托福閱讀能力的提升功夫在平時，想要提升語感與對英文的敏感度，我們除了日常托福閱讀真題練習與總結，更需要盡可能多地進行英文材料或雙語材料的精讀泛讀，下面的這篇雙語閱讀材料來自經濟學人，多利用此類英文材料進行拓展閱讀會極大助力我們的托福讀寫能力提升。

Overcapacity and undercapacity

Glutology

The third brief in our series on big economic ideas looks at Say’s law

產能過剩與產能不足

生產過剩的學問

“重大經濟思想”系列之三——薩伊定律

IN 1804 Jean-Baptiste Say enrolled in the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts in Paris to learn the principles of spinning cotton. The new student was 37 years old, points out his biographer, Evert Schoorl, with a pregnant wife, four children and a successful career in politics and letters trailing behind him. To resume his studies, he had turned down two lucrative offers from France’s most powerful man, Napoleon Bonaparte. The ruler would have paid him handsomely to write in support of his policies. But rather than “deliver orations in favour of the usurper”, Say decided instead to build a cotton mill, spinning yarn not policy.讓-巴蒂斯特·薩伊(Jean-Baptiste Say)于1804年入讀巴黎國立工藝學院(National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts)，學習棉紡原理。傳記作家埃夫特·斯古勒(Evert Schoorl)指出，這名新生37歲，帶著懷孕的妻子和四個孩子，此前他在政界和文壇已頗有建樹。為繼續自己的學業，薩伊兩次拒絕了法國最有權勢的人拿破侖·波拿巴(Napoleon Bonaparte)發出的條件優厚的邀請。這位統治者愿以優渥的報酬請薩伊撰文支持自己的政策。但薩伊沒有“為篡權者發聲”，而是決定建一家棉紡廠，紡紗線而不是編政策。

Napoleon was right to value (and fear) Say’s pen. As a pamphleteer, editor, scholar and adviser, he was a passionate advocate for free speech, trade and markets. He had imbibed liberal principles from his heavily annotated copy of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth Of Nations” and bolstered his patriotic credentials in battle against Prussian invaders. (During breaks in the fighting, he discussed literature and political economy with other learned volunteers “almost within cannonballs’ reach”.)拿破侖看重(且畏懼)薩伊的文筆，這是對的。作為檄文作者、編輯、學者和顧問，薩伊積極倡導自由言論、自由貿易及自由市場。他從自己那本寫滿評注的亞當·斯密的《國富論》中汲取自由主義思想，在對抗普魯士侵略的戰斗中強化了自己的愛國形象。(在戰斗間隙，他與其他博學的志愿者討論文學和政治經濟學，而“炮彈幾乎就在腳邊炸開”。)

His greatest work was “A Treatise on Political Economy”, a graceful exposition (and extension) of Smith’s economic ideas. In Say’s time, as nowadays, the world economy combined strong technological progress with fitful demand, spurts of innovation with bouts of austerity. In France output of yarn grew by 125% from 1806 to 1808, when Say was starting his factory. In Britain the Luddites broke stocking frames to stop machines taking their jobs.他最偉大的著作《政治經濟學概論》(A Treatise on Political Economy)精妙闡述(并發展了)亞當·斯密的經濟學理念。薩伊所在的時代跟現在一樣，世界經濟在技術方面有長足的進步但需求時起時落，創新迸發而經濟緊縮頻現。1806至1808年間，法國的紗線產量上升了125%，而薩伊的紡紗廠正是在那時起步。在英國，盧德分子搗毀織襪機以阻止機器搶走自己的工作。

On the other hand, global demand was damaged by failed ventures in South America and debilitated by the eventual downfall of Napoleon. In Britain government spending was cut by 40% after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Some 300,000 discharged soldiers and sailors were forced to seek alternative employment.另一方面，因在南美擴張失利，全球需求受損，而拿破侖的最終垮臺更令需求萎靡不振。1815年滑鐵盧戰役后，英國政府削減了40%的開支。約30萬名退役士兵和水手被迫另謀出路。

The result was a tide of overcapacity, what Say’s contemporaries called a “general glut”. Britain was accused of inundating foreign markets, from Italy to Brazil, much as China is blamed for dumping products today. In 1818 a visitor to America found “not a city, nor a town, in which the quantity of goods offered for sale is not infinitely greater than the means of the buyers”. It was this “general overstock of all the markets of the universe” that came to preoccupy Say and his critics.結果便是一輪產能過剩，在薩伊那個年代人們稱之為“全面生產過剩”。英國貨被指責充斥了從意大利到巴西的各個外國市場，就和今天中國被指向全球傾銷商品一樣。1818年，來到美國的一位訪客發現“待售商品的數量總是大大超出購買者的財力，每一城鎮莫不如此”。 “全球各個市場的全面過剩”成為薩伊及其批評者的關注焦點。

