the American worker's blood runs cold.
Over the last ten years, if not more, I've learned to recognize a few code words. Not that it takes any great leap of brilliance, or anything more than simple logic. Just consider these terms:
- Reduced Labor Costs
- This should be obvious: what economists call "labor costs", you probably call your paycheck. Of course, that's not the whole story. You've also got fringe benefits, like one of those employer-provided health care programs everyone likes so much. Paid vacations, bonuses, all those other little tokens of appreciation? Labor costs, all.
Of course, that's if you're employed "full time", a category employers have worked to define almost completely out of existence. Part-time employees, temps, and contractors are exempt from such lavish expenditures, so employers have managed to "reduce labor costs" immensely over the past couple of decades, just by recategorizing the majority of their work force.
Saves a bundle!
Of course, having redefined all the positions they can (or can get away with), employers are now suddenly forced to "reduce labor costs" even further. With little choice left but to reduce wages and salaries directly, they've found they can make it a lot more palatable by eliminating part of the workforce itself. Those who survive the cuts know who'll be next, and just what they'll face on the "open market." Given a choice between "reduced cost" and "no cost", the choice for most is a no-brainer. This also contributes to our second term:
- Increased Worker Productivity
- Just because a business has cut its workforce in half doesn't mean it can get by on half the work. If anything, it needs to do even more with what's left to stand any hope of survival. That means getting at least the same amount of work from half the staff it had, and that means at least twice the workload on the staff remaining. Fortunately, having watched half their fellows clean their desks and go, the employees remaining have every motivation to demonstrate their continued value to their employers. What's a little more work for a little less pay? Beats the alternative, doesn't it?
That's Increased Worker Productivity. That means higher profits, which means happy shareholders, and an Improved Economy.
Which means happy economists.
In Summary: Fewer Employees * More Work * Less Pay = Improved Economy
Is this an accurate assessment? I don't know. I suppose not.
I don't consider myself an economist. Not much of one, in any case. I imagine a "real" economist would rip my "analysis" up one side and down the other, and show me how I'm wrong in no fewer than two dozen different ways. That's how much of an economist I figure I am. It still doesn't change the reality of what's happening to us all.
No doubt, we would be much better off, if we could "just" learn to better manage our finances, and budget our income "right". I don't think most of us get much of a chance to do that. I think most of us are too busy trying to make what little money we can, or training for that better paying job we
hope will finally pull us out of our troubles, just a little bit. Until then, what point is there even
trying to "manage" money that's mostly spoken for, even before we see it? What "plans" can be made for money already "planned" for the monthly bills?
I'm sure it's no easier for businesses struggling just to stay above water, but they at least have the option of trimming their workforce, and squeezing what's left. If they can do enough of either or both, they just might manage to survive, and the economists will cheer their
Reduced Labor Costs, and their
Increased Worker Productivity. I don't know. Is that enough for them to declare an
Improved Economy? Do they even look at household incomes? Do even mortgages matter to them unless they're going "underwater"?
I remember reading in Newsweek last year, among a list of threats to our economy, one of the top, if not
the top, was an increase in personal savings. That's right: One of the greatest dangers to our economy is a
rise in our personal savings rate at one of its
lowest points in our nation's history. Well, if that's what scares the economists, then I hope every one of them is shaking in his boots. When the choice is between personal savings and a "healthy" economy, then that, too, is a no-brainer:
Fuck the economy.