Why the higher paid should work longer than the rest


If everyone worked 43 years, the garbage collector might retire at 60 and the lawyer at 67. 6park.com
我们不应该设定退休年龄，而是应该计算工作年限。让低收入和高收入两个群体的人工作到同一年龄再退休是残酷的。



Every now and then a country has a nationwide debate that produces actual learning. It happened in the UK about two years after the vote for Brexit, when many people belatedly found out about the workings of the European single market. 6park.com
每隔一段时间，就会有一个国家发生一场会让人们真正学到某件事情的全国性辩论。英国脱欧公投大约两年后就有一场辩论，许多人都是这时才明白欧洲单一市场的运作方式。 6park.com
   
I’ve spent much of this winter following the French debate about the right retirement age. Any day now, parliament may pass the government’s bill to raise the age from 62 to 64. The argument has raged everywhere from the marches along my road in Paris to “up yours” gestures in parliament. Surprising truths have emerged that apply far beyond France. Last month, I wrote that the French led the world in allowing people a first golden decade of retirement. My main conclusion now: that lower social classes should be allowed to retire about a decade before higher ones. 6park.com
这个冬天我花了很多时间关注法国关于合理退休年龄的辩论。现在议会随时都可能通过政府的法案，将退休年龄从62岁提高到64岁。从我在巴黎住的那条街上的游行，到议会中人们摆出的“见鬼去吧”的手势，激烈的争论到处可见。事实令人惊讶，而且远不只法国如此。上个月，我写道，法国曾引领世界，率先让人们可以享受退休后的首个黄金10年。我现在的主要结论是：应该允许低社会阶层比高社会阶层早10年退休。 6park.com
   
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of workers: the low paid and the high. The high paid tend to study well into their twenties and then might spend years choosing a career. They have lots of autonomy at work, sometimes with an office and even a toilet to themselves. They control their own schedules, ratchet up their salary and status over time and decompress during holidays by the pool. Some never want to retire. The high typically live into their eighties. 6park.com
总的来说，有两种劳动者：低收入的和高收入的。高收入人群往往接受教育一直到20多岁，之后可能会花上几年选择一个职业。他们在工作中有很大的自主权，有人会有自己的办公室、甚至卫生间。他们可以掌控自己的日程安排，而且随着时间的推移逐步提高自己的工资和地位，还可以在度假时游泳减压。他们中的一些人永远不想退休。高收入人群通常能活到80多岁。 6park.com
   
Then think of low-paid workers like cleaners, cashiers and construction workers. They often enter vocational training in adolescence and start work by 18. They have little autonomy: they used to be bossed around by humans, and now increasingly by algorithms, which count things like how many calls they make. Many spend years out of work, incapacitated or unemployed. They have jobs, not careers. At 60, they might still be scrubbing floors for the minimum wage. When I dipped into this life for a holiday job, sorting milk crates on an assembly line, every minute felt like an hour. Some of my co‑workers probably stuck it out for 40 years. 6park.com
再想想清洁工、收银员和建筑工人等低收入人群。他们通常在青春期接受职业培训，18岁开始工作。他们几乎没有自主权：过去他们被人类指挥，现在越来越多地被算法指挥，比如算法会计数他们打了多少通电话。许多人多年待业、丧失工作能力或失业。他们有工作，却没有事业。60岁时，他们可能还在擦地板，拿着最低工资。我曾尝过这种生活的滋味，当时我打了一份假日临时工，在流水线上拣选牛奶箱，每一分钟都感觉像一个小时。我那时的一些同事可能坚持了40年。 6park.com
   
Low-paid workers often have miserable commutes. Priscillia Ludosky, a leader of France’s gilets jaunes’ uprising, told me that the nadir of Parisian suburban life was the packed train into the city on a Monday morning. A triumph was arriving home, shattered, before the kids fell asleep. If that’s your working life, retirement probably feels like liberation. But many of the low paid acquire a disability or chronic illness by their early sixties and die in their seventies. 6park.com
低收入劳动者的通勤经历往往很痛苦。法国“黄背心”(gilets jaunes)运动领袖普里西利亚•卢多斯基(Priscillia Ludosky)告诉我，巴黎郊区生活最糟糕的时刻就是周一早晨挤在进城的火车上。而在孩子们入睡前疲惫不堪地回到家中就是胜利。如果这就是你的工作生活，退休可能会让你感到解放。但是，许多低收入者在60岁出头就成了残疾或患有慢性疾病，并在70多岁时死去。 6park.com
   
