My father would always judge someone not by their background – but by their work ethic. As far as he was concerned, anyone who was hard working and honest – no matter their job or class – deserved respect. But woe betide the individual – especially one who had enjoyed advantages like a good education – who squandered their privilege by embracing an idle way of life. For them he had no time.
I wonder what he would have made of our current predicament. It was recently announced that sick days have hit a 10-year high – 7.8 per annum, as opposed to 5.8 in 2019. Stress, Covid and the cost of living crisis are apparently to blame for these high levels of absenteeism.
While those factors are part of the problem, I think the underlying issues run much deeper. My experience is that many workforces are disengaged and demotivated. Unsurprisingly, sick days in the public sector remain at twice the level of those in the private sector. Society’s focus on mental health has encouraged those with a tendency towards depression and anxiety to demand treatment and more time off.
Over eight million people are receiving anti-depressants in the U.K. – the number of such prescriptions has more than doubled in the last 10 years. But are there actually twice as many people who are clinically depressed as there were a decade ago? And are the 83 million anti-depressant prescriptions issued every year doing any good?
The authorities’ overreaction to Covid encouraged mass hypochondria. Our culture already over-medicalises everyday life – the official neurosis over Covid sent many people into overdrive. This carries a heavy cost for society and individuals. It increases the burden on the NHS and it undermines the nation’s moral fibre. It feeds into the ‘victimhood’ narrative. The problem is that someone has to look after and pay for all the ‘victims’. This trend is especially disturbing among far too many fit and healthy young people who are in the prime of life. Instead of exploring the world, taking risks and becoming self-reliant, far too many are fearful and dependent.
Meanwhile, it might appear as if unemployment has been cured – only 3.7% of the workforce, or 1.3m people, are registered as unemployed – almost a record low. But unfortunately, a further 2.5 million people of working age say they have health problems which means they cannot work. Indeed, fully a quarter of people aged between 16 and 64 are economically inactive.
Lockdown was a disastrous Government intervention which begat others. Many millions were unable to work and companies would have made them redundant or gone broke. So the Government invented furlough – an ‘innovative’ system of paying people to stay at home and do nothing. I believe this policy had pernicious moral and psychological consequences. It broke the link between work and pay. It encouraged shirkers to think that they could receive money for being idle. And like most of the lockdown stupidity, it has left a grim economic legacy.
Talk to bosses and privately most will tell you that their workforce is not as industrious as it was. Some will blame Long Covid, some will blame Working From Home, some will blame bad habits acquired during long periods of furlough. But prior to lockdowns, the very concept of ‘quiet quitting’ (purposefully doing the minimum work while avoiding the sack) would have seemed outrageous. Now, too many people see it as a valid approach to their career.
Some might argue that many jobs are dull, that certain firms exploit their workers and that overwork is a endemic burden which needs addressing. Yet all research suggests that being out of work is much worse for people’s wellbeing than being in a job – despite all these possible drawbacks.
Jobs don’t just give people financial rewards. Much of their status, social relations, daily structure and self-respect are derived from their work. The World Happiness Report, which uses Gallup’s data to analyse the quality of people’s lives, shows unequivocally that being out of work – for those of a working age – generally leads to misery.
A job provides a reason to get out of bed and do things. Work makes our world go round and provides meaning, goals and an income for billions of workers – and their families. Chronically lazy people tend to lack purpose and fritter their lives away. They contribute little to the world, but expect to be provided for by those around them.
Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins and it is entirely right that the work-shy and shiftless should be made to feel ashamed. There are at least a million job openings in Britain of every description – there is currently work for every able bodied individual.
That will not be the case for ever. Just as raging inflation and interest rates of 5% have come as a severe shock to a whole generation, so one day we are likely to experience 7%, 10% or even higher rates of unemployment. Worklessness is a terrible curse, but I fear it is coming. I see many struggling organisations with staff who are clearly underemployed. Eventually those employers will find a way to do more with fewer people – possibly thanks to AI, possibly because of outsourcing and offshoring.
