Work is usually unpopular. Sometimes work shifts are nights, weekends, and holidays. Sometimes work is physically difficult or dangerous. Sometimes it’s boring. Sometimes work involves dealing with people who are angry, violent, insane, dishonest, or ignorant. That’s not just for law enforcement or other first responders; people in other jobs can encounter these as well. They might be managers, coworkers, or the public. Sometimes work involves a horribly long commute; I had a commute like that a few years ago. It’s no wonder Scott Adams has done so well with Dilbert. For many people, work is hell. It’s no wonder that being paid not to work during the initial stages of the pandemic became so popular.
Yet no goods or services will be produced without work, defined here as putting energy, resources, and knowledge together to produce goods or services that people want. This includes the goods and services demanded by people who don’t want to work.
Those who flat-out don’t want to work seem to think that either the world (the rest of us) owe them a living, and that any goods they want come out of Star Trek replicators at Amazon warehouses. A 3-D printer is not the same thing. Some just beg and hustle on the streets, even though businesses are offering signing bonuses for employees. Others seem to think that they can be social media influencers, or professional gamers, or make big money by posting videos on YouTube. Young women are flocking to OnlyFans. Hey, why work when you can pose and strip at home? However, for every one of these people who becomes famous and rich, there are many who are not famous and not rich. Many are called, but few are chosen. It would behoove these I’m-too-cool-to-work social media wannabes to remember that there would be no social media without the people who do real work to maintain the infrastructure of those companies and of national and global communications networks.
“All work is honorable,” said Secretary Colin Powell in his autobiography. Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese poet, said that “you work that you may keep pace with the Earth and the soul of the Earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession…” However, Gibran was writing during a time when most people in his country worked on their family farms, growing food mostly for themselves. Powell rose from humble roots to the heights of power in Washington D.C. at a time when the United States was more cheerful and prosperous. We can forgive a harassed, overworked customer service representative (for example), or someone working two jobs, or a weary first responder drafted for overtime at the last minute, for regarding work as a tiresome and pointless daily grind rather than something noble and honorable. Having the U.S. Federal Reserve inflate the dollar so much that a worker’s work is not rewarded doesn’t help either.
Pay and hours are, obviously, a big problem. It shouldn’t be a surprise that most people are going to be cynical about working if they are getting minimum wage while the C-suite crowd enjoys private yachts and multiple mansions. CEOs who live that lifestyle and wonder why they are having trouble finding employees should look in the mirror. However, skill and experience and training also count for a lot. Yes, there really is a reason why being a nurse or engineer or lawyer pays a lot more than stocking shelves or sweeping floors. Yet those who stock shelves, sweep floors, or flip burgers are also contributing to the bottom line, even if it’s not high-skill labor. They deserve to be paid well too. Their work may not be high-skill, but it is usually more physically onerous. The C-suite crowd would do well to remember an old saying from the Soviet Union: “They pretend to pay us, so we pretend to work.”
Workers don’t have to put up with low-skill/low-wage work. If you are in one of these jobs, do not expect corporate chieftains to have a sudden change of heart about your paycheck or working conditions. Learning new skills is easier now, thanks to various online courses. CompTIA paid off a lot for me! Thanks to CompTIA, I was able to leave my non-sworn law enforcement job and get a bigger paycheck, and it cost a lot less than a traditional university! People, the choice isn’t either high-priced universities or low-wage retail work. There are other options. You aren’t trapped. I did it! You can too! Don’t delay; something that is truly low-skill will sooner or later be automated: examples here, here, and here.
It is also time to reconsider the 40-hour work week. It worked well in the past, when inflation was lower and women generally took care of home chores. Now most women work full-time. Men and women return home tired. There isn’t much spare time to cook, clean, do laundry, or just rest. Again, nothing can be produced without people working, but forty hours per week was not handed down from Mount Sinai. Some companies and municipal agencies have tried a 32-hour work week with promising results. Others want to go beyond 40 hours; they seem surprised at the backlash. (Workers aren’t robots who never get tired? Gee, they didn’t teach that in my executive MBA program!) Working from home also addresses the problem of working people spread thin between work and home chores in the sense that someone working from home can, for example, start a load of laundry and then clock in for work (I do this), but not every job can be done from home.
We are not about to enter some golden age where robots do everything and we can all take it easy forever. (Yes, ChatGPT is a step forward in artificial intelligence. No, it will not pick up trash, fix roads, clean bathrooms, etc.) Work is not going to go away. Those who are able to do so should work; those of us who work should never be obliged to support laziness. But workers are going to have to feel that their work is rewarded and that they aren’t the only ones working.
We might reward work by repealing the Sixteenth Amendment, which legalized the income tax, and discourage laziness by increasing consumption (sales) taxes. That way, those who work will keep more of the money they earn, and those who don’t want to work will find that their life becomes more expensive, which might encourage them to work. We might also accept that some people prefer gig employment rather than the standard 40-hours-per-week daily grind; encouraging this instead of discouraging it by increased IRS scrutiny would encourage more people to work by preserving the option of gig employment. Abolishing the U.S. Federal Reserve and its quantitative easing (printing of money) will help too. Debasing currency never creates prosperity; only work and freedom create prosperity. Somehow, politicians around the world can’t be bothered to learn this lesson.
Employers need to remember that the pre-Covid days of employment aren’t coming back. People are less willing to put up with Dilbert pointy-haired boss management practices or annoying coworkers. They are not going to want to commute if it is possible to work from home, at least on a hybrid basis. Those employers who cannot be bothered to acknowledge this are going to find their workers leaving for employers who do.