Dear Friends,
It seems to me, there was a time when a company would find a good worker who was willing to learn and had a good work ethic, and they would train him or her, today that paradigm is turned on it’s head, and companies are not willing to spend a second teaching a good worker any job, no matter how easy it may be. Instead, they search for the perfect candidate who already knows whatever proprietary software they use, regardless of the employee’s prior work history, then are disappointed they are not an ideal employee. Companies narrow the availability of candidates for jobs by picking criteria that is marginally important and exclude other criteria that have great importance. Isn’t it obvious that criteria that is important should be primary while criteria that is only marginal should be secondary? There are not only a few businesses that do this, but it has become the major paradigm in business today and is why the talking heads constantly argue, “There are lots of jobs but no one qualified to do them… that is why we need immigrants.”
The fundamental reason for this paradigm is the wresting of the means of production from the bourgeois by new class ethic. The new class are the modern aristocracy. The new class is defined as those with advanced college degrees. They look down on anyone not in their class as lesser people. Since the new class makes up the CEOs, news reporters, lawyers, judges, ad men, politicians, etc… basically they run our government, economy and culture… the arrogance and egoistic self interest of the new class has wide ranging and profound implications for our society, economy and culture, not the least of which is a degrading economy. The corrosion of our economy obviously effects the demand for labor, as the economy deteriorates the demand for labor diminishes and along with that the universe of incentives for businesses visa labor changes.
Business owners are always complaining of the poor work ethic of their employees. You hear it any time a business owner talks about their firm. They can’t find good help. Of course if you want someone who is willing to work, maybe that is who you should be looking for, instead of someone who has been trained but has no work ethic. The likelihood of someone who is trained in an area but is not working in that area is that they might not be the best worker. Alternatively someone who is not trained in some aspect of the job, and is willing to learn, has the potential to be an excellent employee. In this case the employer is ignoring that which he wants for that which he doesn’t want.
Those who are willing and anxious to learn are willing to endure hardship to get what they want. That is the definition of a go getter. A go getter is by their nature a hard worker. Modern hiring practice excludes go getters, favoring those who either have book learning, or are willing to lie about their qualifications. An entrepreneur however usually seeks people who have a good work ethic and treats them well. In their arrogance the new class eschews those who are hard workers with little schooling, and instead pursue those with more schooling, regardless of their work ethic or intelligence, then treat the workers as cattle. The fact that the business practices of the new class has driven down the demand for labor, and thus the wages as well, puts them in the position of being able to continue practicing a loosing strategy.
Those at the top of the business world only seek lower wages because any other consideration to lower costs and improve quality is limited by government regulations. As we all know, government only increases regulations and along with increasing regulations comes higher costs for doing business. The new class that runs government have the same mindset as those new class CEOs who run our corporations. They both have disdain for the rest of society but need to convince us that they work in our interests, since there are so many more of us than them. So they pass more and more regulation to show they are doing something, those regulations however, drive up costs and to keep prices down in a low wage environment they have to continually seek lower priced workers. Which of course, lowers labor’s ability to buy the products they produce, creating a negative economic feedback.
The new class aristocracy that run our society today, lack the ability to self examine, and in their arrogance see those without advanced college degrees as lesser. Their haughtiness tricks them into only hiring people with “qualifications” that are in line with their view of the world, colored by their training in universities, and to ignore qualifications of real import. The Bourgeoisie used to train their employees themselves and sought go getters. Since computers have made almost every job today simple compared to the great skill needed in the past, the primary qualification should be work ethic and reliability, instead of having experience in a simple to use software program that can be taught in a few hours. Arrogance and egoism however will not be denied, and the new class have those attributes in great quantity.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
