前列腺炎湿热瘀阻:South Korea’s economy 韩国经济

South Korea’s economy
韩国经济

What do you do when you reach the top?
当达到顶峰后该做什么？

To outsiders, South Korea’s heroic economic ascent is a template for success. But now it has almost caught up with the developed world it must change its approach
对外界来说，韩国成功的经济增长是成功的典范。但是，韩国现在几乎已经赶上发达国家，必须改变其发展方式。

Nov 12th 2011 | SEOUL | from the print edition



IT IS a crisp autumn morning in Seoul, and a hopeful fisherman sits dreaming by the Cheonggyecheon stream as the world bustles happily by. Glass skyscrapers rise behind him housing the capital’s new financial district. The shopfronts at their base are among the swankiest in Asia. Office workers, families and schoolchildren amble past. Busking fills the air. The water tumbles past plum trees and willows.

首尔凉爽的秋天早晨，一位对生活充满希望的渔民坐在清溪川旁，世界欢乐的喧嚣着。标志着首尔新的金融区的玻璃幕墙摩天大厦在他身后耸立。摩天大楼底部的店面是亚洲最光鲜闪耀的商店之一。白领、家属、学生们悠闲地从旁边经过。街上充满了街头卖艺的声音。清溪川两岸遍植李树和柳树，河水滚滚向前。

Twenty years ago, this background would itself have seemed a dream for anyone foolish enough to be trying to fish the Cheonggyecheon. Its waters, dirty and hidden, were trapped beneath a roaring highway; its surroundings were a slum of sweatshops, metal bashing and poverty. The reclamation of the Cheonggyecheon, one of the great urban-regeneration projects of the world, has about it the air of a dream achieved. So, to a large extent, has the Korea through which the stream flows.

20年前，对于那些妄图在清溪川捕鱼的蠢人来说，这样的场景就像是一个梦。清溪川的河水又脏又隐蔽，掩藏在一条喧嚣的高速公路下。河流的周边是一个贫民窟，遍布着剥削的工厂、金属的撞击声以及贫穷。对清溪川的开垦，可以称得上是世界上最伟大的城市重建工程，现在已经实现了当初的梦想。这条河流过的韩国很大程度上同样实现了梦想。

In 1960, in the aftermath of a devastating war, the exhausted south was one of the poorest countries in the world, with an income per head on a par with the poorest parts of Africa. By the end of 2011 it will be richer than the European Union average, with a gross domestic product per person of $31,750, calculated on a basis of purchasing-power parity (PPP), compared with $31,550 for the EU. South Korea is the only country that has so far managed to go from being the recipient of a lot of development aid to being rich within a working life.

1960年，毁灭性战争的后果致使韩国成为世界上最贫穷的国家之一，当时的人均收入与非洲最贫穷国家相当。按照购买力平价（PPP）来计算的话，到2011年底，韩国人均国民生产总值将达到31750美元，比平均水平为31550美元的欧盟还要富有。到目前为止，韩国是唯一一个在四十年左右成功从接受发展资助的国家转变为富国的国家。

For most poor countries, South Korea is a model of growth, a better exemplar than China, which is too vast to copy, and better, too, than Taiwan, Singapore or Hong Kong. All three are richer than Korea but all are, in different ways, exceptions: Singapore and Hong Kong are city states, while Taiwan’s disputed sovereignty makes it sui generis.

对于大多数贫穷国家，韩国是经济增长的典范，是比中国更好的学习榜样，因为中国太大而无法复制。而且韩国也是比台湾、新加坡或香港更好的学习榜样。虽然这三个国家或地区要比韩国富有，但是他们都存在不同方式的例外情况：新加坡和香港是城邦，而台湾具有争议的主权问题使得其别具一格。

South Korea has not merely grown fast. It has combined growth with democracy. Though its spurt began under a military dictator, Park Chung-hee, for the past 25 years the country has had a vibrant parliamentary system. Korea scores the same as Japan in the democracy tally kept by Freedom House, a think-tank in Washington, DC. No other Asian country does as well. At the same time Korea has combined growth with equity. Between 1980 and 1997, its Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, fell from 0.33 to an exceptionally low 0.28, before rising back up during the 1997-98 Asian crisis. In 2010, the level was 0.31, a bit worse than Scandinavian countries, a bit better than Canada.

