Why do You Work? The Crisis in Capitalism.

On a regular basis, I ask myself "Why do I work?" I ask it often, because it forces me to evaluate on a regular basis whether doing the job I'm doing is working for me as well as my employer.

After all, just working to pay the bills is a pretty soul-destroying pastime. Remember the old adage "All work and no play..."

So it is with any job: what you earn has to give you something more than just paying the bills. Subsistence wages are not giving you a life.

I've re-evaluated my employment on a regular basis and have done many different jobs. The main one that took be from earning 70K a year down to 20K was the 9/11 attacks. Back then I evaluated whether flying hither and thither, sat queuing up in airports and spending weeks away from my family was actually working for me. In the end I concluded it wasn't.

This is the crisis in Capitalism at the moment. Capitalism has become corrupted: it now stands for maximum profits and minimal costs.

Capitalism works best when it produces a sense of optimism, a sense of aspiration. Workers do a job that gives you enough free time and enough wages to allow use of that free time. So you can forget work for a couple of days. These days most companies engender that sense in their customers to increase sales, but really it's the workforce that also needs that sense of optimism. Instead we get zero hours contracts, 7-day working weeks and the rush to minimum wages, or wages so low that the taxpayer needs to top them up (the abhorrence that is in-work benefits). We are slipping back to Victorianesque working conditions and sweat-shop labour.

Capitalism works worst when it screws everyone. It screws the customer and it screws the worker. At that point Capitalism doesn't even provide a benefit to the shareholders, because pretty soon the company ceases to exist.

Back in History abuse of workers by factory owners started the Trades Union movement. But today the Union leaders are dining at the same posh restaurants as the factory owners. They have become corrupted. Just like the leaders of the Labour party and their cronyism and fawning over wealthy donors.

We need a change. We need to start to engender a sense that the workers of the UK deserve better. Corporations need to start paying a decent wage and that sense of optimism that brings about prosperity and productivity needs to return to our working lives.

Why do you work? Do you do it to just pay bills, or do you strive towards a goal?

I ask because without that little extra to provide enjoyment, work becomes soulless and productivity suffers. We all lose a little bit of ourselves.

Just as our forefathers, we need freedom and fresh air, just occasionally in order to suffer the depredations of the working week.