“Our human capital stock is ready to get back to work.”
Kevin Hassett, economist, Senior Advisor to the Trump administration
Wow. That's cold.
Puts me in mind of a cane-grindin'. For those who don't know, this is how juice was extracted from sugar cane: Freshly cut and stripped stalks of cane were crushed in a roller mill, and the mill was powered by a mule tethered to a pole, as you see in the picture. The mule would walk in a circle, round and round.
Sometimes they'd tie a stick to the mule's bridle; the stick would have a carrot dangling from it, just out of the mule's reach. The theory was that the mule would keep chasin' that carrot and keep walkin' in that circle, round and round.
The mule would walk in that circle, round and round, until the farmer stopped him. Or until he just dropped dead.
(Cane juice is extracted differently these days. The process is automated, and even those who like doing it the "old-fashioned" way use a tractor or similar vehicle. Nowadays, if you attend an old-timey event and see an actual mule powering the mill, the demonstration is brief -- for what I hope are obvious reasons.)
Kevin Hassett, and plenty of others of his ilk, see the working person like that old farmer saw his mule: as stock. You, like that old mule, are supposed to chase that carrot -- your “carrot” is a vacation, or an end of year bonus, or retirement ... but Kevin Hassett is not going to care much if you just drop dead chasing that “carrot.”
I’d like to think we’re better than that. I was raised to believe that we were worth more than that.
Round and Round.