韩国不仅仅经济增长迅速，而且在发展经济的同时注重发展民主。尽管经济增长由军人独裁者朴正熙创造，但是在过去的25年，韩国采取充满生机的议会制。在位于华盛顿自由社保留的民主记录中，韩国获得的积分与日本一样高，亚洲任何其他国家都无法与之媲美。同时，韩国将经济增长与公平相结合。在1980年至1997年之间，韩国的基尼系数（衡量收入不均的方法）从0.33下降为少见的0.28，在1997-98年的亚洲金融危机期间反弹回去。2010年，基尼系数为0.31，比北欧国家要差一点，比加拿大要好一些。

A model that worked
适用的学习模范

Now Korea can add resilience to its roster of achievements. It was walloped during the global financial crisis, but recovered faster than any other rich country. Between June 2008 and February 2009, Korea lost 1.2m jobs. South Korea’s relatively open financial system made it vulnerable to the volatility in world markets, a vulnerability that continues. This September, foreigners withdrew over 1.3 trillion won ($1.1 billion) from the stock market and the currency slumped 10%.

现在，韩国成就的记事本上又多了一笔，那就是恢复力。韩国在全球金融危机期间也遭受重创，但是比其他任何发达国家恢复的要快速。在2008年6月到2009年2月期间，韩国有120万人失业。韩国相对开放的金融系统使其在世界市场波动中容易受到创伤，这是韩国一直存在的弱点。今年9月，外国投资者从股市中撤走资金达1.3万亿韩元（11亿美元），韩元下跌10%。

Yet in 2010, GDP grew by 6%. This year’s expansion is likely to be 4%. The unemployment rate is now a covetable 3%. Some of the recovery is the result of Korea’s happy dependence on China: it exports more capital goods to China relative to the size of its economy than anyone else, even Germany. But this is only part of the explanation (which is just as well given China’s slowdown). The government also initiated a public-works scheme that is mopping up over 2% of the labour force. It introduced an old-age pension and began, then expanded, an earned-income tax credit. All this from President Lee Myung-bak, who was once chief executive officer of Hyundai Construction and is widely assumed to be excessively friendly to big business.

然而，韩国2010年的国内生产总值（GDP）增长6%，今年的通胀可能为4%，目前的失业率为3%。韩国经济恢复一部分是其依赖于中国的结果。按照韩国经济规模来计算，韩国出口到中国的生产资料比包括德国在内的其他任何国家的要多，但这只是一部分原因（这也正是考虑到中国的经济放缓）。政府还开创了公共劳动计划，吸收了2%的劳动力。韩国引进老年养老金制度，同时开始实施并扩大低收入所得退税制度。这一切都是由现代建筑集团前首席执行官李明博总统引进，此举被普遍认为是对大型企业的过分友好方式。

Korea’s relentless convergence towards America’s standard of living (see chart 1) has barely missed a beat. China’s dollar GDP per person would have to grow at 7.5-8% a year for 20 years to reach the heights Korea has already scaled. If the Korean economy goes on growing at 4.5% a year and America’s at 2.5%, Korea would overtake America (in PPP terms) only a few years later.

韩国疯狂追赶美国生活水平标准的脚步从未停止过（见表一）。以美元为单位，中国人均GDP要赶上韩国已经达到规模的最高点，需要以7.5%-8%的增长率连续发展20年。如果韩国国内生产总值年增长率为4.5%，而美国的为2.5%，那么在几年后，韩国将赶超美国（以购买量平价来计算）。

           

To keep growing that impressively, though, Korea will need some new tactics. And it will need to develop them from scratch. When a country or a company is playing catch-up it can look at what others are doing and do it better. This Korea has done well. Hyundai has outcompeted Toyota in the market for reliable, efficient, cheap cars. Korea’s shipyards have beaten everyone through economies of scale.

虽然，为了保持这样强劲的增长，韩国需要出台一些新的策略，而且需要从头开始慢慢发展。当一个国家或一个公司正奋力赶超的话，其将会借鉴别人的做法并加以改进。韩国在这方面表现出色。韩国现代汽车在市场上已经以可靠、高效、价廉而超越日本丰田汽车。韩国造船厂已经通过规模经济效益击败所有的对手。

All change
所有的都已改变

But this way of doing things works only when others have blazed a trail before you. As you join the ranks of the richest, you run out of beaten track to follow. Your economy comes to depend more on innovation and on learning from your own mistakes than on improving on the successes of others. The South Korean model of 1960-2010 remains an example for developing countries; but Korea itself now needs something new.

