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correlation between income and happiness
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People will argue that having a low-paying job and freedom is better than a high-paying job and a 60-hour workweek. However many including myself, don’t share the views of Hal Niedzviecki’s essay’s “Stupid Jobs Are Good to Relax With”. Having a higher paying and longer hours provides much more income and allows for a lot more financial freedom. This freedom can help bring much more happiness into your life compared to the lower paying workweek. Hal Niedzviecki mentions many benefits to the easy jobs with low-paying workweeks in the following statement
For several years now, I have relied on stupid jobs to pay my way through the world. This isn’t because I am a stupid person. On the contrary, stupid jobs are a way to avoid the brain numbing idiocy of full-time employment. They are the next best thing to having no job at all. They will keep you sane, and smart. (Niedzviecki 1971 p. 5)
With this in mind having a nice amount of money saved away bring peace of mind through financial security. As well as being able to indulge yourself in many more activities and costly items. With a higher paying job and longer hours you can also afford a much better retirement and have more money to spend on family. Both types of jobs have a distinct difference from the income, hours and to the future of your career and life.
First let us talk about a notable difference between these workweeks their income. Having the high-paying job earns you much more money per hour giving you much greater financial freedom. This allows you to help pay for the important things in life such as your kids, better house, and much more. Then with a low-paying workweek your restricted more on what you can spend your money. Hal Niedzviecki stated “Despite his decad...
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...y it? Also in most low paying jobs there isn’t much room for promotion. In the end the low paying job leaves you small savings and little spending cash as well as poor retirement funds, were as the high paying job secures your future and leaves room for improvement.
In conclusion the having a low-paying job and freedom won’t get you anything luxuries and won’t guarantee a higher quality life experience outside of work. Whereas the High-paying job and 60-hour workweek you’re garneted financial security which brings peace of mind and luxuries to your life. In the future you’re able to move up though the job and secure a future for not only yourself but your loved ones to. Therefore taking the High-paying 60-hour workweek job is the best choice in every case.
References
Hal Niedzviecki (1998). Effective Reading and Writing: Stupid Jobs Are Good to Relax With
Ehrenreich show that just because people have a decent job doesn’t mean that they are living a happy life. “ You might imagine, from a comfortable distance, that people who live, year in and year out, on $6 to $10 an hour have discovered some survival stratagems unknown to the middle class . But no.” Many of the narrators coworkers are living a rough life as they are trying to better themselves, but they can’t due to the “Money-less” economy that the middle class entails. That six to ten dollars an hour doesn’t cut it in the high cost of living nowadays. The amount of time that people spend out of the day working is slowly increasing to where some people never get to see their family. My father is home for four days out of every month, which is not a very long time, so we spend as much time with him as possible before he sends back off to the mine to work his life away to support his family. The amount of time that americans spend working doesn’t comply with how much they are getting paid.The minimum wage for the state of wyoming currently is $5.15 per hour. Not making much money can have a large impact on people’s attitudes towards
Ehrenreich states “…the United States, for all its wealth, leaves its citizens to fend for themselves — facing market-based rents, for example, on their wages alone. For millions of Americans, that $10 — or even $8 or $6 — hourly wage is all there is.” (Ehrenreich 214) A large portion of us human beings in society today, only care about making money to benefit ourselves rather than those less fortunate. People who have worked their entire lives on low wages may never experience luxuriousness due to the greed of our employers and government. Those graced with a generous amount of money tend to leave others in need of assistance, thusly causing inhuman nature to develop within our communities. Ehrenreich experiences this when she found out that her own self-esteem lowered at the hands of her employers who treated their workers as disposable. These employers as well as their companies, devalue a worker to essentially keep them powerless against them. Many of the job interviews she had gone through avoided any discussion of wages because, the employers wanted to keep the paychecks at a bare minimum. In most situations within our community workplace, a worker is not compensated correctly for his or her labor. Most of the human beings today would do just anything to stay wealthy, even if it means devaluing another. Most of our society spends their lifetimes
One of the facts of modern life is that a relatively small class of people works very long hours and earns good money for its efforts. Nearly a third of college-educated American men, for example, work more than 50 hours a week. Some professionals do twice that amount, and elite lawyers can easily work 70 hours a week almost every week of the year." What I see from this is nothing more than people only working long hours to receive good pay. That doesn’t mean they enjoy what they’re doing and for me I 'd rather be happy working and making decent pay then work stressful long hours and be unhappy just to receive a bigger
The same article showed other factors that play into the overworked life of an average American, and one of them is the 67% increase in cost of living since 1990(Gilson). Or, the fact that one’s annual salary at minimum wage is merely $15,080. In addition to that, one must have a $30,000 income in order to say that they genuinely have econmic security. So, maybe this is the reason why Americans find themselves having to work longer hours and having to work harder. It is because our economy is relentless, and in order to make a living, things like vacation and days off have to sometimes be put on ho...
“Workers Make Appeal to Taxpayers,” also follows Andrew Olson, a McDonald 's worker who makes $8.60 an hour, and his fiance who makes minimum wage in their experience under the poverty line. “Their salaries are so meager [...] that they rely on food stamps and Medicaid to get by,” says Kelly about Olson’s current living status, a lifestyle most Americans involuntarily live. Aside from the benefits wreaked by business owners and taxpayers, the workers living on poor salaries prove as the most positively and heavily affected; the three point nine percent of working citizens treated unfairly by big businesses. “Workers Make Appeal to Taxpayers” concludes with a quote from Olson, “Just because I work in fast food, does that mean I should have to just scrape by in
There are a lot of reasons motivating people to work, such as their happiness, interests and self-esteem. However, it is important that jobs can influence people to keep their ambitions to achieve their goals, to satisfy their basic needs and to focus on one thing with their passion. Florence Nightingale gave up financial support from her family since she had an ambition to improve England’s medical and healthcare environment in the 19th century. And during my high school, “my job” offered me a suitable chance to reach my aim, too. In “Workers” by Richard Rodriguez, undocumented physical labor who comes from Mexico works in the U.S. to earn money for their basic needs. Furthermore, in Carl Rowan’s short story, “Unforgettable Miss Bessie,” Miss Bessie, a high school teacher with a plenty of knowledge, uses her passion to educate Africa American. According to these three people and me, jobs are so important for everyone because people need some ways to satisfy their ambitions, money for basic needs and passion on doing something.
