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III. Principles of Social InsuranceAccepting that there is a reason for mandatory social insurance programs does not imply the appropriateness of the programs that we have inherited from the past. Todays Social Security and unemployment insurance were enacted nearly 70 years ago. Economic conditions, administrative technologies, and assumptions about economic behavior have all changed dramatically since then. And yet during these past 70 years, the key social insurance programs have expanded without fundamental change.认可我们有理由采取强制的社会保险项目，并不意味着我们从过去继承的项目是合适的。今天的社会保险和失业保险项目从70年前就开始实施，从那时以来，经济状况，管理技术以及对未来经济表现的预期全都发生了显著地变化。并且在过去的70年之中，关键的社会保险项目虽然扩充了内容，但没有根本变化。Before I consider some of the specific ways in which our basic social insurance programs can be reformed and strengthened, I want to discuss broader principles that can help us to think about each of the specific programs. Ill begin with three fundamental political principles and then turn to four economic principles.在我考虑有什么具体的方法来改革和加强我们的基本社会保险项目之前，我想先讨论下能帮助我们思考每一个具体项目的普遍适用的原则。我将从三个基本的政治原则开始然后转向四个经济原则。A. Three Political PrinciplesPolitical principles involve value judgments to a greater extent than the economic principles to which I will turn later. I can explain the political principles that shape my view about appropriate reforms but I cannot prove that they should determine policy. You may or may not agree with them. Of course, you might agree with me about specific reforms even if you reject some or all of these principles.一、三个政治原则与我后面要论述的经济原则相比，政治原则在更大程度上侧重于价值判断。我能够解释塑造我对合适改革的观点的政治原则，但我不能够证明这些原则应该决定改革的方法。你或许同意或不同意这些原则。当然，即使你不同意一些或所有的这些原则，你也可能赞成我的具体改革。Permitting Individual Choice.Individuals differ in their preferences. We do not all have the same risk aversion, the same time preference, the same relative taste for goods and leisure. Letting individuals choose among options in a way that reflects their individual preferences should be an important aspect of social insurance design. For Milton Friedman, such freedom to choose is paramount. For me, it is important but not decisive. In cases where asymmetric information creates serious efficiency problems, I might restrict that choice. But I prefer to allow as much choice as possible. I think that allowing individuals to make their own choices is morally correct and generally improves individual, and therefore social, well-being.允许个人选择：每个人有不同的偏好。我们不会全都有着相同的避险情绪，同一时间的偏好，相同的物品和闲暇消费的替代性。让个人以能反映他们个人偏好的方法，来在不同的选项之间选择，这应该是社会保险设计中的一个重要方面。按照弗里德曼的观点，这种选择的自由是最重要的。但以我的观点，这是重要的但不是决定性的。在这样一种情况下，即非对称信息造成了严重的效率问题，我可能会限制这种选择。但我更偏向于允许尽可能多的选择。我认为允许每个人自己做选择在道义上是正确的，并且通常会提高个人的幸福感，因此提高整个社会的幸福度。But allowing choice means that programs should be designed so that choice enhances economic efficiency rather than creating deadweight losses. A good example of such a program redesign was the Social Security reform that introduced the actuarial adjustment for early and delayed retirement in a way that, in principle, will allow individuals to decide when they will start collecting benefits without changing the actuarial present value of their benefits.但是允许自由选择意味着这些保险项目应该进行设计，使得这些选择提高经济效率而不是造成无谓的损失。这些项目被重新设计的一个好的例子是社会保障，改革为提前退休和延迟退休引入了精算调整，从而提供了一种方法，使得原则上允许个人决定什么时候开始领取收益，而不改变他们的保险精算现值。