Great, just what you need, more advice. Well, if it helps, I will assure you this information will not be found in any other career advice article on the Internet or in any career planning book. You are about to read a first of its kind article. It is interesting that you will not read this anywhere else because this topic has more impact on your future than all other job tips and career advice articles combined. Yep, this supersedes all of them and should be the one you pay close attention to because when this is gone, nothing else matters.
Before we continue, clear your mind. Clear out your biases. Forget about what you heard on the nightly or read on the Internet. Let yourself be relaxed. Slow down your thinking and be open to new information. Do not be quick to judge or formulate an opinion. Just listen. Be a discerning adult, no matter if you are young or old. Are you ready?
What is going to impact your career and future more than all other factors is whether or not America continues down the path of punishing success. Call it what you want, socialism, welfare state, progressive, or whatever. It all boils down to the fact that America has been on a path for a while now that de-incentivizes people by taking more of their work, effort, money, and life. Your life is quickly becoming not yours. You may fight and resist this thought, but it is true. Your life and your work are becoming the property of others to do with as they wish.
What does an economic system have to with my career you might ask? Since you are brave enough to ask this question, hopefully not in public, you deserve an answer. It has everything to do with it. Here is what we know and which is really not disputable if you have remained objective in your thinking. Capitalism, characterized by free open markets, opportunity, incentive, competition, profit and loss, prosperity, and economic growth is slowly being replaced with socialism. Characteristics of socialism include high taxes, perpetually high unemployment, punishing achievement, less risk taking, massive governments, burdensome controls and regulations on business, unsustainable debt, diminishing property rights, etc.
You might say, well we have Capitalism now and we have some of those problems. Not really. What America has is a mixed economy, which means there are some freedoms, but there is also massive involvement in the form of government regulations and controls by government bureaucrats. If you look closely at the problems we sometimes have, delve into the involvement of government into a business or industry and you will usually have your answer. The market is never quite free enough to be a market. A free market will reward achievement and punish failure. When left alone, a free market is the arbiter of all that is good and efficiently removes all that is not. This is why we have accomplished so much in a short 200 or so years.
Socialism is not a new concept. It has been tried, and is still being tried today, and the results are always the same, dismal failure, misery, and tyranny. Why doesn't it work? Fundamentally, socialism does not work because it is not consistent with fundamental principles of human behavior. The failure of socialism can always be traced to one critical defect, it ignores incentive. Let me give you an example.
What was once waking up to a morning of opportunity and motivation for life and the day’s events turns into, oh, it's morning. Some of you may already be feeling this way now. Sorry, but it is only going to get worse. When your eyes open your thoughts quickly turn to, what's the use. You know that most of your day's work and effort is not yours any longer. In some cases higher, but 60-70% of your pay, and day, is now taken in some form of tax to fund the burgeoning government and government programs disguised as compassion. You no longer have money for enjoyment, to better your family, for savings, to live a great life, or to start a business. Now your motivation each day, if you can call it that, is to subsist and maybe to see what you can still extract from the people left hanging on to a dying dream. Even that seems like too much effort anymore, so you just roll over and hit the snooze a few more times.
In many ways, you can think of socialism as an unsustainable ponzi schemes. It may seem like it is working at first, but the truth becomes all too clear. No profits, diminishing property rights, no incentive, and people and companies do not prosper. Money runs out and misery sets in. The "compassion" crowd is now selling you that you need to be even more compassionate and give more as times get worse. You are now onto their game but you do not have energy to fight. At some point you have figured out that your money and effort will never be enough for them.
Whether you are young or old, employed or unemployed, educated or not, cool or a dork, easily influence by friends or your own person, you need to be on guard. Socialism will remain a constant temptation. The socialist programs growing all around you will fail in the long run regardless of initial appearances. They always do and they will bring the exact opposite of its initial intent. All of these socialist ideas ignore the critical role of incentive, and as with any ponzi scheme, they will always fail.
No comments:
Post a Comment