In trying to explain it, Say at first denied that a “general” glut could exist. Some goods can be oversupplied, he conceded. But goods in general cannot. His reasoning became known as Say’s law: “it is production which opens a demand for products”, or, in a later, snappier formulation: supply creates its own demand.試圖解釋該現象時，薩伊先是否認可能存在“全面”過剩。他承認有些商品可能供應過剩。但商品不會全面過剩。他的理論如今被稱為薩伊定律：“生產自行開啟了對產品的需求”，或套用后期更簡明的表述：供給自行創造需求。

This proposition, he admitted, has a “paradoxical complexion, which creates a prejudice against it”. To the modern ear, it sounds like the foolhardy belief that “if you build it, they will come”. Rick Perry, America’s energy secretary, was ridiculed after a recent visit to a West Virginia coal plant for saying, “You put the supply out there and the demand will follow.”他承認，這一理念“有一種矛盾的特性，令人產生偏見 ”。在現代人聽來，這個定律有點像“做出了東西，就自然會有人要”這種愚勇的信念。最近美國能源部長里克·佩里(Rick Perry)在訪問西弗吉尼亞一家火力發電廠時發表的言論備受嘲諷。他說，“你供應了，需求自然就來了。”

To grasp Say’s point requires two intellectual jumps. The first is to see past money, which can obscure what is really going on in an economy. The second is to jump from micro to macro, from a worm’s eye view of individual plants and specific customers to a panoramic view of the economy as a whole.要理解薩伊的觀點，需要做兩次思維跳躍。第一，要超越金錢看問題，因為金錢會掩蓋經濟體內的實際情況。第二是從微觀跳躍至宏觀，從細觀個別工廠和某些顧客轉向俯瞰經濟全景。

Firms, like coal plants and cotton mills, sell their products for money. But in order to obtain that money, their customers must themselves have previously sold something of value. Thus, before they can become a source of demand, customers must themselves have been a source of supply.

What most people sell is their labour, one of several “productive services” on offer to entrepreneurs. By marshalling these productive forces, entrepreneurs can create a new item of value, for which other equally valuable items can then be exchanged. It is in this sense that production creates a market for other products.

In the course of making his merchandise, a producer will pay wages to his workers, rent to his landlord, interest to his creditors, the bills of his suppliers and any residual profits to himself. These payments will at least equal the amount the entrepreneur can get for selling his product. The payments will therefore add as much to spendable income as the recipients’ joint enterprise has added to supply.

就像火電廠和棉紗廠那樣，各類公司為賺錢而銷售產品。而它們的顧客要獲得購買產品的資金，就必須先賣出一些具有價值的東西。因此，在成為需求的源頭之前，顧客自己必須先成為供應的源頭。

大多數人出賣的是自己的勞動力——向企業家提供的幾種“生產性服務”之一。通過組織這些生產力，企業家可以創造出具有價值的新產品，可用來換取相同價值的其他產品。從這個意義上講，生產為其他產品創造了市場。

在制造商品的過程中，生產者會付工資給員工，付租金給房東，付利息給債權人，支付供應商賬單，支付利潤給自己。這些支出金額至少會等于企業家銷售產品所能獲得的收入。因此，這些支出令可支配收入增加，增加的程度等同于收款人此前合力提供的供給。

That supply creates demand in this way may be easy enough to grasp. But in what sense does supply create its “own” demand? The epigram seems to suggest that a coal plant could buy its own coal—like a subsistence farmer eating the food he grows. In fact, of course, most producers sell to, and buy from, someone else.

But what is true at the micro level is not true at the macro level. At the macro level, there is no someone else. The economy is an integrated whole. What it purchases and distributes among its members are the self-same goods and services those members have jointly produced. At this level of aggregation, the economy is in fact not that different from the subsistence farmer. What it produces, what it earns, and what it buys is all the same, a “harvest” of goods and services, better known as gross domestic product.

供給以此方式創造了需求，這也許不難明白。但從什么意義上能說供給創造了“自己”的需求?這一妙語似乎在說，煤礦可以買回自己產的煤炭，就像自給自足的農民吃自己種的糧食那樣。但實際上，不消說，大多數生產商都是從別處購入材料，產品也都是賣給別人的。

然而，那是微觀層面的情況，在宏觀層面并非如此。宏觀層面上不存在“別人”。經濟是統一的整體。經濟體在成員中購入和分配的正是這些成員合力生產的同樣那些商品和服務。如此聚合來看，經濟體與自給自足的農民差別不大。其生產的、賺取的、購入的，根本是一回事，就是商品和服務的“收成”——更為人熟知的說法是“國內生產總值”。

托福各單項之間其實是互通的，我們在備考過程中千萬不要把各單項孤立，要學會通過托福閱讀備考積累亮眼表達助力托福寫作提升，希望各位TOEFLer合理借鑒toefl閱讀材料，融會貫通實現自身英語讀寫能力的全面提升。