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To the Editor:
Re “Even With a Dream Job, You Can Be Antiwork,” by Farhad Manjoo (column, Oct. 23):
One of capitalism’s enduring contradictions is that it fosters a value system that teaches us to find meaning in our work, while employers’ relentless pursuit of profits ensures that millions of people must earn their livelihood in jobs that are degrading, underpaid, and physically and psychologically exhausting.
Current economic circumstances are enabling workers to push back against employers to obtain higher wages and better working conditions. But when the balance of power shifts back to employers, any gains will be put at risk. Those gains need to be locked in by legislation, in particular by legislation that protects and facilitates the right to join unions.
We are a creative and industrious species. When work is emotionally rewarding and fairly remunerated, people should have no trouble seeing it as a meaningful part of their lives.
Gary Mongiovi
New York
The writer is a professor of economics at St. John’s University.
To the Editor:
Farhad Manjoo’s column was a thoughtful analysis of Americans’ disillusionment with a hyperfocus on work. I would suggest yet another reason American workers are saying no to returning to the dead-end treadmill of overwork post-pandemic: They’re sick to death of reading and hearing of the excessive pay and outsize rewards at the high end of the capitalist spectrum, and are simply refusing to serve as pawns on an economic chessboard on which it is clear they will never win.
The ultrarich were always with us. But in previous generations, we weren’t bombarded daily with endless pop culture and social media imagery and breathless coverage of the Zuckerbergs, the Musks and the Bezoses of the world, and their billions.
Self-driving cars! Trips into space! The first trillionaire! The media’s determination to laud the often ridiculous activities of these lucky few has become socially damaging, and is, I feel, an assault on the aspirations of ordinary workers.
Yes, as a culture we seem to have an unquenchable fascination with the rich. But I would suggest that the result of it all to ordinary folks is beginning to be discouragement, hopelessness and a feeling that minimum-wage or slightly higher work is worse than a dead end. It’s insulting. And to a free-market society, that’s a death blow.
Mark Gauthier
Palm Springs, Calif.
To the Editor:
Farhad Manjoo’s excellent column deserves a wide readership. Not only among those lucky or privileged enough to have dream jobs, but also those who do not and those who employ them.
Labor shortage? Raise wages? It’s time to take a hard look at working conditions and the structural changes that would bring people, notably women, back into the labor force during this pandemic. It’s time for radical changes in working conditions.
What if employers offered a 24-hour workweek, with flexible schedules? With a guaranteed minimum income, and free day care, education and child care. Everyone — with a dream job or not — would have time for a vocation, a family and an avocation. Why can’t we do that in this country?
Sharon Stout
Takoma Park, Md.
To the Editor:
Farhad Manjoo extolled the virtue of rejecting the American ideal of hard work. With stocks at all-time highs and an inflationary supply chain crisis around the corner, I’d like to remind readers of the Aesop fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper.”
My team and I are the ants. Those who quit their jobs to receive unemployment insurance or to live off government benefits are the grasshoppers. When winter comes, we ants will not have sympathy for the grasshoppers who chose not to work all summer.
I invite Mr. Manjoo to join me in Wills Point, Texas, to unload my company’s next container. It is an excellent workout and far from the “terrible job” he implied it to be.
Molson Hart
Austin, Texas
The writer is the chief executive of Viahart, an educational toy company.
To the Editor:
Thank you, Farhad Manjoo, for your column. I see a recalibration and redefinition of work in many people’s lives. Many more people are now asking themselves what, where and how they will perform their work. What’s wrong with that?
Lynn Berger
New York
The writer is a career counselor.
A ‘Rush to Judgment on Facebook’
To the Editor:
Re “Power of Likes Puts Facebook in a Quandary” (front page, Oct. 26):
There has been a rush to judgment without empirical facts. It is true, as the whistle-blower Frances Haugen charged, that there was a plethora of misinformation on Facebook concerning the 2020 election. However, her testimony does not empirically show that there is a causal relationship between exposure to falsehoods on Facebook and participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Where also is the evidence to substantiate claims that the Like or Share buttons have caused individuals to form attitudes or behaviors based on messages they liked, shared or received from others? A correlation between the use of these tools and antisocial behavior does not prove that the tools caused the behavior to occur.
The rush to judgment on Facebook is yet another example of the widespread, well-documented tendency to presume that media — from radio to television to Facebook and Instagram — have large effects on a supposedly vulnerable audience.
It is important to conduct research to examine the connection between Facebook’s tools and antisocial actions, but in the absence of data, the claims of Facebook effects are themselves a source of misinformation.
Richard M. Perloff
Cleveland
The writer is a professor of communication, psychology and political science at Cleveland State University.
"work" - Google News
November 06, 2021 at 10:30PM
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Opinion | The Way We Work Now (or Don’t) - The New York Times
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