I love Alternatives Economiques: without agreeing with everything writing in this month, far away, it always presents some interesting debates and serious analysis on topics of interest.
is the case of debate on decommissioning , led by Eric Maurin's book on the subject. However, beyond the technical debate and my admiration for the work of Eric Maurin, doubt assails me: is this a good debate?
Indeed, the debate focused on the transition from one class to a class called "higher", is to pose as an implicit assumption that the classroom is an appropriate standard and that it is possible to rank them. It is assumed a priori that successful life is to end in a "better" social class than their parents. It is highly questionable. For example, some studies on happiness show by example that a graduate with a CAP bakery has more chance of being happy that a high school graduate - the first being happy when he succeeds in getting his account ( This is an accessible dream), the second could be considered to have failed if it does not end the CEO of a company's CAC40 (which is harder).
Moreover, economic conditions make this hope mathematically impossible for all (although it remains possible for some): when economic growth is slower than demography, economic disruption in the presence of strong growth relative to a "linear" (growth in emerging markets, raw material costs, concerns environnemtales ...), model social progress that has prevailed during the "30 glorious years" is probably not relevant, especially because the economy for years to come will probably not be the 60s. The growth of the 60s was a growing development and catching up. That of future growth is innovation and adaptation challenges new. An economy in which agriculture was emptied and that the middle class was being created could hold the promise of "development" class. Make the same promise in 2009 would hope that all the French earn more than the average ...
Current generations will have more debt, a priori less growth (although nothing is written - they can fight against this trend by a burst of innovation), and the challenges of managing scarce resources that were not their parents. Faced with these developments we can try to restore stability status, or on a mode "the Nordic" which is also for which I pleaded with Jacques Attali seek to facilitate trans classification. Ie erase the notion of class in facilitating the transition from one role to another, ensuring the security of essential (income, interest and availability of work, sense of purpose ...) by dropping concepts accessories, such as vision class type "30 glorious years" ...
Brief us focus on decommissioning, we forget two things. First, that happiness is linked to the standards of happiness (as is the case in the example of the baker and graduate above), and that these standards are "self-defined (ie defined by a group to itself): put the debate of a possible return to standards not tenable, that prepare future disappointments. Then the real debate lies elsewhere: it is a happy life. Although this debate joined some of the elements covered by the "theory of decommissioning" (education, income, inequality ,...), and the possibility to change their activity is part of the degrees of freedom important to everyone, this second debate is broader than the first. And it does not preclude a son of an engineer may be more fortunate than his father by choosing to be a teacher. Or employed apparently "downgraded", but that allows him to find happiness outside of a predefined framework, write, create his business or to devote himself to humanitarian causes.
This was the case for a modest employee of the Patent Office in Bern (despite a degree from Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne) in 1902, named Albert Einstein. It is quite possible that even if he never subsequently published article titles, it would have been happier as an employee pursuing his research on his free time, better pay as an engineer but do not have the time needed to what really fascinated him ...