但是这种方式只能适用于已经有其他人开荒辟土之后。当加入最富有的行列之后，可以被模仿的地方已经都被模仿完了，经济发展必须依靠创新，要从自己的错误中总结经验，而不是在别人成功的基础上改进。1960年至2010年期间，韩国的模式仍然是发展中国家学习的榜样，但是韩国自己需要新的血液。

The Korean model had four distinctive features: a Stakhanovite workforce; powerful conglomerates; relatively weak smaller firms; and high social cohesion. All these are either coming under strain, or in need of reassessment, or both.

韩国模式具有四大显著特征：斯达汉诺夫式的劳动力、强大的企业集团、相对较弱小的公司、极强的社会凝聚力。这些特征要么面临压力，要么需要再评估，或兼而有之。

South Koreans lay great store by education and hard work. They put in 2,200 hours of work a year, half as much again as the Dutch or Germans. Their reaction to the 2008 slump was to work harder still. During the 2009-10 recovery, reckons Richard Freeman of Harvard University, Korea had the second-largest increase in hours worked in manufacturing, after Taiwan. And the quality of labour has been even more important than the quantity. Along with Finland and Singapore, Korean schools regularly top international comparisons of educational standards, such as those run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a rich-country club. Korea spends a larger share of GDP on tertiary education than any rich country other than America. Given relatively low wages, this superbly educated workforce is hard to beat.

韩国非常珍视教育和辛勤劳动。他们每年的工作时间为2200小时，比荷兰和德国多一半。韩国人对2008年的经济衰退做出的反应是更加努力工作。哈佛大学理查德?弗里曼（Richard Freeman）估计，在2009年到2010年经济恢复期间，韩国制造业的工作时数增长量为全球第二，仅次于台湾。劳动的质量要比数量更加重要。和芬兰、新加坡一道，韩国经常在类似于OECD这样的组织进行的教育标准评比中位列前茅。韩国用于高等教育的费用占GDP的比重比除了美国以外的任何发达国家都高。考虑到相对较低的报酬，这些教育程度极好的劳动力很难击败的。

But with Korea already top of the league tables, it is harder to generate further jumps in income from big increases in hours and skills. Indeed, the immediate problem is merely to maintain its excellence. According to Yeong Kwan Song of the Korean Development Institute (KDI), a think-tank, companies are starting to worry that graduates are emerging from university with the wrong skills. On some estimates, half of recent graduates are failing to find full-time jobs and are going into further study or part-time employment. So while general education remains good, some industrial skills may be declining.

鉴于韩国已经独占鳌头，韩国人想要通过增加劳动时间和提升劳动技能来大幅提高收入将会难上加难。确实，最直接的问题不过是将目前的优秀状态保持下去。根据智囊机构韩国开发研究院（KDI）的Yeong Kwan Song所说，企业开始担心大学毕业生掌握的技能是错误的。有人估计，最近毕业生中有一半人找不到全职工作，于是他们选择继续学习或者从事兼职。因此，虽然通识教育状况仍然良好，但一些行业技巧教育可能正在衰退。

One way to boost the skilled labour force might be to have rather more people working rather fewer hours. The extra people would be women, often highly educated ones. Quite a lot of Korean women stay at home—the participation rate for women aged 25-54 is only 62%, the fourth-lowest in the OECD—even though they are usually better educated than men. In almost all rich countries, the best-educated women are more likely to work than their less-educated sisters. Not in South Korea.

促进有技能的劳动力的一种方式也许就是增加工人数量，减少工作时间。这些增加的工人通常是受过高等教育的女性。韩国很多女性即使比男性教育程度高，但却待在家里，年龄在25-54岁之间女性参与工作的比例为62%，在经济合作与发展组织（OECD）成员国中排在倒数第四位。几乎所有的发达国家中，受过最好教育的女性要比教育程度较低的女性更可能参加工作，但是韩国属于例外。

Shorter hours might encourage some of these skilled women into the workforce. So might a change in attitudes to schooling. The job of supervising a child’s education falls to women, which is one of the reasons why relatively few women have jobs.

