Apres le deluge

“The great resignation”: Upwards of 40% of workers are thinking about quitting their jobs https://t.co/josb2HmqCg

— Axios (@axios) June 14, 2021

The old joke tells of the newly arrived damned soul who is shown various rooms and given his choice of where to spend eternity. The last room seems the best: people standing waist-deep in shit, drinking coffee. This, he thinks, he can tolerate. Just as the door closes behind him, he hears a voice announce: "Coffee break's over! Everybody grab your ankles!"

The joke has become an analogy.  The room is the workplace, for many people, from the “service” industry to the office.  The voice is GOP governors telling workers to grab their ankles again, like good peons, but cutting off their unemployment benefits as quickly as possible.  The joke may end up being on them.

According to the Axios article, surveys indicate 25 to 40% of workers are considering not returning to their jobs

"People have had a little more space to ask themselves, 'Is this really what I want to be doing?'" So some are deciding they want to work fewer hours or with more flexibility to create more time for family or hobbies.

But according to GOP governors, peons don't need time with family or hobbies. They need to get back to work! You know, to serve their masters!

No, I don’t really think it’s that simplistic.  But after a year of having time to reflect on work and life and what’s important, some people may be deciding to be their own master.  Not quite, again, the extreme of a revolution, an upheaval: but some of the old ways may not hold in this brave, new world.  Office workers may not want to go back to the office when they can work just fine from home.  Other office workers may not want to go back to an office depopulated by technology and social change.

And then there are the “service workers” who may not be that interested to go back to “service,” and may prefer instead to get a better job; say, an office job.

Yes, restaurants have to have waiters and dishwashers, but those restaurants may find they have to pay more for those employees.  And restaurant patrons may find they have to pay more for the pleasure of having someone else prepare their meals.  Which may mean fewer restaurants, or just a bit less shifting costs downward.  Capitalism is based in no small part on exploitation of labor, especially at the bottom of the system (I’ve done the real work of being a laborer on a construction side.  I’d much rather be paid more for far less physical labor.).  As you rise “up” the system, pay tends to increase for the responsibility you take on, not for the labor you exert.  But it may be a percentage of those with low responsibility jobs look to improve their lot in life.

Not a revolution, but an interesting future; one that may not be quite so easily bought off with claims that people “on the bottom” are lazy or “arbeit macht frei.”  Yeah, I went there; screw Godwin’s law.  GOP governors are going to sound a bit too much like Nazis if they don’t watch it.

There’s no revolution coming, no wiping the slate clean and starting from scratch.  But apres le deluge*, some things are not going to remain the same.

*Not that Obama used it, but it applies to him.  Everything we are going through is a consequence of electing Trump, but that is due, in no small part, to the idolatry (I mean that literally and in the “Biblical” sense) of the GOP for “heroes” like St. Ronnie of Reagan, an idolatry which descended to Trump.  Trump has put himself in the position of Louis XIV, but it doesn’t fit.  After Obama came the disaster; and that disaster is reshaping us.  Which, in the end, may be a good thing.