【英语生活】高收入+高福利=幸福？

With the demise of full-blooded socialism, the opponents of market capitalism have fallen back on three remaining policy pillars; tax and spend, the promotion of “equality”, and controls and intervention – the “nanny state” as some like to call it. Two of even these pillars are looking shaky. The argument over public spending has reached a stalemate. Even left-of-centre parties now assume that there is little public tolerance for a further increase in the share of tax in the national income. Equality, too, is no longer the great slogan that it once was.

But when it comes to state intervention the collectivists are still improving their position. A new pseudo-subject called happiness studies has been called in aid. People are asked how happy they are with their lives. Up to some modest level of affluence, real incomes are correlated with reported happiness. But then the relationship falls off. Americans and western Europeans say that they are no happier than they were several decades ago when they were much poorer. Within a particular country the better off report themselves more satisfied than the poor, but it is relative rather than absolute incomes that seem
to matter.

Some happiness addicts even talk of high incomes as a form of pollution for the rest of us. It is not difficult to work out their policy proposals: high and progressive taxation over and above the state's revenue needs, or limitations on working hours so that people have to spend more time with their families, and so on.

Fortunately, we now have a new study of an altogether superior kind by Anthony and Charles Kenny, a father and son team of philosopher and economist*. Aristotle identified happiness with virtuous activity. Jeremy Bentham and his utilitarian followers identified it with pleasure and subjective satisfaction.

To make progress the authors break up happiness into three components; welfare, contentment and dignity. Welfare is treated in a commonsense way, covering items such as life expectancy, literacy, infant mortality or health. Contentment is the type of thing measured by the questionnaire studies. I am less sure about dignity. The celebrity chef who yells at his staff and customers makes an undignified sight, but who is to say that he is unhappy?

The most striking of the Kenny findings is how little welfare has to do with income, either absolute or relative. Income per capita in the early 19th century in the UK was similar to that of Vietnam in 2000. Yet the UK then had four times the infant mortality, a much lower life expectancy and a good deal less literacy. “The most advanced sewer systems they were likely to have known were those found in Roman ruins from 1,500 years earlier.” The authors believe that the main contributors to increased welfare are technological advance and “public action”. Their own data, however, suggest that only a very limited part of public expenditure, such as public health and sanitation measures, are relevant here rather than the bulk of items that went into either a 19th century or a modern government budget.

The authors point out that even if we take the findings on relative incomes at their face value, they are associated in the US with a maximum of 5 per cent of the reported differences in well-being between individuals. So much of the cross-country variation in subjective well-being remains unexplained by objective influences that they suggest “a distinct limit to policy or other interventions” in increasing subjective well-being scores.

As so often, I come back to John Stuart Mill, who never wavered in the conviction that happiness was the purpose of life, but who also believed that those who achieve it “have their minds fixed on some other object” such as the well-being of others or some art or pursuit.

The authors have little patience with growth drives in the developed west. Their main point of contact with mainstream progressive thought is their emphasis on the poor people of poor countries, but not their often corrupt and dictatorial governments. In advanced western countries it is reasonable to expect governments to concentrate on their core functions of internal and external security, providing public goods, which the market cannot do, and trying to correct for the worse spill-over effects of our activities upon each other. I would also include redistribution towards the less fortunate, which need not depend on envy and resentment. But surely matters such as obesity, respect and so much else on the Blairite agenda ought to be left to individuals?

Quite a lot of politicians of all parties would agree with these general sentiments, but when it comes to specifics – such as disliking things they see from their car windows on the way to the airport – the itch to intervene becomes unstoppable.

*Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Utility, Imprint Academic

随着正宗社会主义宣告终结，市场资本主义的反对者只剩下三个政策支柱：高税收与高支出(tax and spend)、推进“平等”以及控制和干预——有些人喜欢称之为“保姆国家(nanny state)”。即使是这仅存的三大支柱，也有两个显得摇摇欲坠。围绕公共支出的争论已陷入僵局。就连中间偏左的党派现在也认同，公众不会容忍进一步提高税收在国民收入中的比例。同样，平等也不再像以前那样是个伟大的口号了。

不过，在国家干预方面，集体主义者仍在改善自己的立场。他们求助于一项新的伪命题——名为“幸福研究”。这种研究调查的是人们生活的幸福度有多高。在达到某种适度的富裕之前，实际收入与人们的幸福感有关。不过随后，这种关联就会逐渐减弱。美国人和西欧人表示，与几十年前穷得多的时候相比，他们没觉得更幸福。在某个特定国家，有钱人对生活的满意度比穷人更高，但起作用的似乎是相对收入，而非绝对收入。

一些热衷于谈论幸福的人甚至提到，高收入是对我们其他人的一种玷污。不难想到他们会提出什么政策建议：超出国家税收需要的高额累进税制，或者限制工作时间，好让人们有更多时间与家人在一起，等等。

幸运的是，我们现在有了一项更高明的新研究，是由安东尼•肯尼(Anthony Kenny)和查尔斯•肯尼(Charles Kenny)进行的。这是一个父子俩组成的哲学家及经济学家组合*。亚里士多德(Aristotle)认为幸福等同于善行。边沁(Jeremy Bentham)及其功利主义追随者则认为，幸福就是快乐和主观满足。

为了更进一步，两位作者把幸福分为三部分：福利、满意和尊严。福利就是人们通常理解的含义，包括寿命预期、受教育、婴儿夭折率或健康等项目。满意是那类通过问卷调查研究来衡量的指标。不过，关于尊严，我就没那么有把握了。名厨对手下和顾客大吼大叫，是个有损尊严的场面，但谁能说他不幸福呢？

肯尼父子最惊人的发现是：福利跟收入（不管是绝对收入，还是相对收入）的关系微乎其微。19世纪初英国的人均收入跟2000年的越南差不多。然而，英国当时的婴儿夭折率要高3倍，寿命预期也要低得多，而且识字的人也非常少。“他们当时所知道的最先进的排污系统，可能就是1500年前罗马废墟上发现的那些下水道。”这两位作者认为，使福利增加的主要因素是科技进步和“公共行动”。然而，他们自己的数据显示，只有非常有限的一部分公共支出（如公共卫生和保健措施）在这方面起到了作用，而不管是19世纪的政府预算还是现代的政府预算，其中大部分项目都没有发挥作用。

两位作者指出，就算我们照单接受有关相对收入的研究结果，它们在美国最多也只与5%的个人幸福度差异有关联。全国各地在主观幸福度方面的差异，很大部分仍不能用客观影响来解释，这表明，就提高主观幸福得分而言，政策或其它干预手段存在“明显局限”。

我总是想起约翰•斯图亚特•穆勒(John Stuart Mill)，他有关幸福是生活目标的坚定信念从未动摇过，但是他同时也相信，那些获得幸福的人“将自己的心思专注在其它的目标上”，比如他人的福祉、某种艺术或追求。

这两位作者不能容忍西方发达国家对增长的迷恋。他们与主流进步思潮相合拍的主要观点，就是把重点放在贫穷国家的穷人，而非这些国家往往较为腐败独裁的政府身上。在西方发达国家，人们有理由希望政府集中精力发挥它们的核心职能，保障内外安全、提供市场无法提供的公共物品、努力纠正我们彼此行为的负面溢出效应。我认为还应该包括针对不那么幸福的人进行再分配，这不需要依靠嫉妒和怨恨。但是，像肥胖、尊重和其它许多布莱尔主义(Blairite)议程中的课题，肯定应该留给个人去解决吧？

在所有党派中，有相当多的政治家会认同这些大体的观点，但是，如果谈到细节（比如他们在赶往机场的途中，从车窗里看到的令人厌恶的事情），又会不可遏制地产生干预的愿望。

*《生活，自由和功利追求》(Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Utility)，Imprint Academic出版社

译者/徐柳