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本帖最后由 守望者 于 2013-4-22 23:44 编辑
译者守望者注：本文系The Age 编辑推荐文章
作者Tim Soutphommasane，悉尼大学政治哲学家，专栏作家。
为了避免撒切尔主义的社会残酷性在澳洲重现，我们准备付出怎样的代价？
上周，伦敦为撒切尔夫人举行了隆重的葬礼仪式，而极具讽刺意义的是，正是这位政治领导人发表了臭名昭著的名言“不存在所谓社会这种事‘There is no such thing as society.'”。（译者注：她的这句话意思是坚决地否定公民社会中成员之间休戚与共的关系（亦即solidarity），从根本上反对财富再分配。）
作为澳洲人，我们很幸运已经逃过了撒切尔主义导致的社会残酷。但撒切尔夫人作为自由市场经济和自由保守主义的代表人物，仍然在澳洲具有象征性的力量。她在澳洲的崇拜者认为她是改造社会提高市场效率的典范。
撒切尔主义当然不是唯一的重塑国家的道路。我们当初就走了另外一条路。我们总是忘记，澳洲实现经济自由化的方式与撒切尔治下的英国有着非常大的不同。正如经济学家Tim Harcourt提醒我们的那样，铁娘子是用对抗来实现自己的目标，而鲍勃霍克则是通过寻求共识达到目的。
在霍克——基廷时代，劳工组织配合着政府完成了经济重组，最具象征意义的就是工党政府与ACTU合作推出的Accord改革方案。澳洲工人选择维持工资现状，而政府则提高“社会工资”——增强在公共卫生和教育以及培训方面的投入，不用说，还有引入养老金制度这种重大的变革。 这是工党在上世纪80、90年代社会民主方面的最高成就：以文明的方式实现市场自由化。
最近，一些工党同情者表达了对那个黄金时代的怀旧之情。“霍克——基廷遗产”已经成为改革派嘴里的陈词滥调。但无论如何，它毕竟软化了经济结构变化带来的冲击，而现在的工党却从没能创造出新的语言对抗来自于新自由主义的责难。
许多工党社会民主人士毫不批判地热情接受了市场语言。他们默许小政府会是更好的政府，这样税收总是降低的，生产率的提高是社会进步最好的衡量标准等等这样的概念。
如此不合格地拥抱市场的做法降低了社会民主的道德标准，即：推进共同的利益来保证社会的良好运转。已故历史学家Tony Judt在他的研究中说的最好：西方民主患上了语言障碍残疾。我们不再懂得如何谈论集体目标。而且我们看起来只相信，经济目标才是唯一值得努力奋斗争取的。
这种公共意识的缩水正带来越来越多的麻烦。上个月，由我的同事David Hetherington为Per Capita智囊组织主持的一项调查显示，有半数的澳洲人相信他们付出过多的税，而且感觉比他们三年前付出的更多。他们从没意识到吉拉德政府在2012年的7月提高了纳税门槛。
更令人无语的是澳洲纳税人的认知失调。超过三分之一的高收入被访者（那些年收入超过15万的高收入家庭，他们属于澳洲最高端的5%的高收入家庭）认为他们支付的税太高，同时却又认为高收入人群纳税太少。而更普遍的是，三分之二的受访者认为自己交的税太多，却又认为政府应该更多地投入资金在公共服务上。
政治家和部分媒体无疑滋养了这种不协调的情况。所有澳洲人，即使是富人，都认为他们应该获得政府的补助，如家庭税务优惠或他们孩子上私校的补贴。任何保持税务系统自然渐进的改进措施，或重新安排收入分配的做法都会被标上“阶级斗争”的标签——新保守主义的政治正确性的一种新的表述方式。
但是，这种不真实的情况会保持多久呢？Hetherington说，算帐的时候马上就要到了。在澳洲的税务收入中有着结构性的缺口，这是由于多年以来的所得税减免以及错失矿业繁荣带来的财富。如果未来的澳洲政府想要保持澳洲人所需要的这样的公共服务和投资，就需要提高税收。
现在，政治家们很少有愿望去做这件事，即使是时候该进行改革了。我们目击了吉拉德政府削减大学费用来筹措资金为Gonski学校重组计划铺路。许多人会得出结论说，这种可疑而胆怯的做法反映出领导力的缺乏。但是，这里还有一些因素在起作用。当政治文化在所有方面都倾向于私有式激励，在税收被当作是类似来自于某个人的股权投资的时候，政府如何能呼吁大众为共同利益做出贡献呢？
在这种情况下，很自然，个人财富的积累会伴随着公众的道德败坏。这就是你跨越市场经济来到市场社会要遭遇的。
Higher taxes could fund a better Australia
DateApril 22, 2013
Tim Soutphommasane
Political philosopher and regular columnist
How much are we prepared to pay to avoid the social brutality of Thatcherism?
