Maybe the work ethic is Mormonism's silver lining. Or was, I've been out of the loop for a while.

I have to wonder if the labor shortage is related to the decline of religion. I would think it's more about the general anomie in the US primarily and in Europe to a lesser extent. Why can't we make things anymore?

The difference I see in working with American vs Chinese manufacturers is like night and day. Here in the US, the thrill is gone. I see the people on the front line. Where's the pride in their work? Their sense of ownership? Oh right, they are wage slaves replaceable on a whim. There's no social contract.

I worry about the victim culture being taught in American universities. How does that engender trust between management and labor? What is our answer to Confucianism?

I think I can ask that here given the atheist majority. You probably don't want to pin the future of work on a protestant revival.

Random entertaining stuff
(Just desultory fun data points)

https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Putnam-1.jpg

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/Screen%20Shot%202013-09-26%20at%205.30.23%20PM.png

https://tacanow.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TACA-Occurrence-Graph-2020_c-copy-scaled.jpg

https://www.profgalloway.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/image-1.png

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/13/1072529477/more-than-1-million-fewer-students-are-in-college-the-lowest-enrollment-numbers-

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/01/11/men-enroll-and-leave-programs-hardest-hit-covid

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Nonmarital_Birth_Rates_in_the_United_States%2C_1940-2014.png/800px-Nonmarital_Birth_Rates_in_the_United_States%2C_1940-2014.png

https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/1037156/crude-birth-rate-us-1800-2020.jpg

https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/marriageupdated-w640.png

https://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and-sciences/NCFMR/images/family-profiles/fp-20-22-fig1.png
Divorce - falling because marriage rates

Gotta diagnose right before determining treatment options or even if.
Consistent inflections around say, 1965 -- so, what occurred then?
Any say, movements? Inventions? What impact?

Is it really so simple as Americans don't believe in a unified fairy tale and so everything went to heck

"Why can't we make things anymore?"
The US does make products, google "American Made". While it may not be at the percentage you like, it will not change. Automation has has been the major culprit of traditional manufacturing from the past. Remember mill and lathe manufacturing? Now its 5 and 6 axis running 24 hours, unattended.

I can't speak for anybody else but my children are working much harder than I did. With cell phones and internet, there is no escaping but a subject for another post.

Whenever a dubious claim to superiority is thrown out there, it's best to see who's being put down in the process.


1. Protestant work ethic is not just puffery or self-congratulations but an implicit slur against the implied lazy Catholics. It's a cover for anti-immigration policies on the west side of the Pond against the Irish, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and the entirety of Latin America. (Those on the eastern side of the Pond can fill in the corresponding biases.)


2. You seem to have a historical blindness to say the 1970s and 1980s when large parts of American industry were outsourced creating the Rust Belt - not long after the 1950s and 1960s when inner cities were torn apart due to racist policies, interstate construction, urban "renewal", and so forth. So when huge parts of the United States' economic policy were built around finding cheaper labor overseas and consolidating capital upwards, how is that you wonder that Americans have neither the capital nor the capacity to rebuild from that?


3. The Chinese outnumber the United States 4 to 1. They have a command economy. And most importantly, they're just the "enemy of the day". The political and media narratives feed into simplistic tales for American tastes. When every program you watch on television has the nuance of a sledgehammer, you create a populace who believe in "good guys vs. bad guys" fairy tales with one common enemy. If this were still the 1980s, we'd be bemoaning economic losses to the Japanese and military fear of the Soviets. Plus ça change....


4. Frankly, the people who whine about "victim culture" are the people who are most afraid that their little fiefdom of self-importance is being eroded. Mind you, they gin up this little tempest in a teapot at early signs of erosion, never asking if they themselves are the ones who never had control to begin with.


5. If you're worried about universities causing rifts between management and labor, then you imply that universities are nothing more than glorified vocational training schools. The fact is, the universities which get pounded on most for their supposedly outré teachings on equity, diversity, inclusion, etc., are also generally at the top end of the college spectrum and are the ones who historically produce management, business owners, and entrepreneurs. So, it's hardly clear what you're railing against.


6. My answer to Confucianism is that it's (1) not Protestantism and (2) an irrelevant simplification of Chinese culture. However, if that's part of what you fear as being dominant and better suited to rule the world economically, maybe *you* should follow that to a possible conclusion and embrace "Confucianism" yourself.


