Guest Poet: America’s Workers Become More Productive
Another poetic gem from TMV’s favorite poet, Michael Silverstein, aka Wall Street Poet:
A recent study found that America’s workers are now the world’s most productive. Each contributes, on average, more than $64,000 to the U.S. economy. This means that the average wage for an American worker is now $64,000 plus, right? Well, not exactly. In fact, most of the wealth these people create gravitates elsewhere. Which raises the question: Is being more productive really that good a thing for those doing the added producing?
America’s Workers Become More Productive
Economists find,
Daily toil seductive.
They give it a name,
They call it ‘productive.’
They say that so great are the national stakes,
We must all labor harder, whatever it takes.
We’re told this approach makes all of us richer,
But on this key point, I really must differ.
What economists find so clearly convincing,
Gets me kind of nervous, in fact, has me wincing.
Productivity seen from under the hood,
Where the work’s really done, ain’t always that good.
Ask yourself what you get, working longer and harder,
A marketplace hero or marketplace martyr?
It’s balance we need here, not talking head blather,
To see what’s important, what things really matter.
Are world markets now with their fierce competition
Just sinister games of human attrition?
©2007 Michael Silverstein
2 Responses to “Guest Poet: America’s Workers Become More Productive”
Interesting question from this poem. Is the American super-productivity due to Americans working harder than others or because we have the tools to produce more in the same amount of time. If the latter, then there is no conflict between being more productive and yet still having time for non-productive things. I’m sure that the productivity is some of both. Of course, some of this conflict is due more to the type of work we do now. In the days of the family farm, there wasn’t a very clear division between living and working, and so it’s hard to know exactly when a farmer had stopped working. This is less true now that we work in cubicles and factories and behind cash registers.
Aka, American Workers Most Underpaid for the Value They Create
There are two ways to generate the more work for the same amount of money: Either invent technology to make the same amount of work go further, or simply pay people less.
Does anyone really think, technology-wise, we’re really ahead of other first-world countries? Maybe a little, in a few fields, but I bet they beat us in others.
No, what’s really making Americans ‘productive’ is that they aren’t being paid enough to start with, and they often end up working unpaid overtime.