Time to hike GST?
Economists say our political leaders must now consider the politically unthinkable - raise the GST - or face the prospect of budgets in the red for years to come.
There was an irony in the very public occasion of Margaret Thatcher's grand funeral procession in London last week. This was, after all, a political leader who infamously declared, ''There is no such thing as society.'' Few figures have done more in office to hollow out the public realm while celebrating all that was private.
As Australians, we are fortunate to have been spared the social brutality of Thatcherism. But Lady Thatcher's symbolic power in Australia as the heroine of free market economics and liberal conservatism remains potent. Her Australian admirers regard her as a paragon for transforming society in the image of market efficiency.
Thatcherism wasn't the only way to do reform, of course. There was an alternative. We often forget that Australia managed to liberalise its economy in a very different way to Britain under Thatcher. As economist Tim Harcourt has reminded us, whereas the Iron Lady did it with confrontation, Bob Hawke did it with consensus.
During the Hawke-Keating years, economic reforms were carried out with the co-operation of the labour movement, as symbolised by the Accord with the ACTU. Wage restraint by Australian workers was rewarded with a ''social wage'' - with boosts in the public provision of health, education and training, not to mention the introduction of superannuation. This was the crowning achievement of Labor social democracy during the 1980s and '90s: ensuring that market liberalisation happened in a civilised manner.
Lately, some Labor sympathisers have expressed nostalgic yearning for this golden age. The ''Hawke-Keating legacy'' has become something of a reformist shibboleth. However, for all that it softened the blow of structural change, modern Labor never quite managed to craft a new language that could compete with the strictures of neo-liberalism.
Many Labor social democrats adopted the language of markets with uncritical enthusiasm. They acquiesced to ideas that a smaller state was a better state, that taxes always had to be lowered, that productivity growth was the best measure of progress.
Such unqualified embrace of the market undermined the moral purpose of social democracy - namely, to advance the common good and to secure the good society. The late historian Tony Judt put it best in observing that Western democracies suffer from a linguistic disability. We no longer know how to speak about a sense of collective purpose. And we seem to believe that economic aspiration is now the only sentiment worth appealing to.
This shrinking sense of the public is increasingly troublesome. Last month, a survey conducted by my colleague David Hetherington of the Per Capita think tank revealed that half of Australians believe they pay too much tax and feel more highly taxed than they did three years ago. Never mind that the Gillard government increased the tax-free threshold in July 2012.
Most striking was the cognitive dissonance of Australian taxpayers. More than one-third of high-income respondents (those with an annual household income of more than $150,000 and in the top 5 per cent of Australian households) believed they paid too much tax while also believing that high-income earners pay too little tax. More generally, two-thirds of respondents who believed that they pay too much tax maintained that governments should spend more on public services.
Politicians and sections of the media undoubtedly feed such dissonance. The ethos of aspiration is, in many cases, little more than economic narcissism. All Australians, however affluent, come to believe they are genuine battlers entitled to government handouts, be it family tax benefits or subsidised private education for their children. Any effort to maintain the progressive nature of the taxation system, or to redistribute income, is decried as ''class warfare'' - an expression of the new conservative political correctness.
But how long can this unreality be maintained? Hetherington argues that a reckoning must come soon. There is structural gap in Australia's tax revenues, created by years of income tax cuts and a failure to reap the full rewards of the mining boom. If future governments are to support the kind of public services and investment that Australians appear to want, taxes will need to rise.
For now, there is little appetite among politicians to propose this, even when tied to worthwhile reforms. Witness the Gillard government's cuts to universities to help fund the Gonski school reforms. Many may conclude that such dubious timidity reflects a lack of leadership. But there is something also at work. For how can governments call for the public to make sacrifices for a common good, when everything else in the political culture is geared towards private aspiration? When taxes are regarded as akin to an investment from which someone is entitled a personal dividend?
In such circumstances, it may only be natural that private wealth comes at the price of public squalor. This is what happens when you cross the line from a market economy to a market society.
Tim Soutphommasane is a political philosopher at The University of Sydney and a fellow of Per Capita. Twitter: @timsout
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/po ... .html#ixzz2RBA2UQbS |
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管理人员评分BOC 在2013-4-23 00:23 +40分 并说
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