7. When the wacky edge of Protestantism went all-in on guns and a buffoon Messiah, no, I can't imagine why anyone not in the thralls of stupidity would want to embrace that.


Tyson



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2022 11:26AM by Tyson Dunn.

Thank you, Tyson.

I would add that it is ridiculous to describe modern China as Confucian. I'm confident bradley doesn't know what that word means. I think he's using it as a synonym for Chinese in a racial sense because there is otherwise no connection between the philosophy excogitated 2,500 years ago or its later reformulation as Neo-Confucianism a millennium ago and today's China.

As you know, China underwent three recognized revolutions between since 1900 and a fourth unrecognized one after Deng Xiaoping launched his reforms in 1979. And at least three of those were explicitly anti-Confucian, in fact concerted efforts to eradicate that ancient philosophy.

Modern China is in no way Confucian: it is hyper-capitalist under the control of a dictatorship. The first step in understanding another country and culture is getting the terms right or, in the Confucian argot, "the rectification of names." And thereafter one would have to dig up Max Weber and discover what he actually meant when he described the Protestant work ethic--another relatively precise concept that, frankly, bradley does not appreciate.

For Protestant versus Confucian, read: white Americans versus inscrutable Asians.

I have no idea where you got your information from (I suspect from your ass. Here is the data:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/productivity#:~:text=Productivity%20in%20the%20United%20States,the%20first%20quarter%20of%201950.

US productivity rates have risen nearly every single year with 2021 having the HIGHEST ever recorded. Apparently "protestant work ethic" is equivalent making up data to fit a narrative.

Americans are working harder now than ever before; and, are producing more as a result.

The "lazy" B.S. is just that...

HH =)

Protestant work ethic?

Geez, religions love to believe their own publicity. They are as as bad a social media stars.

Universities teaching victim culture?

Maca should sue for trademark infringement.

BTW, American employers are famously reluctant to give vacation time to employees, and employees are famously reluctant to take what little vacation time they get.

You want to know what happened? A lot of Baby Boomers decided to retire when their jobs went away with the pandemic. They aren't coming back to work.

400,000 health care workers have left the field in the US because of burnout, and having to deal with abusive a******* patients.

Ditto teachers. Ditto flight attendants.

Truck drivers and people in hospitality industry discovered their jobs suck. They are taking alternative jobs. Employment figures are actually doing pretty well - that's where the people who quit are going - to new jobs. You know, the ones the Boomers quit.

Decline of Protestant work ethic - translation: the working class have more power than they deserve right now. Oh, the horror.

Exactly. The pendulum swings back and forth. Luckily we still have gravity to even it all.

There is no grand plan. And anyone wanting to blame the boomers should shift blame to the generation before them. They are the ones who had too many babies because they had just created a world that had hope of being more peaceful and prosperous.

I have seen no grand scheme. No generation is a victim and no generation is a perpetrator. You do the best with what you have to work with as it has been since the beginning of time

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You want to know what happened? A lot of Baby
> Boomers decided to retire when their jobs went
> away with the pandemic. They aren't coming back to
> work.
>
> 400,000 health care workers have left the field in
> the US because of burnout, and having to deal with
> abusive a******* patients.
>
> Ditto teachers. Ditto flight attendants.
>
> Truck drivers and people in hospitality industry
> discovered their jobs suck. They are taking
> alternative jobs. Employment figures are actually
> doing pretty well - that's where the people who
> quit are going - to new jobs. You know, the ones
> the Boomers quit.
>
> Decline of Protestant work ethic - translation:
> the working class have more power than they
> deserve right now.
=================================

Rare great analysis where things click satisfyingly into place & world makes more sense.

Highly Gruntled -- Gracias

Where's the thumbs up button?

Regarding teachers -- there has been a sharp decline in students who are perusing education as a major. Mediocre compensation and long hours are both factors (as an example, for much of my career I worked 50+ to 60+ hours a week.) It is now an employee's market.

Michigan used to have a huge surplus of newly graduated teachers. Michigan school districts often had dozens of applicants per opening. Now some districts might have only one or two applicants per opening. Somehow this surprises district officials.

I'm thinking back to the generations of my grandfather and father who worked hard and with pride to accomplish great things like the railroad and the giant Hoover Dam. They seemed to feel like they were doing big things that mattered. They had families at home that could survive on one salary.

