don't have 40 years to invest. Let this video now remind you of that ancient Chinese proverb. The best time to plan a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
如果你正在想现在的话，那么就是很好，经济学先生这么解释，但我不是25岁，并且我没有40年的投资时间。现在看这个视频，让你记住一个古老的中国谚语。最好的种树时间是20年前，第二好的时间是现在。
So up to date at acorns.com slash EE and acorns will deposit $5 into your portfolio to help you get started. That's acorns.com slash EE. The link is on screen now and in the video description below. Thanks for watching guys. Bye.
请到acorns.com/EE，保持最新，Acorns会向您的投资组合存入5美元，帮助您开始投资。链接已在屏幕上展示，也在视频描述中提供。感谢收看。再见。