更短的工作时间可能鼓励这些有技能的女性参加工作，从而改变对学校教育的态度。监督子女教育的工作成为女性的责任，这就是女性几乎不参加工作的原因之一。

This does not mean that they have a lot of children instead. Korea has a fertility rate of 1.2, one of the lowest in the OECD. This is in part because those good educations make having children a pricey proposition. An unusually large part of the spending that makes Korean education so good is private, not public. The government spends just under 5% of GDP on education, slightly below the rich-country average. Families add an extra 2.8% of GDP on top of that, easily the highest rate in the OECD. At universities, family spending is three times that of the state. And families spend an estimated 8% of their household budgets on after-hours programmes for each child, an investment which explains the effort mothers put into making sure it pays off. If you have three children, their after-school activities alone could swallow up a quarter of the household budget.

但这并不意味着她们会生很多孩子。韩国的生育率为1.2，是经济合作与发展组织（OECD）成员国中生育率最低的成员之一。部分原因是良好的教育促使生儿育女的成本太高。促使韩国教育如此优异的绝大部分费用都是来自私人，而不是国家拨款。韩国用于教育的费用仅为GDP的5%，稍微低于发达国家平均水平。另外，家庭贡献的教育经费占GDP的2.8%，这样韩国轻而易举成为经济合作与发展组织（OECD）GDP中教育经费比例最高的成员国。如果孩子上大学，每个家庭的花费是政府用于大学教育费用的三倍。家庭在每个孩子身上大约花费家庭预算的8%用于课后辅导，这笔投资解释了母亲投入精力并确保获得回报。如果有三个孩子，光是他们课后活动的费用就占家庭预算的四分之一。

The power of conglomerates. Much of South Korea’s miracle has been the work of big conglomerates, or chaebol. Barry Eichengreen of the University of California, Berkeley, argues that they are “among the most technologically and commercially progressive agents in the Korean economy”. Samsung Electronics, for instance, one of 83 constituent parts of the Samsung empire, sells more smartphones than Apple. Korea’s shipyards have just started work on a new class of container ships called the triple E-class which are easily the largest container ships ever built (Maersk, the ships’ buyer, says the three Es refer to economy of scale, energy efficiency and environmental cleanliness; simpler just to see them betokening EEEnormity). Korea’s large companies employ slightly less than a quarter of the workforce and produce more than half the country’s output. Chaebol-alikes exist round the world, from Carlos Slim’s Group Carso in Mexico to Lee Ka-shing’s holdings in Hong Kong.

企业集团的影响力。大部分的韩国奇迹都是由韩国大型企业集团创造。美国加州大学伯克利分校教授巴瑞?易臣格瑞(Barry Eichengreen)认为，这些企业是韩国经济中科技最先进、商业化最革新的企业。比方说三星电子公司，该公司是三星集团帝国的83个子公司之一，其智能手机的市场份额高于苹果公司。韩国造船厂刚刚开始建造名为3E级的新一级集装箱船，这将成为有史以来最大的集装箱船（该船的买主马士基集团说3E是指规模经济、节能高效和环保清洁，可以将其更简单地看作是EEEnormity）。韩国大型公司雇用的劳动力不到全国的四分之一，但产出是全国的一半。类似于韩国的大企业存在于全球各地，从墨西哥卡洛斯?斯利姆的卡苏集团到香港的李嘉诚的控股公司。

The surviving chaebol have proved resilient. During the 1997-98 crisis, some chaebol’s debt-to-equity ratios soared to over 500%; half of them went bust and conglomerates were widely seen as a drag on the economy. Now, those that came through the time of trial have returned to profitability and respectable debt ratios—but their success still has a downside.

现存的韩国企业巨头都具有较强的恢复能力，在1997-98年亚洲金融危机时，一些企业巨头的负债权益比飙升至500%，这些企业中有一半破产，同时大家普遍认为企业集团给经济拖后腿。现在，那些经历考验的企业集团已经重新恢复赢利并且保持较低的负债率，但是他们的成功仍然存在消极的一面。

After the founding fathers
开创先驱之后

The chaebol system has proved prone to fraud, dodgy accounting and illegal political contributions. Many of the companies depend to an unhealthy degree on a founder or his family. About half the managers of Samsung’s firms used to work in the chairman’s secretariat—and thus directly for the founder or his son—and owe their promotion to the associated patronage. As with any family business, the moment of greatest danger is when the leadership passes to the next generation. Samsung passed this test in 1987 when the founder handed over to his son, Lee Kun-hee. Now Mr Lee’s son, Jay Y. Lee, has been appointed chief operating officer of Samsung Electronics and a new transition looms. If Mr Lee the third has business acumen, fine. If not, the whole country could suffer.