When I heard about the huge infrastructure package that recently passed, my hope was that maybe this could happen again. Maybe the people who had jobs outsourced of all educational levels and manual workers could again get good jobs that build the USA. But things have changed. People can't be loyal to their employers who treat them poorly. The corporations will find a way to take the bulk of the money to shift up to the rich shareholders/executives. They will squeeze the employees in any and every way they can.

I feel I had a great work ethic which I credit to seeing the example from grandparents and parents. My children have a great work ethic but they know they are just $$ numbers to their employers. The loyalty is gone. I fear the pride to accomplish great things together is gone too.

This! In spades. This is what I see regularly from the Mega-Corporations we deal with as they attempt to squeeze us as well.

"Disney CEO Bob Chapek and his predecessor Bob Iger more than doubled their salaries in 2021. Chapek earned $32.5 million, while Iger took home $45.9 million. Chapek was steering Disney through a difficult and trying time in its business, when the pandemic completely shut down parts of its business."

I get absolutely sick at how the world in general, especially Mormons, worship Disney. And we work with their people and they are not the happiest employees on earth.

From The Observer:

"The “Happiest Place on Earth” is anything but for the employees of Disneyland. While the bosses are constantly raising entry fees to obscene rates, they’re definitely not sharing the windfall with the rank and file. An article in the Chicago Tribune stated that three-quarters of the employees are not making a living wage. While Disney refutes that, there are hundreds of employees who live nearby in their cars, tents, and many have not had a home of any kind for several years."

The cost of living has gone up substantially. I just tell my kids complaining isn't going to help you are just going to have to move where things are more affordable or figure out how to make more. The rich own both parties. Don't expect a political solution.

D&D, this is why increasingly I just want to shrug when America is referred to as a "free country." I feel like the rich are in charge, and what say do the rest of us have, really?

The rich are in charge. And the only choices are stand up to them or put food on your table as you allow them to call all the shots. Disney is only the tip of the iceberg.

It's not even enough to be part of the 1% anymore. You need to be part of the 1% of the 1%. And never forget--their "charitable contributions" are a distraction.

I have never seen anyone work harder than the cook at the Mexican restaurant where I washed dishes as a teenager. I don't think his religion, if he had one, had anything to do with it. I'm pretty sure he was keeping his family in Mexico from starving...

They must have converted to Protestantism before getting hired at the restaurant.

;)

It's the only explanation!

I worked at a Chinese restaurant. Same thing.

There's a lot to be said for a work ethic. I would say that's the number one reason the church still exists. The members were too dumb to quit.

I don't know what it says about me that I value indolence over indoctrination.

Manufacturing has been shifted overseas for many years in order to produce consumer products with a lower price tag.

This has caused many manufacturers to shut their facilities in the US. No more factory=no more job opportunities.

The result of this is that consumer goods are mostly produced in foreign countries because American factories are gone.

This causes the US to be dependent on the caprices of foreign companies and governments.

A double hit against the strength of the US economy.

If that were true, the US unemployment rate would be 30% or 40%. In fact, it is less than 4%. That should tell you that your analysis is incorrect.

What happened is that low-wage manufacturing jobs were replaced by higher-wage services jobs. There is nothing morally superior about making color TVs relative to writing software or managing insurance products for global shipping companies. There are in fact *more* jobs available because the US moved up the productivity ladder.

There are plenty of profound problems with the US economy. The first step towards solving them is to avoid focusing on the wrong things.

What I see is that there's too many, kids going to college, they're doing it with a dream of getting a job that's posh, weekends off, every holiday off, bankers hours, with vice president pay and perks, but these same kids aren't interested in building character, they are not interested in the purpose of a liberal education, who's purpose is to learn the different view points of the greatest minds amd talent of the last few hundred years.. this is condemned by the social activists who have taken over as work by dead white guys, it's even infiltrated the stem fields,

Kids just want a job they don't want to learn things so most are in college for the wrong reasons. Also there arnt enough great jobs for everyone to get one,

What needs to happen is for youngsters to be told the hard facts of life recognize their possision theor born into and start doing manual labor. There's too many kids who don't want to work with their hands which is where the jobs are.

If you're inclined toward introspection, you could ask yourself if working with one's hands and gaining a college education and subsequent employment are mutually exclusive endeavors.

Don't hold your breath, Humberto.

Maca Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What I see is that there's too many, kids going to
> college, they're doing it with a dream of getting
> a job that's posh, weekends off, every holiday
> off,

Time off, benefits, good pay, nobody in their right mind wants that /s.

