Handing out relatively small amounts of cash won’t provide more than a temporary upswing — if it does anything at all. What we need is a radical change of attitude towards work.

According to U.S. Department of Labor figures, people in the US economy work 9.1 hours on average each working day — and that doesn’t take into account what they take home or work on over the weekend. Given this amount of human input, the economy ought to be zipping along. It isn’t because a good many of those hours are wasted, and because most of the rest are viewed as time given over to financially-induced drudgery.

Why have we fallen into a mess of shady financial dealings and risky get-rich-quick schemes?

Mostly, I suggest, because work has shifted from doing something worthwhile that you can be proud of — the attitude of the craftsman — to a way of making as much cash as you can by whatever means, honest or not — the attitude of the huckster. And for those who have neither the stomach for selling snake oil, nor the brazen effrontery to cheat the rest of us out of our money via risky investment deals, work has settled down into the same kind of mindless drudgery that once characterized medieval peasants.

The disengaged multitudes

According to Towers Perrin, less than 1 in 7 employees calls themselves “truly engaged” in what they do.

Let’s think about that. Six out of seven people are spending their working time (around 45 office-based hours per week — that’s about half their waking hours) in an activity that they do more or less solely to bring in an income; a job that doesn’t even interest them that much, let alone provide them with a sense of purpose for their lives. It’s a kind of respectable prostitution: selling your physical presence in activities you find somewhere between distasteful and outright unpleasant.

The impact of this disengagement

When someone is disengaged from their work they aren’t likely to look for better ways of doing it; nor will they use more of their energy than they must to engage in it at all. Will they try to be more productive? I don’t think so. Depending on the exact degree of disengagement, they’ll range between doing what they are asked, more or less willingly, and trying to cut every corner and avoid every demand or task they can.

Are they lazy? Probably not. Do they act lazy? That’s much more likely, especially if their response to their work veers towards the area of active dislike. You can’t really blame someone who tries to weasel out of working, if they hate what they do; and only do it at all because they need money to live.

In a global economy that now depends, not on producing the necessities of life, but on persuading people to buy luxuries, consumer goods, and services they don’t need, no country will prosper if it produces things that have poor quality and little appeal. Look at China. Despite low wages, that country is learning the hard way that churning out shoddy goods won’t sustain growth for more than a year or so — just until the next, even lower-cost country for making them comes along.

Germany has high wages, yet maintains a reputation for quality that persuades people to buy what it produces, even when the goods are expensive. Italy’s reputation for fashion and style helps keep its economy afloat. Japan has built most of its post-war prosperity on moving from a being country renowned for cheap, poor-quality goods to a world leader in sophisticated electronics and gadgetry.

Can you support a high-wage economy on disengaged workers?

I think the answer to this has to be “No.” High-wage economies can only survive, let alone prosper, by producing what others want and cannot (yet) produce for themselves: the highest of high-tech goods, the best ideas, the most interesting and desirable services, the most fashionable luxuries.

If the national level of disengagement stays this high — or even increases — creativity and quality will fall. If that happens, wages and prosperity must fall too, since such a country will price itself out of its markets.

A better stimulus package

That’s why the best kind of economic stimulus is the one that increases people’s interest and pleasure in their work. These are some of the ways that could be brought about:

• Devote more of the national wealth to education and wellness, and less to overseas adventures designed to bolster politicians’ egos.
• Encourage people to take enough time in their work to do a first-rate job. Reward craftsmanship, not slick selling.
• Stop rewarding companies that drive up short-term returns by cutting corners, then expect subsidies and bail-outs from their tame politicians to save them when the inevitable consequences come around.
• Use regulation to set standards, since no corporation in a capitalist economy can afford to set high goals that others will instantly undercut.
• Help people to find what they love doing. Provide better career advice, easier ways to change jobs without economic penalty, healthcare that doesn’t depend on the whims of employers, and proper time off to combine family duties with work needs.
• Make setting up your own business less of a risk by providing ways to get affordable healthcare and maintain pension plans in self-employment. People may be willing to risk their money on a new business, but it doesn’t seem reasonable to demand they risk their family’s health and future security at the same time.
• Set national goals for making people happier and society more civilized. Curb those who wish to exploit others for their own, short-term gain.
• Encourage the growth of a nation of craftspeople, investors, and ‘givers’, in place of the current society that rewards cost-cutters, short-term financial traders, and ‘takers’ of every hue.

These are just my thoughts. I’d like to hear yours.

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