事实证明韩国企业集团容易出现欺诈、财务造假以及非法政治献金等现象。很多企业过分依靠创始人或创始人家族。三星公司大约有一半的管理人员曾经在董事长的秘书处任职——然后直接为创始人或创始人的儿子服务——而且这样的优待有助于他们的晋升。对于家族企业来说，最大的危机将出现在父辈向下一辈转移领导权时。三星公司在1987年通过该考验，当时创始人将三星公司交给他的儿子李健熙(Lee Kun-Hee)。现在李健熙的儿子李在镕(Jay Y. Lee)被任命为三星电子的首席执行官，并且新的过渡时期即将来临。如果李氏家族的第三代领导人具有商业头脑，那么皆大欢喜；但如果他不是这块料，那么整个韩国都有可能危机四伏。

Moreover, there are signs that the chaebol may be stifling innovation and entrepreneurship. They have proved expert at applying and improving existing technology, even the high technology of touch-screen smartphones. But except in some internet businesses and computer gaming, South Korea has few start-ups or cutting-edge technology firms. It lacks nationwide venture-capital businesses, says Hasung Jang, the dean of Korea University’s Business School, because each chaebol has one of its own. The firms snap up the best and brightest and turn them into company men. Mr Jang compares the conglomerates to light-hogging trees in a forest: their canopy may be impressive, but it is hard for anything to grow underneath.

而且，有迹象表明韩国企业可能正在抑制创新和创业精神。这些企业证实自己在应用和改进现有科技方面很在行，包括智能手机触摸屏幕高科技方面。但是除了在互联网事业和计算机游戏方面有一些企业外，韩国鲜有创业公司或顶尖科技公司，韩国高丽大学商学院院长张夏成（Hasung Jang）说，韩国缺少全国性的风险投资企业，因为每个企业巨头都有他们自己的风险投资企业。这些企业争抢精英人才，并为自己所用。张夏成将企业巨头比作森林中遮住阳光的高大树木：它们的华盖让人羡慕，但是在它们下面任何其他植物都很难成长起来。

Koreans perceive fewer opportunities for entrepreneurship than any of their peers in rich countries except Japan, according to an annual survey by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, set up by the London Business School and Babson College, Massachusetts. As South Korea moves towards the technological frontier, such attitudes will have to change. Innovation is not going to come if everyone shelters from risk in the chaebol.

根据全球创业观察的一份年度调查，韩国比其他任何发达国家（日本除外）察觉创业机会的能力都差，全球创业观察是由伦敦商学院和马萨诸塞州的百森商学院共同建立的。当韩国想科技前沿前进的过程中，这样的态度必须改变。如果每个人在企业巨头中躲避风险，那么创新将不会出现。

Weak small firms. There is a huge productivity gap between Korea’s export-oriented chaebol and small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) which dominate services. Value added per worker in small firms is less than half that in large ones. SMEs’ operating profits were 4.5% of sales in 2007, compared with about 7% for large firms. Small firms spend about half as much on research and development as large ones per unit of sales and borrow far more relative to assets. Over time, their performance seems to be getting worse. Korea, in short, has first-world manufacturing exporters and third-world services.

弱小的小公司。韩国出口导向的企业巨头和统治服务的中小企业(SMEs)之间存在巨大的生产率差距。小企业中每个工人增值比大企业的一半还少。2007年，中小企业的销售营业利润为4.5%，而大企业为7%。小企业单位销售用于研究与开发上的费用大约为大企业的一半，相对于资产则需要借更多的资金。长此以往，他们的收益似乎每况愈下。简言之，韩国具有第一世界的出口制造商，第三世界的服务业。

Coddled, not coping
关爱，而非竞争 

There are several reasons for the mismatch. Small firms are crowded out of markets for people and skills by the chaebol. And because chaebol pay scales often rise according to years in service, they squeeze wage bills by firing older workers, with the service sector working as a recycling system for surplus labour. Small firms have also been coddled by the government. Korea maintains various entry barriers to shelter mom-and-pop stores from competition. Government support to SMEs rose from under 6 trillion won in 2008 to 10 trillion in 2009. Public credit guarantees rose from 33 trillion won in the Asian crisis to almost 60 trillion won in 2009. Last year, the government “requested” banks to roll over their loans to small firms. Randall Jones of the OECD argues that all this help has made SMEs less, not more, efficient, and damaged competitiveness. The richest economies are switching into services that in Korea are dominated by small firms which cannot compete.

