Gratitude: A Credible Connection Worth Remembering

Happiness is not so much in having more as much as it is being grateful for what you have.

We made this point many times in the book "Why Work Isn't Working Anymore . . . Tools to Transform Your Workplace As If People Mattered."  

Now, there is scientific evidence to support the concept.

Giving thanks will make you happier and improve your relationship with others . . .

The article from the Harvard Business Review is here:

http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/giving-thanks-can-make-you-happier

"As The Debt Machine Grinds to a Halt, Job Creation Falls Off A Cliff" (Charles Hugh Smith)

The jobs recession continues to worsen and has reached critical mass -- employment keeps falling in both nominal and real terms. More of the middle class are being forced down the economic food chain by the day. More people live in poverty in the US than ever before. Food stamps have become the norm. Hunger has reared its ugly head. Civil disobedience is growing.

Charles Hugh Smith has written an insightful article on the topic which can be found here: http://www.oftwominds.com/blognov11/debt-jobs11-11.html

I commend it to your review . . . as well as his website: http://www.oftwominds.com

Here are some excerpts . . .


" . . . the “growth” of the U.S. economy since 1980 is debt-based. Debt has exceeded growth by 136%. If debt had risen in tandem with GDP, then total debt would be a mere $22 trillion instead of $52 trillion."

" . . . every incremental increase in debt has had a diminishing effect on growth. Where $1 of debt once added 70 cents to GDP, now it adds basically nothing, or even reduces GDP."


" . . . employment hasn’t hit a bump in the road; it’s off the road and sinking into a bottomless bog. Here is the civilian participation rate, which measures how many folks in the civilian population are participating in the labor market in one way or another. By this measure, the labor market has retraced to the level of the 1981-82 recession thirty years ago."

" . . . The wheels fell off the financialization and dot-com boom in 2000, and the Federal Reserve and federal government created an even more extreme version of financialization that inflated a gigantic debt/real estate bubble. Like all financial bubbles, this one burst, and once again the Fed and federal government scrambled to inflate another debt bubble.

Since the household sector was tapped out and its primary asset, the family home, had lost a third of its bubble value, the Federal government borrowed $6 trillion to bail out the banking sector and spread trillions of dollars around as stimulus and giveaways like "Cash for Clunkers."

" . . . This is not a bump in the road; it is the exhaustion of the entire model of growth that we have depended on for the past 30 years. Once the debt saturation point has been reached, adding more debt subtracts from the economy rather than adds to it. This is reflected in the decline of employment by every metric: total number of jobs, civilian participation, payrolls per capita, and employment as a percentage of the total population.

" . . . We are past the point of debt saturation, and so we need a new model of employment, and indeed of “growth” itself. Sadly, as discussed in a recent report, the Status Quo financial witch-doctors have only prescribed more debt and more unproductive friction." 

The Old, New NLRB: AmeriKa is getting depressing

In the latest low-rent underhanded tactic by a government gone wild we have the NLRB, the union's advocate in the workplace, putting the pedal to the metal to push through quickie elections in order to 'balance the ledger' so to speak, even though unions already win 60%+ of the time under the current rules which permits 38 days between petitions by unions and employee-decided elections.

Wny the rush?

Politics, of course.

Obama's appointment to the National Labor Relations Board, Craig Becker, who was stomped to death by the Senate, got his place on the Board temporarily via a "recess" appointment, a Constitutional process so bastardized it is now not even recognizable without dental records.

So, the clear mandate of the socialists is to ram a 10-15 day election schedule down the throat of business before Becker is tossed into the street like yesterday's coffee grounds on January 1, 2012, insuring unions election victories in at least 80% of all cases, the avowed intent of the current Adminstration.

The only sane member of the NLRB wrote in response to this "shoot them in the back" attack was as follows: “Make no mistake, the principal purpose for this radical manipulation of our election process is to minimize or, rather, to effectively eviscerate an employer’s legitimate opportunity to express its views about collective bargaining."

Bottom line: The entire US political process has lost total credibility. Next up? Revolution. I'll return for that.

Unions Finding Success Down The Economic Food Chain

We have predicted for several years that organized labor would be more successful by moving out of their comfort zone -- highly paid manufacturing employees -- and organizing lower paid workers in traditionally non-union service businesses. Unions are starting to move in that direction, recently enjoying successes in hotels, restaurants and even car washes.

Check out the link here: http://labornotes.org/2011/11/la-car-wash-workers-win-union

As the economy continues to deteriorate, lower wage workers will look for protection and labor unions will be there to fill the void left by employers not willing to do the right thing.

Large Majority Of American Workers Are Not Engaged At Work

The formula to a point is easy . . .

> engagement
= productivity
= profit

And the inverse is true, which leads to the bad news -- about 70% of American employees are not "engaged" at work, says a recent Gallup survey. You will find the details here:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/150383/Majority-American-Workers-Not-Engaged-Jobs.aspx


It would be self-serving to observe that this is where credible connections with others in the workplace separates the successful from the also ran's, but it is true nevertheless.

For more information, contact us at: jimkarger@mac.com