Last week Michael Offutt posted about Apple products being made in China. In the comments someone called America "the entitlement capitol of the world." I scoff at that because when you compare the US to countries in Europe, American workers get a lot fewer days off, except for union workers who get everything (including deer hunting season) off. Yeah, so maybe many Americans don't work twelve hours (or more) in a sweatshop like in China, but we work a lot more than in France or Greece or other European countries.
And honestly, I have to say a little entitlement is a good thing. It's GOOD when workers feel entitled to wages they (and their families) can live off of. It's GOOD when workers feel entitled to safe working conditions so they don't lose limbs or suffer from debilitating diseases. It's GOOD when workers feel entitled to not being worked nearly to death and then cast aside for someone else. In other words, it's GOOD not to be a virtual slave.
The thing is, Americans used to be in the same boat as the Chinese. They used to be working 12 hours (or much longer) in shitty conditions for peanuts. Eventually they pushed for better conditions and through a lot of blood, sweat, and tears got things like the a 40-hour work week and minimum wage.
And then a funny thing happened: Americans got a life. They realized that work wasn't their whole life. They didn't have to be chained to a machine or a desk all day. They could actually go home to see their spouses and children, go to a movie, watch TV, etc. OMG, the horror!
I don't know when we, like the commenter on Offutt's blog, stopped believing in ourselves. I don't know when we started thinking that if we don't work as virtual slaves like the Chinese or Indians or Mexicans we're lazy and stupid. If anything that makes us SMART. We realized there's a big ol' world outside the office, a world more than the 1% should be allowed to enjoy. Remember that expression: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Happiness ain't sitting around a grimy factory 16-hours a day and living in a cramped dorm with thousands of other workers.
So hey, we're too entitled? Maybe China isn't entitled enough.
Well...there's "entitlement" to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...and then there is entitlement to luxury.
ReplyDeleteI know a lot of Americans that feel "entitled" to luxury. Example: I work in the voc rehab program. I get a referral for a laptop and I work really hard to find one, locate one that's a few years old, get it all fixed up and load it with programs that will prove useful in a job search, and then call the client in to pick it up.
I say, "Great news...I've got a laptop for you and am wondering when you can come pick it up?"
Them: "How long can I have it?"
Me: As long as you need it."
Them: Does it have Windows 7 on it?
Me: Nope. It has Windows XP but it runs really well.
Them: I need Windows 7. XP is old.
Me: Well this is all I got.
Them: Big sigh. It's inconvenient for me to pick it up. Can you deliver it?
Me: Sure. I'll see you on Friday.
Them: Anytime sooner? (Exasperated sigh).
Me: Nope.
FAST FORWARD TO FRIDAY WHEREIN I SHOW UP WITH COMPUTER
Them: (they are staring at it) "This is a Chinese computer."
Me: "So? It runs fine."
Them: "Don't you have anything else than Chinese garbage?"
Me: "Not right now."
Them: **Much rolling of eyes "I guess I can use it for now. BUT call me when a non-Chinese computer comes in."
Me: "I certainly will." (BTW...they never get a call).
Anyway...I'm sick of entitlements. I can see them everywhere. People are spoiled and they continuously look a gift horse in the mouth.
There are non-Chinese computers? Oh right, maybe Taiwanese ones. Or Singapore ones.
DeleteThough I'm reminded of the Seinfeld where Elaine starts a muffin restaurant where they sell just the top of the muffin. She wants to give the rest of the muffins to a food bank but the food bank people tell her that just because the people there are homeless doesn't mean they want someone's scraps.
Many people are spoiled -- but think of the numbers of people you see every day who aren't insisting on a non-Chinese, Windows 7 laptop. Those are the quiet people you don't notice, the ones who feel it's okay with them if their dinner took a few minutes longer to arrive because the restaurant is busy and so they don't bitch and moan and insist on a free lunch.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Grumpy. the US is 13th in average hours worked per year per full time worker:
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS
at 1778, which is about 34-35 hours per week on average. That may seem low, but the countries above us tend to be third-world or emerging economies (except for Greece, which, WTH, Greece? 2nd hardest working country in the world, but can't pay your bills? Get it together, land of Aristotle!) while first-world economies slack around; the lowest is the Netherlands at 1377, or just under 27 hours per week. So okay, in the Netherlands, they're always all high, but West Germany is second lowest, at 1409.
So the Germans work nearly 400 hours less per week than we do!
I haven't heard that the German culture is especially fat, or lazy, or otherwise falling apart, or entitled, and they are (so far as I can tell, based exclusively on listening to "Planet Money") kind of the model of economic brilliance.
This past recession, a/k/a The 2nd Great Depression, is harder to pull out of in part because so many workers are working harder for less money. In 2009, US workers produced an average of $63,000 or so per year in wealth:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/03/business/main3228735.shtml
I see I've exceeded my word limit (you knew that'd happen!) so to be continued...
