工作是新資產
清點自己的資產，土地、房子、基金、股票、存款……….，細數任何名下資產，你會把「工作」視為一項資產嗎？
當然不會！
幾年前，「工作」很少成為政策關注與媒體報導的焦點，但現在開始改觀。特別當土地、房子、基金、股票、存款……….，這類人們努力想擁有的「資產」，逐漸成為貶值、（被）減記的trouble maker（麻煩製造者），甚至是政府要用寬鬆貨幣政策，印鈔票加以「輸氧」救濟的對象時，人們開始覺醒：原來我們依賴股票、基金、存款、房產………，每年分派股息、利息、房租…….，所過的「幸福生活」是會消失或貶值的，它的幸福持久性只是「幻覺」。
長久以來，我們只關注生產3要素中的土地、資本兩種要素，刻意忽略「勞動」，甚至認為透過技術進步，土地、資本取代勞動。換言之，「勞動」是最賤的生產要素，「人有兩隻腳，錢有四隻腳」，追求財富、創造財富當然要靠「四隻腳」的資本，而不是「兩隻腳」的勞動。
美國時代（Time）雜誌封面故事《十個正在改變世界的觀念》10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now，說明從1999年到2006年，人們熱中追求這類資產的情況：
From 1999 to 2006, the value of real estate owned by individuals more than doubled as the homeownership rate hit a record high. The money the typical family had in the stock market soared from just 28% of financial assets in 1989 to a full 53% in 2007 as the percentage of families in the market jumped from 32% to 51%.
（不動產擁有率增加一倍，家庭投資股票的金融資產配置從1989年的28%增加到2007年的53%）
由於擁有更多不動產與股票，讓美國人誤認自己更為富有，所以更敢消費，甚至借錢來花，間接造成2005年美國人普遍的財務赤字。
Houses and stocks — those were the things we paid attention to, the things that gave us the confidence to be good American consumers (hello, home-equity- lines of credit). At the same time, the percentage of income we saved dropped and dropped and dropped -until, thanks to the power of credit cards and other debt, it went negative in 2005. That was neatly explained away by the "wealth effect": we spent money we didn't have because we felt — and technically were — richer because of our assets.
相對而言，工作是支撐人們消費的「正確」且「健康」的財富，工作所賺取的所得，就像債券每個月付給你的收入一樣，而且，雇主每年還會固定調薪，所以，’它會增值，不會貶值。「工作是新資產」Jobs Are The New Assets，《十個正在改變世界的觀念》對它作了以下的描述：
All the while, we blissfully ignored a little concept economists like to call human capital. The cognition you've got up there in your head — your education and training — it's worth something. We can extract value not just from our homes and our portfolios but from ourselves as well. The mechanism for extracting that value? A job. "The income you earn from working is like the stream of interest income you might get from owning a bond," says Johns Hopkins University economist Christopher Carroll. "Think of it as a dividend on your human wealth."
Human capital is worth quite a lot. Gary Becker, the Nobel Prize-winning University of Chicago economist, figures that in a modern industrialized economy, 75% to 80% of a person's economic output comes from human capital (as opposed to, say, land or machinery). Of course, during the bubble years (first stocks, then housing), the noneconomists among us didn't exactly think about it that way. "People became mesmerized by how rich they were," says Becker, "and didn't realize the crucial asset they had in their earning power."
留言列表
