#JobsThatKill #overwork #WorkKills #jobs
For 2.8 million people annually worldwide, work kills.
Today’s society, with its technological advances, has you on an electronic leash with your employer.
So says a United Nations report, discussed in an article by Karen D’sousa of Tribune News Service. The article was published May 2, 2019, in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“The world of work has changed, we’re working differently, we’re working longer hours, we’re using more technology,” the article quotes Manai Azzi of the U.N.’s labor agency, the International Labor Organization.
About two-thirds of the work-related mortality is estimated to occur in Asia, the article quotes the report. The greatest cause of death are circulatory diseases (31 percent of such deaths), work-related cancers (26 percent) and respiratory diseases (17 percent, the article quotes the report.
If you are fortunate enough to have a good job, you can relate to this.
The jobs that pay well keep us from being broke, but also tie us into a 24/7 work life, or close to. Therefore, we may not be financially broke, but we are time-broke.
We miss out on family activities and events. We miss out on some of the recreational opportunities we enjoy. We miss out on just plain relaxation.
It’s been said that most people today are either unemployed, underemployed or overworked.
Perhaps you can recall generations ago, when Mom generally stayed home, and Dad worked. Dad would be home every weeknight at around the same time for dinner. Perhaps he would spend time with the kids after dinner.
Then, there were the weekends, when everyone was home.
Today, there are more crazy work schedules than ever. The 9-toi-5 job is indeed rare. Chances are, if you have such a job, it’s probably not making you rich.
Not only are many folks’ schedules all over the map, they work more than eight hours a day, generally. And, when they come home, there may be work-related e-mails to check, phone calls to return, paperwork to complete etc.
People are more likely than not to get a work-related phone call at home while they are off.
There is good news in all this. It doesn’t have to be this way.
There are many vehicles out there that will allow a person to take a few, part-time off-work hours a week to build an income that could potentially make them not only financially secure, but no longer time-broke.
To check out one of the best such vehicles, message me.
Meanwhile, try to take as much advantage as possible to the things in your life that you enjoy, or mean something to you.
Look for ways to relieve stress, be it physical exercise, pleasure reading or spending time with family and friends.
Your job may try to kill you, but you don’t have to let it. You can still do all you need to do at work, and relieve stress when you are not at work.
Don’t let work stress mess with you. Don’t let it kill you.
Peter
Monthly Archives: September 2019
INCOME INEQUALITY VS. PRODUCTIVITY
IncomeInequality #MinimumWage #productivity #WageGrowth
It isn’t a low minimum wage that has enlarged the income inequality gap.
Nor is it the greed of the top 1 percent, or the recently approved tax cuts that has caused a lack of bounce for the middle and lower classes during the economic boom.
So says Edward P. Lazear, a former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and currently a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He discussed the matter in a May 7, 2019, column in The Wall Street Journal.
Lazear, who is also a Hoover Institution fellow, believes the higher earners are simply more productive, with the help of technology.
“Wage growth for the median worker has stalled at about 0.5 percent in the U.S. , Canada and France,” Lazear writes. In Japan, he continues, there is no growth at all.
His conclusion: future technological advances will widen the gap. The demand for lower-skilled labor will fall. We can’t really stop technological advances, and guaranteeing a wage would merely patch the problem, he says. The solution is to narrow the productivity gap by raising the skills of the lower and middle class workers.
Lazear is correct in his thinking, so how do we, as a country, raise the skills of lesser skilled workers?
There are many programs, and many employers who have initiated programs to do that, but it has yet to make a dent in the productivity gap.
Schools have tried to focus on improving skills for lesser skilled workers. But not all of those workers qualify to get into certain schools.
Plus, these lower skilled workers may be at a stage in their lives in which going back to school for several years to earn a new skill is practically difficult, or will not give them enough good years on the other side to get a sufficient payback from all that education.
Also, you have the problem of fast changes. So, the new skills a worker may have spent years learning may be usurped by even newer skills. So, all that time spent going to school to learn new skills that have been usurped may be wasted.
So what’s a working-class person have to do to get ahead?
Fortunately, there are many vehicles out there that allow a person who spends a few part-time hours a week (maybe even a smaller time commitment than going back to school) to earn a potentially good income. That person just needs to be open to looking for them, and, congruently, at them.
To check out one of the best such vehicles, message me.
