Comprehensive analysis of consumer vouchers

Recently, the voice of issuing coupons to stimulate consumption has come and gone. It is necessary for us to deeply analyze the operability and efficiency of the policy of consumer vouchers to deal with the crisis.

One-off effect of everyone's share

The policy of issuing consumer vouchers to all people is restricted by government revenue and is not a sustainable policy in itself. In 2007, the fiscal revenue of China government was 5 trillion yuan, and the per capita income was 3,800 yuan. Don't spend all your financial income on any public service. On average, everyone in China can get a coupon of less than 4,000 yuan at a time. Voucher policy can only produce a one-off short-term effect. Without follow-up investment and funds, the cycle of consumption-investment-production-income-re-consumption cannot be formed, and the purpose of stimulating the economy to return to normal growth cannot be achieved.

At the beginning of 2008, the US government's 654.38 billion+060 billion tax rebate policy for individuals only maintained the growth of social retail sales for one quarter. The final result is only to postpone the economic recession, because without the support of follow-up investment and credit, it is impossible to produce the sustained effect of economic growth.

What's more, the policy of "coupons for all" costs the government to give up all or part of the resources that can be mobilized and adjusted in the current period, which makes economic growth lose its ability to drive and guide government investment in the absence of private motivation. China has a population of 654.38+03 billion, which is different from any country or region in the world. China's comprehensive national strength may do many things, but it is insignificant if it is dispersed. Dismantling powerful comprehensive strength is tantamount to scrapping martial arts and dismantling armor.

With the economic downturn, the obvious decline of private investment and the lack of sustained impetus for economic growth, especially in China with a population of 654.38+0.3 billion, the consumption growth stimulated by the universal coupon may become a one-off and "short-lived" economic behavior.

Liquidity Trap and Consumer Voucher

The practice of issuing consumer vouchers should be similar to Keynes's policy of "digging ditches to fill ditches". According to Keynesian theory, which was born in response to the Great Depression, during the Great Depression, the interest rate fell to zero and could not stimulate investment growth, so the economy fell into a "liquidity trap" and experienced a great recession. Because there is no "profitable investment" opportunity, we can only increase government expenditure and investment and expand domestic demand to stimulate economic growth. The government can even take unconventional actions, find a group of people to dig ditches, and then find another group of people to fill ditches, pay wages to meaningless labor, and increase the payment and consumption capacity of society. Germany took this extraordinary measure after World War II. In extraordinary times, the government has also taken extreme measures, using all available tools to expand the fiscal deficit, and even issuing large-scale banknotes to provide follow-up financial support, and pulling the economy out of the "trap" by hook or by crook at all costs. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, made a famous point when he studied the Great Depression in 1930s. Sitting on a helicopter to distribute dollars is a killer weapon to stimulate economic growth and save the crisis. Faced with the current once-in-a-century economic crisis in the United States, Bernanke is turning his views into reality.

Paying wages to meaningless labor is very similar to giving coupons. However, "digging ditches to fill ditches" has an additional meaning. The income only enough to meet basic consumption is earned by legitimate labor. However, the direct distribution of coupons is "something for nothing", and the average distribution of coupons per capita is even less theoretical. Moreover, the activity of "digging ditches to fill ditches" will only happen when the "liquidity trap" appears. The economy could not operate normally during the Great Depression, and the government could only rely on the deficit and the risk of Qualcomm's future rise in exchange for economic recovery. Germany, which once practiced the policy of "digging ditches to fill ditches", paid a heavy price for the rise of Qualcomm, and finally had to replace the old currency with a new currency, thus solving the unstoppable rise of Qualcomm.

In the context of the global economic crisis, consumer vouchers suddenly became popular. Ten scholars, from "Father of Euro" Mundell to Professor Cai Hengjin of International Institute of Software, strongly advocated it as an effective anti-crisis countermeasure to boost consumption, and some countries and regions also put it into practice. However, are coupons really a good idea? I don't think so!

