【英语生活】凯恩斯不懂工作狂 The rewards for working hard are too big for Keynes’s vision

If John Maynard Keynes is looking down upon me now — he might make a good guardian angel for economists — then he is wondering why I am writing this column instead of lounging by the pool.

“Three hours a day is quite enough,” he pronounced in his 1930 essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. The essay offers two famous speculations: that people in 2030 will be eight times better off than people in 1930; and that as a result we will all be working 15-hour weeks and wondering how to fill our time.

Keynes was half right. Barring some catastrophe in the next 15 years, his rosy-seeming forecasts of global growth will be an underestimate. The three-hour workday, however, remains elusive. (Keynes was childless, but NPR’s Planet Money show recently tracked down his sister’s grandchildren and asked them if they were working just 15 hours a week. They were not.)

So where did Keynes go wrong? Two answers immediately spring to mind — one noble, and one less so. The noble answer is that we rather like some kinds of work. We enjoy spending time with our colleagues, intellectual stimulation or the feeling of a job well done. The ignoble answer is that we work hard because there is no end to our desire to outspend each other.

Keynes considered both of these possibilities, but perhaps he did not take them seriously enough. He would not have been able to anticipate more recent research suggesting that the experience of being unemployed is miserable out of all proportion to its direct effect on income.

Perhaps Keynes also failed to appreciate that there is more to keeping up with the Joneses than conspicuous consumption. We want to live in pleasant areas with good schools and easy access to dynamic employers. As a result, we find ourselves in ferocious competition for a limited supply of desirable houses.

There are subtler explanations for Keynes’s error. As the late Gary Becker observed in an essay with Luis Rayo, Keynes may have been led astray by contemplating the leisured elite of

the 1920s. The income flowing to the

“1 per cent” was not much different back then, but they owned much more of the wealth. A gentleman in 1920s Bloomsbury drawing income from capital was just as wealthy as a partner at a 21st-century New York law firm billing at a vast hourly rate. Yet it is no mystery that the gentleman spent his time at the club while the lawyer is working her socks off.

A few years ago, the economists Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst published a survey of how American work and leisure had evolved between 1965 and 2005. Both men and women had more leisure time — although nothing like as much as Keynes had expected. But some people defied this trend. The best educated and the highest earners, both men and women, had less free time than ever. Starting in the mid 1980s, this elite began to drop everything and work -furiously.

Perhaps the real story, then, is that we are trying to keep up not with the Joneses but with our work colleagues. By pulling the longest hours and taking the least leave, we climb the corporate

ladder. It may be no coincidence that

the collapse in leisure time began in

the 1980s, at a time when inequality

at the top of that ladder was surging.

The rewards for working hardest

are large.

We are still 15 years away from the world that Keynes imagined. If we are to live up to his laid-back expectations, much will have to change. We’ll need plentiful access to nice schools and neighbourhoods, and less of a rat-race culture in the office.

That sounds welcome. But perhaps the fundamental truth is that many of us enjoy working hard on something that feels worthwhile, or aspire to such work. John Maynard Keynes was a wealthy man, but

that did not stop him working himself to death.

如果约翰?梅纳德?凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)现在从天国俯视我——他大概能成为经济学家的守护天使——那么他会感到奇怪：为什么我不在游泳池边上懒洋洋地躺着，而是正在写这样一篇专栏。

“每天三小时就足够了，”凯恩斯在1930的论文《我们后代的经济前景》(Economic Possibilities for OurGrandchildren)中宣称。这篇论文提出了两个著名的猜测：生活在2030年的人会比1930年的人富裕8倍；因此那时我们每周只需工作15个小时，然后发愁如何打发我们的时间。

凯恩斯只对了一半。除非接下来的15年里发生什么大灾难，否则他对全球增长看似乐观的估计依然还是低估了。然而，每天工作三小时依然难以实现。（凯恩斯没有子嗣，不过美国全国公共广播电台(NPR)的《金钱星球》(Planet Money)栏目最近找到了他妹妹的孙辈，问他们是否每周工作15小时。他们不是。）

那凯恩斯到底错在哪儿呢？有两个答案立刻浮现在脑海里——一个崇高些，另一个不那么崇高。崇高的答案是：我们更想干点什么工作，我们喜欢和同事们在一起，喜欢思想的激发，或者出色完成工作的满足感。另一个不太光彩的答案是：我们努力工作，因为我们攀比消费的欲望没有尽头。

凯恩斯考虑了这两种可能性，但是他可能没太把它们当回事儿。他也无法预想到，最近的研究表明，失业的痛苦远甚于其对收入的直接影响。

凯恩斯可能也想不到，比起炫耀性消费，与邻居攀比是一个更重要的因素。我们想要生活在有好学校、能够轻松进入充满朝气的用工单位的怡人社区。结果就是我们要为供应有限的理想房产进行激烈竞争。

对凯恩斯的错误，还有更微妙的解释。正如已故的加里?贝克尔(Gary Becker)在一篇与路易斯?拉约(Luis Rayo)合著的论文中所指出的，凯恩斯可能基于20世纪20年代悠闲的精英阶层而得出错误的结论。那时候和现在没多大不同，收入也流向“1%”的人的手中，只是他们占有的财富要多得多。20世纪20年代布鲁姆斯伯里(Bloomsbury)一个靠资产获得收入的绅士，和21世纪一位每小时收费超高的纽约律师事务所合伙人一样富有。然而，显然这位绅士能在俱乐部里消磨时光，而这位律师却忙得昏天黑地。

几年前，经济学家马克?阿吉亚尔(Mark Aguiar)和埃里克?赫斯特(Erik Hurst)发表了一项有关1965到2005年间美国人工作和休闲情况演变的研究报告。男性和女性都有了更多的空闲时间——尽管不如凯恩斯预期的那么多。但有些人并没有遵循这样的趋势。受过最好的教育、拿着最高收入的人们，不论男性还是女性，空闲时间都比以前任何时候都更少了。从上世纪80年代中期起，这些精英人群开始抛下手头的一切疯狂工作。

真相也许是，我们不是试图和邻居攀比，而是和同事攀比。靠着工作时间最长和请假最少，我们攀爬着公司的阶梯。空闲时间在上世纪80年代开始“崩塌”或许并非巧合。当时，阶梯最顶端的不平等程度开始急剧上升。极度勤奋工作的回报是非常丰厚的。

我们距离凯恩斯设想的世界还有15年。如果我们想要过上他设想的悠闲生活，很多事情都得改变。我们需要拥有大量的好学校和好社区，减少办公室里残酷竞争的文化。

那听起来不错。但可能最根本的真相就是：我们中很多人享受为某些感觉值得的事业努力工作，或者向往这样的工作。约翰?梅纳德?凯恩斯很富有，但这并没有阻止他一直工作直到辞世。

译者/许雯佳