> but these same kids aren't interested in
> building character,

I'm almost afraid to ask what you define as "building character." Because, from what I've seen, your character is shit, guy.

> they are not interested in the
> purpose of a liberal education, who's purpose is
> to learn the different view points of the greatest
> minds amd talent of the last few hundred years..
> this is condemned by the social activists who have
> taken over as work by dead white guys, it's even
> infiltrated the stem fields,

1. There were great minds and talents who weren't white men. College students are learning about them too.

2. Is there any credible evidence to your claim of "infiltrat(ing) the stem fields?" And talk radio is not a credible source.

3. Why am I wasting time trying to explain higher education to someone who misspells "and?"

>
> Kids just want a job they don't want to learn
> things so most are in college for the wrong
> reasons.

*I* went to college to learn. Just because you're proud of your anti-intellectualism doesn't mean everyone else is.

>
> What needs to happen is for youngsters to be told
> the hard facts of life

Here're some hard facts of life: you are not the center of the universe. The most confident people are also some of the stupidest (you, Maca, are evidence). Education is *not* evil. Smug doesn't mean smart.

> recognize their possision
> theor born into and start doing manual labor.

1. What the fuck is "possision theor" supposed to mean?

2. If you meant "position they're born into," you're describing a class system with no chance of moving upward. Isn't that the *opposite* of what the American economy is supposed to be?

3. They tried having kids do manual labor before. It went out of favor before the 20th century because people realized that it was putting the kids in horrible conditions.

> There's too many kids who don't want to work with
> their hands which is where the jobs are.

Guy, I worked landscaping, construction, and as a deckhand before going to college. Folks are willing to get their hands dirty. But you're just going to ignore this in favor of spouting more of your "Book-learning bad! Me smart!" bullshit.

Deflate your ego and start using your brain for once, guy.

I know you will get a lot of blowback for that. Not from me though I do not agree wholesale. I do like to explore why you feel that way and what at times I have felt that way too. Some of your points get lost in black and white thinking--like when we talk about people in generations or lump them together in order to make our points.

I have seen a lot of what you refer to:" . . .kids going to college, they're doing it with a dream of getting a job that's posh, weekends off, every holiday off, bankers hours, with vice president pay and perks." I've had a lot of them at my business over the years and they don't last because we really work or the business goes under. I have run into them later and they haven't done well elsewhere either. We aren't too big to fail as the mega corporations are. I look for those excited about the work, who can't wait to show what they can do, show how fast they can pick up the talents needed, and who forget to ask about the benefits until the second interview. There are still plenty of good ones like that.

Your point that college degrees are not the be-all-end--all? Most of the people who have made it really big in this country have worked really hard to get there. Long smart hours. They know what is what. Many of them never went to college. And, I dare say the ones who did owe their success to something other than their degrees. Talent, elbow grease, and a can-do attitude with a side of competitiveness.

The way I see it, during the last couple of centuries each generation had better opportunities than the one before them. That is a pyramid scheme that could not last. Something has to give. If everyone is at the top of the ladder, the ladder will . .. well, too obvious to state. So, considering that, there may be better opportunity at the ground level without the fancy sheepskin if you have the right stuff. The education is great but the education isn't the only way.

There is more than one way to skin a . . . peach. I take that as your point.

D&D who has been wildly successful working with his hands after learning on the job and never showed anyone his degree which he has.

I agree.

I think education is very worthwhile; yet two of the millionaires whom I know had no college, yet they had tunnel vision in the field that interested them, and, very importantly, they learned to "read the room" in any setting.

"kids going to college, they're doing it with a dream of getting a job that's posh,"

You are mostly referring to 18 and 19 year olds. We all had grandiose ideas but reality kicked in or interests changed. I remember a lot of guys saying they were pre-med and I suspect a small percentage achieved the goal. Remember talking to your girlfriend/boyfriend in high school, planning out your lives? The jobs I've had in the last 30 years didn't even exist when I went to college.

Note: Maybe I could have got more dates if I told college girls I was a pre-med major....

"The jobs I've had in the last 30 years didn't even exist when I went to college."

I think that is a key way to look at his subject. When you are a kid and they ask what do you want to be when your grow up most kids have the same ten responses. I suppose very few say cowboy though nowadays and get the side eye from parents if they say policeman. Doctor used to be the correct answer but now with the law suits, not so much.

