by Mitt Romney
I wasn’t a particularly good garbage collector: at one point, after filling the trough at the back of the truck, I pulled the wrong hydraulic lever. Instead of pushing the load into the truck, I dumped it onto the street. Maybe the suits didn’t notice me, but the guys at the construction site sure did: Nice job, Mitt, they called. Why don’t you find an easier job? And then they good-naturedly came down and helped me pick up my mess.
Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of Americans at work. The work on a farm is unrelenting. Work at service jobs in places like restaurants, airports, and retail stores means being on your feet for hours on end, and smiling about it. Nurses, caregivers, dentists, vets, and doctors regularly go about some of the most difficult tasks, often with little recognition. Manufacturing jobs can be numbingly repetitive. Taxi and truck drivers put in long and lonely hours. Even the men and women in business suits and skirts often experience a level of stress that more than makes up for their air-conditioned environment. Americans work hard.
In some quarters, however, the American work ethic is waning. Some people devote themselves to finding ways not to work. Some seem to take a perverse kind of pride in being slipshod and lackadaisical. In many cases where our work culture has deteriorated, shortsighted government policies share a good part of the blame.
Welfare without work erodes the spirit and the sense of self-worth of the recipient. And it conditions the children of nonworking parents to an indolent and unproductive life. Hardworking parents raise hardworking kids; we should recognize that the opposite is also true. The influence of the work habits of our parents and other adults around us as we grow up has lasting impact.
Despite all the evidence of their harm, advocates and politicians continue to promote safety-net policies that strip out the requirement for work—and too often they are succeeding. During my tenure in the Massachusetts statehouse, the majority of people on welfare qualified for an exemption from the state’s work mandate. For example, welfare recipients with a child two years old or younger were exempted. Before you applaud that policy, think of the incentive that creates for having an out-of-wedlock child.
One of the largest groups receiving government support was for those with disabilities. While people with incapacitating disabilities shouldn’t be required to work, abuse of that exemption and outright fraud is not uncommon.
When the Merrimack River overflowed its banks and flooded a large trailer park, I stopped by the motel where the park’s evacuees were temporarily housed to make sure they were well cared for and to assure them that the state would help them get on their feet again. As we gathered in the motel lobby, I went around the room asking people about their personal circumstances, and to my surprise, most reported that they were on disability. One fellow complained that he had lost three cars in the flood—automobiles that he was restoring in his driveway. It was not the right moment to ask him, but I certainly would have been fascinated to know how he was physically able to repair cars but not to work at a job—any job. There are plausible answers, of course, and some of those in the room may have had health conditions I couldn’t see, but most appeared to be healthy and able-bodied.
Back at my office, I learned that disability exemptions regularly followed diagnoses of conditions like chronic back pain or mental distress—conditions that can lend to malingering and abuse of the system. Proving deceit in those kinds of cases was difficult, but occasionally the cheaters themselves inadvertently assisted the fraud investigators—as happened when a city worker who had been on disability for some time was pictured in the newspaper for winning a bodybuilding contest.
My administration proposed programs such as child care and training for single parents of young children, which were designed to get people who were on welfare or disability back to work. The legislature turned us down, intimating that we were heartless. But what’s truly heartless is to deny someone the dignity of work. Because my proposed program was built on training and child care, it would have actually cost the state more than simply keeping people on welfare—it wasn’t cost savings we were looking for. We wanted to help save people from a culture of indolence and an endless cycle of poverty.
In some cases, even the conditions in the workplace can affect our culture of hard work. Many years ago, I toured an American Motors assembly plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, with one of the plant’s managers. When we neared a group of two hundred or so workers who were punching out for the day, the manager stopped and waited for them to disperse before we continued. When I asked why he was reluctant to walk through the assembled workers, he said, Because we would be hurt. I couldn’t believe it, but he insisted that it really would be dangerous.
American Motors was on the ropes at the time, and rather than pull together in an effort to turn things around, some employees considered management to be the enemy. Without question, that sentiment was translated into sloppy workmanship, poor concentration on the job, and at times even vindictiveness—a dealership once discovered that a rattle in a car door was caused by a tool a worker had placed inside it. This was not the American Motors that my dad helped build with a dedicated group of autoworkers. Over the years, the workplace had become a battle zone, and the consequences were that everyone lost—shareholders, managers, workers, and consumers.
Whenever an us-versus-them attitude pervades an enterprise, resentment and disengagement are the inevitable result, and workers lose the sense of commonality of purpose with their employer. This in turn can lead to enterprise-penalizing work rules and excessive demands that threaten the viability of the company.
