Friday, March 29, 2024

Truth Clinic: Refining the work hard philosophy to maximize benefits

By James Breedlove, NDG Contributing Writer

Recent reports by the Pew Charitable Trust conclude that African Americans are much more likely than whites to be stuck at the bottom of the income and wealth ladder from generation to generation.  Even when blacks manage to achieve middle class status they do not pass middle class motivation on to their children to the same degree as white families.

Yet, many of our black political and civic leaders continue to focus attention on, and understandably so, high impact issues such as the devastating disparity of Black unemployment which remains at twice the level of white Americans.  They describe Black problems and social ills from a slave tainted emotional perspective without providing workable solutions or identifying methods for overcoming the economic inequality that Pew addresses.

Too often the Black Community seems to be mesmerized into inaction because of the uncertainty associated with economic conditions such as the recent fiscal cliff that are controlled outside the community.

However, based on recent history this combative dysfunctional political environment is going to be the norm.  Congress and the Administration, after a brief pause to regroup, will reenter negotiations over America’s out- of- control debt and deficit spending with more partisan political rancor and very little bi-partisan fixing.

Obviously the black community cannot afford to continue embracing a strategy of talking and doing little to control its own economic destiny.  The National Urban League’s equality index has only registered tenth of percent incremental moves since its inception in 2005; which if extrapolated indicates that black economic parity is still ­600 years away.

While high level black intelligentsia focus on conferences, forums and blue ribbon commissions why not plant a simple but powerful concept in the black community that individuals and families can immediately begin to implement?

It starts with Refining the Work Hard Philosophy To Obtain Maxim Benefits for the individual and the community.  But first we need to be fully aware of how a lack of understanding of work-pay ratio has kept the average worker from maximizing potential benefits of his hard work.

Typically we are indoctrinated to work hard from an early age and taught to get a job or engage in some service where your time is exchanged for money.  The average person starts out either broke or with barely enough money to sustain a minimal life style.  I was introduced to the work for pay concept as a child when I cut grass, shoveled snow, and delivered newspapers.  For others it may have been an allowance for doing chores around the house.  Whatever the means, the end result was actual money in hand.  Other jobs usually follow.

This is what usually happens.  The money received for working is gradually spent.  If you wish to get more money you have to repeat the cycle and give additional time for more money. Each new unit of time worked results in a new unit of money received which equates to a work-pay ratio of one to one.

As this scenario is repeated over time the hard work and effort expended in earning new money is an inefficient use of your time because you are always operating from your initial starting point; broke, not the destitute broke but pay check to pay check broke.  When you do not work you do not get new money.

While there are obvious short term benefits resulting from having a one to one work-pay ratio job the long term consequences are not obvious until it is too late to remedy, Initially, you convince yourself that by buying things (home, car, cloths, food) your hard work is justified, You feel a sense of gratification and accomplishment.

Now, fast forward 20-30 years when your physical and mental agility has diminished.  You do not approach work with the same enthusiasm as in previous years.  Your attitude towards hard work changes as you realize you are just working to pay bills for stuff that no longer gratifies as much.  Even though you’ve accumulated a lot of things you seem to be on a perpetual merry go round; moving but not going anywhere.  Maintaining the status quo becomes more difficult as the purchasing power of your paycheck becomes less because of government’s punitive economic policies.

You suddenly realize that retirement is becoming less feasible and you will have to work much longer or perhaps indefinitely.

Consider one alternative.  If instead of simply participating in a standard work-pay ratio job you had been mentored early in your career to address the question, What can I do with some of my earned money that will make money for me?

For example, suppose you had $10,000 (this baseline amount is your choice) that was averaging 5 percent a month return or $500 and you became proficient at doing this consistently?  In other words this single pot of dollars that you worked hard for is now making money for you each month.

Does it seem reasonable if you could make $500 each month with $10,000 you could replicate the process each month with $100,000 and make $5,000?  It does not require more work.  You expend the same effort that you did with the $10,000.  This template, once perfected, can be expanded to any multiple of $10,000 (your baseline) that fulfills your individual objective.  Since work expended is constant and pay increases your work-pay ratio is no longer one to one but one to 5, 10, 20 or more.

It stands to reason then that the earlier in life the concept of short term benefits versus long term consequences is understood the sooner individuals can make the decision to transform a stagnating one to one work-pay ratio job into a perpetual money machine that delivers continuing long term benefits from short term hard work instead of the reverse.  Section 322 of the public library contains work-pay magnifier books.

This is the type of indoctrination our homes, schools and churches should be instilling in our black youth if the black inter-generational economic disparity gap is to ever become a historical relic.

Comments or opinions may be sent to the writer at: jaydubub@swbell.net.  Mr. Breedlove is available to conduct workshops or seminars on the Work-Pay concept. 

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