My niece, a wonderful single mother, supporting her child by
running a day-care program that works with other working
mother's children, sent me this little story. Her parents work
two jobs as teachers and work in the civil service while they
have put their four children through school and two through
college with a third in college at present. The entire family
helps each other with the parents supporting children and
grandchildren in their endeavors. This little story
seemed
more like "black humour" when I thought of how hard they
actually work in this "paradise." So I took it seriously
and
wrote a reply. I hope it is not too serious.
REH
Dawn Beam wrote:
I've been feeling very tired lately. I've been blaming it
on iron poor blood, lack of vitamins, dieting and a dozen
other maladies. But now I found out the real reason. I'm
tired because I'm overworked!The population of this country is 237 million. 104 million
are retired. That leaves 133 million to do the work.There are 85 million in school, which leaves 48 million to
do the work.Of this, there are 29 million employed by the federal
government. This leaves 19 million to do the work.Four million are in the Armed Forces, which leaves
15 million to do the work.Take out the 14,800,000 people who work for the state and
city governments, and that leaves 200,000 to do the work.There are 188,000 in hospitals, so that leaves 12,000 to do
the work.With 11,998 people in prisons now, that leaves just two
people to do the work. You and me. And you're sitting
there reading e-mail!
Dawn,
Thanks for the lightness, but it masks a serious question.
First of all there are more people than you said, probably 300
million and over 100 times as many in prison, most being minorities.
I know, however that your joke is not so funny when it expresses real
frustration. I also know you are overworked and
a wonderful
mother and granddaughter as well.
The one question you aren't asking is how much work is there
that is significant and how much is just tiring busy work?
Busy work makes one feel ignorant and useless while significant
work makes one feel energized. The number of significant
and
community oriented jobs i.e. jobs where people work in teams for
long periods of time, are slowly being devoured by what is called
the "Lean and Mean" industrial strategy. In short it means
down size
labor and replace with machines and computers.
Give labor jobs that have little permanence and make them individually
supply
their own health-care, disability, family health & retirement.
Unlike your
father's inadequate government job which just pays too little for a
family of
four children with college, "Lean & Mean" is a deliberate strategy
to get the
average worker to accept less and lower their expectations.
In order
to cover this up you must distract them (like you do with children
when
they complain about doing something you want) with:
1. games like the stock market (gambling and usury)
2. complexity like taking money
out of medicine and education
and giving it to a third party (stockholders) and
calling the resultant
lower amount available for the actual task "efficiency."
Less effort
for the company and more tasks for families working
two jobs already.
(Reagan's Law: "Overworked people don't have
the energy to protest
societal and environmental abuses!")
3. an enemy: in Europe it was
Jews and Gypsies (they are still
sticking it to the Gypsies ), in the
U.S.A today it is your neighbor who doesn't agree
with you about
abortion or who isn't the same religion, or who
is elderly, or retired
after a long work life in the same job (and whose
retirement funds is
the basis for capital that makes the market prosperous).
Great
targets for envy but these retired skilled folks
would make ideal allies
if the current youth could find a way to enlist
them as such.
There is a word for all of this and it can be looked up on the Internet.
It is called AGILE Manufacturing and is the code word for temporary,
flexible jobs that require people to have flexible mobility
(be willing to
move anywhere and the family be damned!), no loyalty to anything
in
work except the temporary task at hand (how much money, is the
supreme indicator of personal value, i.e. your "worth.") & the
slow
withering
away of the democratic government in favor of the stockholder
controlled
corporation, ("the big government is 'corrupt' while the 'competition'
of the
market keeps people honest.")
Well Dawn,
Dad taught me that the most important thing was to tell the
truth, even if no one else did. But to balance the harshness
of that light
with the reality of your community and to try to live together in peace.
If
your neighbors are constantly moving that is hard to do and truth becomes
just one more irritant in your life. I still try to live
the way Dad taught me
and as he said "God gave me eyes, ears and a mind to help me
decide
what was right for me and my family." That was what both
he and mother
taught me even though my ears were sometimes "stopped up."
You are right about the reason for your and our fatigue. When
you have
to spend:
-hours on the internet searching the reason for your medical problems
because the medical establishment isn't doing their job,
-or when you have to spend days researching your children's schools
(as we do here in NYCity with school choice) and then checking up on
them to see if they are doing what they said.
Or consider, in the workplace, my company spends $120,000 a year
in training for personnel who have graduate degrees in music but
who
have only been trained to sing in church or synagogue.
That makes us train them to act, dance, sing in ensembles, use theater
technology and worst of all to DO practical grammar in their
Diction (but
they have plenty of Math and Science!) Conservatives
complain about
history ed. but my experience is that these graduates know the history
of
America but nothing about the history of their profession and why
that
makes these courses necessary for our work. It is just
as bad amongst
business majors who are taught the local economic theories but little
of
the effects of those theories on the history of the world.
They don't even
know the history of American business practices!
-when I have to send back (for four years) four different Steinway
Pianos
sold at premium and with technical flaws, before I get a good one.
And
that is the best piano on the market!
-and then their is the generally poor quality of Information hardware,
(computers, scanners, color lasers) with huge costs on replacement
consumables, ($500 for the color cartridges every five reams of
paper
if you're lucky) and $90 to $120 per hour technicians necessary
to keep
them running.
-Not to mention the problem of lost work in dealing with poor quality
and equipment replacement. Yes they do have warranties that replace
the parts but lost work and sales are not covered.
This kind of built in distraction means that you spend your life being
impotent in health, retirement and insurance (since you are
not
a big company but only one consumer); forced to be an expert
in
health and education since private and for-profit schools have
destroyed the nations public schools and health care system; and if
you don't want the market to devour your retirement you had better
pay attention to the market for a many hours a week or earn
enough money to hire a market "professional" to do it for you.
If other profession's college graduates are anything like mine
then,
educational "generalism" is the rule and if they don't do as we do
in
MCORE, i.e. spend relatively vast amounts for training, then
their
companies must be rife with ignorance and inadequacy.
My
experience exactly, since unlike us, they seem to be able
to get
away with it.
In my business no one can appear on the stage in such a condition
and still succeed, so we train our personnel no matter what
the cost.
Finally to live in this brave new world you are not supposed to care
about
the gambling (unless it helps an Indian) and the Game
of
Capital finance.
Remember, the rule is: Only if it creates money is it of "value."
Churches, hospitals, public schools, culture are all "valueless" in
this perverted kind of thought, and less important than mining or
clear-cutting forests, or remaking next year's "new" products for
the marketplace. "If Capital doesn't expand it dies (contracts)."
Expansion and the Games as the meaning of life. Sounds like
Rome.
Love to you all
Give Ashley a kiss from all of us,
Uncle Ray
