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Psychologist: “America is not well”

The capitalist system demands that you work, come hell or high water.

But “for a moment in early 2020, it seemed like we might get a break from capitalism,” a Vox article says (read it here).

It continues, “A novel coronavirus was sweeping the globe, and leaders and experts recommended that the US pay millions of people to stay home until the immediate crisis was over. These people wouldn’t work. They’d hunker down, take care of their families, and isolate themselves to keep everyone safe. With almost the whole economy on pause, the virus would stop spreading, and Americans could soon go back to normalcy with relatively little loss of life. Obviously, that didn’t happen.

“Now it’s been nearly two years since the beginning of the pandemic — a time that has also encompassed an attempted coup, innumerable extreme weather events likely tied to climate change, and ongoing police violence against Black Americans — and we’ve been expected to show up to work through all of it. ‘I don’t think people are well,’ says Riana Elyse Anderson, a clinical and community psychologist and professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. ‘We are moving along but we are certainly not well.’ …

“Since the pandemic began, workers in America have faced ‘compounding and continuous’ crises, Anderson said. There’s the threat of the virus itself, which has taken a devastating toll on front-line workers, with line cooks, warehouse employees, and agricultural workers at especially high risk of death in 2020. The first waves of the virus also brought economic hardship in the form of job insecurity, slashed hours, and depleted savings, anxieties that fell especially hard on Black and Latinx workers ….

“Since then, the crises have kept compounding. A new variant of the coronavirus stalks the globe, stoking fear and uncertainty in leaders and ordinary people alike. Tornadoes killed at least 90 people across six states in December in what one federal official warned will be the ‘new normal’ due to climate change. American democracy looks ever more at risk, with experts warning that the country is ‘sleepwalking’ toward a future in which votes no longer matter.”

I would like to interject here and say I’m not sleepwalking toward such a future. I’ve been doing everything I can to warn readers of this blog that Republicans are an existential threat to the democracy and freedom we’ve taken for granted all our lives. This is not the Republican Party you used to know. You can’t vote for these people. It has nothing to do with politics, or policy choices. I’m as much for limited government, low taxes, and capitalism as anybody. These people are literally trying to kill you and take away your right to choose your government. They must be stopped, or the America we know and love will be gone.

America’s long-abused workers have had enough. This was building up long before the pandemic upended work lives and a lot else. Before the conservative revolution that began with Reagan, 60% of America’s economic output went to workers, 40% went to investors. By 2019, it was the reverse: 60% to capital, 40% to labor. That was the primary result of 40 years of Republican economics. (Side effects included numerous corporate scandals and financial crises.) The average American wage, adjusted for inflation, hadn’t grown at all since 1970. Workers were underpaid, overworked, and above all disrespected. “Take this job and shove it!” became a popular social meme.

What the Vox article argues is America’s workforce is breaking down mentally and emotionally, and that will require changes. “Experts say what’s needed is, at minimum, a new approach to employee well-being and, at a maximum, a full rethinking of the meaning of work in America,” it says. Employers, of course, won’t go along willingly. The short answer to this is, if they don’t, they won’t have workers. People are walking out by the millions, because they can’t stand work anymore.

Vox says, “Overall, surviving the disasters of the 21st century will require a new kind of strength from Americans — not the dogged persistence to keep doing our jobs while the world falls down around us, but the empathy and generosity to come together to stop the collapse.”

I’ll interject here again. Crisis, mental stress, and emotional fatigue are nothing new. They’re a continual part of being human on this planet. Society is full of people who’ve borne unbearable stress. The pandemic is merely creating a new batch of them.

The world needs a strong America, one capable of defending freedom, holding dictators in check, and leading the way in technological and other kinds of progress. For that we need a healthy workforce. If something’s not working, it’s time to try something different. This Vox article makes some suggestions about what should change.

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