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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Plutocrats’ machinations and corporate abuses are huge factors affecting inflation and the decimation of quality of life for most Americans. But those same Americans must shoulder some of the responsibility for their deteriorating opportunities.
Consumers must make a real effort to resist the lure of cheap disposable goods and demand quality, transparency and accountability.
Prioritizing ‘things’ serves people poorly for any number of reasons – resource abuse, growth of pollution for making and shipping, costs of garbage, waste, general dissatisfaction, and putting more money in the pockets of the profiteers that can be used to buy legislation and votes.
Moving from the macro to the factory floors and office cubicles, a concerted effort needs to be made to build morale and improve quality of life.
Since taxpayers most definitely include the management cohort of companies, they should shoulder obligations that move us all towards a circular and more sustainable economy including in the areas of human resources and company policies and practices.
Good management means getting rid of make-work – meetings for the sake of meetings, company rah-rahs that serve little purpose, tech staffing and A.I. development by people trying to justify their own positions, efficiency experts breathing down everyone’s neck trying to enforce one-size-fits-all approaches when almost every major breakthrough comes, at least in part, out of left field.
Keep it simple. Ask the workers what would make them happy and focus on that.
Instead of adding obligations, find ways to streamline achieving results that aren’t blockaded by micro-management. Allow people to find their own rhythms, make them proud to collaborate, reward them with fewer hours for better pay, and stop expecting them to take work home or be on call at all hours.
The modern equivalent to “the buck stops here” should be “your emergency is not my emergency so get over it.”
More and more studies show cutting hours not only improves quality of life, but it also significantly raises productivity.
Excess time worked means mistakes, it means having to hire and train again and again as people quit or fall ill, it increases internal theft and vandalism, it destroys families and happiness… and unhappy people have never made good employees.
Stress alone contributes to 19% of absenteeism costs, 30% of disability costs, at least 60% of workplace accidents, and 40% of staff turnover costs.
More time off has been proven to reduce resignations, diminish stress and improve energy, all contributing to better profitability.
This may seem counterintuitive to people raised in today’s cutthroat Gordon Gekko-on-steroids competitive environment but the facts are borne out. Again and again and again, studies show increased profitability tracks employee satisfaction.
So long, that is, as leadership doesn’t use improved initial results to buy into the destructive Wall Street mentality that is eating the American economy from within, and aspire to be the next Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, profiting with total disregard of the interconnectedness of our world.
Americans should stop being afraid of enjoying life, relaxing and taking time just to be – a personal quality of life, not frenetic activity to keep up with the Joneses or bury their own angst.
Their work is not their whole life and they need to learn to… leave work at work.
For those who haven’t voted, please turn away from the short term-focused memes of this election, all those that benefit Wall Street, not Main Street, which are most of them on both sides.
Hold your nose if you must, but get out and vote against the fascist threats poised to eviscerate our societal norms across the country. And push everyone you know to do so as well.
Gaga Trumpian autocracy poses the gravest threat to the quality of Americans’ lives since the Civil War.
This is not a fire drill; this is the five-alarm fire.
Do some research on how this country was almost destroyed from within by Hitler’s German as set forth in Rachel Maddow’s book Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. Read it and weep because the United States is facing the same fight once again.
The Trump worldview’s newest advocate is the America First Policy Institute which is horrifically reminiscent of the America First Committee enmeshed with the Nazis, support for fascism, the seduction of elected officials, and the direct attack on democracy of the 1930s and early 40s as documented in Maddow’s book. A movement which led directly to the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his undermining of Americans’ civil liberties and widespread coercion tactics against freedom of speech.
Divides between have and have-nots, between the religious and the secular, the vilification of immigrants, setting factions against each other using fear and hatred occurred in Europe and America in the mid-1900s. It’s happening again today.
Only you can make a difference. With your vote.
Not just every four years but in every election that you can to ensure that the new generations of candidates espouse your values. Don’t give special interests a backstage pass onto any bench or any level of government.
Outlier opinions of special interests with axes to grind will bend the arc of justice away from the pluralistic and harmonious future envisioned by MLK.
Take on the responsibility to do the research necessary to understand the long-term ramifications of positions. Don’t be lazy and get sidetracked by glossy mailers that don’t have your interests at heart.
Embrace the opportunity to take a stand for what is right and against what is wrong no matter how difficult. Be courageous and hold your course.
The greatest satisfactions in life come with the greatest efforts.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
