【英语国际】美国人为什么不存钱

The inveterate spending habits of rich American households are financed by the thrift of poor Chinese peasants. The explanation of this paradox has several elements, but the contribution of financial market deregulation is a paradox in itself. The more highly developed a country's retail financial services, the less that country saves.

The US, followed by the UK, has the most sophisticated range of products available to savers and investors in the Group of Eight rich countries. The large continental European economies – France, Germany and Italy – follow some way behind, and Japan and Russia come after that. That ranking is also the ranking of national savings rates, with the US and the UK at the bottom and Japan and Russia at the top.

Only the worthy Canadians – who benefit from American financial expertise and products but retain the thrift and caution appropriate to their chilly climate – are an exception to the general rule. These rankings – particularly the low savings rates of Britain and the US – are long- established and firmly entrenched.

Liberal financial markets give wider opportunities to save and to borrow, but they expand opportunities to borrow even more than they expand opportunities to save. Britain and the US have the most competitive mortgage markets, and have also been pioneers in equity release schemes that enable people to spend the capital gains accrued in their homes. These countries were also the first to adopt credit cards, and they still make the most use of them.

Italy, by contrast, has relatively less lending for house purchases than any other developed country, even though it has a high rate of owner occupation: well-meaning but inept regulation has inhibited the evolution of both the mortgage market and the rental market.

The common myth is that young Italian men remain at home because they cannot tear themselves away from Mamma's cooking. A more likely explanation is that they can find nowhere else to live. Italian law protects consumers by making it almost impossible to repossess a house, which achieves the intended effect in an unintended way by making it difficult to obtain a mortgage in the first place. When Mamma and son are not savouring the bolognese, they are both busily saving to find the substantial deposit needed for his house purchase.

Social habits and economic institutions are mutually reinforcing. German banks are conservative lenders, and German households suspicious of debt. This creates a frame of mind that justifies the old joke that banks will lend only to someone who doesn't need the money. And these banks are right to behave that way, because anyone who does need the money has stepped outside established cultural norms.

A wider and more attractive range of investment opportunities does not necessarily lead to more saving. If saving were a commodity like any other, better returns and wider choice would make saving more appealing.

But saving is not an intrinsic good; it is a means to future consumption. If you can expect – or are led to believe you can expect – indefinite double-digit returns from your stocks, you need put aside correspondingly less to achieve any particular goal. And savings have a precautionary purpose – what an older generation used to describe as providing for a rainy day. But the more options you have when a rainy day arrives, the less you need precautionary saving. The credit card and access to the equity in your home are always available.

None of this means that financial market deregulation is a bad thing. But I used to believe that the justification for an active financial system was that it made it easier to garner the funds needed to build schools and factories, shops and offices.

Yet active financial systems don't build more schools and factories, shops and offices. They are associated with higher shares of consumption and lower shares of investment in national income. The role of a developed financial system is to enable us to buy a Wii as soon as it appears in the shops and spend our retirement cruising the Caribbean.

美国富裕家庭根深蒂固的消费习惯，是靠中国穷苦农民的节俭来资助的。对这种矛盾现象的解释包含几个要素，不过，金融市场解除管制这个因素本身就是一种矛盾。一个国家的零售金融服务越是高度发达，这个国家的储蓄也就越少。

在八国集团(G8)富裕国家中，美国（随后是英国）的储蓄者和投资者能获得种类最完善的金融产品。在这方面，欧洲大陆大型经济体——法国、德国和意大利略微落后，再往后是日本和俄罗斯。这个排名也是国家储蓄率的排名，美国和英国排在底部，日本和俄罗斯则位于顶端。

只有可敬的加拿大人是这个一般规则的例外——加拿大人得益于美国的金融专长和产品，却保留了与寒冷气候相称的节俭与谨慎。这些排名（尤其是英国和美国的低储蓄率）由来已久，而且根深蒂固。



自由金融市场提供了广泛的储蓄和借贷机会，但它们带来的借贷机会远超储蓄机会。英国和美国有最具竞争力的按揭市场，在股本释放计划方面也一直是先锋，这些计划让人们花掉住宅的增值。美英还是首先采用信用卡的国家，并仍然是最大限度利用信用卡的国家。



与此相反，尽管意大利的房屋自有率很高，但相对来说，它比任何其它发达国家的购房贷款都少：用意良好却不适当的监管，限制了按揭和租赁两个市场的发展。

按照常见的“神话”，说意大利男青年留在家里，是因为他们不能离开妈妈做的饭。更有可能的解释是，他们找不到别的地方住。意大利法律让消费者的住房几乎不可能被贷款机构收回。它以一种无意的方式达到了保护消费者的意图：根本就很难获得按揭贷款。品尝完意大利肉酱面后，母子俩就忙着储蓄，筹措儿子买房需要的大笔存款。





社会习惯与经济制度的作用相互加强。德国的银行是保守的借贷方，而德国家庭对债务持怀疑态度。这就产生了这样一种心态，认为那个老笑话说的很对：银行只会借钱给那些不需要钱的人。而银行那么做是对的，因为凡是确实需要钱的人，都已经走出既定文化习俗界限了。

投资机会范围更广、更吸引人，并不一定会导致储蓄增多。如果储蓄与其它大宗商品一样，更好的收益和更广泛的选择就会让储蓄更有吸引力。

但是，储蓄在本质上不是商品；它是一种以未来消费为目的的手段。如果你能指望从自己的股票中得到大约两位数的收益（或者你被人引导这么想），你就可以相应地少存一些钱，来实现特定的目标。储蓄有一种预防性的目的——年纪比较大的一代人把这叫做“未雨绸缪”。不过，当雨天来临时，你拥有的应对选择越多，你也就越不需要预防性储蓄。信用卡和住宅的股本总是可以利用的。



这并不意味着金融市场解除管制是一件坏事。但我曾相信，一个活跃金融体系存在的合理性在于，它能让我们更容易地获得修建学校和工厂、商店和办公室需要的资金。

然而，活跃的金融体系并不会修建更多的学校和工厂、商店和办公室。在这样的体系中，消费占国民收入的比例较高，投资所占比例较低。一个发达金融体系的作用是，它能让我们在Wii刚在商店里出现时就买上一部，还能让我们退休后在加勒比海上巡游。



译者/徐柳