Creating Program Transparency.Social insurance programs involve complex rules about the benefits to be received, the taxes to be paid, and the link, if any, between them. Who among you is confident about even the most basic Social Security rules that determine benefits at retirement? If you are a man, what benefit would your wife receive if she collects on her own rather than as your spouse? How would that change if she earned more or worked another year? If she decides to retire at age 62 rather than 65? Im told that there are more than 2500 separate rules in the Social Security handbook建立保险项目的透明度：社会保险项目包含各种复杂的规则，包括待遇的领取，需要缴纳的税负，以及可能的话，两者之间的联系。即使对最基本的决定你退休后待遇的社会保险规则，你们之中又有谁有信心全都了解了？如果你是一位男士，你妻子自己参保而不是依你配偶的身份，她又能拿多少养老金了？如果她挣得更多或者又工作了一年，养老金又将发生什么变化呢？如果她决定在62岁退休而不是65岁又将怎样。我可以告诉你，在社会保险手册中有超过2500条独立的规则。The complexity of the rules weakens the perceived link between the payroll taxes paid and subsequent benefits. Many employees may simply regard their Social Security payroll tax as similar to the income tax, thereby increasing the perceived marginal tax rate and raising the deadweight loss of the tax. 规则的复杂程度削弱了我们已经了解的工资税和以后的收益之间的关系。许多雇员简单地把他们缴纳的社会保险费等同于所得税，因此提高了现存的边际税率并增加了在税收方面的额外损失。Lack of transparency also permits programs to have effects that might not be politically acceptable if they were more explicit. For example, some defenders of the current Social Security system believe it permits a substantial amount of redistribution that Congress would not be willing to build into an investment-based system of individual accounts. Although the Social Security rules do not actually achieve that redistribution, the important political principle is that it is inappropriate in a democracy to use a deliberately opaque system to achieve a redistribution of income that would be rejected if proposed in a more transparent way.缺乏透明度也使得这些项目有着这样的影响，即如果这些项目更清楚的话，可能不会被政府接受。比如，一些现行社会保险体系的捍卫者认为这会产生巨大的再分配效应，而在现行的以缴费为基础的个人账户制，这是国会不愿建立的。即使社会保险规则并不会真正实现这种再分配，但重要的政治原则是，在一个民主社会里，如果以一个更透明的方法来提议的话将会被拒绝，因此故意利用一个不透明的系统来完成收入的再分配是不合适的。 The Social Security program lacks transparency because it is a defined benefit system rather than a defined contribution plan of the sort that now characterizes most private pensions. Converting Social Security to a defined contribution planeven an unfunded “notional” system such as Sweden and Italy now havewould allow individuals to see the link between their taxes and the resulting benefits. An explicit decision by Congress to supplement the contributions of low-income earners in such a defined contribution plan would achieve income redistribution without a loss of transparency.社会保险政策缺乏透明度是因为它是给付确定值而不是像现在许多私人养老金采用的缴费确定制。把社会保险转化成固定缴费计划，或即使是像瑞典或意大利那样未设基金的名义上的制度，都能使个人明白他们缴费与收益之间的联系。国会通过的一个明确的决议，在这样一种固定缴费计划下，补助低收入者的缴费，这同样会实现收入的再分配而不存因透明度产生的损失。Recognizing Political Dynamics.When we economists talk about policy design, we generally think about enacting permanent reforms. But experience shows that legislated rules do change and that the initial conditions influence the path of that change. When designing a particular program or advocating a particular design, economists should recognize that some designs are more stable than others and should anticipate how a program might evolve.承认政治的动态性：当我们这些经济学者讨论政策制定时，我们通常会考虑制定永久的改革。但是经验告诉我们立法规则真的在改变，并且最初的状况影响着这种改变的路径。当制定一个详细的政策或者提倡一个详细的设计时，经济学者应该明白一些设计方案比另外一些更稳定，并且应该预测一个项目将怎样发展。The Medicare drug legislation enacted in 2003 is a good example. Medicare beneficiaries will pay the first $250 a year in drug expenses, followed by a 25-percent coinsurance rate to a maximum benefit limit. Patients must then pay 100 percent of the drug cost up to $3600 in out-of-pocket payments. Above that, Medicare will pay 95 percent of any additional drug costs.2003年颁布的医保药物法案是一个很好的例子。医疗保险的受益人需要在第一年支付250美元的药物费用，接着是25%的最高限额的共付比列。在药物费用低于3600美元时，患者必须自己支付100%的比例。超过了这个数字，医疗保险将支付95%的额外药物支出。