In a full employment situation, wages increase and conditions improve for "miserable jobs".
Given higher pay, many people will choose such jobs because they aren't all consuming. My son-in-law owns a long haul truck. He works hard and tells me "if the wheels don't turn, then I don't earn". A lot of money flows through his hands. He can get a gross $2,000-$3,000 for a two day trip from Seattle to Los Angeles. But, he must keep driving - those wheels have got to turn.
It's not easy work. (Though it's highly computerized and my son-in-law has a lap top in the cab to connect to a service that lists attractive contracts. In this way he moves from state to state delivering a load, then picking up another nearby.)
My dentist is tied to his job for five days a weeks, often handling more than one patient at a time. I don't think he works Saturday except for emergencies. But, I think he is still paying off the cost of buying the practice. For him too - "if the drills don't turn, then he doesn't earn".
They both earn a large income but are tied to their jobs.
Cleaning lavatories isn't the greatest job - but you leave it behind when you go home.
A job doesn't have to be meaningful (a thought beloved of many). It has to bring in bread and butter and whether it's developing an artistic streak or not doesn't matter. Brad moans about his computer programming job, but presumably it brings home the bacon, so that's all right. After work, he comes into his own - may even read a book or two.
Ray is fortunate in that he gets income for doing things he loves. I rather think that Keith much enjoys his work. As for me, I've spent an exciting time through much of my life trying to bring in the millennium. You may have noticed that I've failed.
Up until now - there is still some time left.
I've been doing what I want to do, even though the wolf at times was not at the door - he was inside the house.
Toward the end of the Big War, my factory closed and I was unemployed. I couldn't get a job because I was due to be called up (drafted) at any time. As the war was over they thought it was safe to let me into the RAF. However, no-one wanted to hire someone who might disappear next day. So, I was out-of-work with a wife who was preggers - as we once said (well, it was our language - we could do what we liked with it).
I found that a local food factory - Telfers - hired day laborers. At 6am, a motley group of us in overalls stood in a line while a foreman chose some of us to work the day and be paid at the end of it. The only overall I owned was my toolmaker's white coat, so I wore it. This obviously set me up a rung from the others, so I didn't get a job cleaning the lavatories. Instead I was given a stack of trays in which large cakes were baked.
They didn't use waxed paper. Instead, ordinary paper was spread in the tray. Then with a small sponge and a few deft wipes I spread oil over the paper and passed them on to the tray fillers. In a couple of hours, I had oiled all the trays and went looking for something else to do. That's when I found that the stack was supposed to be a full day's work.
I went round the factory day by day, learning how they operated. I found that sausage rolls came in three kinds with varying amounts of meat inside. Most meat went into the rolls that ended in the snazzier restaurants. Much less meat went into those destined for retail. After 6 years of war, the Brits deserved a little more meat in their sausage rolls.
Very little meat went into the sausage rolls that went to the NAAFI canteens (USOs). But what do soldiers care so long as it's hot?
I graduated to the "Two Pound Pork Pies". Two pounds of dubious pork pieces were dumped into a shell of pastry - then sent off to the ovens. Problem was that the pastry shell couldn't have holes in it. So, it had to be kneaded to remove the holes. The fellows would take a lump of dough in each hand and knead away until they were ready to be pressed out into a shell for the pork.
No-one would tell me, or show me, how to knead two simultaneous pieces of dough, but I practiced until I had it. It didn't get me liked. I was too young to realize this was THEIR skill. They were paid for this and I shouldn't have intruded on their territory.
The manager wanted to hire me full time, but I refused. For most of the year I had been in a high tax bracket. Of course, later I forgot to include my day laboring wages in my tax statement - so got a hefty refund at year's end.
In due course, I was in the RAF eating those rotten sausage rolls. Fortunately, the incidents at Hiroshima and Nagasaki prevented my arrival in Burma, or somewhere else in South-East Asia. You'll notice the "fortunately". It's an ill wind . . . .
Afterwards, I sympathized with those workers. Their days were spent in wiping oil in pans, or kneading lumps of dough. Doesn't have the shock effect of scrubbing urinals, but could be soul searing.
Or perhaps not - if the pay is very good and/or the hours are short.
In a free society, with the shortage of labor that is a natural condition, people would have to be attracted to the rotten jobs with higher pay. People who are mentally challenged (ouch!) would probably get jobs at doormen and suchlike.
Remember "The Last Laugh"? (That allusion should bring out some lurkers who have enjoyed those excellent German films of the twenties - maybe even Brian.)
Needed are the high wages of a full employment economy. Not arrived at by using artificial stimulants such as Minimum Wage Laws, whose purpose is mainly to give our congressmen an excuse to preen themselves for 'doing good'.
Nor by the actions of CEO's (or Communist leaders) who pick grapes for public relations because they know they won't be picking grapes tomorrow.
What we need is a truly free society.
Then, we need not worry about the drudge-jobs.
Harry
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Karen wrote:
Probably as much of a PR effort than anything else, some CEOs have "done stints with their workforce", as in serving customers in their fast food restaurant, swabbing floors, baking bread for a week, for a month, etc. Many businesses still make new sales or management hires learn work around the production floor so that they do a better job of selling the product. But when it is someone in higher realms of power or wealth, this touches on the common man's gratitude that the lord of the manor, or the monarch, knows and cares about those under his or her protection, that deep down, they are 'one of us'. It reaches back to literary symbolism that is ingrained in our thinking. We have myths. They hold fast. Sometimes we cling to them for dear life, desperately. KarenDo you mean that Mitch Daniels might take a summer off to work in the fields picking fruit with migrant workers? Rumsfeld might work as a janitor at Wal-Mart? Wolfowitz arise in the middle of the night to bake bread for the morning rush hour? Eliot Abrams work in a retirement home, changing beds and bringing food trays? John Poindexter work as a receiving clerk in a county jail? Condi Rice to stand in a factory sorting tomatoes for canning all day? Dick Cheney pump gas, check tires, wash the windshield? George Bush, as fit as he is, haul garbage cans and throw them onto a truck? Wonderful idea. - Karen >>>> Yes, a wonderful idea and wonderfully expressed! That made me chuckle all day. But in the world of reality Ed Weick was dead right when he subsequently wrote: <<<< The Chinese tried something like that in the Cultural Revolution. While it may have been humbling, it had no staying power. >>>> And, as a result, the memory of Mao Zedung who caused the deaths of at least 30 million of starvation by stupid policies and set back China economically by 10 years, is now despised by the Chinese elite (according to "China's New Rulers" by Nathan and Gilley [New York Review Books]). No, we have to return to the mechanisms that did, in fact, produce homo sapiens -- the survival of the fittest or, more specifically in our case, the survival of the mentally ablest. Whether we like the present product or not, the fact remains that we are the consequence of a line of evolution during which our brain expanded enormously relative to the other primates. If we legislate our intelligentsia away in a tide of egalitarianism then we are doomed. The Chinese know this. Some of those who survived the Cultural Revolution did so by eating grass, bark from the trees and even their own children. They will not forget what Mao Zedung's egalitarianism produced for a long time to come. Let's not kid ourselves. We are now living in bonanza times produced by the accident of massive quantities of cheap oil and natural gas. When these easily-tapped resources peter out in the next 20/30 years or so, our descendants are going to have to live by their wits again -- as we've always done, except briefly during the last century. Keith
****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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