造成不协调的原因是多方面的。在人才和技能的方面，小公司完全被企业巨头排挤出局。因为企业巨头的工资标准通常根据服务的年数而增长，他们通过解雇老员工来减少工资支出，服务部门则像剩余劳动力的回收系统一样运转。小公司同样也受到政府的优待。韩国维持着各种各样的准入门槛，来保护夫妻经营的商店免于竞争。政府对中小企业的支持从2008年低于6万亿韩元增长到2009年的10万亿韩元。公共信用担保从亚洲金融危机时期的33万亿韩元增长到2009年的60万亿韩元。去年，政府“要求”银行将小企业的贷款进行续期。经济合作与发展组织(OECD)的琼斯（Randall Jones）认为，所有这些帮助使得中小企业效率更低，而非更高，同时破坏了中小企业的竞争力。最发达的经济体正转变到服务行业，韩国的服务行业由小企业统治，但这些小企业却毫无竞争力。

Social cohesion. Korea’s equal distribution of income is changing. Judging by the relationship between the richest and poorest tenth, Korea is becoming more unequal than it used to be. Worse, the growing number of poor people is disproportionately elderly. In other rich countries, people between 66 and 75 are no more likely to be poor than the population as a whole. In Korea, they are three times as likely to be poor. This is all the more worrying because the low birth rate means the country is ageing more rapidly than any other rich country. In 2009, people over 65 were outnumbered ten to one by the working-age population. By 2050, there will be seven over-65s for every ten working-age adults. Disproportionate old-age poverty would have a huge impact on the social backing for policies designed to foster growth.

社会凝聚力。韩国的收入平均分配正在改变。根据最富有和最贫穷中前10%人群之间的关系来判断，韩国正变得比以前更加不平等。更糟糕的是，不断增长的贫困人口中老年人居多。在其他发达国家，在66至75岁之间的老人并不比总人口贫穷。在韩国，这个年龄段的老人贫穷的肯能性是其他发达国家的三倍。这更令人担忧，因为低生育率意味着韩国比其他发达国家老龄化的速度更快。2009年，65岁以上的老人人口超过劳动年龄人口。到2050年，每十个劳动年龄成人要供养7个65岁以上的老人。不成比例的老年贫困人口将对旨在促进经济增长的社会支持政策产生巨大影响。 

Korea’s equitable income distribution used to provide a sense that society as a whole was benefiting from breakneck catch-up. But discontent is rising both about inequality and about the role of the chaebol, producing growing disenchantment with both main political parties. The recent election for mayor of Seoul produced an upset win for a left-wing anti-establishment maverick.

韩国公平的收入分配曾经给人一种感觉，那就是社会作为一个整体，已经从疯狂的经济追赶中获益。但是对于不公平的不满和对韩国企业巨头扮演角色的不满正不断上升，促使两大主要政党不断清醒。最近首尔市长选举爆出冷门，让反对正统的非常规左翼派赢得选举。

It is proving hard to resist the trend towards inequality because of another basic feature of Korea’s economic model: total tax revenues are just 26% of GDP. Taxes are especially low on labour, a choice designed to boost work and foreign investment. But as a result, social spending is low (11%); public spending on family benefits is exceptionally low (less than a quarter of the rich-country average); and the tax-benefit system is the worst in the OECD at reducing inequality and poverty. Korea’s tax-benefit system reduces poverty by only 18% (compared with what it would have been without the benefits). Sweden’s tax-benefit system cuts its poverty rate by 80%.

抵制不公平的趋势越来越难，因为韩国经济模式的另一个基本特征：所有税收总额仅占GDP的26%。对劳动力的征税特别低，这样的选择目的是想促进劳动并且吸引外国人的投资。但是结果，社会支出很低（11%），用于家庭福利的公共支出更是低的可怜（不到发达国家平均水平的四分之一）；而且旨在降低不公平和贫困的赋税优惠体系是经济合作与发展组织（OECD）成员国中最差的。韩国的赋税优惠体系降低贫困仅仅为18%（与不存在这样的优惠体系相比）。瑞典的赋税优惠体系将其贫困率减少了80%。

Korea, argues Mr Jones, needs to increase taxes and social spending in order to reduce poverty and inequality. One reason it is reluctant to do this is because it is afraid of the impact on jobs. Its changing demography also suggests caution in expanding the social safety net too fast or far, as it will be used ever more over the decades to come.

