2012 Reboot

Here we are, a week into the new year, and what has changed? Nothing really. Why should it have? We don't do the holidays like we should. We've forgotten some of the most important lessons we ever learned, or at least repressed them. I can't say we're all the better for it either, but we must make do, even with what we've got.

By all appearances, 2012 is going to be a challenging year. The Americans will be having elections; the Germans are squabbling over their Federal President; the English are trying to save their last "industry" financial services; the French are trying to save their banks; the Russians are trying to have a say, as are most of the Arab world; the Chinese are finally realizing capitalism isn't all it's cracked up to be. Oh yes, I think we've still got a lot of excitement in store for this year ... and we'll have to figure it all out fast if it's coming to an end next December. Those feisty Mayans ... what'll they think of next?

I was reminiscing this morning – a prerogative of folks my age – about the "old days". I'm not sure they were all that good, but they had one thing going for them: people used to work for a living. Remember that? Oh, it's not what you might be thinking. I'm not talking about the evils of the welfare state, on the contrary, I'm talking about the time when people were employed, maybe even had careers, and were halfway secure in thinking that they could support themselves and their families (i.e. live) from their work. There's not a lot of that around anymore, is there?

No, we traded in employment for "jobs": something we're required to do, for which we expect to get paid, but those who do the paying think this should be as low as possible. It doesn't matter if you can live from it or not. That's not the job-provider's problem, is it? I was wondering because in most of what I have to do at the training company I work for is to ensure that when people have taken our training, that in the end, they have a job. Our job, if you will, is to make these people "employable" ... whatever that means.

When I was growing up, even the service-station attendant could live a modest life from what he earned. Not only don't we have service-station attendants anymore, if we did, they certainly couldn't live from what they earned. That "lowest rung" in the worker's hierarchy has been raised above the reach of a lot of young people these days. Is it really because the "market" doesn't need them or want them, or is because we, "society", don't want them anymore? Or, who decided that it's OK not to be able to live even a modest life when working full-time? Was that the "market", too? And if it was, who put the "market" in charge?