The worthiness and value of work

The last few months of unemployment statistics have been dismal – every economic update on it is ‘unexpectedly bad’. It’s true that people are unable to find jobs like they used to have…but a couple data points and personal anecdotes have me wondering if other dynamics are at work

Today’s “Real Clear Markets” included a blog entry from “Blackhawk Blogs” by Ziad K Abdelnour who said:

A great number of the richest among us never finished high school, and many who went to college never managed to graduate. …..

The entrepreneurial knowledge that is the crux of wealth creation has little to do with glamorous work, or with the certified expertise of advanced degrees. Great wealth usually comes from doing what other people consider insufferably boring.

The treacherous intricacies of building codes or garbage routes or software languages or groceries, the mechanics of butchering sheep and pigs or frying and freezing potatoes, the murky lore of petroleum leases or housing deeds, the ways and means of pushing pizzas or insurance policies or hawking hosiery or pet supplies or scrounging for pennies in fast-food unit sales, all of those tasks are deemed tedious and trivial.

This is interesting to me, because while I was in highschool I was a cook in a restaurant. That convinced me to get an engineering degree because music/art would NOT be a certain path to avoiding future restaurant work

As a result of that choice – to go for a harder more rigorous degree/career:

• I opted for a part time job as a highschool intern at Kodak in the afternoons in a work-study program – giving up a starring role in the highschool musical and relinquishing a spot on the varsity cheerleading squad my senior year
• In college I worked in an every other semester co-op  program allowing me to earn a great hourly wage while getting real world experience in engineering at top notch corporations – so I had to give up my spot in the university’s audition-only madrigal choir.
• While back at college during my ‘on semesters’ when I was taking classes, I chose part time jobs – sacrificing social activities, parties, football games and sororities.

Right after the Berlin Wall fell, I asked a Sabra (native born Israeli) what they thought of the recent Russian emigration wave to Israel. Their response: “we love it because like our parents who first settled here, those immigrants are willing to do any job where there is an opening – a PhD in physics will sweep streets for a butcher just to start out and have some work – unlike immigrants from the USA and Europe”

Recently I overheard someone saying they weren’t willing to take a specific kind of job at a specific pay level because “they didn’t go to college and get a degree just to do that kind of work for that pay.”

It makes me wonder how many of the unemployment statistics are related to a culture that has lost its appreciation for personal responsibility, for doing whatever it takes – including (Heaven forbid) having a little personal humility and incurring a temporary sacrifice from fun activities.

As Ziad states: “In short, our rich – America’s best entrepreneurs – perform work that most others spurn.”