I hate to go all 18th and 19th century on you on a weekend, but I've been thinking a lot lately about the work ethic, what it means in our society and culture, and how it's played out in our current politics. After some rumination, I realize that at heart, I'm a big, big fan of what's known as the Protestant work ethic - such a big fan, in fact, that it explains a lot about why I'm a Democrat and not a Republican.
Let me start with what I think of as the value in work on the individual level. Entering the workforce fosters character traits that serve a person well throughout life: reliability, personal accountability and perseverance, as well as the ability to overcome boredom, learn new skills, solve problems, manage money from a paycheck and cooperate with others. It's this final quality - cooperation - that seems to me to be the key bridge between society and the individual, and one that is often overlooked.
A first job in this country is usually the first time a young person really plugs in to the larger society and is expected to give back something in return for a paycheck. Entry-level jobs in America are mostly concentrated in the service sector in which employees interact with others - again, perhaps for the first time - on a basis that is not self-selected. People from all walks of life stroll into, and work in, a McDonald's, a supermarket, a Starbucks. Tolerance, patience and the rudiments of accepted social behavior are required to succeed. These are good lessons for the individual, but they are even more important as the foundational elements of a participatory democratic (with a small "d") society: We are yoked together in civilization, like it or not, and we need to learn how to negotiate the interplay of our own individual desires with the desires of others and with the collective good of the society as a whole.
Which brings me, at last, to why I'm a Democrat (with a big "D"): Our party has a long and proud history of striving to ensure the safety, efficiency and dignity of the individual worker - and by extension, honoring the value of work itself. We've led the fight in abolishing exploitive child labor, legislating safety protections, instituting the eight-hour workday (both a safety and efficiency issue) and challenging workplace discrimination. To Democrats, workers matter. Work itself is a value we believe should be encouraged by paying people enough money to live on in dignity, creating conditions for an accessible job market, and putting into place a job training network that helps Americans remain flexible in a shifting, challenging economy that continually requires updated skills and approaches.
As John Edwards so succinctly put it during the 2004 campaign: Democrats value work over wealth.
The GOP, with its emphasis on tax cuts for the rich, tax breaks for corporations and resistance to protections for workers, coupled with recent proposals to eliminate taxation on dividends, capital gains and interest income - income, in short, not exactly earned by the sweat of the profiteer's brow - well, let's just say it's honoring something closer to parasitic financial behavior than productive economic and human values.
As a member of what is often called the "investment class" - more than one-third of my personal income is derived from dividends - I should by all rights be an enthusiastic Republican, giddy at the thought of this dangling fruit of dividend exemption. But I'm not. In fact, I'm pretty appalled. And it's not just because I'm a bleeding heart populist (which I am; I can't even bring myself to use or live off of that portion of my unearned so-called "earnings"). As an investor, I simply think it's lousy economics to undervalue work and the people who perform it, both in the short term and the long term. From a purely selfish shareholder point of view, I don't want worker lawsuits weakening my investments. I also don't want an economy awash in unskilled, unemployable and disgruntled workers, which can lead to social and economic instability. I don't want the corporations in which I hold shares to have to continually undertake the high and often hidden costs of high worker turnover and retraining. I want my companies to have happy workers, damn it. I want them treated well, compensated well and retained.
But that's not what's happening in this "recovering" economy under GOP leadership, according to Marketwatch:
At this stage of most past recoveries, companies distributed 25% of their income growth to profits and 75% to compensation. But this time appears to be different, with the split closer to 60-40. Companies are putting 59% of income to profits and 41% to worker compensation, according to EPI's analysis.
A shift from 75 percent of corporate income growth going to wages to a lowly 41 percent strikes me - non-economist that I am - as an alarming reprioritization in distribution that's flying largely under the national radar. Do I have a solution? Sorry, not a clue. But it seems clear to me that GOP's cultish worship of the mythical "free market" (mythical due to governmental corporate bailouts and obscene corporate tax exemptions) is simply not working. Some sort of regulating intervention appears to me necessary - as light-handed as possible, I hope, but still necessary.
Now which political party do I trust to take on the task of proposing policies that re-honor work and stabilize the foundational free fall threatening the intertwined economy/society? For me, it's a no-brainer. I'll continue to cast my vote for the party that dragged this country out of the Great Depression in the previous century, that proposed innovative national programs like the WPA, that created a socially secure safety net that went a long way toward ensuring a dignified old age to American workers, that fought long and hard for the Family Medical Leave Act - and that today commits itself to honoring work over wealth.
Now it's my job as an active Democrat to seek out and support those individual candidates and officials in the party who can bring this vision to practical fruition. It's going to take homework and political pressure on my part - on all our parts - to make sure those we support and elect take the commitment to work, workers and the accompanying ethic to heart.