This rather strange design was accepted to limit the total cost of the plan while delivering benefits to a very large number of senior citizen voters. An economically more rational plan with the same budget cost would have insured at least part of the range that is currently uninsured and kept total costs down by a larger deductible. But that would have had the political disadvantage of giving benefits to fewer individuals. It seems likely that future legislation will address the residual insurance gap in a way that will raise the total cost of the program.这个非常奇怪的设计被接受了，以此来限制固定缴费计划的总支出，同时向大量的的老年人提供养老金。一个有着相同预算成本的，但在经济上更合理的的计划，应该至少保障了现行制度下保障人数一部分，并且通过大量缩减开支降低了总的成本。但这又会产生政治劣势，即向更少的人提供补贴。看起来未来的立法会以增加总的支出的方法来解决剩余的保险差距。There is another and potentially more significant aspect of the future evolution of this Medicare drug program. If all of the drugs consumed by seniors come to be covered by government insurance, there will be strong pressure to regulate the price of those drugs. Such price regulation is, in turn, likely to discourage the development of drugs for those diseases that particularly affect the elderly. It would be sadly ironic if an insurance plan initiated to improve drug access for seniors led ultimately to a reduced availability of new drugs for this group.关于医疗保险项目未来的发展，还存在着的另一个可能更重要的方面。如果所有老年人消费的药品都覆盖在政府的保险之中，那么政府将会面临着击打的管理这些药物价格的压力。这种价格管理，反过来，可能抑制一些药物的发展，而这些药物是用来治疗与老年人密切相关的疾病的。这就会产生一种悲哀的讽刺，即一个为提高老年人药物获得性而设计的保险计划，确最终降低了这一群体对新药物的可获得性。B. Four Economic PrinciplesLet me turn now from these three political principlespermitting individual choice, creating program transparency, and recognizing political dynamicsto four economic principles.现在让我从三个政治原则允许个人选择，建立保险政策的透明度，承认政治动态性转向四个经济原则。Recognizing the Economic Effects of Social Insurance Programs and Their Taxes承认社会保障项目及其税收对经济的影响.Noneconomists who write about social insurance programs often implicitly assume that social insurance programs do not affect the behavior of beneficiaries or the overall performance of the economy. Evidence shows that the opposite is true. Social insurance programs have important and sometimes harmful effects on the economy that are not fully recognized by the public, Congress, or the politically responsible officials.写关于社会保险项目的非经济学者，总是假设社会保险项目不会影响受益人的行为或者是经济的总体变现。有证据表明相反的情况才是正确的。社会保险项目对经济有着重要的，有时甚至是负面作用，而这没有被公众，国会或者是负责任官员所意识到。A substantial volume of work during the past quarter century has shown the various ways in which social insurance programs do affect individual behavior and the overall economy. These effects include reducing national saving, inducing early retirement, raising the unemployment rate, pushing up the cost of health care, and crowding out private health insurance. Any serious evaluation of social insurance programs, and any attempt to improve their design, should take these effects into account.在过去的25年里，大量的工作记录证明了存在着多种方法使得社会保险政策切实影响着个人行为以及整体经济。这些影响包括降低国民储蓄，引致提前退休，提高了失业率，增加了健康护理的支出，以及对私人健康保险的挤出效应。任何对社会保险政策的严肃评估，任何改善政策设计的尝试都应该把这些影响考虑进去。There is, of course, controversy about the magnitude of these effects, just as there is about most other economic parameters. Decisions about program design have to use the evidence that is available, even if parameter estimates come with substantial uncertainty. But there is clearly room for economists to use new data, new statistical methods, and new natural policy experiments to improve our knowledge and, therefore, to improve policy design. 当然，会存在着对这些影响的重要程度的争论，就像大多数其它经济参数一样。政策设计的决策必须依据已有的证据，即使参数存在着巨大的不确定性。但仍有很大的余地供经济学家来用新数据，新统计方法，新的政策试点来提高我们的认识，由此来提高政策制定的科学性。