"Meet the people's growing material and cultural needs by making social production develop continuously on the basis of high technology"-the above summary of the basic economic laws of socialism by orthodox socialist political economy itself fully illustrates the importance of consumption, because expanding consumption itself is the ultimate goal of economic development; The current international economic and financial crisis has further enhanced the importance of expanding domestic demand, especially expanding consumption. This is because China's economic growth has been highly dependent on external demand in the past 20 years, especially in the past 10. Although this growth model has made brilliant achievements, the shrinking external demand caused by the global economic crisis has sounded the alarm and warned us that this model is unsustainable. More importantly, as mentioned above, the goal of our economic development was originally to improve the material and cultural living standards of our citizens, but the economic growth model that is highly dependent on external demand inherently requires reducing the income of our citizens as much as possible to enhance the price competitiveness of our export products in the international market, which runs counter to the original goal of economic development. Only the domestic demand-driven economic growth model inherently requires increasing national income, thus creating more effective demand for production, which is in line with the initial goal of our economic development.

It is really important to expand consumption, so how can we boost consumption sustainably? To this end, we need to start from the following aspects:

The first is to create employment opportunities and improve people's employment expectations. Here, investment and consumption are not completely contradictory, because investment creates employment opportunities, and consumption can only be realized with employment opportunities; Moreover, the investment in infrastructure such as roads, water and electricity in rural areas is completed, so that farmers' products can get more income because they face a broader market, and then expand consumption.

The second is to raise the expectation of existing disposable income. To this end, on the one hand, we must rebuild and improve social security such as pension, medical care and compulsory education, and change consumption expectations; On the other hand, it is necessary to moderately expand the demand for affordable housing, and curb housing prices while maintaining and increasing the volume of real estate transactions, thus releasing more purchasing power. At the same time, in the context of the general collapse of the international primary product market, we also need to support the prices of some important primary products by maintaining and increasing the government purchase price, establishing and supplementing important bulk material reserves, and preventing price damage. Such price support measures are mainly used in agricultural products (13.23, -0.0 1, -0.08%, right).

Third, improve the imbalance of income distribution, so that national income will flow more to the middle and low income classes, and then be converted into the income of domestic producers and sellers, rather than being highly concentrated in a few high-income classes, and then support overseas luxury goods producers and sellers.

But in all these sustainable measures to stimulate consumption, coupons are not among them. No matter how to distribute consumer vouchers indiscriminately like Taiwan Province Province, or how to distribute 1000 yuan to low-income families as suggested by ten scholars, it is unlikely to achieve our expected goal of effectively boosting consumption, but it may have far-reaching negative consequences.

First of all, what we expect to boost consumption is sustainable boosting consumption. Even if the coupon has an effect, its effect is only one-off. Secondly, even if coupons can boost consumption efficiency at one time, this effect should not be overestimated, because coupons may replace other expenses planned by consumers, thus limiting and offsetting their role in increasing consumption.

What is even more alarming is that blindly pursuing the welfare of consumer vouchers, which is free of charge, will damage the spirit of national self-improvement. Under the continuous strict family planning policy, urban residents in China have generally formed the one-child family structure, and the younger generation who grew up under this family structure generally lack the sense of responsibility and the spirit of hard struggle. What we should do is to try to offset this negative influence, instead of adding fuel to the fire to the dangerous tendency of weakening the struggle spirit of the younger generation.

Yes, since the reform and opening up 30 years ago, the imbalance of income distribution has become an important factor leading to the low consumption rate in China. As a redistribution tool, finance has the responsibility to play a role in reversing the imbalance of income distribution, but the core of reversing the imbalance of income distribution should be to improve the income distribution rules and make them fairer, rather than indiscriminately giving the public the opportunity to get income for free. Welfare must be linked to work, except those who are unable to work.

Looking back at history, the rampant welfare can erode a nation's spirit of self-reliance and self-improvement. In order to win political support, upper-class politicians competed to distribute the rampant welfare to Roman residents, which led to the once fearless Romans becoming a group of timid and incompetent losers. After just 20 or 30 years of parasitic life, "children of the Eight Banners" have become synonymous with decadent parasites ... We must be wary of repeating historical mistakes.