失業對於中產是致命的 Boredom and vice can be deadly in a life without work

How bad is a life without work? I have been asked this question a lot lately. It is becoming pretty clear that the forces of globalisation and technological progress are reshaping economies and societies, especially in advanced economies, and that these effects are being felt most right in the centre of the workforce across the individuals and families that make up what Americans call the middle class. Lots of the traditional jobs for these people are disappearing in the rich world, and wages for remaining workers are pretty stagnant.

如果沒有了工作，生活會變得多麼糟糕？我最近被多次問到這個問題。現在很明顯，全球化和技術進步正改變經濟和社會面貌（特別是在發達經濟體），受影響最大的是處於勞動力核心的人羣，即構成美國人所謂中產階級的個人和家庭。對於這些人而言，在富國，很多傳統工作正消失，其他勞動者的薪資嚴重停滯不前。

The fact that the middle class is being hollowed out in country after country is rightly of concern. A large, stable, prosperous middle class is important for civil society; most informed observers agree that it supports inclusiveness, tolerance, democracy and many other good things. It is also a great engine of overall demand for an economy lots of moderately affluent households buy lots of things. But what happens when the industrial-era jobs that underpinned the middle class start to vanish? Voltaire offered a prescient caution, observing: “Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.”

一個又一個國家出現中產階級空心化，這一事實理應讓人擔憂。一個大規模、穩定且富裕的中產階級對於公民社會很重要；多數有見識的觀察人士認爲，它爲社會包容性、寬容、民主以及很多其他優良品質提供支撐。對於一國經濟而言，它也是一個推動整體需求的巨大引擎，很多中等富裕的家庭會購買很多商品。但當支撐中產階級的工業時代工作開始消失時會怎樣？伏爾泰(Voltaire)提出了具有先見之明的警告，他認爲：“工作可以使我們免除三大害處：煩悶、縱慾、飢寒。”

Of these three, I’m least worried about need. Trade and technological progress, after all, make a society wealthier in aggregate. The problem that they bring is not one of scarcity of not enough to go around. Instead, they bring up thorny questions of allocation. Most of us earn money to buy the things we need via our work what do we do when opportunities for work become scarce?

在上述3種害處中，我最不擔心的是飢寒。畢竟，總的來說，貿易和技術進步讓社會變得更爲富有。它們帶來的問題不是物質缺乏沒有足夠物資來滿足生活所需。它們帶來的棘手問題是財富分配。我們多數人通過工作賺錢購買我們需要的東西，如果工作機會變得稀缺，我們該怎麼辦？

So to boredom and vice: how bad are they? How worried should we be about them? I sometimes hear the argument that we should not be worried at all. If we do not need people’s labour, the logic goes, why should we care what they do? Why should traditional notions of boredom and vice matter? If people want to drink, take drugs, engage in casual sex or play video games all day, where is the harm? These are not the most conventionally respectable or productive activities, but why should we let convention hold sway?

至於煩悶和縱慾：它們有多大害處？我們對它們的擔憂應該到何種程度？我有時聽到這種看法：我們根本不用擔心。這種看法的邏輯是，如果我們不需要人們的勞動，我們爲什麼要在乎他們做什麼呢？傳統觀念對煩悶和縱慾的看法有什麼要緊？如果人們想喝酒、吸毒、亂交或整日打視頻遊戲，其害處表現在哪裏？從傳統上來說，這些並非最體面或最有用的活動，但我們爲何要讓傳統決定我們做什麼呢？

One reason for concern comes from research by the political scientist Charles Murray documenting how much social conditions have changed over the past 50 years for lower-middle class Americans (while remaining essentially unchanged for the upper-middle class). Divorce rates have skyrocketed, as have crime rates, the number of children being raised outside two-parent homes and the number of men who have essentially dropped out of family and community life.

一個擔心的理由來自政治學家查爾斯默裏(Charles Murray)的研究，他記錄了過去50年，美國下層中產階級的社會狀況發生了多大變化（上層中產階級的社會狀況基本未變）。離婚率飆升，同樣飆升的還有犯罪率、在雙親家庭之外的環境中長大的兒童數量、以及基本上退出了家庭和社區生活的男性的數量。

These social ills have come alongside the disappearance of industrial era jobs. There is active debate about whether the disappearance of steady work causes them, or whether they are all due to other factors. I am in the camp that believes that the disappearance of work is a cause, not just a correlation.

這些社會問題是隨着工業時代工作消失而出現的。人們正熱烈討論這些問題是不是穩定工作消失導致的，還是完全出於其他因素。我認爲，工作的消失是原因，而非只是相關因素。

A recently published paper by 2015 Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton and Anne Case reveals a much more alarming trend than social decay: while death rates for almost all American adults have dropped sharply in the past few decades, those of the least educated middle-aged whites have actually increased. They found that between 1999 and 2013 the death rates of this group rose by 134 per 100,000. This is a huge jump. As Mr Deaton writes: “Only HIV/Aids in contemporary times has done anything like this.”

2015年諾貝爾獎(Nobel Prize)得主安格斯迪頓(Angus Deaton)和安妮凱斯(Anne Case)最近發表的一篇已論文，揭示了一個比社會問題更令人擔憂的趨勢：儘管過去幾十年，美國幾乎所有成年人的死亡率都大幅下滑，但那些受教育程度最低的中年白人的死亡率實際上一直在上升。他們發現，1999年至2013年，該羣體的死亡率上升了1.34‰，這種增幅是巨大的。正如迪頓所寫的那樣：“在當代社會，造成過類似結果的只有艾滋病。”

What is causing this tragic spike? Professors Deaton and Case found that the majority of the rise could be attributed to three factors: suicide, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, and alcohol and drug poisoning. The people in this socio-economic group, in other words, are killing themselves deliberately and inadvertently, quickly and slowly.

造成死亡率悲劇性上升的原因是什麼？迪頓和凱斯教授發現，大部分增幅可能要歸咎於3個因素：自殺、長期肝病和肝硬化、以及酒精和毒品中毒。換句話說，身處這個社會經濟羣體的人正有意或無意、迅速或緩慢地自殺。

Much more research is required to understand the causes of this development. But I do not think the employment woes of this group are incidental to the story; I think they are central to it, and that it is far from a coincidence that the employment-population ratio for US adults with no more than a high school degree was less than 52 per cent in September. The boredom and vice that come when work goes away are a serious public health problem.

要了解導致這種情況的原因需要更多研究。但我認爲，這個羣體的就業困境不是偶然的；我認爲，這種困境是核心原因，今年9月，擁有高中或以下學歷的美國成年人口的就業率低於52%，這遠非巧合。失業導致的煩悶和縱慾是一個嚴重的公共健康問題。

Intriguingly, Profs Deaton and Case find that Hispanic and black Americans have not seen the same recent mortality increases. This could be because they have been more economically marginalised, and so less accustomed to the steady middle-class jobs that whites have enjoyed, but that are now vanishing for the least educated among them.

有趣的是，迪頓和凱斯教授認爲，美國西裔和黑人近年來的死亡率並沒有出現類似的上升。這可能是因爲，他們在經濟上更爲邊緣化，因此不像美國白人那樣習慣於一直享有穩定的中產階級工作，但對於他們之中受教育程度最低的人而言，這類工作現在正在消失。

This is far from the whole story. But it seems to me that Voltaire’s first two great evils are starting to show up in the social and health statistics, and we should all be concerned about that.

這遠非故事的全貌。但在我看來，伏爾泰提到的前兩大害處似乎正開始反映在社會和衛生統計數據中，我們都應對此感到擔憂。