At American Motors before my dad became CEO, for example, the workers had set up a barbershop in the men’s room, run by company employees, on company time. The ladies’ room was being used as a part-time restaurant, preparing breakfast for workers and take-out dinners for home. When my father headed the company, he had a private meeting with Walter Reuther, then the head of the UAW, about the direction of the labor movement. During their conversation, Reuther candidly admitted that doing less and less work for more and more money is a dead-end street. With the financial collapse of Chrysler and General Motors in 2009, his words finally proved true. My dad and Reuther were somewhat famous antagonists, but neither disrespected the other, and both were convinced of the necessity of hard work to sustain a growing enterprise.
Not all unions adopt counterproductive attitudes. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters, for example, works hard to instill pride and professionalism in its membership, and provides extensive training aimed at making its members more productive. And it remains true that in some cases, unions are a necessary check on excessively demanding, insensitive, or thoughtless employers.
Poor corporate management and excessive CEO compensation are capable of causing the kind of worker resentment that undermines hard, smart, effective work. While governor, I met with union workers at a plant in western Massachusetts that manufactured socket sets. These workers had been informed by their management that they had to agree to a pay cut or the facility would be closed. The union leaders understood that it was in their best interest to agree to the cuts rather than risk unemployment in a weak job market. But the fact that the company’s CEO had received a reported 20 million bonus the prior year outraged these workers as it would have me had I been in their shoes. It was all they could talk about. The rank and file simply wouldn’t surrender a large share of their wages when the CEO had been so selfish. In the end, the workers refused to give in, and the plant was closed—and the cost of management excess fell on the workforce.
In my experience, most successful corporate managers, on the other hand, have a way with people and demonstrate their concern and appreciation for their employees. For many years, as a friend and as a Marriott International board member, I’ve watched J. W. Bill Marriott lead his company. He personally visits as many as 250 hotels a year and knows a remarkable number of his longest-serving employees by name—and not just hotel managers, but doormen, telephone operators, an
d cleaning staff as well. He doesn’t just call them associates, he considers them such, and among the company’s corporate management ranks are people who began their Marriott careers as hourly workers. The company is regularly ranked high on the lists of best places to work, best places for the disabled to work, and best places for minorities to work. These awards, though earned and richly deserved, may be less telling about the company than the experience and reviews of its customers. I’m a bit biased, of course, but I stay in a range of hotels, and Marriott people simply seem more attentive to the guests than do most of their competitors.
Across the workplace spectrum, if America is going to continue to lead the world, we must reinvigorate our national work ethic. Government safety-net programs must be reshaped to reward work if we are to help make every person a productive citizen. Labor leaders and corporate managers need to be evaluated and rewarded at least, in part, on their effectiveness in encouraging teamwork, productivity, and engagement on the job. Let’s rate, rank, and publish surveys and assessments of labor leaders and corporate managers based on such criteria. And we need to remind parents that teaching their children to work is even more important than soccer, video games, or music lessons.
Our work ethic has been a critical part of America’s success, and our national strength depends in part on retaining this distinct cultural advantage. Stories we hear about the value placed on work and the commonality of purpose of teams of workers in nations like China and Japan are real—and we cannot afford to fall behind.
An Education Culture
Only sixteen years after the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth and were still enduring terrible hardship, they voted to establish a university. When it opened, the school had an enrollment of nine students and employed only a single faculty member. The institution was later named Harvard in honor of a minister who left it his library and one half of his estate. The rigors of Harvard’s early curriculum are evident in the writings of its early graduates like John Adams, who were arguably far more proficient in Latin, modern languages, classical history, political science, and philosophy than are students today.
We continue to esteem education. Bumper stickers proclaim that a child has made the honor roll. Window decals note a son or daughter’s attendance at a respected college or university; and caps and sweatshirts you see parents proudly wear are often reminders that they have sacrificed a great deal to ensure that their children are able to attend the best schools possible. Parents accurately believe that the more education their children receive, the better their lifelong opportunities.
In addition to the failures in schools and homes I described in Chapter 8, the weakening of America’s education culture also contributes to the deterioration of our educational standing and excellence. Many of America’s chronically poor believe that education doesn’t make a difference. New generations come of age presuming that their lives will mirror those of their parents—with welfare, crime, and menial jobs as a way of life. They believe that education cannot alter those realities. Among immigrants, however, there characteristically has been a far greater appreciation of education. In fact, it’s often been the concern for a child’s educational opportunity that has led immigrant families to America. I think many people are surprised when they look at the Boston Globe’s annual profile of each year’s valedictorians from our high schools: almost one quarter were born outside the United States.
