I am in strong general agreement with Philippe Van Parijs’s argument for a UBI or patrimonya portion of the product of a society that should be shared by all of those who inhabit that society. To establish such a patrimony is equivalent to recognizing shared ownership of a significant fraction of the resources, physical and intellectual, that enable the society to produce what it produces. As the essay makes a very strong case for the UBI and its feasibility, I will limit my comments to just two issues: (1) why a UBI (or patrimony) would be just; and (2) some problems of incentives that such a system poses and that need to be handled effectively.

总的来说，我强烈支持Philippe van Parijs的关于UBI（注：普遍基本收入，就是按人发钱）或遗产 的论点社会的产品的一部分应该由所有那些居住在该社会的人分享。 建立这样的遗产就是等于认可资源、自然和知识的很大一部分属于共享所有权，它使得社会生产它生产的。因为是随笔，对UBI及其可行性做非常有力的支持。我将限制我的评论到二个问题： (1)为什么UBI (或遗产)是正义的; 并且(2)这个系统要面对的一些激励问题，以及需要它有效地去把握。

Justice When we compare average incomes in rich nations with those in Third World countries, we find enormous differences that are surely not due simply to differences in motivations to earn. Laziness is not a principal cause of poverty. A more plausible explanation for the differences, in fact the explanation that is universally put forward, is that much greater resources per capita are available to some countries than to others. These differences are not simply a matter of acres of land or tons of coal or iron ore, but, more important, differences in social capital that takes primarily the form of stored knowledge (e.g., technology, and especially organizational and governmental skills).

正义当我们拿富有的国家平均收入与那些第三世界国家相比时，我们发现有巨大的差距，这不能简单地归因于在赚钱动机上的差异。懒惰不是贫穷的主要起因。对于这种差距，一个更加振振有词的解释（实际上它被普遍地提及）是：某些国家比其他国家有更加巨大的人均可用资源。这些区别并非简单地是土地英亩数、煤炭吨数、或铁矿，更重要的差距是社会资本，它是存放知识（如技术，尤其指组织和政府的技能）的主要形式。

Exactly the same claim can be made about the differences in incomes within any given society. In large part, these differences must be attributed to differences in capital ownership, of which the largest part is social capital: knowledge, and participation in kinship and other privileged social relations. In addressing the question of justice, therefore, we are assessing the justice of inheritance of such resources along bloodlines. This is a question of value, not of fact. I personally do not see any moral basis for an inalienable right to inherit resources, or to retain all the resources that one has acquired by means of economic or other activities.#p#分页标题#e#

在所有特定的社会，关于收入的差距一致要求能够正确地提出。在很大程度上，这种差距必须归因于资本所有权的差距，其中最大的部分是社会资本，它包括知识、裙带关系和其他特殊社会关系，因此，我们依照血统评价这些资源继承的正义。这是价值的问题，不是事实问题。 我个人认为，没有任何道德基础支持不可分割的资源继承权利，或者保留全部资源它已被通过经济或其他活动所取得。

The usual argument for such a right is based on the assumption of perfectly competitive markets where factors of production are paid their marginal values and where there are no externalities. But this assumption does not hold to any reasonable degree of approximation in real societies. Access to the social capitala major source of differences in income, between and within societiesis in large part the product of externalities: membership in a particular society, and interaction with other members of that society under practices that commonly give preferred access to particular members.

一般认为，这样的权利是根据完全竞争市场假设，（在这个假设下，）生产因素被支付给他们的边际价值，并且没有外部性（注：可以理解为对其他人带来的好处）。但这个假定在真正的社会中没有任何合理性。 有权使用的社会资本（是在社会上产生收入差距的重要根源）的大部分产生外部性： 特殊社会的会员资格、在实践中与那个社会的其他成员一起活动（一般提供成功的实践给特殊会员）。

How large are these externalities, which must be regarded as owned jointly by members of the whole society? When we compare the poorest with the richest nations, it is hard to conclude that social capital can produce less than about 90 percent of income in wealthy societies like those of the United States or Northwestern Europe. On moral grounds, then, we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent to return that wealth to its real owners. In the United States, even a flat tax of 70 percent would support all governmental programs (about half the total tax) and allow payment, with the remainder, of a patrimony of about $8,000 per annum per inhabitant, or $25,000 for a family of three. This would generously leave with the original recipients of the income about three times what, according to my rough guess, they had earned.

