Return of the worker

And why should we desire that some people who work hard are made to feel like losers?

We usually confirm our existing beliefs when we interpret news.  So with our explanations of why people didn’t come back to work after staying at home during Covid.  Child-care availability and cost? Still have a nest egg left over from relief payments?  Took early retirement?  Are lazy and shiftless?  Still feared the epidemic?  Fed up with low end jobs and more confident than before that they can do better? Willing to get by (reducing consumption) with being a one job family?

They are all probably true, but to different extents.  Our prior beliefs that will determine for each of us how much each contributes to the phenomenon. 

I want to examine one of these in this blog. Maybe it’s significant. Maybe not. But it is an explanation that I was predisposed to find important.

While we all pay lip service to the ennobling value of work, reality often disagrees.  Low paying jobs, jobs that people take when nothing else is available and they are rather desperate, are viewed by many as Sh-t jobs and those who work them, losers. 

During their “Covid vacations” many people found productive work at home, fixing things, making things, gardening, cooking.  Purchases during this period bear this out.  People did work that was satisfying.  Those who kept busy in these ways, became a maker, a provider, a person of value. 

To return to the old dead-end job would mean once again being a “loser.” 

In our culture pay is a prime indicator as to the value of a job and by association the value of the worker who does the job.  Low pay means low value.  It is hard to maintain self-respect, if one is doing low reward, low value work.

Not returning to such jobs is a silent unorganized strike. Some of the relief money sent by the government serves as a “strike fund.”

The solution?  Raise wages and improve working conditions. 

Employers will pass the costs on to consumers, as long as consumers are willing to pay.  So be it and why not?  Higher prices for goods as a result of better wages and working conditions for workers is “good trouble.” That is an “inflation” we should be glad to welcome.

Will it lead to a spiral of rising expectations and lead to run-away inflation?  I side with most mainstream economists that say no. As long as consumption and production are reasonably well matched, inflation is unlikely, irrespective of human emotions and self-fulfilling prophecies.  We are more likely to see a onetime upward readjustment of wages and prices (profits as well, perhaps).  Higher prices will then mean a reevaluation of consumption choices as the consumer compares prices and assesses needs.

This is good news.