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I have to say I don't understand many things about your comment, so I'd be glad if you were to clear them for me. 1) You blame your "individualistic natures" f

by tiberius1900 8y ago

I have to say I don't understand many things about your comment, so I'd be glad if you were to clear them for me. 1) You blame your "individualistic natures" for the appearance of pointless jobs. Now, I haven't lived in the US, but that seems odd to me. I live in Romania, a society that is profoundly focused on the community, and the abundance of pointless jobs, particularly in the communistic years (communism being a profoundly anti-individualistic ideology) was absolutely staggering. It just seems to me pretty self-evident that, as you move the focus from the individual, and his own happiness, he will find less motivation to do a meaningful job, and be contempt with a pointless, but simpler job. I may be missing something important here, as, again, everything I know about American culture I know from the internet, so, if I am, please feel free to tell me. 2) "Public jobs are low-paying and staffed with people who couldn't find jobs in the private sector, resulting in little incentive to do more than the absolute minimum." I'm afraid I just don't follow here. Wouldn't the low pay motivate people to work at pulling themselves out of those jobs and into the private sector? 3) You claim, quite rightly, that companies are not concerned with the public good, just with their survival and/or success, and consider jobs given out as "saintly privileges". Firstly, all of the modern advances of mankind, from the industrial revolution, to the ridiculously cheap products provided by Rockefeller, Edison, and the like, to the supercomputers almost every human in the civilized world carries with him in his pocket, were made, not in the interest of "the greater community", but in those people/companies' self-interest. Secondly, which worker do you think is more productive? The one that says "I am owed this job by my company"? Or the one that says, "My job is nothing but a privilege given onto me by the company, and I must prove every day that I deserve it?" In any case, I'd be really grateful if you could explain these points to me. Thanks in advance!!

Dirlewanger 8y ago
>I may be missing something important here, as, again, everything I know about American culture I know from the internet, so, if I am, please feel free to tell me. Americans, as the saying does, live to work. Many tie their individual worth to the jobs they do. We invest a lot of ourselves into our jobs (those we care about anyway), and oftentimes the output doesn't equal the input. >Wouldn't the low pay motivate people to work at pulling themselves out of those jobs and into the private sector? You greatly overestimate the average person's drive to better themselves. Plenty are fine to get something that pays the bills and that's it. >Secondly, which worker do you think is more productive? You're going between 2 extremes that I didn't mention. My comment about companies offering jobs comes from the understanding of how positions (mainly in the white collar industry) used to be in the 50s/60s/70s vs. today. People that worked at the IBMs/RANDs/GMs/etc. of yester-decade worked there for decades. They were loyal to that company, almost to a fault. When they retired, they were given an expensive Omega with their name engraved in the back. Some even got pensions. Note this was also largely in the context of the pre-globalization age. Nowadays companies have no problem axing whole divisions to meet their bottom lines. They will go overseas. They have no problem leaving an area they've been at for decades. All the while, baby boomers continue to wonder out loud why their kids don't have the same earnings potential as they did. Not saying any of this is good or bad, it just is.

Dirlewanger 8y ago

>I may be missing something important here, as, again, everything I know about American culture I know from the internet, so, if I am, please feel free to tell me. Americans, as the saying does, live to work. Many tie their individual worth to the jobs they do. We invest a lot of ourselves into our jobs (those we care about anyway), and oftentimes the output doesn't equal the input. >Wouldn't the low pay motivate people to work at pulling themselves out of those jobs and into the private sector? You greatly overestimate the average person's drive to better themselves. Plenty are fine to get something that pays the bills and that's it. >Secondly, which worker do you think is more productive? You're going between 2 extremes that I didn't mention. My comment about companies offering jobs comes from the understanding of how positions (mainly in the white collar industry) used to be in the 50s/60s/70s vs. today. People that worked at the IBMs/RANDs/GMs/etc. of yester-decade worked there for decades. They were loyal to that company, almost to a fault. When they retired, they were given an expensive Omega with their name engraved in the back. Some even got pensions. Note this was also largely in the context of the pre-globalization age. Nowadays companies have no problem axing whole divisions to meet their bottom lines. They will go overseas. They have no problem leaving an area they've been at for decades. All the while, baby boomers continue to wonder out loud why their kids don't have the same earnings potential as they did. Not saying any of this is good or bad, it just is.