In the past, labor unions could retard technological growth and efficiencies with rules that companies had to follow. Unions don’t have the clout they once had, and that may be a good thing in the modern age because change happens much more quickly than in decades past.
The lesser skilled workers first have to realize that government is an unlikely solution to the problem. It will be up to workers themselves to decide what to do. You can’t stop an ocean wave, and you can’t stop changes in the workplace.
But you can decide that you’re going to make changes in your own life to not only ease your financial burden, but also create a life for you and your family that could be better than you’d ever envisioned.
So, instead of expending valuable energy worrying and complaining about your situation, income inequality or the good fortune of others, create your own good fortune, however it works for you.
We are all capable of changing our lives. But not everyone is willing to step outside his or her comfort zone to do it.
Peter
EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS: INDIVIDUAL OR SYSTEMIC?
#EducationalSuccess #SchoolModels #EducationalAchievementGap #HeadStart
Economist Eric Hanushek has seen successful school models, and sometimes believes overall educational improvements are possible.
At other times, he worries that educational success simply depends on the individual student.
Maureen Downey, education columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, discusses how the education gap persists in an April 16, 2019, column.
Hanushek co-authored a recent study that concludes “a stark opportunity gap between America’s haves and have-nots despite nearly a half-century of state and federal attempts to provide poor children with the extra resources to catch up,” Downey quotes the study.
“We have been trying a lot of things to close that achievement gap over time, but these gaps have not changed one whit over the almost half-century in which we are able to track performance,” Downey quotes Hanushek.
Head Start, desegration of schools, mandating services for students with disabilities and more equal funding between rich and poor districts have all been tried, yet there is no real movement, Downey writes.
The study, which analyzed various standardized test scores over the decades, determined that nothing that is really relevant has changed, Downey quotes Paul Peterson, director of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance and a co-author of the study.
However, rising educational attainment by parents over those decades – a good thing – may be offset by the decline in the quality of teachers, Downey quotes the two experts. More higher-income opportunities for women have much to do with the decline in teacher quality, Downey writes.
This all breaks down to students who grow up in homes in which education is a priority — usually those in which the parents have a lot of education– have a better shot at educational success than those who don’t. That hasn’t changed in 50 years.
However, that doesn’t mean that students who grow up in poorer, less educated families CAN’T succeed. It may mean that those students need adults who can motivate them and help them make good life choices. These adults need to step up and help these kids.
The schools, after all, can’t do everything.
Also, kids need to be taught that college, and all its expenses, is not for everyone. They have to be taught that being a successful adult may not require a college education.
Certainly, if a motivated student really wants to go to college, he or she will also be motivated to find a way to get there if there are no obvious resources in their backgrounds.
Also, there are ways to earn money – potentially a lot of it – that don’t necessarily require a college education. They simply require a student to think outside the box, and perhaps look at something he or she never thought existed,or even thought they would be suited for.
Many such vehicles and programs exist. To check out one of the best, message me.
To sum it up, students need adults to motivate them. Every teacher may not connect with every student, but for every student, there is undoubtedly an adult who can find what makes that student want to succeed, and provide the time and resources to help that student experience what could be his or her passion.
Relying on schools to do everything for every student is like relying on a government to do everything for every citizen. The students have to look for what will motivate them. They have to learn not to let circumstances define or derail them.
They have to be taught that school may not have everything they need. If the school doesn’t, the students have to look for what they need and adults – parents, mentors, others – have to be willing to work with them.
Peter
ANDREW LUCK RETIRES, AND GETS BOOED
#AndrewLuck #IndianapolisColts #FootballSeason #FootballFans
Andrew Luck, quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts, retired just before the start of this football season. He is 29.
He got tired of dealing with a four-year cycle of injuries, including a lacerated kidney.
He left millions of dollars on the table.
And the fans booed, as he walked off the field for the last time during a preseason game after his announcement.
Why?
Gracie Bonds Staples, who writes the “This Life” column for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, asked that very question in her Sept. 8, 2019, column.
Staples asked one expert, Erin C. Tarver, an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford College of Emory University, who wrote the book “The I in Team,” what she thought of Luck’s decision.
She called it terrible, but not surprising, Staples writes.
“Many fans come to identify so strongly with their teams that they cease to think of players as individual people at all,” Staples quotes Tarver. “If they do, it’s as people who owe them something: wins, more years of their lives, a willingness to subject themselves to serious long-term damage for the sake of the fans’ hometown,” the quote continues.