Furlough and working from home have fed into an entitlement culture which could ultimately bankrupt the entire welfare state. This model works on a system of voluntary reciprocation: those who can earn a living do, while those who are genuinely too frail, disabled or ill to work are supported by productive members of society. But if too many people are too indolent to work and pay their way and the system enables them to get away with it, then at some point taxpayers will revolt – or the Government will run out of money.
Economists say Britain is suffering from a productivity crisis, and I fear the legacies of lockdowns like furlough have exacerbated it. Unfortunately, 47% of GDP is now taken up by Government spending, national debt exceeds £2.5 trillion (the interest on which will soon exceed £100 billion a year) and tax rates are at a 50 year high.
Essentially, we are borrowing to fund our lifestyles and living beyond our means. An ever narrower tax base, with fully 29% of income tax paid by just 1% of taxpayers, is an unsustainable edifice. Public services like the NHS, the police, social care, the civil service and so forth are widely seen as inefficient or even failing. Yet the paranoia and overspending during Covid triggered a contradictory desire for more state intervention and higher public spending – even though most of us know that many parts of the public sector – like the NHS – are not working.
Our standard of living will certainly stagnate unless we can improve productivity and grow the economy. But that cannot happen if people lack the energy or ambition to apply themselves and put in the work. We cannot simultaneously work less and expect the state to do more. The decadent nonsense of ideas like a Universal Basic Income and a four day week must be discarded permanently. The books will simply not balance.
Part of the challenge we face is demographics – society is much older than it was, so the demand for healthcare, social services and so forth is much higher. Arguably, we face the prospect of having to work harder in the years to come just to maintain our quality of life, thanks to an ageing population and the significant debt burden we have accumulated.
But this possible destiny has been exacerbated by the safetyism of modern times and the denigration of work as a noble pursuit. Any society that wants to progress must put its shoulder to the wheel. If we want to build things – like more homes, which we desperately need – we need more bricklayers, carpenters, electricians etc. If we want an improved healthcare system, we need more doctors, radiographers, pharmacists and nurses etc. We need more grafting entrepreneurs to start and grow fabulous enterprises which generate innovative new products, exports and taxes. We must consign the horror of furlough to the dustbin of history, stop celebrating victimhood, and instead state categorically that work is an essential and an overwhelming force for good.
Luke Johnson is a Director of Skeptics Ltd, the company that publishes the Daily Sceptic.
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I disagree with the blanket condemnation of working from home – in general IMO when it doesn’t “work” it is simply exposing existing poor management practices.
But everything else here is spot on – the effect seems to me to have been serious for enough people that it has made a big impact on the work ethic of the country as a whole. Another negative consequence that was easy to foresee.
Thanks are due to Mr Johnson for his support of DS and his stalwart public opposition to covid folly and evil.
“I disagree with the blanket condemnation of working from home – in general IMO when it doesn’t “work” it is simply exposing existing poor management practices.”
TOF – you have made this point before and the implication, I think, is that generally working from home is fine in terms of productivity, but exceptionally (when management practice is deficient) it isn’t. What that analysis omits is the impact of human nature.
Are people more likely to work hard if they are in an environment where the team or company culture is all around them, or where they are detached somewhat from it? Are people likely to work hard if everyone around them is working hard or if the TV is on in the background and the kids are playing, etc? Are people more likely to communicate with each other if they are in the same physical space or in different locations? I also think in-person meetings and conversations are generally more successful than on-line ones, for a whole variety of reasons.
Also I think it depends very much on age and experience. Someone senior who has made their connections and built relationships during their younger days will probably get on fine at home (although I would say the office would benefit from their experience on at least some days of the week) whereas a young person just starting out will likely never develop the optimal skills, knowledge, work ethic and social bonds required if they start out working from home.
Speaking as that senior person, that’s what I thought. But I’ve got inexperienced kids on my team straight from uni who chomp through work, at home. I am surprised that more of them don’t choose to come to the office for the social side, but that’s their choice.
See my reply to MichaelM above, too.
I suppose it depends on the job and the person too. I wonder how it will afffect them long term though. So many people meet friends and partners through work. Perhaps the internet seems to make that less important these days.
Yes. It’s a funny old business. I never liked working from home, but much prefer it now. Less tired and I don’t need to listen to normie colleagues talking about the Latest Thing.
