"If you’ve ever seen the look on somebody’s face the day they finally get a job, I’ve had some experience with this, they look like they could fly. And it’s not about the paycheck, it’s about respect, it’s looking in the mirror and knowing that you’ve done something valuable with your day. And if one person could start to feel this way, and then another person and then another person, soon all these other problems may not seem so impossible. You don’t really know how much you can do until you stand up and decide to try.” From the movie, "Dave.” In the movie, Dave is a temporary employment agency owner posing as the U.S. president
February 12, 2014
By: Linda Case Gibbons
In 1606 Capt. John Smith set out for the New World with a bunch of guys who, it turned out, believed that others in the group should work, but not them.
They thought whatever they had done back in England would be okay in the new colony, Jamestown. They were, after all, from a privileged class. Who knew from work?
They didn’t work and it didn’t work.
Eventually Smith had to lay down the law. "Fellas’,” he told them: "he that will not work shall not eat. For the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hundred and fifty idle loiterers.”
It was a great statement. It stood the test of time and could easily be used today.
It was probably the reason Pocahontas saved Smith from being bludgeoned to death by the local Indians. Everyone loves a decisive leader who tells it like it is.
The fact is "Work” isn’t just something you have to do. It’s something you need to do. It is a cherished American ideal and always has been.
If you’re lucky enough to find the work you love, you will be transformed by that work.
If you find work that pays you for your labors, you will have the privilege of being able to care for yourself and your family. You will be able to hold your head up high as a respected member of society in a great country built upon the labors of many.
It is the basis of the American Dream.
Thomas Alva Edison believed in hard work. It is what got him to where he wanted to go. He also believed in naps which, he said, stimulated his creative spirit.
But the naps came after he worked: After he sold newspapers at a train station when he was 12, after he learned Morse Code and worked as a telegraph operator when he was 15, after and in between inventing the incandescent light bulb and the phonograph.
And he did all this while nearly totally deaf. He worked. Genius or not, we all have to work.
Time and again Edison credited hard work with his accomplishments.
"I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident…None of my inventions were derived in that manner. They were achieved by having trained myself to be analytical and to endure and tolerate hard work.”
Yup, there is no substitute for hard work if you want to be a self-actualized individual.
Literary success didn’t come overnight for John Grisham. He worked 60 to 70 hours a week at a Mississippi law firm, writing his novels on yellow legal pads while waiting to go into court.
Sam Walton didn’t open his first "Wal-Mart” until he was 58. In the interim years he worked at J.C. Penney, served in the Army intelligence unit during World War II, went broke a couple of times, then borrowed $25,000 from his father-in-law to open a Ben Franklin store franchise. It was a long road, filled with, you guessed it, hard work.
But today "Work” has been cast in a new light thanks to Obamacare and the Obama administration.
It – Work – is now characterized as something bad, something to do less of.
Work is something that now can easily be done without – as long as you have government subsidies.
The government tells us Work discourages creativity. It snatches important life choices away from people. It is something you do, which you don’t like, but something you have to do to get healthcare.
The fly in the ointment is that although healthcare has taken center stage during Obama’s time in office, it is not worthy of that position. Work is. Healthcare isn’t. It’s simply one of the necessary list items on a household budget.
Or it used to be.
But now, it is a fact that because of the nuts and bolts provisions of Obamacare, employers have cut, slashed and dumped jobs and employees in an effort to save their own hides or go broke.
Full-time jobs are at a premium.
Because of the nuts and bolts provisions of Obamacare, 2.5 million jobs will be lost by 2017, this according to the recently released report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
But Jason Furman, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers says this job loss isn’t a bad thing. It’s a good thing, mainly because it isn’t really job loss.
It is about choice, Furman, said in a recent press conference.
It isn’t about employers cutting hours and jobs, it’s about employees "choosing to work less.” It's not about lost jobs, it's about these workers being able to become entrepreneurs or spend time at home with family – albeit with fewer work hours and less pay.
It isn’t about lost jobs, Furnam says, it’s about workers choosing to "supply less labor.”
After we register how insulted we are, let’s move on.
We all know Furman is spinning a law that is a real dog. Democrats regret passing it, are trying to distance themselves from it, but are stuck with it.
We all know it is a law that has led to loss of jobs, loss of work hours, steeper insurance premiums and higher deductibles.
So who does Furman think he’s kidding when he’s straight-out lying to the American people? And what was the president who sent him out as the "Obamacare Susan Rice” thinking when he told him to lie to us?
But actually this kind of spin is totally in line with previous Obama-think. "More unemployment benefits contribute more money into the economy,” we are told. "More people on Medicaid does, too.”
Hang onto your hats, folks. The best is yet to come!
When and if the employer mandate finally ends and employers lay off workers, I wonder what Furman and Obama will say then?
Oh, that’s right. It’s already been covered. This week the Treasury Department issued a statement.
The employer mandate will be delayed until 2016, but only for those businesses that do not lay off any employees or reduce their employees’ hours. Owners must certify to this on their tax statements under threat of perjury.
In an effort to "fix” Obamacare, the government has decided to control how many employees a company can have and how many hours those employees can work. Top that with a certification by the business owner that Obamacare had nothing to do with any of his business decisions and that should tie it all up neatly.
After all, we’ve been told, it’s all about choices.
Hold the line, America.