I caught a conversation on the radio this morning on my way to work. According to the survey they discussed, 79% of employed Americans are unhappy with their job, and 59% prefer to work for themselves.
Being your own boss is at the heart of the American dream. Building something you control. Getting out from under someone else’s boot.
I won’t speculate why almost 80% of those polled said they didn’t like their job or career path, and nearly 6 out of 10 would instead work for themselves. There are as many reasons as there are people, and everyone is different. And that made me wonder.
Does this sample suggest that 60% of America still gets it?
If you are motivated to get out from under the thumb of an employer, why wouldn’t you be more motivated to make sure that doing that had the best possible odds of success.
Government interference, regulation, taxation, licensing, zoning, tax rules, the list of potential infringement or barriers to success can appear endless. Filing your tax returns seems deliberately daunting, as if they are dissuading you from trying.
Rules for how or if a business owner can exercise free speech can be complex, the path littered with trip ropes and traps.
If 60% of us want more freedom, shouldn’t 60% of us want more liberty and less government too?
I want to think the number is higher, but as noted in the past, and as recently as this morning, the COVID “test” produced a lot of failing grades and not just among our so-called leaders.
It is our nation. We are the power behind the people we elect to serve us. That relationship was long ago inverted, but if a majority see work freedom as preferable, perhaps the sentiment behind the original American Revolution still smolders under the surface.
The idea that we can do a lot more for each other for a lot less while serving our own interests within the framework of a few simple ground rules.
It sounds like a message in a bottle, so, like Sting says in the song by the same name,
Walked out this morning
Don’t believe what I saw
A hundred billion bottles
Washed up on the shore
Seems I’m not alone at being alone
A hundred billion castaways
Looking for a home
How many admitted but unrealized pro-liberty castaways think they are alone and are looking for a home? And how do we do a better job of getting them the message that they have a home? It’s America. That they need to stand up and defend it, not every four years or when they feel like showing up at the polls for a local election, every day.
And not just every day, but informed, and in every way.
America is becoming that job you don’t really like, but if you don’t do something and soon you’ll never be able to “work for yourself.”
They are trying to take that away from you, and you need to stop that before it is too late.
