And what was the result or fallout?

结果是什么?

Exactly how much do we see corporate political spending increase?

我们到底看到企业的政治支出增加了多少?

A flood of corporate money. It's hundreds of millions of dollars.

公司资金的洪流——数亿美元。

It's probably, right Dorothy, approaching billions now.

多萝西，这很有可能，现在已经接近几十亿了。

Yeah. Part of the problem is that you can't even tell exactly what's going on.

是的。 部分问题在于，你甚至不能确切地说出发生了什么。

So, much of this money is coming in the form of dark money organizations that don't have to disclose who's donating it.

所以，这些钱大部分是以黑钱组织的形式出现的，这些黑钱组织不需要披露捐赠者。

But, the most recent calculation from Open Secrets estimated that in the 2020 election alone, there was a billion dollar spent in dark money on that election, which is the high point.

但是，根据"Open Secrets"的最新计算，仅在2020年的选举中，就有10亿美元的黑钱花在了那次选举上，这是最高点。

On the surface, though, it does seem like it's a good thing for companies to have more of a say in who's getting elected and what policies or regulations are getting passed.

尽管从表面上看，公司在谁将当选以及哪些政策或法规将被通过方面拥有更多的发言权似乎是一件好事。

Maybe it's not great for democracy or the little guy, but it's definitely good for the corporations engaging in it.

也许这对民主或小人物来说不是好事，但对参与其中的公司来说绝对是好事。

Why do you argue that it's actually bad?

为什么你认为它实际上是不好的?

That the negatives outweigh the positives?

弊大于利?

I think we mean bad business in a few different ways and I'll just highlight two.

我想我们说的“坏生意”有几种不同的方式，我只强调两种。

The first is this the classic sense that there is actual evidence suggesting that companies that spend more on politics, that spending is correlated with lower firm value.

第一个是传统意义上的，有实际证据表明在政治上花费更多的公司，花费与低公司价值相关。

And I think this makes intuitive sense to us because if you are competing on regulatory shortcuts, you're not going to be so well positioned to profit by selling quality goods and service by evolving over time to meet the needs of your consumers.

我认为这对我们来说是有直觉的，因为如果你在监管捷径上竞争，你将无法通过销售高质量的产品和服务来获利，也不会通过不断发展来满足消费者的需求。

We also mean bad in a different sense in that this spending lacks legitimacy and the basic idea there is that under this traditional balance of power in corporate law, you've got corporate managers who are deciding how to allocate corporate assets.

从另一种意义上说，“坏生意”的意思是，这种支出缺乏合法性，基本理念是在公司法的传统权力平衡下，你有公司经理来决定如何分配公司资产。

So, of course, this is true of political spending, too.

当然，政治支出也是如此。

They're deciding when they're spending treasury dollars.

他们决定什么时候花国库券。

They're doing this without input from the people that are forking over the money.

他们这样做没有得到提供资金的人的支持。

Academics for a long time have focused on this, calling this an agency problem.

学术界长期以来一直关注这个问题，称其为代理问题。

The idea that sometimes you have corporate managers who are out there using their control in ways that's not going to benefit the shareholders or the company.

有时候，你会发现公司的管理者会以一种对股东和公司都没有好处的方式使用他们的控制权。

You've got shareholders with all sorts of diverse political views who are investing in companies, not expecting to have their invested dollars spent in these ways.

有持各种不同政治观点的股东在投资公司，他们不希望自己的投资以这种方式花掉。

For example, we know that more Americans are Democrats than Republicans and there are many, many independents.

例如，我们知道民主党人比共和党人多，而且无党派人士也很多很多。

But, we cite in the paper that 60% of CEO donations went to Republicans.

但是，我们在论文中引用了60%的CEO捐款给了共和党人。

And that since Citizens United, in terms of corporate spending, $282 million went to Republican candidates versus $38 to democratic candidates.

自从联合公民组织成立以来，就企业支出而言，共和党候选人获得了2.82亿美元，而民主党候选人获得了3800万美元。

Now, even if you assume the investor class is wealthier on average than the typical American, and that would be true, it's pretty clear the investor class is not as skewed as that in one political direction.

现在，即使你假设投资者阶层平均来说比典型的美国人更富有，这也是真的，很明显，投资者阶层在一个政治方向上并没有那么倾斜。

You got to remember, too, that most of these shareholders are broadly diversified.

你也要记住，这些股东大多是多元化的。

They're holding a portfolio of companies. They're holding index funds or ETF's.

他们持有一系列公司的投资组合。 他们持有指数基金或ETF。

So, they're not going to benefit from one company's rent seeking.

因此，他们不会从一家公司的寻租中获益。

That's benefiting that one firm at the expense of another.

这是以另一家公司的利益为代价的。

And they're not going to benefit from that increase in externalities that results from this political spending that they're going to bear as taxpayers and in other ways.

他们不会从他们作为纳税人或以其他方式承担的政治支出带来的外部性增加中受益。

If every single sector of the economy simply turns regulatory policy in their direction, and therefore the companies have their way, that doesn't mean there's more overall economic growth for the American public.

如果经济的每一个部门都简单地将监管政策朝着他们的方向转变，因此这些公司就有了自己的方式，这并不意味着美国公众会有更多的整体经济增长。

It can simply mean that there's more pollution, there's worker injuries, and it can actually be a drag on real economic growth.

这可能仅仅意味着更多的污染，更多的工人受伤，它实际上会拖累实际的经济增长。