The long-term physical punishment to football players — punishment for the sheer pleasure of the fans and the income to teams, leagues and players – has come under the microscope in the past several years.
Football organizations at all levels are now addressing it, from children’s leagues to the pros. The particular focus is on repeated concussions, and long-term brain damage that may result.
Though football is a business for players, coaches, professional team owners etc., it is basically a game. Luck obviously wanted to be as whole a person as possible for as long as possible for his family, friends etc.
As a fan, one should understand this. It’s likely that Colts fans saw their team’s chances to thrive this season as diminished by Luck’s departure. But they should understand that he has taken a lot of punishment for their pleasure, and enough is enough. It was no longer worth the risk, or the money, to him. The decision undoubtedly was hard for him.
Though most of us are not professional athletes, we, too, can face issues of having a job that is slowly killing, or, perhaps, permanently injuring us.
This can happen in many ways, not just physical punishment. Stress, overwork, lack of time with family and friends can have long-term effects on us as people.
Feeling underappreciated by those who don’t know, or don’t care, what you are going through can hurt, too.
If you have a job that you feel is killing you, and you are motivated to change your situation, there are many programs out there that, by investing a few part-time hours a week, can put you on the way to potential financial freedom – enough to perhaps eventually kiss that killer job goodbye. To find out about one of the best such programs, message me.
Staples writes that Luck was not offended by the boos. He took out a full-page ad in the Indianapolis Star, thanking the fans for their support over the last eight years.
That’s a class act. Here’s hoping Luck can live a full life, free of pain and full of appreciation from grateful Colts fans.
Peter
IT’S LABOR DAY, AND THE JOB MARKET IS GREAT, BUT …
#LaborDay #jobs #employment #QuittingYourJob #economy
Young professionals are quitting their jobs before they find new ones.
And they are finding new ones quickly.
So reports Michael E. Kanell, business and economics reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His article appeared on Labor Day, Sept. 2, 2019.
Kanell uses the example of Lindsey Roushdi, who had a job as an accountant for a solar company. The industry was seeing a bit of upheaval, so Lindsey decided to move on, Kanell writes.
After talking to a recruiter, within a few hours, she secured a list of 45 job openings that suited her qualifications, according to the article. She got a job almost immediately at a studio.
Kanell quotes a number of young folks who seem to have their pick of jobs. They probably would have never thought about quitting a job without having another one to go to a decade ago.
That’s a good thing.
However, there are many stories out there of those who aren’t thriving. Since the job market is better than 10 years ago, they may have found work. But the new work doesn’t pay close to what they received from the job they lost.
Some of them are even cobbling together multiple jobs to survive.
So, if the economy is so good, why isn’t everyone thriving? Automation, technology and efficiencies have robbed the economy of many good-paying jobs, particularly for those who don’t have college degrees.
A second reason: Many with college degrees are graduating with so much debt, In fact, according to a recent “60 Minutes” piece, New York University Medical School has gone tuition-free, thanks to the generosity of many benefactors.
Many doctors come out of school with six-figure debt. And, if they go into a practice like internal medicine, family medicine or pediatrics – the so-called primary care group – they may not make enough money to live a good life AND pay off their debt. Though you may find it difficult to have sympathy for doctors’ finances, the primary care folks aren’t living the lucrative life you may think.
Yes, economic numbers are good. Unemployment is low. But the quality of life for many has still deteriorated. Those lives will deteriorate further if the economy tanks, which experts say it will eventually.
What to do? First, if you have a job you like, don’t presume it will be there forever. Reorganizations, bad managers, efficiencies etc. can kill perfectly good careers.
If you don’t have a job you like, or that pays you enough to live a decent life, there is hope. The only requirement is for you to be ambitious, coachable and have a need or desire to change your situation.
There are many programs out there that can allow you to make a good income by investing a few, part-time, non-work hours a week to make it happen, without it seeming like a “second job.”
To learn about one of the best such programs, message me.
Meanwhile, don’t get too cocky at work. If you don’t like your job, find a different one. According to Kanell and other experts, there are more available jobs than officially unemployed people. Hopefully, you can find one to your liking.
Meanwhile, do so BEFORE you quit your current job. You may not be as lucky as the young folks in Kanell’s article.
It’s certainly great to dream, and most dreams are achievable with the right attitude, effort and willingness to look at things that may be outside your comfort zone.
So look and listen. You never know when that great life-changing thing comes your way.
Peter