垣根をとり払い、お互いに助け合いの出来る社会を

朝日新聞社の論説を引用しました。
スラチャイは辞書なしでも５０％くらいは理解できますが、
辞書を使えばほぼ全部理解できます。
電子辞書を活用すれば、辞書引きの時間も大幅に短縮されますよ。
どんどん英文を読んで、英文読解力を高めましょう。
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The author is an Asahi Shimbun reporter covering the economy.(IHT/Asahi: August 27,2009)
POINT OF VIEW/ Tetsuya Nozawa: We must tear down barriers and help each other
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
垣根をとり払い、お互いに助け合いの出来る社会を

Prime Minister Taro Aso, who insisted "the economy comes before Diet dissolution," will finally see his government tested by voters in Sunday's Lower House election.

Aso surely had hoped his government's generous pump-priming measures would eventually bolster his Cabinet's public approval ratings from their dismal levels.

But to the contrary, most people apparently feel that lavish handouts, while good for temporarily improving the economy, will not be enough to ensure good times return. This wide gap in perception is likely what is behind Aso's slumping approval ratings.

As a reporter for a series called "Kohin Shakai" (society with collapsing public systems), which focused on mutual support across our society, I spoke with many people struggling to make ends meet amid the recession. It has run in the vernacular Asahi Shimbun for slightly more than a year.

A hungry 33-year-old man who lost his job at Oita Canon Inc. was walking on the street near the company dormitory complex that he would soon have to leave. "If I collapsed inside my room, I would not be saved," he said.

A 66-year-old man, on welfare and living with other homeless people at a shelter run by a nonprofit organization, had this to say: "All I can do is merely try to stay alive until I die."

At the other end of the spectrum were parents devoting themselves to their children's junior high school entrance examinations, hoping to ensure their offspring are "winners in life," and rich people intent on saving inheritance taxes.

While a growing number of people are out on the streets with no means to support themselves, those who live comfortably in "safety zones" are building higher walls around themselves.

Our society has lost its mutual support systems. What it needs most is not a government that doles out fixed benefits to encourage spending or tax reductions to encourage people to take out housing loans. What Japan needs is to transform itself from a nation that believes in the "growth myth" to a nation that can sustain itself.

We need to recover our spirit of mutual aid and cooperation, establish an environmentally friendly, sustainable economy and work to build a society in which our children can have hope. In short, we need to place precedence on sustainability, even at the cost of forgoing immediate growth.

What concrete steps will help us reach this goal?

The top policy priority of politicians must be to fight poverty. Instead of simply shoring up the social safety nets, lawmakers must take positive steps to ensure poverty does not become entrenched. Such steps include, for example, upgrading and expanding public education and job support for young people.

If the budgets needed for such measures are covered by increases in inheritance and gift taxes, it would also help ease the "inheritance of disparities" passed down from parents to children.

Generous support for child care is also important. To help finance such programs, outdated tax systems--

including deductions for spouses that benefit workers whose spouse is a full-time homemaker or works part-time more than it helps double-income households--should be reviewed or scrapped.

The current business world exploits workers and deprives them of happiness and the chance to earn a reasonable living, and thus needs transformation. If "sustainability" is the new yardstick of values, it would also be reasonable to apply the brakes from time to time.

For example, if businesses in the same trade take turns to stay open late at night or on holidays, we can be one step closer to becoming a user- and eco-friendly society.

The manufacturing industry can absorb the impact of economic downturns by shortening work hours instead of slashing jobs. In Germany, workers can bank their overtime work as "savings" that can be "withdrawn" a few years later as holidays. Perhaps Japan can consider a similar program.

What about individuals? In view of Japan's rapidly aging society, tax increases may be inevitable.

However, to avoid drastic tax hikes, people in the private sector also need to take the initiative to share public functions by chipping in what they can. For example, people who volunteer to work in nursing, child care and other areas to help others should be rewarded with points that they can later use when they find themselves in need of nursing and medical services.

Such a system of mutual exchange is well worth considering.

We can all help by using our free time to tutor neighborhood children with their homework or to shop for elderly neighbors, for example. We should tear down our fences and do what we can to help each other.