I think about the recent chain of events and it forces me to wonder where this type of behavior manifests itself. What gives people the idea that they have a right to FAIL and to still be REWARDED?

We look at the Wall Street/Citi-Bank/Auto Industry bail out and somehow believe that it is or isn’t a government problem. But I think that it is a behavior/societal problem. Or at least, that’s where the expectation originated.

Ever since parents decided to give their children the “things that they never had”, we have been sending the signals to generations that we are going to “give” it to them, because we didn’t have it. If our kid wasn’t getting enough playing time in a game, we would bitch at the coach until the kid got more time. If a teacher expected our kid to study more and improve their grades, we accused the teacher of picking on our kid. That is case and point one.

Then, our schools introduced such cutting edge ideas like “no cut” activities. If you go out for an extracurricular activity? Congratulations; you made the team. No, no, no; you don’t have to work hard to be the best you can be. You have made the team photo. That’s good enough.

We have people in our country today who have a job, consisting of perusing the phone book for their five contacts so that they can write them down on their “job search” form. Then, they turn it into the Unemployment Office so that they can continue to receive unemployment benefits. If they are given a job offer, they will provide a litany of excuses for not taking it. They have no intentions of getting a job and why should they? We are paying them NOT to!

And between the lawyers and the unions, how in the hell can someone RUN THEIR BUSINESS? You have signed a contract that has basically taken all of those employee conduct issues and given it to a “grievance” procedure. Why? You screw up and your employer doesn’t have the right to fire you? In fact; you have an automatic 5% increase every year for the next three years. Whether profit is good or the employee is meeting company goals, they get their five because the contract says so.

Yeah; I know. There are those business owners who skirt the laws, treat their people like crap, steal the pension money, live lavishly and close up and move to another state. But they are the exception and not the rule.

We have spent so much time developing artificial intelligence that we have created a certain “artificial reinforcement” for “artificial accomplishments”. We have become a nation where status quo and lowered expectations have taken root. Look at what we are doing in the fire service!

We don’t want to invest a lot in the search for new firefighters. We couldn’t hire them if we knew the whole story. So, we get into “degrees” where crime in their past is an issue. No drug test, either.

I’m telling you loud and clear that the bail outs are a direct result of Society accepting less than our best, spoiling our kids who are now in positions of leadership, promoting mediocrity through our schools and forcing companies to take on added overheads because we don’t think that they can run their own company.

And besides; can some economist in our group please explain to me how we have the money in the first place when we are gazillions in debt to begin with?

Is there a reason why we can’t get a better common sense approach to the financial “crisis”?

And since we are going to allow people to live off of unemployment benefits, can we at least have them clean up our streets and parks? We are paying for it!

Is it any wonder that we are losing industries in this country when we are paying people more money for less work, giving them more days off basically incentifying them to MISS work, allowing them acts of misconduct because turnover is high and putting out a crappy product in the end? Don’t believe me? How long has it been since you went to a sit down restaurant? How was the service? Was your glazed orange chicken worth the 55 minute wait? Yum!

We need to get back to the basics. We need to re-establish goals. We need to reward accomplishment. We need to get back to positive/negative reinforcement to maintain/change behavior.

And most of all, WE NEED TO STOP REWARDING FAILURE WITH “BAILOUTS”!

TCSS.
Art