主题：【讨论】陈志武教授本人对<能力不足还是别有用心>的回应 -- pxpxpx
近来河友德斯蒙的一篇 能力不足还是别有用心——评陈志武教授的《我们的政府有多大》在河里反响很大。
本人虽然不是财经专业，但是对这个话题很感兴趣，同时很想知道事实到底如何。在眼看这个话题日渐被砖头埋没之前，本人冒昧给原文作者陈志武教授发了封电子邮件，并附上了河友德斯蒙的原文。
感谢陈志武教授的热心，在两个小时的时间里给了回复，现将所有的往来电子邮件列在下面，也请感兴趣的朋友积极讨论，同时也请参加讨论的河友拿出专业的精神，人身攻击还是不要的好。
Email 1
Dr. Chen:
I am personally interested in Economy and Finance of China.
About one week ago, I occasionally read a post on one of the most influential Chinese forum ccthere.com saying that your latest article regarding Chinese government expense, especially in comparison to US, has some fundamental flaws, especially on the data analysis level. I am not an expert. But even I can see how obvious they are if the accusations in the post are true.
I understand that you must be really busy and probably won't have time to reply an email from nobody and nowhere. But I'd really appreciate it if you can share some of your thoughts so that people won't waste their time in the meaningless arguments.
I really appreciate your time and wish you the best.
PX
The link to the post is
http://www.ccthere.com/article/1765360
please see the contents below:
此处略去河友德斯蒙的原文。
Email ２：
Sorry, I don't know your name or background.
About the data, it is true that I made a mistake by not realizing that the US data I used is for the Federal government, whereas the China data is for all levels of government. But, the person who wrote the comment you forwarded did not want to pay attention to the fundamental differences between China and the US. When I wrote my article, I only used the officially published data on the Budgetary Revenue (Yu Suan Nei Shou Ru), as a point of discussion. I mentioned this in my article, because this officially known revenue number is really a small fraction of the Chinese government's total income. Note the following:
1. In the U.S., the governments at all levels do not own factories or assets (less than 1% of GDP), so the tax revenues are pretty much the only revenues for them. On the other hand, China's government has four sources of income: official Budgetary Revnue (taxes and fees), extra-budgetary revenues, profits of state-owned enterprises (such as PetroChina, Bank of China and so on), and value increases in state-owned enterprise shares and state-owned land and collectively-owned land. Therefore, the 5.1 trillion Yuan Budgetary Revenue in 2007 was only a fraction of the actual income total for the government of all levels. See http://yulechengbao.bbs.cctv.com/redirect.php?tid=326976&goto=lastpost for a summary of some of these aspects. You can also search on the internet for Yu Suan Wai Shou Ru.
As an example, last year, the total profits of the 150 Central Government SOEs were about 1.5 trillion Yuan. No body knows exactly how much the governments of all levels received from selling state-owned land for real estate development and from selling state-owned enterprises. At one point when PetroChina's A-shares were listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the total market value of PetroChina alone was more than US$1 trillion. Such wealth owned by the state and capital gains from such state asset ownership are all at the Chinese government's disposal. With such vast wealth owned by the state and not privatized or owned by the people, why should the government raise any taxes at all, in order to provide welfare benefits to the people?
Without any published data about such Yu Suan Wai income amounts, it is difficult to get any exact number for how much actual income the Chinese government really received in 2007. Therefore, I had to make assumptions about how much the productive assets owned by the state should have risen in value in relation to the GDP growth rate, which gave me a total of 15.7 trillion Yuan for China's governmenal income (including taxes, fees, SOE profits, SOE asset value gains, and state-owned land value gains). But, that is just a rough estimate. So, I chose to focus only on the published official number for the Budgetary Revenue (or, Yu Suan Nei Shou Ru, or revenues within the fiscal plan).
2. The sad thing is that China started nationalization of land and enterprises in the 1950's, with the official goal of spreading and sharing wealth among the people and managing the economy for the people, but the reality is that the government in China has spent less as a percentage of government revenues (even when we use just the 5.1 trillion Yuan as the basis) on items related to people's lives, than in the U.S. All the state-owned assets have not done much to boost people's welfare., which is part of the reason why the SOEs should be privatized.
3. The person who wrote the comment below says in his Point 5 that asset value appreciation of state-owned enterprises and state-owned land is not spendable or disposable income. That is a lack of basic understanding of economics. He says ＂难道因为我的房子今年增值了10万元，就说我今年的可支配收入是10万以上么？＂（此处及下面中文在陈教授电子邮件里是乱码，现在的内容是根据乱码里的数字和上下文猜测的）. Yes, of course, you can. You can either sell the house to realize the gain or borrow a home equity loan to cash out part of the gain and then spend, which means that you can spend the gain (but it does not mean you will need to spend it). The point is that you can spend it if you really want to. ＂那么明年房子跌价了20万元，难道可支配收入就变成负值了？＂. The same logic in the opposite direction. Yes. The fact that the Chinese government did not need to take in the 1.5 trillion Yuan of SOE profits last year and did not need to sell much of the SOE shares or state-owned land suggests that the government had too much tax income already, so it did not need to use the capital gains.
The minor differences in other data points are due to different sources of data and to the fact that it usually takes several rounds of revision for government statistical bureaus (both in the US and China) to modify and finalize macro-economic numbers. So, depending on which version you use, you can get different numbers. Because of time shortage, I don't want to go through each of them here. But the basic conclusions are the same as in my article: that is, China's government has taken in much taxes and fees in addition to state-owned assets and other productive wealth, but has not done much for its people, not even as much as governments in totally privately-owned economies.
Thank you for your pointing out this comment. I had known about it before, but thought that readers could see what the basic picture and message is. As to the personal attacks on me, I don't really care.
Chen Zhiwu
Email 3
Dr. Chen:
As I said in my previous email, I do appreciate your response.
In addition, I am wondering if you would allow me to post your comments (in English only without translation) to ccthere so that other people can see as well. Based on my experience, many users of this forum are mid-age professionals who are living overseas. So I believe that your comments will definitely spark some very serious thinking and deeper discussions.
Please note that my pen name in this forum is pxpxpx and I didn't attend the current discussion at all. The only reason that I sent you this email was that I don't like to see any naive, ignorant and even hatred comments on such a serious topic. It's just simply not healthy.
Your response encouraged me to go deeper in this field and make me feel that there are always hope and potentials in our country that are bigger than anyone could ever imagine.
Good work professor!
Thanks
Px
本帖一共被 5 帖 引用 (帖内工具实现)
对经济不太懂,但感觉很有说服力.
专款专用的预算外收入，政府不可以随便花的话，是不是应该算在政府收入中呢？美国接管了两房是不是说明美国政府突然变大了呢？原则上来说，英国的土地也是国有的。那么英国政府大不大呢？可能主要问题就在政府的定义上。
我觉得很有问题的一点，是陈教授把“国有资产与国有土地的增值”，当作可支配收入。如果真的要大规模实现这个收益，大卖国有企业与土地用于国民福利，必然是象大小非减持一样，股价迅速走低，能兑现多少并不好估计。中国政府实际的作法是小规模有控制地出售土地、出售国有股、私有化国企，其收益已经体现在预算外收入等项目中。在美国，房产增值了，可以向银行“再贷款”获取可用的收入，但这显然是很危险的，美国经济问题很大程度就是因为这种大胆的“可支配收入创新”。
关于德斯蒙质疑陈文引发的争议，是讨论政府收入、预算安排等数据。我觉得陈的结论，中国政府自己富了，却对民生不够关注，是正确的，我自己也总结过。但用收入与开支来论证，容易扯不清。一方面正如陈所说的，数据很混乱，另一方面，逻辑也不容易搞清楚。和美国对比，政府挣了多少花了多少，要得出陈的结论，逻辑上说服力不够。
我觉得应该从财富的角度去算，结论就很清楚了。美国人有多少财富，美国政府有多少资产，显然美国私人财富比政府要多得多。到中国来算，政府控制的资产是远远多于个人财富的，我的估计是私人财产有3-4倍以上。在这种情况下，政府应该对国民福利有更多的责任。从收入开支数据来看，确实不易说明美国政府从人民收得少，给人民花得多。中国政府为人民花的钱从数额与比例上来说，也不是很差。但是，这并不说明中国政府对人民好。如果人民自己够富了，并不需要政府花多少钱。中国政府的问题恰恰是，自己占有太多的资产的使用权。这些属于人民的资产，应该让人民得到应有的好处，现在还远远不够。
陈文的结论说要把政府资产分给人民，这是一种直线式的结论。我认为有另一条道路，就是由政府进行世界各国中比例较高的福利开支框架。比如政府建起世界一流的交通、电信等基础设施，民众在其中低成本方便地使用，这也是一种国民福利。
当然，只是理论上如此，实际操作的变化暂且不管。
这些土地等财富增加只要没有变现，就不能叫做可支配收入，而只能是资产、财富的增加。这和我们居民持有的股票、房地产、收藏品等资产都是一样的。同理，2006年、2007年国内房地产大幅上涨，国内广大房产持有者的财富同样极大增长，但这一般不定义为可支配收入增加，更不是GDP核算中可支配收入概念了。
关于各级政府土地出让收入，不完全统计，2007年大概在3万亿人民币左右，这和当年GDP也没有直接关系，实质是居民财富经过开发商转移给政府了。并且，这部分收入也不在地方政府的预算中。
我国政府的各项收入非常繁杂，大的来看就可以分为预算内收入、预算外收入（有专指，并不是预算内收入之外的所有收入，呵呵）和制度外收入等。06、07年土地出让金已经成为制度外收入的主要来源，更成为相当部分地方政府的主要收入来源，已经超过预算内收入了。
国有企业利润也可以说是政府可以控制支配的收入，但不能和财政一概而论。还要注意，海外上市的国有企业可是向海外投资者分配了大量的现金红利，可以看看中石油、中移动分配了多少利润。对比一下A股上市公司，可叹哦
问题不在收支多少，老实说，TG的账本，没人看得懂，基本数据来源，数据范围都是一笔乱账，如何以其昏昏，使人昭昭。
直接了当的说，TG的政府概念和老美，老日，老欧洲乃至所有其他国家都有很大滴不同。简直就是两个世界。
别的不说，TG的“事业单位”概念，就能让人目瞪口呆。分析福利支出，最好的办法，就是分析一下“事业单位”中的医院，简直一个活标本。分析好了，就知道TG的财政收入，福利支出是咋回事了。
国家提供便捷廉价的公共设施给国民使用，那么境外人士来中国就应该科重税，因为他们应该补贴这之间的差价，否则就如现在的房产市场一般，被海外富人抄低了。
如果是来旅游、做生意、工作，这个是有益于经济发展的，可以共享。如果是来炒房，建议收100%的炒房税。
中国正好适合大搞公共服务。例如体育台，算是世界各国里看各种体育节目条件最好的了。
px老兄的认真精神值得赞叹。陈志武的回复，再次表明他是一个死硬的还乡团分子，根本目的就是要把国有资产、尤其是土地私有化。来看他的回复：
不能因为陈志武在这一点上认错就轻轻放过。其实这是个非常严重的错误，拿这人的头和那人的头加身子相比，稍有科学素养的人都会发现这是不可接受的错误。我如果在审一篇学术文章的稿子时发现这种低级错误，肯定会大怒，建议直接退稿，并且怀疑作者的诚信（当然，我不是经济学专业……）。辩论和搞政治的一个技巧就是在被人发现一个不可辩护的错误时赶快承认，然后转移话题来止损。陈志武就是这样做的，你看他下一句就是：
直说就是：虽然我引用的数据有误，但是我宁要民主的草，不要专制的苗！我希望大家不要被他转移注意力，前一点引用数据的硬伤已经足以彻底破坏他的可信度了。
陈志武坚持国有资产和土地的增值收入也算政府的收入，我认为这是很荒诞的。关键是这所谓收入和预算内收入没法以同样的方式使用啊。政府收的税，可以直接用来修路、造飞机。资产增值，那是个虚名，要花出去前提是把资产卖掉。陈志武说可以用作抵押，借钱来花。很好啊，借钱不用还吗？
其实要是把借钱也算作政府收入的话，美国政府的可支配收入是最多的，它可以让财政部印国债、美联储买国债，从美联储借钱。这样即使要付利息，还是可以无限地借下去的，借新债还旧债，往美元的价值里无限注水，－－美国政府现在就是这样干的。原则上世界各国政府都可以这样做，但美国政府这样做的能力是最强的。因为和陈志武说的相反，美国政府的资产不是很少而是很多：就是美国的形象，尤其是美国的军队！美国政府借债的能力，就是建立在美国的形象和美军的基础上的。在这一点上，陈志武对美国有没有批评呢？
说到底，陈志武的立场是非常明确的：私有制就是好的，国有制就是坏的。你看他的用词：
国有的财富就不是“私有化的或属于人民的”，显然陈志武认为“私有的”跟“属于人民”就是一回事。跟这样一位坚定不移的还乡团分子，还有什么好说的？