There will certainly be people who struggle to be productive from home, because of their home circumstances but also their personal characteristics. The question is, to what extent is it helpful to then force everyone to travel for hours a day just because there are some people who lack intrinsic motivation? If they are motivated but lack the space at home then they can and should come to an office and employers IMO would be wise to make sure they provide office space for those who prefer it.
It may be true that there’s an element of “positive influence” whereby the weaker can see the stronger and be inspired to do better, but perhaps this is hard to measure.
The experience in our firm has been an overall positive one, so far, though I should say that we have, in general, well paid and well motivated staff, whose work is often solitary and lends itself to flexibility – though we also do use collaboration tools to good effect when it’s appropriate. I probably talk to some members of staff about work more now we’re online than when we were physically together (though perhaps this is an indication of my previously lax management approach :)). I accept other firms with different circumstances might have different experiences.
In summary I think one should not over-simplify the issue to one of “wfh bad”, which is often what seems to be how people think.
Can’t disagree with any of that – it is a complex question and what is optimal is dependent upon the particular circumstances.
What does nag away at me a bit is that WFH cements a little more the kind of social disconnect that was already well in train because of TV, internet, phones and accelerated by lockdowns. But it’s what people seem to want.
Yes – it’s the sudden increase after lockdowns that bothers me too. That it’s part of a general trend away from socialising, and towards seeing other humans as a bit dirty and unnecessary.
What people want is not necessarily what the economy of the country needs. There are too many people, especially in the public sector for whom WFH is actually Shirking at Home.
If a person really wants to work productively from home then they should become self employed. If they cannot do that for any reason then WFH is not an economically viable option
“What people want is not necessarily what the economy of the country needs.” So who decides that?
Maybe there are lots of shirkers in the public sector. If that’s the case, haven’t there always been? Maybe the answer is to shrink the public sector, and also to change the way it is run, change the way managers and workers are incentivized? If you can’t trust the managers to manage workers remotely, why would you trust them to do it in the office?
“If a person really wants to work productively from home then they should become self employed. If they cannot do that for any reason then WFH is not an economically viable option” My firm is 80-90% working from home. We’re making very decent money, so we are very much economically viable.
I’m delighted for your firm. I, for my sins, was a management consultant working across a wide range of commercial organisations in leadership support. Sadly I had a lot of evidence to support my assertions.
I can imagine. There’s slackness and inefficiency everywhere, including the private sector, especially in my experience in large organisations.
I couldn’t agree more with your comment re large organisations. The the public sector have one further disadvantage, the profit motive is not in their DNA. As they don’t have to produce the revenues to cover their costs (thanks to us generous taxpayers) the concept of cost saving is totally foreign to most of them. They talk a lot about being ‘cost effective’ and ‘providing value for money’ but deep down they always know that the taxpayers’ tap is never turned off. And they receive regular confirmation of that through the ability of senior ‘managers’ to fail abysmally and be promoted away from their failures. The NHS provides the most egregrious example here.
Indeed. I see a lot of waste in the private sector too, but ultimately it is limited by their ability borrow money which eventually runs out, meaning they either sort the problem or go bust. I think it’s a hard problem to solve, my preferred remedy is to vastly reduce the amount of stuff that the state is involved in funding directly or indirectly. Sadly not the direction we’re going in…
Looking at myself, I’m not the world’s most motivated employee, but there are plenty of excuses for unproductivity at work – coffee with colleagues, unnecessary catch ups etc., that I don’t have at home.
Also, when I have that slump in the afternoon and I’m in the office, I tend to just stare at my screen for 45 minutes to an hour. At home, I have a ten minute power nap that takes me out of the slump then I’m back in the saddle pretty quickly
Lastly, when at work I tend to leave at 5pm whereas I tend not to log off until 6.30pm on my working from home days..
Yup, I think there are pros and cons, and it shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all which is how a lot of large firm bosses seem to approach it. A blanket policy always seems like less aggro than treating people as individuals, until your good people all leave or become less productive because you’ve pissed them off.
I do think the social side of some people’s lives will suffer (mine hasn’t, and not everyone’s will, because they have things they do outside of work) but then I am not their mum.
I think it’s the way some people are using it that gets to me – presenting it as a human right. Perhaps I’m just jealous that I was never allowed to work from home – not even for one day a week – back when I commuted to London!
Yes my firm never really had much truck with it either.
It’s of course not a right. The market should sort it out – it will be part of what employees think about when they decide where they would like to work.
My neighbour waxed lyrically that he, the company’s clients and the company all benefitted from working from home. I asked if had concerns that if he could work from home in a high wage country couldn’t his job be off shored to a lower income country. He said he was a valued employee with a set of skills that couldn’t easily be offshored. He at 52 years old has now been made redundant and his job has been offshored.
Offshoring has been a threat to UK jobs for a long time. In my personal experience (my firm and our clients) it sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. I guess that’s part of being in a global jobs market. You could argue that a global jobs market is not good for the UK and you want to see steps to prevent it, which is a separate discussion – but I don’t think that’s really an argument for or against working from home.
All true. But the idleness and unsustainable public debt didn’t begin with lockdown policy. All that did was turbo charge a well established trend.
Great article which touches on a lot of the issues .A few observations
I am 63 , took my work pension early after being made redundant in my late 50s .I applied for many jobs but age and experience was against me .Yes there are a million “jobs” out there but many are minimum wage /limited hours or hospitality type jobs .
I was looking for something full time and that reflected my qualifications and experience but they are not out there .They are for the younger generation though.
The benefits system needs total shake up .At a basic level it must be contribution based ,with some time limitations. That should be all benefits including Ta x credits , Housing benefits etc .If you have not paid in for say 10 years or so you cannot get anything out.
Also the work asessment for disability must be changed .A friend ,who walks badly was refused yet a bloke wearing a dress apparently sailed through .
Finally stalled productivity .A lot of this comes from the use of Government supported /sponsored low skilled,low wage “imports” replacing the need for investment in equipment and machinery .Think hand car washes replacing automatic car washes..
Where is the focus on entrepreneurship ??Its evaporated ,post Thatcher to be replaced by Blob driven regulation and safetyism at so many levels .
Not everybody can win a talent show but thats what seems to be held up as a life goal now ,not beavering away in a small industrial unit making widgets…
The Welfare state was long ago bankrupt and the culture of victimhood and enslavement to the State well established. LDs just hastened the inevitable.
Culture is King and our culture is low, not high and barbaric not ‘modern’ or civilised.
Don’t work. Cry, whine. Be a victim. Abort, euthanise, haver endless wars. Government uber alles. Drugs, drugs, drugs. Entertainment, circuses and some crumbs of bread. People can sing the latest idiotic pop crap but don’t know the century of King Alfred or the date of Agincourt, or who James Maxwell was or the year the local viaduct was built or why their town has the name it possesses. But they are sure the diapers and stabs are effective.
Trades et al are looked down upon. ‘Intellectuals’ and their Church of irrational ‘$cience’ dominate. Everyone wants to be a virtue signalling polygendered non White ‘intellectual’ saving the world. Men are now women.
Thus does it all end.
All very true.
“Trades et al are looked down upon.” I shall never forget how, during “covid”, the people who came to our house to work on it were consistently the least covidian. Of course, the “lockdowns” weren’t really proper lockdowns either. Many “looked down upon” workers carried on as normal.
As someone said, there weren’t lockdowns. There were working class people delivering things to scared middle classes hiding behind their sofas
I think the only proper lockdown was in Wuhan where the city was locked down but essential services were kept going by people brought in from outside the city/region. A proper lockdown would see people starving in their homes.
Or as someone once said “The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian one is a matter of time” ——Ayn Rand.
Great article, spot on.
I used to work in a Birmingham factory. Employees would get fed up, partner left, fell out with kids, go off to the Doc, who’d promptly tell them they were depressed, give them a prescription for anti-depressants & sign them off for 6 weeks….. the last thing they needed. They’d then spend 6 weeks, either in the pub, or moping at home, a disaster for all. After 6 weeks of ‘treatment’ they really were depressed.
I challenged Dr’s about this who told me it wasn’t their job to assess if someone was fit for work.
Where I worked able bodied young men in their 20’s were off work “depressed” for the allotted time (13 weeks I believe) and then remarkably they would be back at work till they were allowed to be off again for another 13 weeks. My grandfather worked 50 years in the Michael Pit, raised 5 kids and had a huge garden full of vegetables. He had no time to be depressed, and no one would indulge him if he was.
One thing that seems to get overlooked in this type of article is what are we asking the young to work for?
Virtually no one under 35 who doesn’t already will own their own home and many can’t find somewhere secure to rent affordably.
Many are looking forwards and seeing very few long term employment prospects due to AI and automation.
The highest (and only going to rise) tax burden for 70 years. No hope of retirement.
How many of these jobs that are available are 16-20 hours on minimum wage seasonable jobs that are no good to live off all year round?
Go to the tourist areas in the lake District and nearly every shop/restaurant has a sign up for staff but noone can afford to live locally and there’s no reliable (if any at all) public transport to get to and from these jobs.
There’s a generation of young people realising that they can’t “win the game” so what’s the point in even playing.
Great comment… and tragic what has happened to our country…
Yes a good comment. Where there is life there is hope and conversely……………
Surely they are all “socialists” and they should be working for the “greater good”
In a democratic system, the dependent majority will vote to continue leeching off the ever shrinking younger minority until the last drop of blood has been sucked out of them.
Very true.
However it looks like that last drop might be coming far sooner than the majority is expecting
So true. When the game is so obviously rigged, only suckers play by the rules.
This is just one element of the “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive” consequences of the Establishment’s lunatic Covid policies.
And it was deliberate.
Hmmm. I disagree completely with the statement that But prior to lockdowns, the very concept of ‘quiet quitting’ (purposefully doing the minimum work while avoiding the sack) would have seemed outrageous. – I saw plenty of that in the years before lockdown and in various job sectors too. I also noticed that the amount of personal phone use in work time that some people consider perfectly acceptable is astonishing. Several tradespeople I’ve spoken to have reported having to ‘let go’ young apprentices because they simply cannot put their phones down long enough to learn or do anything. In my last job there were two people who I swear spent more time texting friends and family than actually getting down to work – very frustrating in what was an otherwise very busy office. The phone has encouraged very short attention spans, which cannot be beneficial for productivity.
Yet the article contradicts itself further down with the comment ‘ I see many struggling organisations with staff who are clearly underemployed. – which surely worsens the situation: Mattias Demet’s ‘bullshit jobs’ come to mind here. What do you want: focussed, efficient workers who can see that their role actually contributes to something and has meaning, or just bums on seats who spend their days texting their mates? You can’t have it both ways.
The “welfare state” is a Ponzi scheme – it was always a matter of when if failed, not if.
One of the few remaining true well-known entrepreneurs in Germany (the rest have basically become fascist beggars for ever more state handouts) Wolfgang Grupp from Trigema, has just started that ‘Anyone who can work from home in my company is not important.’
In today’s narcissist ‘like’ culture, such statements and corresponding actions might actually be sufficient and able to reverse that damaging trend.
Yeah well my most productive team members all work from home. I’ll tell them they have to travel 3 hours per day and live somewhere expensive, shall I, and see how long it takes them to go and work for a more flexible employer?
Something that might not be well understood is that unemployment/employed is not statistically binary. Someone is only classified as unemployed (by the ONS) if actually looking for employment – they are “economically inactive”. That does not include pensioners drawing an income from a pension scheme either. Perhaps economic inactivity has become more popular recently.
If you believe that Covid vaccines and widely prescribed psychiatric medications such as antidepressants have serious debilitating and detrimental adverse effects on many people who are given them, then it’s very unsympathetic and unfair to describe the sufferers as “chronically lazy”.
You can’t have it both ways.
So true.
“But if too many people are too indolent to work and pay their way and the system enables them to get away with it – then at some point taxpayers will revolt – or the government will run out of money.”
Or the government can just print more money, of course.
Or we could simply follow the advice of the late, great Buckminster Fuller:
And he said this back in 1970, mind you. At the very least, we could shorten the workweek like John Maynard Keynes predicted.
“We cannot simultaneously work less and expect the state to do more. The decadent nonsense of ideas like a Universal Basic Income and a four day week must be discarded permanently. The books will simply not balance.”
Of course we can. With today’s technology, we simply don’t NEED everyone to work for a living, let along five days a week, to give everyone a decent standard of living. That is outdated and specious 19th and early 20th century thinking. A Monetarily Sovereign government can never go bankrupt since they can simply print the money (even Donald Trump himself admitted that fact in a gaffe back in 2016). And growth for the sake of growth is, of course, the ideology of the cancer cell, which eventually kills its host.
And of course, there is predictably no mention in this article of all of the unpaid household, volunteer, reproductive, and care labor done disproportionately by women. Because apparently that doesn’t count as “work” per the Protestant Work Ethic (TM), despite the fact that the whole economy would collapse without it.
” … If we want an improved healthcare system, we need more doctors, radiographers, pharmacists and nurses, etc….. “
This is simply not true.
So called doctors and nurses and especially pharmacists are part of an industry which actually sickens people, whether through iatrogenic errors or via the simple act of prescribing artificial products to people which the body doesn’t recognise or need.
Medical mismanagement and polypharmacy are probably one of the greatest sources of death and injury in all western nations – this much is widely accepted.
As to medical advice – well, we saw where that leads, especially during the recent ( and soon-to-be-repeated ) covid hoax.
The writer seems to confuse throwing money at something with increasing the value of that thing.
Its not just the UK – but if the US goes we go with it.
Only now do we learn from RFK Jnr telling it as it is the mess the US is in:
“Today, as corrupt powers have overtaken our government, the ranks of the dispossessed have swelled beyond indigenous and Black people to include tens of millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck in financial desperation. The dispossessed also include the legions of the chronically ill, the addicted, the depressed, and the 80% of the country that can no longer afford a normal middle-class lifestyle.
A rising tide of discontent is swamping our country.”
Read/watch Robert F Kennedy’s historic speech yesterday 9th Oct in Philadelphia
https://robertfkennedyjr.substack.com/p/kennedy-independent-presidential-candidate
https://youtu.be/A9opkWJn5aE?t=1260
Quite agree, but “purposefully doing the minimum work while avoiding the sack”?
‘purposefully’ does not mean ‘on purpose’!
Also worth trying: ‘deliberately’
For crying out loud.
Excellent article, many thanks
Can you blame them? The output of this country is 2.5TN and lo and behold, that’s also the debt we’re in. Thanks to the central banks printing money like it’s going out of fashion (I hope so) we are now effectively working for the banks, paying £52BN in interest on a loan of magic money which is nothing more than ledger entry. No thank you. I now trade in silver, crypto & local currency. While the money supply is controlled by sociopaths, we’ll forever be boom n busting – or ‘fleecing the flock’ as the central bankers call it.
Of my family and friends, at 55 I am the only one in full-time employment, part-time education (my choice – I love my work and I love learning). All the others (that is four working in the NHS) have either ‘cut-down’ to part-time (as low as 1/week for one GP relative) or ‘retired’ early three living frugally until their pensions kick-in. Three have relocated out of the South East to rural village locations. My partner also works full-time as a music teacher and loves it.
Whilst I work in technology, I am a trained musician and we spend our time at in-person events in London – we’re regular Prommers, concert-goers, gig attendees, choral singers. That has increased since the Covid nonsense.
We don’t live within TfL and what we’re noticing is that we are the odd-ones-out – trains (if they run at all) are empty, provincial towns are aging rapidly with poor arts provision and boring/bored people who don’t go anywhere or do anything. What used to be a dormitory town for London life at 21 miles away now feels fully asleep 24/7. Our idea of downsizing is probably selling-up out here and moving closer to a normal train service such as the District Line which now runs 24/7.
It isn’t just the work ethic that Covid lockdowns killed – it normalised sitting at home watching the idiot box and eating takeaway food. It killed a zest for life, for different. It told us that we should obey rules, obey norms, conform. It was fundamentally anti-liberal. It was anti-individual.