Get back to the Puritan lifestyle and work ethic.
Get back to the Puritan lifestyle and work ethic.
on Jan 29 in Canada, Culture, Current Affairs by Chris Mantelos
As the British were conquering in India, Africa, Australia, etc., as the saying goes “the sun never sets on the British Empire,” why were the British during the American Revolution in 1776, not able to defeat the American colonies? Because the American colonies were saving and working harder than the British counterparts. While British Aristocrats were lounging in country-side estates, the north-eastern American Industrialized were creative in creating things, with the likes of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Samuel Adams.
The Puritan lifestyle and work ethic was too much to match for the British, For example, while the working classes in England were moving from the countryside to the forming of cities during the Industrial Revolution, subjugated to hardships in mines and factories, a decent wage was hard to find to get out of poverty.
If anything, a decent wage started with the the labour movement, the 40 hour work-week, 8 hour day, was a Puritan precept to the growth of capitalism, with all its spoils and privileges it brought with it. In Britain it was the left-wing Socialist who demanded child labour be banned in the late 1700′s, while in the United States, the 40 hour work-week was institutionalized from the U.S. Federal government in the 1920′s as bakers who were working 80 hours a week! went through litigation and up to the Supreme Court, ruled bakers and other workers would work 40 hours a week.
Nonetheless, the spoils of capitalism have morphed into the 21st century ills of capitalism. Rather than “a full days work is a full days pay” as the Mormon proverb suggests, finance capital, for example. derivatives have taken root as speculative “gambling” has rewarded hedge fund managers and international real estate development globe-trotters, who find different cities to exploit, moving on to the next city, once they have profited enough in one. Being frugal and working hard does not mean anything anymore when flipping houses and building high-rises, all for the sake of lower taxes, by increasing the Canadian population is the root and sole purpose of creating jobs in the Canadian economy.
Inflating and re-inflating prices in Canada is squeezing the middle class. Class warfare does exist, the pity is, it has been replaced with Identity politics and wedge issues. As Ronald Reagan said “its the economy you idiot!”
The Puritans would say a simple mantra, work hard and be frugal, do not pay attention to the details, only “early to bed and early to rise makes a man wealthy and wise!” Benjamin Franklin.
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