How America can rise to Asia's challenge
India, China; China, India. The only remaining question seems to be which will clobber the rest of us first. Last week, even as the dollar slid, Azim Premji of Wipro was touring the US terrifying conference rooms with his company's plans. Not only will the Indian giant continue its work in information technology, its chairman reported, but Wipro will also develop yet more software on its own. Adjust, ye alumni of Caltech. America's big political parties are also grappling with the challenge of international competition. The Republican effort this month focuses on Social Security, whose reform would lead to a more competitively priced workforce. Democrats, too, are thinking about foreign competitors especially Democrats who served on the economics side of the Clinton administration. Indeed, two recent books out of Clinton-land put forward valuable models for changing the future.
The first, The Two Percent Solution*, comes from Matt Miller, columnist, radio commentator and former Budget staffer for Bill Clinton when he was president. Mr Miller targets correctly three big problems in the US economy: the despair of unskilled workers, the perversity of the healthcare system and the damage done by mediocre schools. Is it not time, he asks, for the US to combine public and private sector experience to improve matters? Mr Miller wants a living wage for all workers. He wants a system of universal healthcare albeit via market methods. And he wants to offer teachers hefty financial incentives make them millionaires to deliver pupils who can meet a series of objective standards.
These are all appealing ideals, especially the millionaire teacher. After all, US school-leavers would have a better chance of competing with the brains of Indian call centres if US schools taught two things they have omitted in recent decades: grammar and long division. Mr Miller points out that US federal tax revenues these days represent about 16 per cent of gross domestic product, down from the 18, 19, 20 per cent or more considered inevitable only a decade ago. If the US spent 2 percentage points more, he posits, it could fix all three big problems.
And federal tax revenues as a share
of GDP would still be only 18 per
cent, far less than the rates that
obtain in European counterparts. The Two Per Cent Solution sounds like a bargain: a smarter, healthier, better paid nation, all for less than the old mean.
Slightly different is The Competition Solution, by Paul A. London.** Mr London, deputy undersecretary of commerce under Mr Clinton, argues that the 1990s were prosperous not so much because of manly fiscal discipline (sorry, Secretary Rubin) but rather because they were a period of fierce competition. Competition permitted by the Clinton administration's policy of liberalising trade barriers. Competition made possible by vigorous antitrust enforcement in the old American progressive tradition. And competition fostered by actions that preceded the 1990s the break-up of AT&T in the 1980s, for example. Mr London even goes so far as to praise junk-bond pioneer Michael Milken for fostering innovation in areas that traditional financial markets left underfunded, such as telecommunications. (True enough, but not a truth normally advertised by Democratic appointees.) To succeed in future, Mr London posits, the US will have to internalise these 1990s lessons.
There are a few things to quibble with in Mr London's argument. He thinks it is OK for “businesses and taxpayers” to subsidise the modernisation of healthcare. This idea looks nice on paper more new computer networks. But it ignores the fact that industrial policy usually fails. (Ask India: as Harjiv Singh of the Fortex Group, an economic scholar and one of Mr Premji's hosts, pointed out last week, “the reason the IT service sector came about in India was that government didn't really take much interest in it.”) As for antitrust enforcement the jury is out on whether it lifts productivity.
Nonetheless, the competition thought is key. And the added value in both books is that they work hard to find common ground with Republicans. The ideal here, therefore, would be to take up the policy agenda as identified by Mr Miller. And then deploy Mr London's solution. Mr Miller is right when he focuses on using market forces to improve government, but his 2 per cent spending notion, nifty as it sounds, cannot work. It might have done half a century ago, when Bangalore's economy was a backwater operation. Today, however, it is just as well that US taxes are not 18 or 19 per cent of GDP. That level cannot keep up with Bangalore software writers or the breweries of Harbin.
Real GDP in the US grew 4.4 per cent last year, the government reported on Friday. To continue that success the US must work harder to cut spending. And it must sustain its current ratio of taxes to GDP, or go even lower. The most humane target in today's scenario is not the 2 per cent but the 16 per cent solution.
