Hard Work Is Not Rewarded

          I continue to listen to points made by the Occupy movement and their opponents. While the Occupy movement means many things to many people, two messages seem recurrent: (1) The System is rigged to transfer middle class money upwards, and (2) corporations have undue influence on politics. The numbers over the last twenty years make their first point a certainty. I’ll update this weeks numbers at a later time. I sympathize with their second view. We’re a nation of the People, not of the corporation. The Founding Fathers would, in my view, never have made a business a “person”. Leave it to modern legal lunacy to do so.

          The Core Problem is that the System is rigged….after a fashion. This is not so much a conspiracy as a convergence of many factors. The bottom line is that Middle Class money is being sucked into Corporate Class pockets. This is bad for everyone, but mainly for the Middle Class. Corporations can just take their ball and go to emerging markets to create jobs and profits. With @70% of corporate profit generated outside the US, in one sense corporations might be seen as not part of our economy. They are certainly no longer part of our economic solution. Unless Bubba wants to learn Hindi and wear a turban, he’s stuck in Bugtussle getting money sucked out of his pocket. 78% of our economy is based on consumer spending. Wages are declining. Mortgages are underwater. Households are fueled by credit and generate debt. We’re not likely to spend our way out of this.

          Most Americans are not aware or do not believe that money is being sucked out of their pockets by the corporate class. Some are aware of this and are on the street bitching about it. I point out that our most profitable domestic sector is finance. I can think of fewer more worthless ways to expend one’s life. In the olden days, financiers would invest in the dreams and success of others and make a profit doing so. These days, finance means short term fixation on massive micro-transaction profits. Producing nothing…shuffling cash from one rich pocket to another. No wonder people who work for a living are pissed at Wall Street.

          Objectors to the Occupy crowd appear to be advocates for hard work. If these bums just worked hard, they wouldn’t be on the street (looking at you Herman). This is the ACTUAL central argument and fallacy of today’s economic situation. The reality is that hard work is not rewarded.

          This statements shocks advocates of the American Dream, which is based on individual hard work. As a caveat let me say that if you want to start your own business and work a bijillion hours a week, the American Dream works pretty much as well now as it ever did (if you can get the startup capital). In the olden days, if you worked for somebody else (which most people do to rely on funds and healthcare), hard work and loyalty were rewarded. When the company profited everybody profited. Hence that American Dream thing. However, your hard work and loyalty are now no longer rewarded.

          It is crucial to understand the dissolution of the psychological contract between business and employees. This occurred in the 1980s and I have mentioned it previously. It is REALLY REALLY important to understand what this means. Business no longer HAS to reward loyalty or hard work, or give raises, or share profits, or keep your job. When the company profits, the workers NO LONGER PROFIT. The economy shifted from rewarding work to rewarding ownership. That’s a BIG DEAL.

          It means that corporations could wander around the globe looking for profits and have no loyalty to America or Americans. Their loyalty was to their owners. In many ways, this mindset is similar to the industrialists of previous centuries. During the 20th Century, American workers fought long and hard for a System that would create and benefit the Middle Class. It appears that they have to do so once more.

          So when Middle Class workers oppose the Occupy movement, they are loudly proclaiming the core value of hard work, ignorant that this is obsolete. One can be “right” and still have your way of life ripped apart by the System. Just ask the farmers of Alabama who lost their Hispanic agrarian labor force within the last few weeks because of their tough immigration bill. Were Hispanics really a big problem in Alabama? Unless the System changes, these farms will go the way of their workforce. I doubt that the unemployed playing drums in Oakland will say “Dude, let’s go down to  Alabama and pick whatever the hell they pick in Alabama”. In spite of the farmers plight, I fear the only one going down to Alabama will be the devil (there's a new song in there somewhere).