琼斯认为，为了减少贫困和不公平，韩国需要增加税收和社会支出。韩国不愿意这样做的原因之一就是韩国担心会对就业产生影响。另一个原因是，在人口结构不断改变的情况下，我们要注意别过快或或深地扩大社会保障体系，因为在未来数十年里我们都要采用这个体系。

And then there is the ever-present imponderable: the possible need, at some point, to finance the horrendous costs of reunification with destitute North Korea when that state collapses. That would make the vast expense of unification in Germany pale into insignificance. At some point in the future Korea may need all the room for future fiscal expansion it can get.

而且无法预料的事物还会始终存在：某一天，当赤贫的朝鲜倒台后，朝鲜半岛重新团结所耗费的海量资金需求。这将会使德国统一时的巨大费用黯然失色。未来的某一天，韩国也许需要其能获取的所有财政扩充空间。

A bridge to the future
通往未来的桥梁

The problems of the South Korean model should not be allowed to obscure either its achievements or its continuing strengths. True, over the past 40 years annual GDP growth has declined from about 10% to 4-5% (see chart 2). Business investment has halved from over 30% of GDP in the mid-1990s to 17% in 2010—but that is still 50% over the OECD average. Further declines in growth seem likely.

韩国模式的问题不应该遮掩韩国成就或持续优势的光环。的确如此，在过去的40年里，韩国GDP年增长率从10%下降到4%-5%（见表2）。上世纪90年代，商业投资占GDP的30%，而到2010年，几乎减少了一半，只有17%，但这仍然超过经济合作与发展组织（OECD）平均水平的50%。未来经济增长具有明显的下降趋势。

That is not surprising. As Kwanho Shin of Korea University and Dwight Perkins of Harvard show, every country’s growth starts to ebb as its income reaches about $10,000 a year. South Korea has kept going longer than most. If it can increase public spending a little to reduce inequality and poverty, boost its labour supply by encouraging more women to work and avoid compromising its educational standards and penchant for hard work, then it should be well placed to pull ahead of Europeans and catch up with America, too.

这并不奇怪。正如韩国高丽大学的Kwanho Shin哈佛大学的帕金斯(Dwight H Perkins)所指出的，当年收入达到一万美元时，每个国家的经济增长都开始出现衰退。韩国已经比大多数国家保持经济增长的时间要长。如果韩国能够增加一些公共支出来降低不公平和贫困，同时鼓励更多的女性参加工作、避免降低教育标准以及辛勤劳动的传统，通过这些来促进劳动力供给，那么韩国就能赶上欧洲并且也能追上美国。

South Korea has long been a model for outsiders. President Kennedy’s chief economic adviser, Walt Rostow, wanted to use it as a testing ground for his theories about stages of economic growth. But Koreans do not see themselves as a blank slate, or as a new world power. They stress a long legacy of openness and innovation. Before the wars of the 20th century Korea was a bridge between the more closed worlds of China and Japan. It developed movable metal type two centuries before Gutenberg; its last imperial dynasty benefited from checks and balances more extensive than in its Chinese prototypes. The more Korea brings these qualities of domestic innovation to the fore, the better its chances of blazing a new trail for itself.

韩国一直作为外界学习的榜样。肯尼迪总统的首席经济顾问华尔特?罗斯托(walt Rostow)想要将韩国作为其经济增长阶段的理论的试验田。但是，韩国并不认为自己是一张白纸，或者是新的世界强国。他们强调开放和创新的优良传统。20世纪的世界大战之前，韩国作为中国和日本这两个更加封闭的国家之间的桥梁。韩国发明活动金属印刷模型要比古腾堡（人名，德国活版印刷发明人——译者注）早两个世纪。韩国的最后一个帝国朝代比中国模式要更广泛地收益于各方制衡。如果韩国在未来越多地运用这些国内创新素质，那么韩寒开创新篇章的机会就越大。

from the print edition | Briefing



注释：

earned-income tax credit

The United States federal earned income tax credit or earned income credit (EITC or EIC) is a refundable tax credit primarily for individuals and families who have low to moderate earned income. Greater tax credit is given to those who also have qualifying children. When the tax credit exceeds the amount of taxes owed, it results in a tax refund to those who claim and qualify for the credit. This tax credit is provided, in part, to offset the burden of social security taxes and to provide an incentive to work
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit