2010年11月18日

福利国家破产了? Bring back sloth

 

20年前在柏林,我从一位印尼妇女那里租了一间房,她是来德国工作的,却在那里发现了德国大男人。因此她再也没有回过国。她的厨房里总会有一两个德国大男人在那里晃荡,那时的生活节奏比较慢,因此我们经常坐下来聊天。

我记得一位德国大男人,他是我房东的固定男友之一,已经35岁左右,他告诉我他的生活目标是不完成学业。我天真地问道:“为什么?”他解释说,作为一名法律系的学生,生活相当惬意。他从政府那里得到一笔可观的助学金,然后依靠开出租补贴家用。大学毕业后,他将成为一名法官。但法官的工作很辛苦。因此,他依偎在福利国家的温暖怀抱里。

1965年至1990年是欧洲大陆福利国家的鼎盛时期,高福利不仅让穷人获得了尊严,还帮助像我房东男友这样的人过着不受金钱控制的生活。如今,欧洲福利国家的坍塌正在毁灭最后仅存的慢节奏生活。未来,几乎所有欧洲人都不得不将生活视为一项职业。

如果必须指出福利国家的巅峰时期,那可能是1976年前后的荷兰。我正是在那一年搬到这个国家的。那时,没有多少荷兰人会非常努力地工作,因为他们的大部分收入都直接流入了收税员手中。当时多数欧洲国家都是如此。未来几代人将很难理解上世纪六七十年代英国流行音乐的一个分支:反对税收当局的歌曲。1966年奇想乐队(The Kinks)有首歌是这么唱的:

收税员夺走了我所有的钱,

剩下我留在这座豪宅里,

懒洋洋地享受着阳光午后,

那时生活更多的是阳光午后。

政府确保所有人都能享受这些,不管你工作还是不工作。我们有一个荷兰朋友,他曾在Sociale Academie短暂地学习过社工专业,即便在当时的荷兰那里也已经作为嬉皮士(hippie)的天堂而闻名,但他发现“竞争激烈”。后来退了学,从未正式工作过。拿着政府的钱弹吉他、在电视上看板球比赛,向熟人追究宿怨。

如果你曾试着工作过,但不喜欢,也可以停止工作。我有一位高中老师,不理解青少年。她的生活很悲惨。一天课间休息时,她出现在人头攒动的操场,打扮成一个复活节兔子(Easter bunny),她蹦了一会,然后蹦着回了家。她再也没回来过。与当时很多荷兰人一样,她被诊断为工作压力太大,得到了一笔数额巨大的养老金。

1980年左右,当衰退来袭时,各国政府削减了福利待遇。它们还减少了税收。突然之间,一个新的物种出现了: 雅皮士(yuppie)。以前,几乎没有人见过社会地位处于上升趋势的年轻专业人士,但现在到处都是他们的身影。实际上,“雅皮士”这个词很快便消失了。人们认为,所有人的社会地位都在上升或者希望如此。

有一部分慢节奏生活的确保留了下来。我认识几个编辑文学杂志的瑞典人。读那些杂志的人不多,但这并不重要,因为政府资助他们。在巴黎,我现在居住的地方,我孩子的朋友们常常会去与祖父母们住上几周。这些老人大多五六十岁,精神矍铄,很久之前就已退休,依靠政府生活。上个月,负债累累的法国提高了退休年龄。生活节奏又将进一步提速。

我们很容易嘲笑旧式的福利国家。但后来对幸福的研究发现证明了其合理性:在富裕社会,人们不会因为变得更为富有而感到更幸福,与朋友和亲戚们在一起的时间才能带来幸福。

另外,我们能负担得起高福利。我们有能力给一大群无所事事的人付钱。正如英国经济学家理查德•莱亚德(Richard Layard)在《幸福》(Happiness)一书中写到的那样,认为由于全球化“所有人的生活必然都会变的更为艰难”的想法“完全是胡扯”。即便这些国家中有些人遭遇损失,但整体来看全球贸易让所有国家变得更为富有。莱亚德写道:“任何西方国家都不会因为负担不起而被迫放弃以前的生活方式。”他表示,如果愿意的话,我们的国家可以选择减少工作时间,提供更多就业保障。我们的收入会减少,但鉴于我们现在的生活水平已很高,那“并非巨大的苦难。”然而欧洲国家正在禁止懒惰。我们现在都成了职业至上者。生活被重新定义为一场赛跑,从一出生就开始了。

我在这里援引美国网站Yourbabycanread.com上的一段话:“当前这种从上学开始教授阅读的做法太晚了……研究证明,儿童越早学会阅读,他们在学校以及以后生活中的表现就越好。”甚至连婴儿也将不再有时间享受慵懒的阳光午后了。

译者/梁艳裳

 

http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035620

 

 

In Berlin 20 years ago, I rented a room from an Indonesian woman who had come to Germany to work and had discovered big German men. She had never gone home again. There was always a big German man or two hanging around her kitchen, and because life was slower in those days, we’d often sit around and chat.

I remember one big German, one of my landlady’s regular boyfriends, already in his mid-30s, telling me that his aim in life was not to finish his studies. “Why not?” I asked naively. Life as a law student was good, he explained. He got a tidy grant from the government, and supplemented it with a spot of taxi driving. The moment he finished university, he’d become a judge. Judges worked hard. So instead he nursed at the bosom of the welfare state.

In the welfare state’s heyday, between around 1965 and 1990 in continental Europe, it didn’t just give poor people dignity. It also helped people like my landlady’s boyfriend live lives that weren’t dictated by money. Now the demolition of Europe’s welfare states is stamping out the last remaining slow lives. In future almost every European will have to view life as a career.

If you had to locate the welfare state’s zenith, it would probably be the Netherlands circa 1976. That was the year I moved to the country. Few Dutch people then worked very hard, because most of what they earned went straight to the taxman. That was true in most European countries at the time. Future generations will struggle to understand a subgenre of British pop of the 1960s and 1970s: songs against the tax authorities. Here are The Kinks in 1966:

The taxman’s taken all my dough,

And left me in this stately home,

Lazing on a sunny afternoon.

Life then was more about sunny afternoons.

The state made sure that everyone could enjoy them, whether you worked or not. We had a Dutch friend who had briefly studied social work at a Sociale Academie – famous even in that time and place as a hippie hangout – but had found it to be “a rat race”. He dropped out, and never worked on principle. The state paid for him to play guitar, watch cricket on TV, and pursue obscure vendettas against acquaintances.

If you tried work and didn’t like it, you could stop. I had a teacher at high school who didn’t understand teenagers. Her life was miserable. One day she turned up in a packed schoolyard at break-time dressed as an Easter bunny, hopped around for a while, and then hopped off home. She never returned. Like many Dutch people back then, she was diagnosed as too stressed to work, and given a hefty pension.

When the recession hit around 1980, governments cut back the welfare state. They also cut taxes. Suddenly a new species emerged: the yuppie. Hardly anyone had seen a young upwardly mobile professional before, but now they were everywhere. Soon, in fact, the word “yuppie” disappeared. People assumed that everyone was upwardly mobile, or wanted to be.

Bits of the slow life did survive. I know various Swedes who edit literary journals. The journals aren’t much read, but that doesn’t matter, because the state funds them. Or here in Paris, where I live now, my children’s friends are always going off to stay with grandparents for weeks at a time. The grandparents are mostly hale people in their 50s and 60s, long since retired and living off the state. Last month an indebted France raised the age of retirement. Now life will speed up further.

It’s easy to mock the old welfare state. But it anticipated the findings of later research into happiness: that rich societies don’t become happier when they become even richer, and that happiness is time with friends and relatives.

Moreover, we can afford it. We can afford to pay hordes of people to do nothing. As the British economist Richard Layard writes in Happiness, it’s “complete nonsense” to think that because of globalisation, “life is bound to be tougher for everyone”. Global trade makes countries as a whole richer, even if some people in those countries lose out. Layard writes: “No western nation has to reject its former lifestyle because it can no longer afford it.” He says our countries can choose to work less, or have more job security, if we want. Our incomes would fall, but given how high living standards are already, that’s “no great hardship”.

Instead European countries are banning sloth. We are all careerists now. Life is being redefined as a race to get ahead, starting from birth.

I quote from the American website Yourbabycanread.com: “The current practice of starting to teach reading in school is too late … studies prove that the earlier a child learns to read, the better they perform in school and later in life.” Even for babies, there’ll be no more lazing on a sunny afternoon.

 

http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035620/en

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