EU Work Env, originally uploaded by crassus08.

This taken from Time magazine and i thought that its a good article to let us get updated of the world around us:

"Unemployment is a West European epidemic-or luxury. But in a global economy, old attitudes about work have to change."

This part i feel that all of us should read and ponder, as there is bound that we will tend to fall into this during one part of our lives... or so i think...

'The son of a single mother, Jensen grew up in the Danish town of Elsinore. When he left school at the age of 17, he had no intention of doing much of anything. "I had no plans, no ambitions," Jensen says. But the Danish government no longer allows people like him to coast. His social caseworker enrolled Jensen in job-training placement schemes and courses. Everytime he dropped out of one, he was put on another. If he didn't show up, he didn't get his benefits. One spell Jensen remembers vividly: he had to turn up every morning at an Elsinore job center to be give a series of mundane assignments that ranged from sweeping leaves to washing the gates of public institutions. "It was almost as if one day I had to move a pole of boxes from one place to another and the next day move them back again," Jensen says. "I often felt humiliated."'

It seems that even socialist countries like Europe are also giving way to the highly competitive capitalist society that we Singaporeans are so familiar with.

Our society is one such that we cannot survive if we do not work. For those who cannot keep up, we simply abandon them. So hypothetically we have dropouts who become problems to the society because of their way of life.

It is all about keeping in tune with the masses and be termed as successful if we could do it. Thus a degree or diploma is paramount if we should seek to hold a firm footing in our society, to be able to afford a house and also being able to rear children so that we can depend on them when we grow too old to work.

In other words, we are stuck to the economic machine. Time magzine reporter Peter Gumbel pointed out that "West Europeans regard the shift (work nature) as an outrageous attack on hard-won social advances gained over the past half-century."

Now its either to follow the economic robot or be left jobless and labelled as a parasite.

So the questions lies, how do we go about working to live, or are we just simply just living to work like many others are unconsciously doing so in the huge Economic machine?

- posted by “兴”火燎原 @ 9:52 PM