... right here.
ReplyDeleteWhich is way above the average median household income for 2009 ($39,231) which means in 2009 -- the height of Great Depression 2: Electric Boogaloo -- workers were producing an average of $24,000 in wealth THAT THEY WEREN'T TAKING HOME, and that was way ahead of everyone else in the world.
By 2011, that productivity was staggering -- and costing jobs. In 2011, corporations earned an average of $11,000 in profits PER JOB,
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/04/good-news-worker-productivity-and.html
and the economy was outproducing the pre-depression economy by 0.14% -- but doing so with 7,300,000 fewer people employed.
In other words: We're working ourselves to death and producing sky-high profits to do so.
I work about 45-55 hours per week. So do most of the lawyers in my firm. Imagine if we were to work just 40, and take those extra 5 hours per week and hire another person. I would-- theoretically, I'll come back to this -- take a 12.5% paycut (reducing my pay by the same amount I reduce my time) and so would everyone else, but we'd hire someone else who would then make what we make, so 11 people would do the work that 10 now do and we'd all leave here at 5 p.m. every day.
Now: about that 12.5% paycut. If our corporation -- it's an S-Corp -- holds true to the average, then we make $11,000 in profit for every person who's employed here. That's PROFIT, not gross. We employ 33 people. So our firm on average can expect to make $363,000 profit off our employees. Which means we could hire a new employee, pay him, say, $60,000, and reduce the firm's profits by only 1/6, or 16% or so. That means everyone in the firm could retain their same salary, and the firm's overhead would be 1/6 closer to its profits, but we could hire a new guy and pay him 60,000 a year and go back to working 40 hours per week.
If people, including my lawyers, felt a little more ENTITLED, they might say "Why am I here on a Sunday when you could hire some new guy and reduce your bonus at the end of the year by 1/6 and I could spend time with my family?"
(The good news is: I discourage my employees from doing that. I try to encourage them to leave at 5, and we're probably going to hire two new people. But that's beside the point.)
But people are afraid and there's 7,300,000 people out there waiting to take our jobs, all because we run our society in such a screwy, heads-over-heels way.
I'm always pointing out to people that if we all just behaved rationally, we could have a nicer life. Lawyers, in particular, could have it cushier than we already do. We could, for example, agree that we will NEVER schedule anything on a Friday, so we could all take Fridays off and so could our clients or we could have easy, casual days in the office.
But even if 99.9% of us agree to do that, there's going to be one jerk/loser out there who schedules a deposition for Friday, and then everyone's going to do it.
In short: we could hire more people, all take minor cuts in pay or profits, live a more modest life that might mean we could only upgrade our cell phones 2 of every 3 years instead of every year, and have three weeks of vacation plus half-days on Fridays. But people are stupid.
WE NEED MORE ENTITLEMENT!
What happened the place where I work is when I started about 10 years ago we had 4 full-time accountants, 1 part-time accountant, 2 secretaries, and the Boss. Now we've got 2 full-time accountants, 1 part-time accountant, and the Boss. I actually threatened a grievance when they tried to dump all the secretary stuff on us accountants but in the end they fired all the secretaries anyway so there wasn't anything left to do so now I have to do all my own filing and shit like that.
DeleteAnd that's pretty much how it is all over. They cut back on people and dump the workload on those who are left. What can you do? Find a job somewhere else? Good luck.
Cool I'm glad yor experiment in censorship is over. I have a ton more to say than Briane did, I just can't type it all on my phone. It will sprain my thumbs. Bottom line is that I agree. Big corporations are force feeding us this line that we can't compete. I just got notified yesterday that my job is being looked at as a possible outsourced position - and I'll need to work a bit harder to keep it.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of injustice there. I don't want to make working weekends and late nights my plan for the next 40 years because they can get cheaper help than me overseas. It's frustrating.
To use another Seinfeld reference, employer right now have "hand" and they're using it as effectively as George did in that episode. Though maybe later it will come back on them. What sucks is you'll probably keep working your tail off on weekends and they'll just export the job overseas anyway to save a few more bucks.
DeleteAnd while you are mentioning, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". I wonder when more Americans will realise that universal healthcare is a right and not a privilege. Then again, your medical insurance companies and your pharmaceutical companies would argue against this.
ReplyDeleteTake care.
With respect, Gary
Well, I probably would have had more to say, but Briane took most of it (instead of Michael, which is pretty amazing).
ReplyDeleteThere's some European group that ranks countries on productivity every year. For a long time, France was right up there at the top. In recent years, they've fallen down the scale. Apparently, they were really pissed when Americans showed up in the top 3. They tried saying that we somehow biased the project, but America has nothing to do with this thing, and France had to just take it. I'm pretty sure Americans ranked #1 last year as the most productive people in the world. And that was with our unemployment pretty much as high as it's ever been.
Overall, I think Americans have been trained to feel entitled to work. To work for the 1% who get all the benefits.