Adverse effects result from specific program designs and are not inherent in the goals of the programs. For example, John Gruber and David Wise showed that the rules governing retirement benefits induced early retirement in several European countries but that different rules at different times and in other countries did not induce early retirement. The U.S. benefit rules that now specify an almost actuarially fair relationship between benefits and retirement age reduces substantially the perceived bias in favor of early retirement.具体的政策设计所产生的负面影响，不是政策目标所固有的。比如，John Gruber和David Wise展示了支配着退休金的制度在欧洲的几个国家诱导了提前退休，但不同的时间，不同的国家，不同的制度并没有诱导提前退休。美国的收益制度，现在规定了一个几乎公平的养老金和退休年龄之间的关系，大大降低了已存在的对提前退休的偏爱。More generally, social insurance programs not only distort economic behavior directly, thereby creating deadweight losses, but also create further deadweight losses because of the taxes that are levied to finance those programs. I believe that the deadweight losses of those taxes are much larger than is generally recognized.更一般地来说，社会保险政策不仅直接扭曲了经济表现，藉此产生了额外损失，而且为这些政策融资所征得税，也会造车未来的额外损失。我认为这些税收所产生额外损失比我们通常所预想的要大得多。I will illustrate this with the effect of the 50-percent increase in the payroll tax rate that could occur if there is no change in benefit rules. Deadweight losses depend on marginal tax rates. Consider an individual who now faces a combined federal and state marginal rate of income tax of 30 percent without social insurance. The current 15.3 percent employer-employee payroll tax rate, when adjusted for the interaction with the income tax and for the present actuarial value of the additional retiree and survivor benefits that result from increased taxable earnings, now increases the overall marginal tax rate from 30 percent to about 37.7 percent.8 A 50-percent rise in the 15.3 percent marginal tax rate, adjusted for the income tax interaction, would increase this effective marginal tax rate from 37.7 percent to 44.2 percent.我将通过工资税率增加50%所产生的影响来阐述这个问题，如果待遇领取制度没有改变的话，这是有可能发生的。额外损失取决于边际税率。考虑这样一种情况，一个人面对着联邦和州的联合的30%工资税率，并且没有社会保险。现在的15.3%的雇佣工资税率，由于应纳税所得额的增加，所得税和额外的退休和生存年金的保险精算现值的改变而需要而进行调整时， 现在把整体的边际税率从30%增加到37.7%。在15.3%的边际税率基础上的50%的增长，为了适应税收间的交互作用而进行调整，可能会使这一有效边际税率从37.7%增长到44.2%。The increase in the deadweight loss that would result from this tax increase reflects both the reduction in labor supplybroadly defined to include not just working hours but also the accumulation of human capital, the choice of occupation, effort, etc., and the change in the form of compensationaway from taxable cash and to less valuable fringe benefits. Although neither behavioral change can be measured explicitly, the resulting deadweight loss can be calculated empirically by estimating the extent to which the higher payroll tax would reduce taxable labor income. It is appropriate to focus on the decline in taxable labor income without evaluating the two separate effects because the relative price of the two componentsthe marginal tax rate on the reward for increased labor supply and the marginal tax rate that determines the net cost to the taxpayer of fringe benefitsremains the same when the tax rate changes. Taxable labor income is, therefore, a Hicksian composite good that can be used to assess the deadweight loss .税负的增加可能导致的额外损失的增加，反映了劳动供给的减少广义上来说，不仅包括工作时间，还包括人力资本的积累，职业的选择，工作努力程度等等，以及报酬形式的改变从应纳税的现金转向价值较小的附加福利。即使行为变化不能明确地衡量，但由此产生的额外损失却可以通过估计高工资税降低应纳税劳动收入的程度，以经验来进行计算。把注意力放在纳税劳动收入的降低,而不去估计两者各自的影响是合适的，因为当税率变化时，两者间的相对价格由劳动供给增加引起的边际税率和决定纳税人附加福利净费用的边际税率仍保持不变。因此，应纳税劳动收入，作为一种希克斯混合产物，可以被用来估计额外损失。