【英语生活】玛氏巧克力通胀

I wish I frequented the same high street as the statisticians who calculate measures of inflation. Given their calculations include “Various selected popular brands of sweets, chocolates, gum”, will they take note of a Mars Bar shrinking in size from 62.5g to 58g while remaining the same price? I make this an effective price increase of 7.76%. If not, when are those lying bastards going to stop lying to me?

Ralph Corderoy

Dear Mr Corderoy,

Your arithmetic is correct but your objection is confused. The statisticians – or “lying bastards”, au choix – do indeed adjust for such changes. It is far easier for them to do that than to make the many other adjustments they attempt every year to cope with the fact that nobody knows how many gramophones there are in an iPod.

Certainly, you are right to suspect that when the bean-counters go out to calculate inflation, they are not buying exactly the same products that you buy. How could they? Some people spend a lot on petrol, heating and mortgage payments; others are more interested in clothes, fast-food and laptops. The statisticians' best can never be quite good enough.

I will concede, though, that the Mars Bar has been worthy of scrutiny ever since the late Nico Colchester noted in the Financial Times back in 1981 that it was a very stable unit of account. It is a veritable ingot of basic commodities (sugar, milk, cocoa) that has kept its value relative to the price of other goods such as small cars, which have cost about 20,000 Mars Bars for the past 70 years.

Fortunately, there is no strong trend towards debasing the Mars Bar – its weight has always fluctuated. It weighed 57g in the late 1970s and as much as 67g in the mid-1980s: 58g is simply a return to historical norms after something of a Mars Bar bubble.
 

真希望我经常光顾的购物街与那些计算通胀率的统计学家们去的是同一个地方。他们的计算中包括“各种经过挑选的大众喜爱的糖果、巧克力及口香糖品牌”，既然如此，他们能不能注意一下，每块玛氏巧克力(Mars Bar)的规格已经从62.5克缩减到58克，而价格却维持不变？我认为这实际上是涨价了7.76%。不然的话，这些撒谎的混蛋打算什么时候不再骗我？

拉尔夫•科尔德鲁瓦(Ralph Corderoy)

亲爱的科尔德鲁瓦先生：

你的计算没错，但你的抗议却混乱不清。那些统计学家——或“撒谎的混蛋”，怎么叫都行——的确会根据这种变化做出调整。对他们来说，这比他们每年尝试进行的其他许多调整要容易得多，比如说，如何应对没人知道一台iPod里有多少唱片的事实。

当然，你完全有理由怀疑，这些统计专家跑出去计算通胀的时候，买的商品与你的并不完全一致。怎么会一样呢？一些人把大笔钱花在汽油、暖气费和房贷上；另一些人则对服装、快餐和笔记本电脑更感兴趣。就算统计学家尽了全力，也总是无法令人满意。

不过，我承认，自从已故的尼科•科尔切斯特(Nico Colchester)在1981年为英国《金融时报》撰稿时表示，玛氏巧克力是一种非常稳定的计算单位时起，它就应该受到严密审查。它是名副其实的基础商品（糖、牛奶和可可）的融合体，相对于小汽车等其它商品的价格一直保持稳定——过去70年里，小汽车的单价一直约等于2万块玛氏巧克力。

幸运的是，贬低玛氏巧克力的强烈倾向并不存在——其重量向来起伏不定。上世纪70年代末时，净含量为57克，80年代中期高达67克：58克不过是在经历了类似于一轮玛氏巧克力泡沫后，向历史标准的回归。

译者/陈云飞