Thoughts on Making a Living

Tag: Increasing Income Inequality

A Moped, a Wheelbarrow, and Grit

I met a man on Friday while I was walking around Reno waiting for my car that was being serviced. I was vexed with my work and I was trying to sort it out in my head while I walked. I mean I was wound up tight over some trivial issue. I probably had a scowl on my face. I was totally in my own head.

I spotted him as he rode past me on his moped pulling a two-wheeled wheelbarrow. My first thought was, “That is so cool!” I suspected he was a guy trying start his landscaping business. However, a little further down the road, I saw him pulled up next to a dumpster. At first, my opinion of him changed, but then I thought “Why?”

I went over to talk to him. I told him I liked his rig. He said it was much better than pushing a shopping cart around. However, it had gotten him in trouble with a traffic cop who had recently given him a ticket for riding his moped in a bicycle lane. He showed me a contraption that had a matching backpack that he had just found in a dumpster. He had me guess what it was, but I could not. He popped it open and it was a combined propane lamp and stove with a matching backpack. It had probably cost $50 or more when new. He said he thought he could get it going and sell it to someone. He asked me what I was doing and I told him I was walking while my car was in the shop. He immediately asked what was wrong with my car and asked if I needed some help. I explained that it was just a routine service, but thanked him for the offer. We talked about a few other things. It was still hot for the 1st of October, but supposed to turn cold in the next few days. (Do people who live on the street hear about the weather forecast? Or does it just sneak up on them?)

He asked if I was a soldier. I told him no, but I had been at one point earlier in my life. He said he guessed that, because I stopped to talk to him. He had slept in front of a recruiting center the other night. He had been awakened by a female officer who handed him a Egg McMuffin, but told him he couldn’t sleep there. He said soldiers had always been good to him. That made my eyes well up a little. Soldiers know what it is like to sleep on the floor and how to make equipment work for us in odd combinations. Soldiers also know that there, but for the grace of God, go I.

I wished him good luck and repeated that I really liked his rig. I walked away thinking about him and how blessed I am. The walk had worked for my tangled mind, but not in the way I had supposed when I set off. A hundred yards down the sidewalk, I realized I did not get his name. In most social circles that is the first thing I get when I meet someone. I was ashamed of myself, so I turned around and went back. I asked him his name. He said it was “JT” and I laughed and said, “Well, mine is TJ.” We said good-bye again with a hand shake.

I’ve got no profound truth for you here, Reader, but I know who had more grit and grace at that moment next to a dumpster in a parking lot in Reno, Nevada.

His name is JT and he rides a moped and pulls a wheelbarrow around Reno trying to make a living. It was 31° in Reno this morning.

Why Do We Have Increasing Income Inequality?

It is an issue that is all over the news, Increasing Income Inequality or I3. (I just made that I3 up). Normally, it is expressed in terms of the top 1% own 136% of everything or some other statistic like one CEO makes more than the rest of the world combined. It is obviously an issue that so many feel hard done to, but the prescription normally involves a “living wage” or caps on what some can earn or taxing income above certain amounts at confiscatory levels. That’s just pie-fighting. I wish we had more pie makers, especially those who really love to make and eat pie.

Political viewpoints normally determine where one stands on these issues. The Right want free enterprise, but the Left want social justice. However, I would like to frame this issue more in the New Yeoman point of view. What if you got social justice through free enterprise? Who from the Right would want to discourage self-employment? Who on the Left would want to discourage the individual to stand for themselves?

Unfortunately, some would. The corporatists (modern day mercantilists) and the government-firsters are in agreement here. Keep ’em under the thumb, so they are easier to manage. “You don’t have a W-2 slip? What are you a weirdo? Are you evading taxes? No, you cannot get a loan.” (There’s a great book on this topic entitled “The Future and Its Enemies” by Virginia Postrel)

What we have is far too many people who have listened to the decades of “good” advice to “get a good job.” In simple economics, the supply exceeds the demand. What happens when the employee demand exceeds the supply? All other things being the same, wages will go up and I3 will reverse. I can hear the howls of indignation already! “Koch stooge! Hippie! Unfettered Capitalist!” But hear me out.

Yes, I know everyone is not cut out to be self-employed, but that is not what I am talking about. All that is needed is for the most capable to become self-employed. The number needed to hit the exit from employed life would need to be relatively few. The meme of “The War for Talent” should be an indicator that it is a pretty fine balance already and wouldn’t take much to upset it. Remove a few of the best qualified and voila you have a labor shortage. Both in number and productivity. This can be seen in the hi tech fields already. Many coders have taken the leap to self-employment. That shortage means that the ones who are still happy to be employed reap higher wages and benefits too.

Roughly speaking, all other things being the same, each 1 million employees that became self-employed would drop the current unemployment rate by approximately ⅔ of a percentage point. [Source: USA’s BLS statistics for December 2015.] And that is from a employed work force of nearly 150 million. Surely, we have 1 or 2 million people who would prefer to run their own shop rather than work for Mr. Blatherhard?

The problem is that we as a society have reduced the respect we give to the self-employed. To own one’s business of any type should be held in high regard by everyone. It means that, compared to employees, one has taken more risk and shown more willingness to make it on their own. Yes, I know “no one makes it on their own,” but that is true of everyone, so for those that do become self-employed, still, they are different. And it is not only good for them; it is good for those that do remain employees.

So, how do we get a few million of the employees to remove themselves from the “employed” force? First, we need to set it as a goal for people by holding those who do so in high regard. Parents, teachers, counselors,  I’m looking at you. The employed world you knew is not the one your children are entering. They need more than, “get into the best school you can” and then, “get a job at a blue-chip company.” Second, the thing that stops many is the idea of the bureaucratic hassle of setting up a business, so we should make creating a business so easy that anyone could do it in under an hour. Surely, that should be a goal of government, no?

That’s it. Something that is socially respected and easy to set-up. It is New Kind of Science in its simplicity, but I believe those are the ideas that work best over large populations and time, because they are clear and repeatable. All that is left is excitement and hard work.

Let the New Yeomen take over from there!

 

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