Kazuto Suzuki
@KS_1013
「トランプ王国」の発端にはジョンソン政権の「貧困との戦い」があり、それが人々の尊厳を奪ったことがトランプ現象につながっていると論ずる良記事。「尊厳の欠損（Deficit）」というタイトルが的確に響いている。
この記事は金成記者の『ルポ：トランプ王国』にも出てきたトム・フレッチャーの小屋のエピソードが出てくる。あれが尊厳を失わせるシンボルになっているという点は興味深い。仕事をすることが尊厳の源であり、単に生活するための福祉とは違う、という議論は日本にとっても様々な点で示唆的。
I NEED YOU TO NEED ME
At its core, to be treated with dignity means being considered worthy of respect. Certain situations bring out a clear, conscious sense of our own dignity: when we receive praise or promotions at work, when we see our children succeed, when we see a volunteer effort pay off and change our neighborhood for the better. We feel a sense of dignity when our own lives produce value for ourselves and others. Put simply, to feel dignified, one must be needed by others.
The War on Poverty did not fail because it did not raise the daily caloric consumption of Tom Fletcher (it did). It failed because it did nothing significant to make him and Americans like him needed and thus help them gain a sense of dignity. It also got the U.S. government into the business of treating people left behind by economic change as liabilities to manage rather than as human assets to develop.
The dignity deficit that has resulted is particularly acute among working-class men, most of whom are white and live in rural and exurban parts of the United States. In his recent book Men Without Work, the political economist (and American Enterprise Institute scholar) Nicholas Eberstadt shows that the percentage of working-age men outside the labor force—that is, neither working nor seeking work—has more than tripled since 1965, rising from 3.3 percent to 11.6 percent. And men without a high school degree are more than twice as likely to be part of this “un-working” class.
These men are withdrawing not only from the labor force but from other social institutions as well. Two-thirds of them are unmarried. And Eberstadt found that despite their lack of work obligations, these men are no more likely to spend time volunteering, participating in religious activities, or caring for family members than men with full-time employment.
That sort of isolation and idleness correlates with severe pathologies in rural areas where drug abuse and suicide have become far more common in recent years.
To be sure, rural and exurban whites who possess few in-demand skills and little education are hardly the only vulnerable group in the United States today. But the evidence is undeniable that this community is suffering an acute dignity crisis. Left behind every bit as much as the urban poor, millions of working-class whites have languished while elites have largely ignored them or treated them with contempt.
Americans from all walks of life voted for Trump. But exit polls unambiguously showed that a crucial central pillar of his support came from modern-day Tom Fletchers: Trump beat Hillary Clinton among white men without a college degree by nearly 50 percentage points. Tellingly, among counties where Trump outperformed the 2012 GOP candidate Mitt Romney, the margins were greatest in those places with the highest rates of drug use, alcohol abuse, and suicide.
Many analysts and policy experts saw Trump’s campaign as a series of sideshows and unserious proposals that, even if implemented, would not actually improve things for his working-class supporters. For example, academic research clearly shows that trade protectionism—a major theme of Trump’s campaign—is more likely to destroy jobs than create them. Yet Trump won regardless, because he was the first major-party nominee in decades who even appeared to care about the dignity of these working-class voters whose lives are falling apart.
WELFARE TO WORK
If its goal is to instill dignity, the U.S. government does not need to find more innovative ways to “help” people; rather, it must find better ways to make them more necessary. The question for leaders, no matter where they sit on the political spectrum, must be, Does this policy make people more or less needed—in their families, their communities, and the broader economy?
The single most important part of a “neededness agenda” is putting more people to work. The unemployment rate is relatively low today, at around 4.7 percent, after peaking at around ten percent in 2010, in the wake of the financial crisis. But the unemployment rate can be a misleading metric, since it does not take into account people who are no longer even looking for work.
This demonstrates that commonsense limits on welfare can increase people’s incentives to seek employment without crushing them or their families.
But conservatives have failed to get their proposals enacted, in no small part because they have made the wrong arguments for them. Why reform taxes? “To boost earnings and GDP.” Why require work for welfare? “To make those lazy welfare queens work!” Such rhetoric has made good policies sound out of touch and inhumane. The most compelling reason for tax reform and further welfare reform is to create more opportunities for people at the periphery of society.
But they should also experiment with reducing minimum wages to help people trapped in long-term unemployment, making these vulnerable people more attractive to hire. Governments would then supply those workers with direct wage subsidies to increase their take-home income. For example, Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute has proposed that the federal government let employers hire long-term unemployed people at $4 per hour and then itself transfer an additional $4 per hour to each of these workers.
it’s reasonable to conclude that illegal immigration tends to moderately reduce wages in low-skill industries, whereas the legal immigration of high-skilled individuals has a positive effect on the overall economy and job creation. Congress and the Trump administration should therefore prioritize the enforcement of existing immigration laws, not through mass deportations but by targeting low-wage employers who hire and exploit illegal immigrants. But they should also significantly loosen the current quotas that limit the number of high-skilled immigrants who can enter the United States.
Making people more necessary will also require improving human capital through better education
失業率は低いものの、労働市場に参加していない人口も多く、人生を捨てて、ドラッグに走って、失望をしている人たちも多い。実はこうした白人たちが、トランプ大統領を支持している。
ジョンソン大統領は貧困層に補助金をばら撒いたが、結果として貧困率は変化していない。
人間には必要なのは尊厳であり、それは、自分が必要とされている感覚、褒められたり、昇進したり、何かの役に立ったり、何か価値のあることをしている、という感覚である、と。 トランプは、尊厳が満たされていない白人の支持を得たのだ、と。
ただ、補助金をばら撒いても、尊厳が満たされるわけではない。
仕事につける教育を受けさせて、ちゃんとした仕事につかせることが大事だ、と。
不法労働者は底辺の労働者と競合するから、まずいが、しかし、不法移民を取り締まらずに、雇用者の方をとりしまるべきだ、と。
同時に、最低賃金を下げれば、底辺の人にも開かれる雇用がある。それでは食っていけないから、例えば、４ドルで雇われている労働者に、政府が４ドルの補助金を労働者に与えればよい、と。
ーーー人間の尊厳って、著者の言うような意味もあるが、しかし、労働や成果あるいは、他人からの評価と関わりなく、あるものだと私は思っているので、ちょっと、言葉に違和感があるが、しかし、言いたいことはわかる。
誰かに必要とされているという感覚というのは生きがいとして力強いものがある。
その半面、誰にも必要とされなくても健やかに生きていく、にはかなり強靭さが必要だ。
大抵は耐えきれず、例えば、ドラッグに走ったり、あるいは、狂人となる場合さえあるわけだ。