Same for higher education. The options featured are too narrow when choosing a major. What I did the rest of my life wasn't even on the radar and is not taught in schools. Happened on it by accident. Been fantastic.

Serendipity is often the antidote to everything.

You have to make work worthwhile. The businesses that are having trouble finding employees are those that pay low wages. When you've chronically underpaid your employees, and those employees have an alternative, they may very well take that alternative.

When I was working my way thru college, trains had 6 member crews; now, there are 2 for freight trains, Amtrak train crew is 3; an 'engineer' (train driver in europe) a conductor & 1 assistant conductor; the 'hotel staff' are not responsible for the movement of the train but rather passenger duties of cooking & serving meals, making up sleeping quarters, etc.

the railroad companies want to reduce train crews to 1 person on long-haul service routes, they claim there is no safety advantage to more than one crew member.

me: I am greatly concerned by trains only having 1 person in the locomotive; the potty isn't in the cab (what to do when nature calls?) the crew members in the loco 'call signals' that they see along the way confirming to each other that the appropriate actions are taken.

trains sometimes separate due to mechanical failures, which requires that heavy parts (a 'knuckle' weighs about 80 pounds on freight cars) be replaced. After a knuckle is replaced, the air hoses must be manually re-connected & the cars coupled; How car 1 person do that? Remember, some trains are now 3 miles long! IDK if I could lift 80# alone!! when it happened while I was working, it took 2 or 3 crew to replace a knuckle!!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2022 09:30PM by GNPE.

That's very interesting. . . and concerning, GNPE.

I looked for the article, but can't provide it, but:

It reported that a rather large number of women are not returning to the workforce. These are mothers, probably with husbands and children, who found themselves SAH for extended periods--and they liked it. They learned how to manage on smaller (single) income, and liked the idea of caring for their children themselves, as opposed to daycare.

They're neither working nor looking for work, and thus don't fit the standard cohorts used in employment data. This will probably have an economic depressing effect, but an enriching psychological one.

Related to this, a lot of them took up home schooling. That will have its own ripple effect.

A lot of them can't find daycare.

Please, everyone-

'Childcare' the focus should be on the children, not on the day

Maybe you should check your Epoch Times.

"protestant work ethic" is a bullshit term. Work ethics are not confined to religious groups.

Diligence and industry may not be associated directly with religions, but they are sometimes correlated with culture and religion is a subset of culture.

It was a reasonable argument when Weber formulated it.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Diligence and industry may not be associated
> directly with religions, but they are sometimes
> correlated with culture and religion is a subset
> of culture.

Totally true.

Weber's argument was that there was a close correlation between Calvinism and the countries in which the Industrial Revolution occurred: the Netherlands, England, etc.

This mattered because in most of Europe, as the rest of the world, people did not work regularly. Calvinism, however, taught that there was redemptive value in labor and Calvinist homes often put their chairs away during the daylight hours so people had no choice but to be up and about the Lord's work. Whether on the farm or in incipient factories, people tended to work a lot more and rest a lot less in that handful of countries, and the result was a financial surplus from which capital markets emerged.

The logic is not dissimilar to what Henry Ford did at almost exactly the time when Weber was writing. People in the US in the first decade of the 20th century were inconsistent in their work habits. They would arrive late, leave early, and sometimes fail to show up at all. Ford broke those habits by paying far above market wages and firing people who refused to work dependably, and eventually the five-day week became the norm in North America.

Whether that routinization of labor was good for workers and society is a separate question. But not many economists or sociologists dispute Weber's description of what had happened in 18th and 19th century Europe, and he frankly acknowledged that over the course of the latter century work habits and discipline had spread beyond the original Calvinist homelands.

What about Desire to be Accomplished Work Ethic? That is the one that counts.

Yes. I don't want to sound too woke but it feels like victim-blaming when the jobs presented to us now are not for anything you can get passionate about or doesn't fuel a cause we can care about. Yet we're missing a value based on working for work's sake; we're just not virtuous enough. Despite us wanting what people have always wanted, to feel fulfilled, like the things we do were worthwhile. No, that makes us spoiled and entitled, apparently.

And that's not even getting into the demand of employee loyalty to corporations, yet the message we keep getting is "you're replaceable, a machine could do your job, the only thing that matters is my bottom line" from employers. But no, bradley is right. Me not wanting to sign up for that and being gung-ho about the threat of starving trapping me under a corporate heel is me not having virtuous work ethic. I'm a fool to prefer being happy than swallowing the bit.