A large part of this problem is that many Americans buy into the ploys of capitalism, sacrificing happiness for material gain. “Americans have voluntarily created, and voluntarily maintained, a society which increasingly frustrates and aggravates” them (8). Society’s uncontrolled development results in an artificial sense of scarcity which ensures “a steady flow of output” (78).
This article, written by Barbara Ehrenreich, describes her month-long experiment with living on only minimum wage in June of 1998, shortly before certain welfare programs were to be cut back. She intended to test the viability of living only on minimum-wage jobs, as well as the claim that “work will lift poor women out of poverty while simultaneously inflating their self-esteem, and hence their future value in the labor market.” Ehrenreich at first expects her privileges – such as her intelligence, race, health, and transportation – will allow her to easily find a job and survive off of it. Immediately, her expectations are dashed by the difficulty she faces in finding a job she would prefer. She eventually settles on being a waitress, and for a short period works two jobs at once. After a month of exhausting work, she finds she is unable to withstand the physical, emotional, and economical demands of minimum-wage labor any longer.
Firstly, having a steady job can have stable income. In now’s society, money is one of the most important thing, especially for an adult. In average, an American family can spend 51,100 dollars a year, which include transportation, food, entertainment, education, housing, insurance, clothes and some others. And a thirty year-old person can earn 54,305 dollars a year. So if a person has a full-time job, he is able to afford the family’s expends. Having stable income can also provide people safety, because money is necessary for living. Doing one job constantly can improve a person’s ability. Because getting used to a job need time, and be a master of the job takes even more time. While doing the stable job, people can explore new things, new method and give more sophisticate ideas to keep challenge oneself. Doing a steady job can also provide working experiences, and it is like having an insurance for the future. Because the boss will know more about the person, and know what kind of job he is good at. Then the person can at least keep the job or even luckily, get a promotion. Because there are so many benefits of keeping a steady job, people should not follow the dream.
High workloads, high stress and low wages are the norm, (Greenhouse, 2008) which translates into a lack of work/life balance. Consequently, the largest job growth sector in America is the low wage retail and food service sector. (Draut, 2005) Chain stores are everywhere, making jobs at places like Starbucks and Best Buy plentiful. Unfortunately, these types of jobs pay little above minimum wage. This puts the debt-strapped college grad in the impossible situation of having an income, but not earning enough to cover the basics. Further still, working in food service and retail guarantees an unpredictable schedule. Some retailers will post work schedules only a few days to a week in advance, (Draut, 2005) while others will call their employees at the last minute to fill shifts, thus making it difficult to plan or have a social life. And considering that many college grads work in these industries, it is understandable how this kind of work-stress coupled with financial stress is a recipe for disaster. In addition, employees often risk losing their jobs when they need to miss work to care for sick children. (Greenhouse,
One thing about life that I never understood is pay role. It makes no sense at all. It seems to me that the more work you do the less you get paid and the less work you do the more you get paid for it. For example, my father started out working as a garbage disposal man. By this I mean that he was the guy hanging off the back of the garbage truck. He would work long days and the physical demand was just exhausting. Could you imagine doing this work in the biting cold of winter or the humid heat of the summer all day long? The pay was not very good. Currently he still is in the same business but I would say a lot further up the ladder than he used to be.
The first advantage is very easy to understand. Stupid people are never asked to do a lot. Many have noticed that people tend to steer away from someone they feel may be stupid. This is for a very good reason. The stupidity which they posses makes a name for themselves, a name which can be very difficult to shake. Possibly, it is a word which describes the working habits of the person. A close friend was quoted as saying, “ the working habits of a stupid idiot suck, they work like crap.” Yet, this creates a positive situation for the stupid person. They will have a lot of free time on their hands for more of life’s truly meaningful pleasures. Some of these activities are combing facial hair, and counting the pixels on a Sony TV.
If you had the choice to keep all your wages that you earned from one day at work, with no taxes or deductions taken out, or, have one entire day to spend with your family, which would you choose? The chance to make money so it can be spent freely is enticing. And, missing just one day from the family, to make a couple of hundred dollars, does not seem that detrimental. Nor does missing a child’s game or a date-night with the spouse; these events can always be made up at another time. But, all too often, the money-making opportunity triumphs over quality time that could be spent with family.
Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions a person has to make in their life. It is so important because that is what we will have to do to support ourselves throughout life. Imagine being stuck in a dead end job and having to go to work every morning and dreading it. That is no spending oneÕs time and life is too short to work 35 years and be unhappy with it. If a person likes the job they do then it is not work, because finding satisfaction out of a job can bring great happiness. That information has enabled me to make the decision of choosing my area of study and career in the field of Information Technology.
Choosing which career path to follow is one of the most important decision people take in their lifetime. Considering that this decision will affect the entire future life, it is very important to be sure that it is the right one. It is one of the most important steps in order to successfully find a job that would satisfy personality needs and guarantee a steady income. If he or she is passionate about their job, hard work is simplified and high salary helps to concentrate on results. The key about being successful at work is to be in love with it.