>From: "Hymowitz, Carol" <Carol.Hymowitz at wsj.com>
>To: "'Carl Remick'" <carlremick at hotmail.com>
>Subject: RE: Your Wall Street Journal column today, 'When Work Is Frantic"
>Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 11:17:29 -0400
>
>thanks carl for writing.....and i do understand that your analysis of the
>systemic reasons underlying our frantic frenzied lives is a deeper way of
>looking at the issue carol hymowitz
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Carl Remick [mailto:carlremick at hotmail.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 1:38 PM
>To: Inthelead
>Subject: Your Wall Street Journal column today, "When Work Is Frantic"
>
>
>Dear Carol Hymowitz:
>
>With all due respect, I think the agonies of what you term
>"on-call-all-the-time work schedules" call for sterner measures than the
>pathetic coping mechanisms practiced by your interviewees.
>
>As a corporate communications writer for the past 25 years who has often
>been involved in company crises, restructurings, transactions, etc. -- I
>have long been familiar with demanding work hours, especially since I have
>been employed on a billable-hours basis for over a decade. However, while
>the sheer time demands of work have gotten worse over the course of my
>professional life, there is no question that in the past year or so this
>continuing quantitative change has become a qualitative one.
>
>The very terms of working life have become debased and vile. What matters
>now isn't the quality of work one produces but the difficulty of the
>conditions under which one produces it -- e.g., staying up all night or
>investing an entire weekend in petty labors that often amount to no more
>than make-work. I term this "stunt work," and it seems to be
>characteristic
>
>of most workplaces nowadays.
>
>All in all, I find the record prosperity we are now supposedly enjoying a
>puzzling notion of the good life. Americans in general have never seemed
>more crass and spiritually impoverished than they do today, lacking the
>time
>
>or inclination to cultivate their sensibilities. As for the comforts and
>security of material wealth, they show every sign of being illusory and
>evanescent. Today's rip-roaring stock market is quite obviously a Ponzi
>scheme. And the unprecedented accumulation of consumer goods that has
>occurred in recent years reflects only the most reckless sort of
>spendthrift
>
>behavior. We may *think* we deserve all these goodies because of the
>ridiculous hours we work, but in truth, all that effort doesn't generate
>much true value; America's spending boom has been fueled by the generosity
>of others, as evidenced by the greatest current-account deficit in history.
>
>Long story short: Capitalism has got to go. In the very few years since
>the Berlin Wall came down and America emerged in earnest as *the* global
>superpower, the nation's business elite have gone out of their way to
>confirm the worst claims ever made about free enterprise as an inherently
>mindless, exploitative, alienating mechanism bent on crushing real human
>potential.
>
>The interviewees cited in your article are preoccupied with making prudent
>use of the "personal choices" available to them. They should realize that
>those choices don't amount to a hill of beans. The system stinks and must
>be replaced. Absent some sort of socialist society, our prospects are
>bleak
>
>indeed.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Carl Remick
>
>
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