Working hard? - or Hardly working?
How do you earn your living? Are you "working hard" for a wage or salary as an employee of someone else? Or do you "hardly work", living instead perhaps on income and gains on investments? [If you are self-employed, as I was for 25 years, you probably earn most of your money by your own hard work and by that of your hardworking employees, whom I hope you pay fairly].
You probably have some investments in the stock market, either individual stocks or some mutual funds, perhaps as part of a 401(k) plan through your employer. You also probably know what the Dow Jones average is and maybe the Nasdaq and S& P 500. If you are still a "hard worker", you likely have visions of someday "hardly working" and living instead on passive income. If you work for startup, you could be one of the next "Microsoft millionaires". Hopefully you don’t work for the next Enron.
The last time I "worked hard" for an employer was January 1, 1974. Since the employer had been required by an Order of the National Labor Relations Board to give me my job back after illegally firing me for union organizing activity, they were quite thrilled to receive my resignation letter. Even though the employees had voted the union down several months before, the company was still nervous about having me around. I made my resignation effective at the end of the day on January 1st, in order to get paid for the holiday without actually working, having learned something about nickel and dime economics from my employer.
That one day as an employee in 1974 turned out to be of more value than I realized, because the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) took effect that day, and I thereby became vested in a portion of the company pension plan under he new law. If my last day had been December 31, 1973, I would not have been vested at all.
ERISA was designed to regulate company pension plans to prevent them being used for the benefit of the top executives while screwing over the lower echelon workers. But top executives have high priced lawyers who figure out new ways to get around laws like ERISA , and lower echelon workers usually have a hard time figuring out exactly how they are still getting screwed.
The gravy ERISA took out of executive pensions was replaced with exorbitant executive salaries, bonuses, stock options, severance packages and other gimmicks, with the added attraction that these payments could be received much sooner than retirement age and the recipient could be long gone with the payments before the company went broke, leaving the workers pensionless. Once the executives were no longer personally interested in pension returns, they could also work to short change the pension fund, putting that money instead into profits and getting another bonus for doing so.
As an economic conspiracy theorist, I am struck by the fact that the adoption of 401(k) plans has made so many employees feel like they are participants in the "ownership society". They identify with other fellow capitalists and faithfully follow the market indexes and fantasize about someday "hardly working". In spite of the fact they still work hard full time, this new identification, combined with other myths carefully crafted by the wealthy elite, has made these workers think politically more like capitalists than like the hard workers they actually are.
I am not disparaging employee investments. I am just saying workers should remember that their fundamental asset is their ability and willingness to "work hard" and not their dream of "hardly working", and they should have that in mind when they vote. If you have "worked hard" and been able to achieve "hardly working" status, or if you are able to do so in the future, remember what it took for you to get there and vote to give others the chance you had, rather than voting like a capitalist.
You probably have some investments in the stock market, either individual stocks or some mutual funds, perhaps as part of a 401(k) plan through your employer. You also probably know what the Dow Jones average is and maybe the Nasdaq and S& P 500. If you are still a "hard worker", you likely have visions of someday "hardly working" and living instead on passive income. If you work for startup, you could be one of the next "Microsoft millionaires". Hopefully you don’t work for the next Enron.
The last time I "worked hard" for an employer was January 1, 1974. Since the employer had been required by an Order of the National Labor Relations Board to give me my job back after illegally firing me for union organizing activity, they were quite thrilled to receive my resignation letter. Even though the employees had voted the union down several months before, the company was still nervous about having me around. I made my resignation effective at the end of the day on January 1st, in order to get paid for the holiday without actually working, having learned something about nickel and dime economics from my employer.
That one day as an employee in 1974 turned out to be of more value than I realized, because the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) took effect that day, and I thereby became vested in a portion of the company pension plan under he new law. If my last day had been December 31, 1973, I would not have been vested at all.
ERISA was designed to regulate company pension plans to prevent them being used for the benefit of the top executives while screwing over the lower echelon workers. But top executives have high priced lawyers who figure out new ways to get around laws like ERISA , and lower echelon workers usually have a hard time figuring out exactly how they are still getting screwed.
The gravy ERISA took out of executive pensions was replaced with exorbitant executive salaries, bonuses, stock options, severance packages and other gimmicks, with the added attraction that these payments could be received much sooner than retirement age and the recipient could be long gone with the payments before the company went broke, leaving the workers pensionless. Once the executives were no longer personally interested in pension returns, they could also work to short change the pension fund, putting that money instead into profits and getting another bonus for doing so.
As an economic conspiracy theorist, I am struck by the fact that the adoption of 401(k) plans has made so many employees feel like they are participants in the "ownership society". They identify with other fellow capitalists and faithfully follow the market indexes and fantasize about someday "hardly working". In spite of the fact they still work hard full time, this new identification, combined with other myths carefully crafted by the wealthy elite, has made these workers think politically more like capitalists than like the hard workers they actually are.
I am not disparaging employee investments. I am just saying workers should remember that their fundamental asset is their ability and willingness to "work hard" and not their dream of "hardly working", and they should have that in mind when they vote. If you have "worked hard" and been able to achieve "hardly working" status, or if you are able to do so in the future, remember what it took for you to get there and vote to give others the chance you had, rather than voting like a capitalist.
posted by Tom Blake | 3:09 PM
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