《盐铁论》与皇朝财政的基因

在汉代所留下的经典财政学文献《盐铁论》中,至少讨论了财政领域三大问题:财政支出规模是大好还是小好?工商业是否可成为财政收入的来源?如何管理暴利性资源商品?对这些问题的回答,形成了后世皇朝财政运行的基本原则(即基因),并主导了皇朝财政向近代的转型。在皇朝国家的重建与常态运行中,成为主导性原则(显基因)的主要是:财政支出规模应该小,财政不应以工商业为收入来源,暴利性资源应该控制在国家手中。但在皇朝国家遭遇重大危机,处于变异和转型时期,下述隐基因显性化成为主导性财政原则:财政支出必须扩大,财政收入必须以工商业为基础,放开暴利性资源给民间经营由政府征税。

On Salt & Iron and the Genes of Imperial Public Finance

The classical finance literature of the Han dynasty called On Salt & Iron discusses at least three big questions concerning public finance,namely the scale of public expenditure,whether industry and commerce can be regarded as the source of financial revenue and how to manage profiteering resources,whose solutions lead to the basic operation principles(namely genes) of later imperial public finance and dominate the modern transformation of imperial public finance.In terms of the reconstruction and normal operation of imperial countries,the dominant rules,namely dominant genes,are as follows:the scale of public expenditure should be small;industry and commerce should not be regarded as the source of financial revenue;the governments should control profiteering resources.But if the imperial country encounters a big crisis,the following implicit genes become dominant financial rules: the scale of public expenditure should be large;financial revenue should be based on industry and commerce;the governments should authorize private business to manage profiteering resources and impose a tax on them.