It’s a snowy Tuesday and I’ve got the day off from work. Actually, we’re in the middle of a blizzard and the governor has declared a state of emergency, no travel allowed, all mass transit is closed down. Unless you are working in a hospital, a police officer, a fire fighter, and the like, you’re off today.
And guess what? The world will not come to an end. Oh for sure, we’re losing one day of “production” for consumers who now have one less day to consume. Month end goals are now in peril and quarterly reports will be severely off their projections. Oh, the horrors.
Instead, most of us will spend a quiet day at home, with friends and family, enjoying each others company and marveling at the wonders of nature, with little or none of this adding to the GDP, DOW, GNP, or other financial gauges of our value. Our productivity output as the nation’s labor force will falter. And to it all I say, so what?
Maybe it’s because I just turned 60 or maybe it’s because I’ve grown tired of waiting for the wealth that our productivity has created to trickle down. Maybe it’s because I noticed that since the early 70’s, my productivity as a laborer has gone up, our GDP is up, our nation’s wealth has grown, but I am no better off now than I was in the early 70’s. I’m not alone, I’m the majority and the majority of us have worked harder and harder each year only to see the wealth of our labor transferred to a tiny minority. It’s simple math. If we’re all working harder and the nation is getting richer for it but we’re not seeing it in our wallets, whose wallet is it in? It’s in the wallets of a small group that the Republicans call “Job Creators” while a more accurate term would be labor exploiters, little different from the pharaohs who “created jobs” for the men and women who built the pyramids. Yes, these pharaohs created jobs for masons, sculptors, day laborers, cooks, and so on, but they, like we, are not really going to benefit from the pyramid scheme. (pun intended).
So enjoy your day off and worry not about the falling DOW and GDP. You’re not getting a piece of that anyway. So what if the pharaoh’s pyramid will be a little shorter this month?
There is no work-life balance in American culture anymore. People don’t take earned vacation. They go into work very ill to show off. They spend time on social media bragging about how hard they work and all the extra things they do. Remember in the 50s they said we were going to work 20 hours a week because of technology? Nope.
Europeans must think we’re nuts. Not sure I disagree. Stay warm and dry. Play Monopoly (without the ersatz rule about putting money on Free Parking), try something new in the kitchen, or sewing room, or workshop. Alphabetize something. Do some amateur photography. Write. Hope everyone is safe and enjoys themselves today.
Because they are afraid of losing their job and with it, health insurance. I hear the Tea Party and the rest brag about our “Freedom” because unlike our Danish brothers, we can walk into a Dick’s Sporting Goods and buy a Bushmaster Assault Rifle to protect ourselves from dome imagined tyranny. What’s lost on them is that our Danish (and German and French and Canadian and..) brothers have true freedom from the real tyranny of the employers.
But that is the price of equality. People here, even in MA, still think they can get more for less from their government. In reality they get less for less, and they see that reality, feel government is broken and unresponsive, and then vote to cut it more.
Had a three hour conversation with a Finnish grad student named Stannis at a mutual friends house party, mainly about their education system and the differences he has encountered. He feels America is a much better place to be free and make money. He even went with some friends to Indiana to buy fireworks and go to a gun range, because why not? ‘America is a great place to make money and have fun, Finland is a great place to raise a family and retire’. That about sums it up for him.
…we’re a theme park.
…but for those who do it shouldn’t be a problem.
In the wiki entry on the two wings of the “conservative” Christian Democrats of Germany it said ‘the CSU is more socially conservative since it favors paying parents to stay home with their kids, while the CDU favors universal day care”. Their ‘tea party’ favors paying parents to stay home while their ‘moderate conservatives’ favor universal day care. Ask any Democrat outside of New England or the Northwest and they will run for the nearest exist to duck that question. It’s just sad.
All the social ailments from family breakdown to the rise of illegitimacy to the decline of marriage rates and the rise of abortion rates can be pinned down to our inequitable economy and the collapse of the middle class. Hopefully we can finally get this message across that government is a key partner to creating stable families.
