Work Sucks

I've been thinking a lot about work lately . . . well really that is a subject I regularly think much about. What kills me is that it seems that the large majority of jobs really suck. I mean who the hell would want to build toasters, pave roads, work at the post office, do secretarial work, etc. A few years back I got a hold of some statistics that categorized the various occupations in America and then gave the percentage of the working population working in each. The statistics intrigued me and they still do, but they are also daunting. What is one to think about something like that? What is good about it? What is bad about it? I don't know, but I do like the idea of having an overview of our entire economy.

I dream about an economy where everyone loves their job. But how can we ever get there? What are the principles we need to follow in order to get to that point? What are the characteristics of today's jobs that cause so much unhappiness? The monotony? The lack of autonomy? What else?

There is a book related to this issue that I really want to read. It's called The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work and it's written by Joanne B. Ciulla . Perhaps this is a subject I need to get more deeply into. Hmmm.

And this brings up the issue of all of the things I want to study: methodology, economics, economic sociology, information glut, education, city planning. It's really hard to decide what to study when? But now that I'm looking at this list I just made I think it would be best to work on the first three first.