Culture and Religion

A world view where the guide for society is based on human nature,
 not on ancient scriptures.  Home  or Topic Groups

This collection of topics, a brief view of life, could be used to teach an adolescent the basics about life.

Job

A job is what one does to earn a living. Other social animals, like a number of primates, also have communities like people do; these communities remain separate as they compete over local resources (since food is obtained by hunting or gathering). One difference for humans is a person can specialize his/her skills and that specialty can be integrated into a business entity in the local community or some nearby one.

Communities are not necessarily in competition within this human social structure having many layers, from family, to community, to a company or business or service, to a city or county or state, and so on.

When people work together, success can be more efficient than when attempted alone. Teams of individuals having different skills can work together to the benefit of their respective communities by providing a needed product or service. For manufacturing, an engineer can design a product, a technician can make it, a salesman can distribute it where wanted or needed, and an accountant can make sure everyone is paid a fair wage while the product is priced to meet all expenses. For a service, different teachers can work together to provide a well-rounded education while different doctors and nurses can work together to maintain the health of the community.

There is a critical connection between the jobs and the community, where those doing the work see the benefit to themselves and their community.

That connection is lost when the businesses treat their workers as a physical resource like a raw material, not as human beings. Plantations using slaves for the manual labor were profitable for the owners to the detriment of those working under such inhuman conditions.

Current economic policies also treat workers as raw material. Unions arose in the 19th century when workers had very long hours, very low pages, under very dangerous conditions. As the hours decreased and the conditions became safer, unions still enabled the workers to demand a fair wage for their labors. As government policies have made it more difficult for unions to be created or survive, there is nothing left to check inequalities in compensation so now most wages are decreasing while hours are increasing. Even worse, companies are able (with no intervention by any level of government) to ship the manufacturing facility (and all its jobs) to other countries to lower their costs while still increasing their profits, to the benefit of only the top executives and shareholders.

Current and pending economic policies will continue to reduce taxes on the wealthy even as the rest have lower wages from the decreasing number of jobs. The critical connection between the workers and their benefits (fair wages, with their community getting rewarded by the company's generation of products and services, not only executives or bankers in a remote location) must be restored.

Reference: Unemployment

created - December 2011
last change - 12/17/2011
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