joshclarkson.net

When you work for a company, some days you feel owned. You feel maybe as if you are an asset for “the man”. But on those days when you realize that you are an autonomous agent able to do as much as your inner resolve allows, then you are a person who is indeed useful. When we take into account that companies are just bodies of people aligned together in similar goals, then we can work in harmony towards the greater good. Adam Smith in his quintessential tome on economics, “The Wealth of Nations” sums up nations and economies very simply…

“The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally
supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which
it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate
produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from
other nations.

According, therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it,
bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are
to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all
the necessaries and conveniencies for which it has occasion.”

With all of the constant talk of “economic stimulus packages” by our governments and people. You would think that economic growth was an animal that could be prodded along with a stick by an appointed official. When will the people of America take responsibility for the economy? We, the ones who are willing to work and labor, to sweat and toil, are the only driving force behind real economic growth. Basically I’m begging the question, why are most Americans so lazy? You may say, “Please excuse my impertinence, but isn’t America one of the hardest working nations in the world?”. While I will grant you that our nation is founded on a group of the hardest-working self-sacrificing individuals on the face of the earth, how can you even refer to the mainstream American as an individual? We now expect that health care should be granted to each of us, that we were born with that so-called “right”. We cannot be relied upon to be independent and self-sufficient in the areas of, home ownership, retirement, health, childcare, education, and even just paying our own debts. We constantly seek a handout for, home loans we couldn’t afford, old age we didn’t plan for, a failing health we could have prevented, and children we would rather someone else “handled”.

We need to get back to admiring hard work, applauding true innovation. Many Americans remember that they used to work harder to make a dollar, and now it’s easy. Well what would happen if we did the hard thing again? What if we abandoned our lives of ease and, together as one company got off our enormous duffs? Then I think economic stimulus could truly be obtained. What does your company need to grow? They need you. America needs you.