Labor Studies, Pethokoukis
So the New York Times asked me to write a “Room for Debate piece based on this prompt: “Can companies excel without making workers miserable?”
It is a theme that had never occurred to me. As I point out in my mini-essay, companies are very profitable and workers overall aren’t miserable. So is this speculative or something? Or does it reflect a certain world view about what brings humans deep satisfaction?
As my boss Arthur Brooks has written, “In other words, the secret to happiness through work is earned success. It is deeply satisfying to apply our skills and create value in our lives and in the lives of others. No wonder Americans who feel successful in the workplace are twice as likely to say that they’re happy overall. This means economic opportunity is critical. That’s what enables us to find the job that suits our skills and advance through hard work. Opportunity is the gateway to a key source of human happiness.”
Fellow RFD essayist Guy Kawasaki argued something similar: “The bottom line is that if you want to be happy at your job, find one that is psychologically rewarding with adequate compensation — in short, one that enables, encourages and even requires good work. But good work is hard. And when you want to have fun, go to Disneyland.”
So it’s important to have an economy that creates jobs, gives people necessary work skills, makes sure work pays, and requires work for welfare. Others disagree and propose a guaranteed basic income with no conditions. Here is an interesting counter by Andrew McAfee, coauthor with Erik Brynjolfsson of The Second Machine Age, a book whose predictions about technological change and automation have been cited by guaranteed income proponents:
