Is America a Bad Place to Work?
Recently I encountered a study by an organization called Oxfam Research. That study: Where Hard Work Doesn’t Pay Off. As defined in Wikipedia, Oxfam was founded in 1942 as a confederation of 21 independent charitable organizations, centered in Oxford England. focusing on alleviating global poverty and led by Oxfam International. There is an American affiliate. I thought the study would be worthy of a deep dive.
As the proverbial “big dog,” we can expect operations to take off after us. It did not take long to discern the orientation of this 39-page study – attacking America. After lauding the American economy by size, the authors made this statement, “Despite a powerful economy, one that largely drives the global economy forward, the United States does little to share revenue with workers and does even less to ensure workers are safe and protected while on the job. These are political choices, not inevitabilities.”
The introduction then launches into a tirade against the United States seemingly written by the lawless members of Black Live Matters. Out of left field they made this statement, “The long legacy of slavery and subsequent immigration policies in the US underscore the ways in which the government of this country has written laws and policies meant to create hierarchies of workers in which workers of color, especially women of color, were excluded from protections, stable wages, and the ability to organize.”
I looked at the history of slavery and when the other 37 countries abandoned slavery. Some of the countries (like Iceland) did not exist or were barren of population during the 19th century. Some of the countries may not have had slaves, but they were involved in the slave trade. They also welcomed very few immigrants. An example, go to Sweden in the 19th century and try to find someone who wasn’t a native-born Swede.
The bottom line is the Western world abandoned slavery as a policy in varying stages during the first half of the 19th century, which timing was about concurrent with America. On the other hand, many of these countries had slavery within their borders, but did not acknowledge it. Germany had slavery in the 20th century and two countries not in the study, China, and Russia, still have slavery up to today.
The United States ranks 36th out of thirty-eight countries in their survey in how employees thrive by the Oxfam standards. Mexico is ranked last, but it is a lawless mess. Interesting, that “socialist heaven”, Denmark, ranks 37th. Notwithstanding that Bernie Sanders touted Socialism in Denmark as a model for the United States, their Prime Minister offered “I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism,” he said. “Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
And where are people banging down the door to enter? America. Angela Merkel engineered a mass migration from Northern Africa during the first part of this century. This has caused unrest in most countries where mass migration happened. Look at the war on the streets of France. In Sweden, the immigrants have not exactly blended into their society as crime has soared and jobs have not.
Concurrent with the Oxfam study coming out stating how badly America treats its employees, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released information that income in the United States for employees had grown over the past fifteen years while all those ‘generous’ benefits have shrunk incomes for employees in Greece, Italy, France etc.
Here are some fun facts about the economies that are lauded by the report.
The eurozone economy grew about 6% over the past 15 years, measured in dollars, compared with 82% for the U.S. Maybe all those “benefits” employees receive in the other countries come with a cost – like no jobs.
The United States has had a steady flow of over ten million job openings for a couple of years since the pandemic subsided. There are few job openings in the EU which is part of the strife caused by immigrants. There are no jobs.
Oxfam is another elitist organization attempting to establish criteria for employees that do not work in the real world. And then they insult the intelligence of people who decide to go where the jobs are – America — by telling them the jobs in America are tainted by racism. If the economy is so racist, why do Indian Americans and Asian Americans have higher average incomes than Caucasians? Why do immigrants have a higher home ownership rate than native born Americans?
Here is another finding from diving into Oxfam’s anti-success attack on America. They have a separate study incorporated in the report showing the best places in America to work. The best places are in varying shades of green and the worst are in varying shades of red. The green states are places like California, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York where people are moving from in the hundreds of thousands and the red ones are where the economies are booming.
Conclusion: Oxfam thinks the people relocating are just stupid and do not understand what they are giving up. On the other hand, the simpletons leaving for red states realized the only ones getting the benefits defined by Oxfam are the public employees. The transplants have given up paying the unsupportable cost of outsized benefits.
