The Inspired Economist

Whether you’ve been forced to take unpaid furloughs, reductions in pay (or increases in insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical expenses) or find only one person in your household with a job instead of two, you’re not alone in having to rediscover how to live on as much as 50 percent less in household income.

According to Kenneth Couch, a University of Connecticut economics professor who studies worker pay issues, displaced workers who eventually find a job may experience pay cuts as much as 40 percent. It’s no surprise the latest productivity numbers nationally are as high as they are; corporate America is getting more work out of their employees for the same or less amount of hours and, of course, paying those who do have a job less.

What thousands of Americans have discovered is that you can actually thrive by getting by with less, a large part due to adopting a more sustainable approach to living and working, often, for yourself.

Here’s a few approaches I’ve discovered while writing ECOpreneuring, Rural Renaissance, and Edible Earth:

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In my last post, “Soulcraft and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance The Demise of Shop Classes,” I discussed Matthew B. Crawford’s recent book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, in which he examines the consequences of the disappearance of high school shop.

Crawford acknowledges that community colleges to some extent are able to “salvage” the lack of high school shop. This is certainly true as you may read in my post, “Green Technology at Your Community College.” CCs are providing an essential service to the workforce. Government studies show that the highest paying jobs, especially green jobs, will come from the CCs. ( Jessica Milano and Conor McKay at the Democratic Leadership Council. San Jose Mercury News.)

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 In his book, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, Mathew B. Crawford, tells how he discovered that he could not get a meaningful job with his advanced degree—a PhD in political philosophy from the University of Chicago.

He worked for a while in a cubical as an indexer abstracter making $23,000 a year and at another time as a SAT tutor making $15 an hour. Crawford finally found satisfaction as a “gearhead” fixing motorcycles.

Crawford laments the loss of high school shop classes, and the misinformed notion that schools must produce “knowledge worker,” by preparing students for four-year programs. According to Crawford, three-forth of high school shop classes in California have disappeared since the 1980s. He sees the present system turning out an army of clerks that he likens to the Dilbert cartoon. 

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Mass production has been used since the industrial revolution as a means of creating large quantities of standardized products. It has many advantages over one-at-a-time production. It reduces coast and provide interchangeable parts.  Its disadvantages are that it can over produce and it dehumanizes labor.

Mass production will often continue to build inventory in spite of an economic slump. Large inventories can lead to massive layoffs. Unemployment reduces consumption and a viscous circle ensues.

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Eight billion dollars.  It’s what we currently spend in the National School Lunch program.  It’s not currently part of the health care legislation being debated, but some, including Ann Cooper and Beth Collins, co-founders of the Lunch Box Project, think it should be. The Lunch Box Project is tool for schools and their various stakeholders to bring healthy food to their cafeterias.  Cooper and Collins claim that when fully developed, the toolkit will include a multi-faceted approach that can help any school transition from processed food to a “whole foods environment where food is procured regionally and prepared from scratch for the student population.” Read the rest of this entry »

Are you looking for a green job?  Or a job in corporate social responsibility and sustainable business?  Well, all you need to do is Twitter.  “Green” recruiters understand the best way to reach the new generation of “green” talent is via social media…Facebook, Linkedin, blogs, Flickr, YouTube and of course, Twitter.  So fire up your laptop and hop on Twitter.  Who knows?  You may find a career that aligns with your life’s passion.

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The Texas American Federation of Teachers (AFT) cites the case of a widowed public school teacher that retired with a $900 monthly pension. She would have been eligible to receive $600 survivor benefits based on her husband’s Social Security contribution, but the windfall elimination provision (WEP) eliminated all of her survivor benefits. What is WEP?

The Reagan administration believed that reducing taxes would boost the economy. According to this “supply side” economic theory, less tax meant more profits, which would be plowed back into in to the private sector creating jobs and goods. The theory didn’t work and the deficit soared.

The administration looked for “revenue enhancements” that wouldn’t look like taxes (at least not taxes on business) to buy time for its theory to work. Social Security became a target of this quest. Especially, Social Security benefits received by public employees.

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Chip Rees is a  storyteller. With his firm Witness The Way We Live, he uses both audio, video and other forms of multi-media to help clients better understand their customers and share the stories of their lives for the purposes of creating better brand relationships. He does this for a living.

What he does “for fun” is use these same storytelling techniques to record history and facilitate conversation on the very real and complex issues of our day – struggles that have become storytelling lore but have real implications for inspiring change. He calls this experimental effort The Dilemmas Project, a multi-media platform for engaging citizen participation around the ongoing dilemmas ordinary people are facing every day.

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During the last presidential election, both candidates promised some form of “national service.” While neither was specific, they seemed to favor some form of domestic Peace Corps perhaps by expanding AmeriCorps. Neither candidate was specific about the goals of national service. If one of the goals is to bring people into the workplace then perhaps OJT coupled to work-studies (co-op) may be the answer.

William James coined the term “national service” in his essay, “The Moral Equivalent of War.” According to James, mandatory service could teach peace and democratic values. John Dewey argued that democratic values could not be taught by authoritarianism

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The US hasn’t had a draft since 1973. The last time a draft bill was introduced before Congress was in 2003 during the Iraqi War. It was unanimously defeated. Even its author voted against it. So why are men denied government jobs or college loans because they neglected or refused to register with the Selective Service System?

The function of the Selective Service is just to collect names. It serves no other purpose. It doesn’t provide names to military recruiters or provide recruitment information to registrants. It does provide severe penalties for none compliance.

Failing to register through negligence or intention can ban men from government jobs, college loans and even college. What is really amazing is that this life sentence is irrevocable.

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