如此巨大的外部性，必须认为由整体社会的成员联合拥有？ 当我们把最穷与最富有的国家比较时，很难做出社会资本能产生小于90%收入的结论对美国或西北欧洲而言。 于是，在道德基础我们赞成把90%的单一所得税退回给它真正的所有者。 在美国， 即使70%的单一税将支持所有政府项目(大约总税的一半)和给与支付（？），剩下的，大约每个居民每年$8,000的遗产，或者三口之家每年$25,000。 这将慷慨把大约他们挣到的三倍的收入（根据我粗略的估计）留给原始的接收者处理。#p#分页标题#e#

Incentives Economists are always quick to point out that people must be properly motivated to be productive. If average returns to effort were uniformly reduced by a factor of three, it is not clear why motivation to earn more would be reduced. The behavior of two-income families in the United States suggests that the desire for income is related much more to processes of social comparison than to the real wage rate after taxes or the relative desire for goods and leisure. Similar questions may be raised about savings and capital accumulation, but in discussing them, private savings should not be dissociated from social saving (either by government or by the processes of social exchange themselves), which commonly produces externalities that are not evaluated by the market and appear nowhere in the social accounts. In any event, the questions about incentives to work and save are empirical questions that should be settled by experimentation and observation and not by philosophical debate.

激励经济学家总是迅速地指出，人们必须适当地被刺激是有益的。 如果努力的平均回报通过三要素之一一致地减少，就不清楚为什么将减少赚钱的动机。 在美国，双收入家庭的行为暗示收入的欲望更多的与社会攀比的进程（processes of social comparison）有关，而不是税后真实工资率或对财物和闲暇的相对欲望。 相似的关于储款和资本积累的问题也许被提出，但在谈论他们，私人储蓄不应该与社会储蓄分离(通过政府或社会过程交换它们自己)，它同样产生外部性，这是不能通过市场和并不存在的社会帐目来估值。无论如何，关于工作和储蓄的激励问题是实证问题，它必须经由实证和观察来解决，而不是经由哲学辩论。

I have focused on a UBI within a single nation. Let me leave aside questions of justice in reallocation of income among nations, and simply observe, as has been observed by many developmental economists, that reallocation can be accomplished at a relatively low cost by the export of knowledge rather than tangible resources. It is true that per capita income in wealthy nations might decline with increasing competition from those thereby endowed, but again, these effects of export of know-how need to be evaluated empirically and not simply posited by fiat. Meanwhile, the spread of multi-national corporations, with their power to allocate capital throughout the globe, may settle the question, for better or worse, before our empirical inquiries are complete. The historical record suggests that attempts to keep technological advantages within national boundaries are not usually successful for long.我把焦点集中在一个国家内的UBI。

让我搁置一个国家的收入再分配的正义问题，简单地观察，很多发展经济学家观察发现，重新分配可以被实现于经由知识出口的低成本，而不是有形的资源。这是真的，国民平均收入在富裕国家也许随着他们竞争的增加而下降，从而被资助。但是另外，这些技术秘诀出口的效果需要被实证评估，不是简单地由命令假定。同时，跨国公司的蔓延，以他们的力量在全球调拨资本，也许解决问题，是更好或者更坏，在我们实证调查之前就完成了。历史纪录暗示企图保留技术优势在国界之内通常不是常胜之道。#p#分页标题#e#

No discussion of income redistribution should conclude without considering its impact on resource conservation and population. Sustainability must be a central concern in all questions of national and global social policy. Increase in income has, in recent centuries, been the most potent means that has been found for stabilizing populations, but at the cost, alas, of increased energy production, which aggravates the problems of maintaining the quality of life on our Earth. (Bringing the Third World up to Western energy levels would multiply the carbon dioxide problem by a factor of at least ten!) We must focus on converting income and savings to forms that are more benign in this respect.

关于再分配的讨论不应该结束在不考虑它的对资源保护和人口的冲击的情况下。可持续性在全国和全球性社会政策的所有问题中必须是一个核心问题。近百年来，在为稳定的人口被找到了的收入的增量，是最有力的手段，但在能源生产成本的增加，它使在我们的地球上维护生活水平的问题恶化。 (带来由第三世界直到西方的能级水平将增加二氧化碳问题至少十倍!) 我们必须专注于转换收入和储款的方式到更加良性的形式。

Herbert A. Simon is University Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. In 1978, he received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

西蒙是卡内基梅隆大学教授，1978年诺贝尔经济学奖得主，个人专著《过剩经济学》已由广东经济出版社出版。