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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
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Poverty and low wages have been a problem ever since money became the only thing that people began to care about. In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, she presents the question, “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?” This question is what started her experiment of living like a low wage worker in America. Ehrenreich ends up going to Key West, Portland, and Minneapolis to see how low wage work was dealt with in different states. With this experiment she developed her main argument which was that people working at low wages can’t live life in comfort because of how little they make monthly and that the economic system is to blame.
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Often we can 't make a decision because we can 't clearly see which one will benefit our life more. There is a simple way to rectify this. Get a pen and paper and start writing. Write down your choices on a piece of paper and then write out the pros and cons of each choice. Take some time to really consider the pros and cons, and what you are left with is a scale of which decision would be the wiser decision for you to make.
better life. I believe that college is the best option, furthering your education will give you a
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,
For many people in the United States, life is no more than a regular work cycle. Members of working class usually have a High School diploma and may work in a low skilled occupation or manual labor. Most of the enjoying age of this people is spent in working, as they don’t want their new once to have a life they struggling through. Therefore, this essay will argue that minimum wage should be increased federally to $15/hour by 2017. Firstly, if taxes touches the sky, why should the minimum wage be on the ground? Increasing minimum wages would also create new opportunities for education as the students wouldn’t have to work crazy hours. Likewise, many couples won’t have to work multiple jobs in order to manage the household. Lastly, it will lift
The more educated and diverse a society is, the better society’s job market is served. This social economic separation of class is both good and bad for society. Many workers at the lower levels of employment are both pleased and displeased with many aspects of work. Though this fact also holds true with most any job at any level, pay scale often compensates for endurance of a particular job type. The security of a person’s job is also an issue that in today’s economic times forces one to be prepared for change.
In “Americans Are Overworked, but Still Surprisingly Happy on the Job,” Suzanne Lucas claims that an appropriate amount of work can make workers feel satisfied, but
The question of whether money buys happiness and how we choose to answer this question has significant implications in our lives because it directly affects our choices. Most of us base our choices on the amount of money they will result in. We compromise our integrity to demanding bosses in the hope of getting a promotion or a large bonus. We pick college majors based on their monetary value rather than our interest because we believe the extra money will make us hap...
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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.