I’ve long thought the Dems should be the ones campaigning hard as the party of “family values”.
So long as the identity interests don’t get aflutter at this rhetorical turn, but I’ve long wanted to just ask the next Republican speaker at the March for Life why the abortion rate went up 30% under Bush, or how cutting Head Start, keeping single payer DOA, or opposing living wages and family leave policies actually helps kids, and actually makes it easier to raise them?
And aren’t they the party always complaining about how many babies unwed welfare mothers are supposedly having? Either give them socialism or let them plan their families (ideally both), “neither nor” is a downright Malthusian option. It’ll be a lot of fun when Frankie rolls the Popemobile into town and speaks before these folks on the Hill.
I was hungry and you did not feed Me.
I was thirsty and you did not give Me drink.
I was imprisoned and you did not visit Me.
“Lord, when did we see You in that state and not respond?”
Verily I say unto whatever you do for the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you have done for Me.
the Pope coming to the US. The GOP is about to get politely stomped by a messenger of love.
For some of us, this is a pain in the neck because we actually own the business we run, and losing time to snow costs us money.
You appear happy to cling to your chains, waiting for the overseerers to give your that extra grain ration if you whine long and hard enough. Different strokes, I guess.
For those of us who MAKE our work instead of waiting for it to be bestowed upon us – it’s OUR damn pyramid that’ll be shorter.
I love it when the “self made’ swells hasten to assert their exceptional specialness.
It’s just so adorably uncouth.
you need to spell the word “swell” with a capital S. Get with the game. They deserve that level of deference. Gawd, next you will not be greeting the IOC Swells with a smile when the enter the hotel, bar, brothel or any other place they choose to venture in our fair Boston.
I notice that the righties who come here to joust seem to have some need to convince a bunch of strangers with opposing outlooks how much status they have, real or imagined.
It’s as if they don’t understand that it’s no way to win friends or influence anyone.
It’s like picking ones nose in public or farting in a crowded elevator and expecting applause to ensue.
If opposing points of view were not available to you (we’re glad to provide them here) it would be pretty boring and all you lefties couldn’t sit around so smugly and assert the wonderfulness of your ways. I for one enjoy hearing from and perhaps learning from other peoples ideas. An idea is never so strong as when it is rigorously opposed.
How imaginative, inspiring or useful is gloating really?
Is that really even a point of view?
If shared lore of the ups and downs of small biz versus just working for someone else was on the menu it might whet some appetites.
Garden variety bragging is more of a stretch and that often seems to be on the menu whenever one of these self made hero’s drops by to edify us.
There are some out there besides just of us smug lefties who find it to be evidence of a bad signal to noise ratio.
Was there ever a time in the long stretch of human discourse that bald chest puffing rose to the level of an ‘idea’?
Just wondering?
If you run a small or medium-sized business where a couple of days off is eating into your margins in a substantial way, I don’t think John’s post was aimed at you. Couldn’t there be ways to structure taxes that would work for you both and avoid the obscene concentration of wealth and power at the very top?
That’s the myth of the “job creator”.
How many businesses actually “make” jobs?
If the population grows–more demand makes jobs. If money or resources are added to a system–more demand makes jobs.
At steady state . . .
OK, you start your own electrician business. You go out and advertise and get some customers. If you weren’t working for them, other people would be. So – no new jobs.
You hire more electricians to work for you. There’s no new work (we’ve already established that you are just taking work from other people) so your employees would be either doing the work themselves or working for someone else. This is just division of labor: you are doing more selling and managing, they are running more circuits. If you weren’t keeping the billing and scheduling straight, they would be. So – no new jobs.
You come up with a new idea for fancy track lighting and convince people to put it in. Sounds like a new job, doesn’t it? But unless the customers were keeping that money under their mattresses, they would be investing it, or spending it on something else. You get the track lighting business, someone else doesn’t get to do the new landscaping. So – no new jobs.
This can’t work in all circumstances (there have to be some economic inputs or activities that act as a multiplier) but it seems to me that this train of thought contradicts any easy assumption that being an employer “creates” jobs.