“For example, how many retirees can relate to Jack Nicholson’s professional exile in About Schmidt, a film about a man trying to find purpose after a career as an actuary, when the title character returns to the office one day in a pathetic last-ditch effort to show he is still relevant?”
Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of short essays by Merion West contributing editor Jonathan Church exploring the idea of capitalism, as practiced today in the United States.
As fear of a potential recession continues, it is easy to be reminded once again that income insecurity often entails a persistent and frightening cloud of anxiety that hangs over many people in the age of “neoliberal capitalism” that we are said to be living in. Losing a job in the United States, where two-thirds of people live paycheck to paycheck and the wealthiest 10% of Americans own 93% of stocks, can induce immediate, suffocating worry about not being able to pay rent, meet mortgage payments, buy food, obtain health insurance, make car payments, or keep the lights on. Or, in the case of high-earning spendthrifts who also live paycheck to paycheck, they might not only be unable to make ends meet but also be unable to keep charging up the credit card to live large.
Dire as this is, however, people must also cope with the emotional disorientation of job loss as they try to survive in a bourgeois society where dignity and self-respect feel inextricably and thoroughly intertwined with having the privilege of routinely punching the clock in exchange for a paycheck (and a thank you if one is lucky), otherwise known as “gainful employment.”
The angst of layoffs, furloughs, and terminations can feel almost like a form of exile. Moreover, even retirees with a pension and maybe a cushion of savings cannot count on spending their golden years without a sentimental yearning for the perfunctory self-esteem derived from being able to list an occupation when filling out paperwork at the doctor’s office. This may also be true, perhaps even more so, for those retirees who have been fortunate enough to have sustained a remunerative career without being ruined by the risks of a dynamic capitalist society (with a fickle stock market) that scoffs at a comfortable safety net lest it give people permission to relax.
For example, how many retirees can relate to Jack Nicholson’s professional exile in About Schmidt, a film about a man trying to find purpose after a career as an actuary, when the title character returns to the office one day in a pathetic last-ditch effort to show he is still relevant? Although no longer employed, Warren Schmidt comes in for a visit with his replacement attempting to reclaim the aura of command, respect, and dignity that comes with, in the case of Warren, refining the “pre-teen mortality risk models” that matter so much for the firm’s bottom line (and for families that receive a payout if tragedy should strike and the fine print of a life insurance policy does not negate the policy).
Nevertheless, it is not all doom and gloom. In an essay about why the Great Recession of 2008 was the best thing that ever happened to me, I once described how getting laid off from a top consulting firm led to transformative developments in my life. More to the point, I was never haunted by self-doubt. “I never once wondered,” I wrote, “who was I if I didn’t have a job? What would I do with my life?” True, I was young and not concerned that “I would not eventually make it back into the work force,” but still, “I never once worried that my identity or self-esteem was at stake.” I had to figure out how to make a living, but I was single, healthy, and had access to some savings, unemployment insurance, family lodgings, and a reasonable faith in the future (even as the world’s economic tailspin reminded people of a Great Depression in which a quarter of the workforce was unemployed). I had “no problem figuring out how to spend my day or how to make something of my life. The reason is that never in my life have I allowed myself to be defined by my job.”
To be sure, it is not simply a bourgeois shibboleth that one can find purpose, or at least satisfaction, in gainful employment. This is, in fact, what the slogans of a capitalist society promise us in the name of “follow your dream,” “believe in yourself,” and “equality of opportunity.” Life may convince us that it is only a “fortunate few” who love their work so much that they never work a day in their life, as well as that the American Dream is a myth of hero worship rather than a risk-return assessment we can bank on. Even so, if one’s job is a drag, he can take pride in a hard day’s work. We can take control of our lives, commit to a retirement savings plan, and one day, even if we never lived our dream, we will have earned the freedom to do what we want—perhaps finally to pursue that dream so long as we are not too old and worn out to figure out how to achieve it, or even envision it.
In short, we all risk a day of reckoning when we discover the “just desserts” ideology of a purportedly meritocratic society in which chic advertising campaigns spur the market demand that not only determines whose morally arbitrary merits can turn a profit but also ensures our complacency with a market society that sedates us with distraction. Before we reach that point, we might trade stories around the water cooler about how the “system” screws us over. But we generally find ourselves too strapped for time and money to confront earnestly our suspicion that, if upon losing our job we are faced not only with a heap of unpaid bills but also with the full panic of rootlessness that has been creeping up on us in the solitude of our commutes, cubicles, and computer screens, then perhaps we have never been truly free or happy. As the great novelist might have said, the paradox of capitalism is that even in the best of times, it was always the worst of times.
Jonathan Church, a contributing editor at Merion West, is also a government economist and author. He is author of Reinventing Racism: Why “White Fragility” Is the Wrong Way to Think about Racial Inequality, as well as Virtue in an Age of Identity Politics: A Stoic Approach to Social Justice. He hosts the podcast Escaping Ideology with Jonathan Church at Merion West and can be found on X @jondavidchurch