The elasticity of taxable labor income with respect to the net-of-tax share, i.e., to one minus the marginal tax rate on labor income, is much greater than the traditional elasticity of labor supply as measured by labor force participation and average hours worked. Estimating this elasticity is now a subject of very active research among public finance economists. Although a wide range of estimates has been produced, some studies are more reliable than others. I believe that a conservative estimate is that the compensated elasticity of taxable income with respect to the net-of-tax rate is one-half. 至于扣除款后的份额，应纳税劳动收入的弹性，也就是一个人减去劳动收入里边际税率之后的弹性，比传统的通过劳动力参与率和平均工作时间衡量的劳动供给的弹性大得多。时下，测算这种弹性的大小对公共财政学家来说是非常热的。尽管已经产生了许多不同的估计，但各种估计的可靠性不一。我认为，保守估计，扣除税款后，应纳税收入的补偿弹性是0.5。Using this elasticity and the 2004 taxable payroll implies that a rise in the effective marginal tax rate from 37.7 percent to 44.2 percent increases the annual deadweight loss by $96 billion, or nearly one percent of GDP.11 Since the 6.5-percent increase in the marginal tax rate applies only to taxable labor income (about 40 percent of GDP), the deadweight loss is equal to about one-third of the incremental tax revenue. Even this understates the relative size of the deadweight loss because it ignores the reduction in the tax base and therefore in the tax revenue that results from the higher marginal tax. When that reduction in taxable income is taken into account, the incremental deadweight loss is nearly 50 percent of the incremental revenue.12 The true cost per additional dollar of payroll tax revenue is therefore $1.50.利用这一弹性和2004年的应纳税工资表，意味着有效边际税率从37.7增长到44.2%的上升，增加了每年的额外损失，到达960亿美元，将近GDP的1%。由于边际税率6.5%的增长只适用于应纳税收入（大约占GDP的40%），额外损失将近占到税收增量的1/3。即使这样也只是保守地估计了额外损失的相对量，因为这忽略了税收基础的下降以及由更高的边际税率所导致的税收收入的减少。当把应纳税收入的降低计算进去，额外损失的增量大约是税收增量的50%。因此每增加一美元工资税收入的实际成本是1.5美元Note that this is just the deadweight loss or excess burdeni.e., the pure wasteassociated with the incremental tax. It does not include the deadweight loss of the existing tax or the direct burden of the taxes themselves. And it does not include the deadweight loss caused by the program distortions.意识到这仅仅是增税引起的额外损失或额外负担即净损失。这并不包括增税前造成的额外损失或税赋本身的直接负担。同时也不包括政策变形所产生的额外损失。Although scaling back the rise in future benefits would reduce the increase in the deadweight loss, it would also reduce the protection that Social Security provides to future retirees. An alternative approach is therefore to redesign the program so that the increased financing required for the aging population has less of the character of a tax.虽然缩减未来养老金支出的上升可能会减少额外损失的增加，但这也会降低社会保险提供的对未来退休后生活的保障程度。一个替代方案就是重新设计保险政策，使老龄人口所需要的不断增加的资金，较少地刻上税收的烙印。One way to do that is to strengthen the taxpayers perception of the link between taxes paid and future benefits. That is one of the advantages of shifting from the existing complicated defined benefit rules to a defined contribution system, even to a notional defined contribution system. Although a notional defined contribution plan would remain a pay-as-you-go system, it would clearly link each workers social insurance tax payment to his or her resulting future benefits.这样做的一个方法是加强纳税人对纳税与未来收益之间的关系的理解。这也是从现存的复杂的给付确定制转变成缴费确定制的优点，即使是转变成名义上的缴费确定制。虽然名义上的缴费确定计划肯仍保留着现收现付制，它也会清楚地把工人的社会保险税支出和他们的未来收益联系起来。A defined contribution system would provide a tax-benefit link for those groups in the population that now receive no extra benefits at all in exchange for their additional taxes. For them, the Social Security payroll tax is a pure tax just like the income tax. These include both young and older workers who are not in the top 35 wage-indexed earning years of their life, the basis on