经济学人下载:疫情后时代社会保障的绝处逢生(3)

That is the easy part. Balancing generosity and dynamism is harder. Part of the solution is to top up the wages of low-paid workers. AngloSax on countries have done this well since reforms in the 1990s and 2000s. But wage top-ups are of little use to the jobless and are often scant compensation for people who lose good jobs to forces beyond their control. Paltry support for the unemployed in Britain and America preserves incentives to work but at high human cost. The sparsity of social insurance has undermined political support for creative destruction, the catalyst for rising living standards. Continental Europe tends to underwrite traditional workers’ incomes more generously. But the distortion of incentives leads to higher unemployment and divisions between coddled insiders and a precariat. Both sides of the Atlantic lack a permanent safety net that insures gig workers and the self-employed. 

这部分很简单。但在慷慨和发展之间做好平衡就很难了。部分解决办法是增加低薪工人的工资。自20世纪90年代和21世纪初的改革以来，盎格鲁-撒克逊国家在这方面做得很好，但涨薪对失业者用处不大，对那些因不可控力而失去好工作的人来说，这点补偿杯水车薪。在英国和美国，对失业者微不足道的支持保留了工作动力，但却付出了高昂的人力成本。社会保险的匮乏削弱了对创造性破坏的政治支持，而创造性破坏是改善生活水平的催化剂。欧洲大陆倾向于更慷慨地承保传统工人的收入。但是，激励机制的扭曲导致失业率上升，得到悉心照料的内部人员和不稳定型无产者之间的分歧也随之加剧。大西洋两岸都缺乏一个永久的，可为零工和个体经营者提供保险的社会保障系统。

There is one country that combines labour market flexibility with generosity: Denmark, which spends large sums- 1.9% of GDP in 2018—on retraining and on advising the jobless. These interventions stop the unemployed from falling into dependency. The inadequacies of policies elsewhere are often glaring. Britain’s efforts have flopped. America’ s comparable spending is less than a 20th as large as Denmark’s, even though the few lucky beneficiaries of its “trade-adjustment assistance” earn $50,000 more in wages, on average, over a decade. 

丹麦则把劳动力市场的灵活性与慷慨结合在了一起。丹麦在为失业者提供再培训和咨询方面花费了巨额资金，2018年支出其GDP的1.9%。这些干预措施防止失业者对救济陷入依赖。其他地方政策的不足之处往往是显而易见的。英国所做的努力已经失败了。美国的类似支出还不到丹麦的二十分之一，尽管其“贸易调整援助”的少数幸运受益者在十年内平均多赚了五万美元的工资。

For years social spending has favoured the elderly and an outdated safety net. It should be rebuilt around active labour-market policies that use technology to help everyone from shop-workers who are victims of disruption to mothers whose skills have atrophied and those whose jobs are replaced by machines. Governments cannot eliminate risk, but they can help ensure that if calamity strikes, people bounce back. 

多年来，社会支出一直偏爱老年人以及过时的社会保障系统。但政府应该围绕着积极的劳动力市场政策重建社会支出，这些市场政策能够利用技术帮助到每一个人，从受到动荡影响的商店店员、到技能衰退的母亲、再到那些被机器取代工作的工人。政府不能消除风险，但他们可以帮助确保在灾难来袭时，人们会重新重整旗鼓，绝处逢生。