It’s cruel to make both groups work until the same age. The French economist Thomas Piketty argues that instead of setting retirement ages, we should count years worked. If everyone worked 43 years, the garbage collector might retire at 60 and the lawyer at 67. France’s nationwide debate persuaded the government of that. Its revised plan takes account of “long careers”: people who started work before 16 can retire at 58, while those who started by 18 can leave at 60 and so on. 6park.com
让这两个群体的人工作到同一年龄再退休是残酷的。法国经济学家托马斯•皮凯蒂(Thomas Piketty)认为，我们不应该设定退休年龄，而是应该计算工作年限。如果每个人都工作43年，那么垃圾收集工可能60岁退休，律师可能67岁退休。法国全国范围内的辩论说服了政府采纳了这个理念。法国政府修改后的方案会考虑“长工龄”：那些在16岁以前就开始工作的人可以在58岁退休，而那些在18岁时开始工作的人可以在60岁退休，以此类推。 6park.com
   
But given the class chasm, retirement ages should probably be even more gradated. True, that would make the pensions system more complex. Specialist commissions would probably be required to keep updating the working length for each occupation. As work evolved, there would be constant scrapping of old rules, like the one dating from the era of filthy coal-fired locomotives, which allowed French train drivers to retire at 52. But in this case, complexity is fairer. 6park.com
但考虑到阶层鸿沟，退休年龄很可能应该更加细分。诚然，这将使养老金体系更加复杂。专家委员会很可能需要不断更新每一职业的工作年限信息。随着职业的演变，旧的规定会不断被废除，比如可以追溯到肮脏的燃煤机车时代的一项规定允许法国火车司机在52岁退休。但在当前这种情况下，复杂更公平。 6park.com
   
The other finding from the French debate: most workers really don’t like their jobs. And work seems to be getting more intense, perhaps because of technology that monitors employees’ breaks and keystrokes. In an analysis of results from the European Working Conditions Surveys for 15 countries, Mariann Rigó of Düsseldorf University et al found “that work stress generally increased from 1995 to 2015, and that the increase was mostly driven by psychological demands. People in lower-skilled occupations had generally higher levels of job strain and effort-reward imbalance.” In Gallup’s latest annual State of the Global Workplace report, 44 per cent of workers, an all-time high, described experiencing stress “a lot” of the previous day. Only 21 per cent felt engaged at work. 6park.com
法国的辩论的另一个发现是：大多数劳动者真的不喜欢自己的工作。工作似乎变得越来越紧张，也许是因为有了监控员工休息和敲击键盘的技术。杜塞尔多夫大学(Düsseldorf University)的玛丽安•里戈(Mariann Rigó)等人对针对15个国家的“欧洲工作条件调查”结果进行了分析，发现“从1995年到2015年，工作压力普遍增加，而且这种增加主要是由心理压力导致的。低技能职业的人通常工作压力更大，付出与回报更加不平衡。”在盖洛普(Gallup)最新的年度《全球职场状况》(State of the Global Workplace)报告中，44%的员工表示前一天“承受了很大”压力，这个比例创历史新高。只有21%的人觉得自己在工作时很投入。 6park.com
   
No wonder some countries have seen a “Big Quit”. If we need people to work longer, we’ll have to improve their experience, perhaps by cutting down on monitoring. We should also train them for better jobs. And we must counter age discrimination so that somebody will hire them into their sixties. If people at the top of society are going to add burdens to everybody else’s lives, they first need to understand what those lives are actually like. 6park.com
难怪一些国家出现了“大辞职”。如果我们需要人们工作更长时间，我们就必须改善他们的体验，也许可以通过减少监控来实现。我们还应该培训他们去找更好的工作。我们必须反对年龄歧视，这样才会有人雇用60多岁的人。如果社会上层的人要给其他人的生活增加负担，他们首先需要了解那些人的生活到底是什么样的。 6park.com