? The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love (PublicAffairs); ** The Competition Solution: The Bipartisan Secret Behind American Prosperity (American Enterprise Institute)
美国如何应对亚洲挑战
印度，中国；中国，印度。似乎唯一悬而未决的问题是哪一个将最先击败我们这些对手。上周，就在美元处于跌势时，Wipro公司董事长阿齐姆?普莱姆基(Azim Premji)在美国访问，他带的公司企划书令人畏惧。普莱姆基先生报告说，Wipro这家印度巨无霸公司不仅将继续从事信息技术业务，而且要自主开发更多软件。美国加州理工学院(Caltech)的毕业生，努力调整吧！
美国的主要政党也正努力应对国际竞争所带来的挑战。本周，民主党人将工作重点放在社会保障上。社会保障制度改革的实施将使美国劳动力的价格更有竞争力。与此同时，民主党人也在考虑外国竞争者的问题，克林顿政府时期负责经济工作的民主党人更是如此。确实，克林顿阵营最近出版的两本书，提出了旨在改变未来的有价值的模式。
第一本书名为《百分之二解决方案》(The Two Percent Solution)*。该书出自比尔?克林顿执政期间担任专栏撰稿人、广播评论员和预算官员的迈特?米勒(Matt Miller)。米勒先生正确指出美国经济存在的三大问题：非技能型工人的绝望、医疗体系不正常和平庸学校造成的损害。他就此提问，美国是否应该开始将公私两部门的经验结合起来以改善现状？米勒先生要求所有工人都能得到足以维持生活的工资。他呼吁通过建立一种让所有人受益的医疗系统，即便是通过市场化手段。他还要求向学校教师提供丰厚的资金激励手段，让教师成为百万富翁，这样才能教育出符合一系列客观标准的学生。
这些理想化的建议富有吸引力，尤其是让教师成为百万富翁。毕竟，如果美国学校能够向学生教授他们近几十年来遗漏的两样东西：语法和长式除法，美国学校的毕业生就更有机会与印度呼叫中心的人才竞争。
米勒先生指出，目前美国联邦税收约占美国国内生产总值的16%，而仅仅是十年前，18%、19%、20%甚至更高的比例被人们认为是不可避免的。他指出，如果美国的财政预算增加2个百分点，这三大问题都可以解决。而且，即使联邦税收只占GDP的18%，也远远低于欧洲的比例。《百分之二解决方案》听起来是一场划算的交易：造就一个更加聪明、更加健康、收入更高的国度，而实现这一切所需要付出的，却仍低于原先的平均数。
保罗? A. 伦敦(Paul A. London)的《竞争解决方案》(The Competition Solution)**与之略有不同。伦敦先生在克林顿担任总统期间担任商务部助理副部长。他认为，造就美国90年代繁荣的，不是铁腕的财政紧缩政策(谨向前财政部长鲁宾(Rubin)致以歉意)，而是这一时期存在的激烈竞争。克林顿政府解除贸易壁垒的政策使得竞争成为可能。克林顿政府依照美国旧有的渐进式传统，大力推行反垄断法，造就了竞争的局面。美国在90年代前采取的种种举措，包括分拆电报电话公司(AT&T)，也进一步培育了竞争。伦敦先生甚至称赞垃圾债券的先锋人物迈克尔?米尔肯(Michael Milken)，称他推动了传统金融市场未能提供融资的领域(如电信业)的创新。(这是事实，但这一事实通常并未得到民主党任命的政府官员的大力宣传。) 伦敦先生指出，要在未来取得成功，美国必须学会仔细研究90年代的经验教训。
伦敦先生的观点中有几样东西值得商榷。他认为由“企业和纳税人”为医疗体制现代化承担部分成本是合理的。这个想法在纸面上看起来合理，但忽略了一个事实，就是产业政策通常以失败告终。(不妨问印度: Fortex 集团的哈吉维?辛格汉(Harjiv Singhan)上周指出，“IT服务业之所以在印度出现，是因为当初政府不看重该行业。哈吉维?辛格汉是经济学学者，也是Wipro公司董事长普莱姆基先生的东道主之一。) 而就反垄断措施的实施而言，判定其是否会提高劳动生产率还不到时候。
然而，关键是竞争这一观念。两本书的附加值是两位作者努力与共和党达成共识。因此，最理想的应该是采取米勒先生所拟定的政策议程，然后采用伦敦先生的解决方案。米勒先生主张利用市场力量改善政府行为，这是对的；然而他的财政支出增加2%的主张，尽管听起来是个很妙的主意，却不可行。半个世纪前印度班加罗尔的经济如一潭死水时，这一主张或许还可行。今天，美国的税收幸亏未占到GDP的18%或19%。那种水平的税收，是无法与班加罗尔的软件程序员或哈尔滨的啤酒厂竞争的。
本周五，美国政府发布的报告表明，美国去年的GDP实际增长率为4.4%。要保持这一增速，美国必须加大力度削减财政支出，同时要保持甚至降低税收在GDP中的比例。从当前情况看，最富有人性化的目标应该是将维持现有的16%这一水平作为解决方案，而非提高2个百分点。
*《百分之二解决方案》：以自由党和保守党都可以接受的方式解决美国的问题(公共事务)；
**《竞争解决方案》：美国繁荣背后的两党政治内幕(美国企业研究院，AEI)