In some cases, however, new immigrants fail to understand or appreciate the critical role education plays in the lives of their children in this country. Some don’t know what colleges and universities actually do, and others even fail to see why high school is important. In their home countries, manual labor may have been the only provident path to secure a decent life, and people believed that the sooner you went to work, the better.
Among some chronically poor young people, there is an even more troubling development. While parents may encourage their children to study and achieve, friends or gang members may belittle these children for being studious. In these situations, education is not just underappreciated, it is disparaged, and though this attitude is far from pervasive, destructive behaviors and ideas do have a way of spreading.
As governor, I proposed a Parental Preparation Program in Massachusetts for every underperforming school district. In order for parents in these districts to enroll their children in public school, the parents would have been required to attend classes themselves, where they would learn about the value of education as well as ways in which they could support their children’s educational experience. The American Civil Liberties Union objected to the proposal—which convinced me I was on to something.
From classes designed to change parental attitudes to sermons in churches and conversations at family dinner tables, we must all make a renewed and active effort to expand our education culture. If we don’t, we risk wasting precious young lives and the diminishment of our nation.
Risk and Its Rewards
More than any other people in the world, Americans accept risk in order to venture for reward. We’re a nation of entrepreneurs. Many fail, of course—that’s the nature of risk—but a few succeed magnificently. In the late 1970s, in addition to my consulting work at Bain & Company, I was asked to help recruit bright, recently graduated MBAs to join the firm. At the time, Bain was a very attractive place to land for recent business school graduates—we were a cutting-edge company, we paid high starting salaries, and we usually landed the cream of the crop. After a series of interviews with a particularly impressive MBA, we made an offer to the young man. But he confessed that he was leaning toward turning us down in favor of joining a start-up business with a friend from college. I pointed out that if he did, he’d make far less money and be committed to a tiny company that could easily fail. But, in the end, he rejected the bird in the hand we offered him in favor of birds in the bush.
I saw Steve Ballmer twenty-five years later at the home of Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates. He reminded me of my long-ago effort to recruit him. I joked that if he’d taken my offer instead of joining Microsoft, he’d likely be doing pretty well by now. It was a pretty good joke—at the time, Steve was worth an estimated 15 billion.
Most entrepreneurs don’t dream of reaching the Microsoft heights. They want to own their own taxi medallion, pizza shop, or automotive repair garage. And when they reach their goals, I suspect that most are as happy as Steve Ballmer, perhaps more so. Taking a risk and succeeding is enormously gratifying, no matter the scale. In fact, many Americans agree that taking a risk and failing is more rewarding than never having ventured at all. Remember Teddy Roosevelt’s famous assertion: The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena . . . who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Yet while we esteem risk and opportunity, most of us also harbor a desire for security and stability. As a nation, when we salve our collective need for security by regulating and burdening the risk-taker and heavily taxing the reward they receive for risk and innovation, we deaden the entrepreneurial spirit and imperil the American economic engine. Columnist George Will recounted the warning of the renowned nineteenth-century observer of the American life and the American character, Alexis de Tocqueville. As George Will tells it, he foresaw our government becoming:
an immense, tutelary power determined to take sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It would be a power absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle, aiming for our happiness but wanting to be the only agent and the sole arbiter of that happiness. It would, Tocqueville said, provide people security, anticipate their needs, direct their industries, and divide their inheritances. It would envelop society in a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform. But softly: It does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and dir
ects them until people resemble a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
Will was not quoting Tocqueville as a matter of historical curiosity but because what he warned about is almost here.
The monarchists of the eighteenth century found the kind of security Tocqueville described in a shepherd king, believing that an all-knowing, all-powerful government was better able to provide for the well-being of the public than could the citizens themselves in an inherently unruly democratic system. But the American revolutionaries disagreed. They held faith in the individual, not only as a voter, but as a responsible actor in all aspects of life. For them, guaranteeing that people could pursue happiness according to their own dictates was not just good politics, it was good economics. And they have been proven correct.
Today’s monarchists-in-spirit—those people who envision massive government control of virtually every aspect of our lives—are relentless. The economic crisis that befell the nation beginning in the fall of 2008 was just another opening in their endless campaign to promote their agenda, to play on public fears and the resentment of the successful, and to amass to government—and thus often to themselves—the power they could not win in a free economy. If allowed to go far enough, these modern-day neomonarchists could replace our culture of opportunity with a culture of dependency. The consequence of a cultural shift of that magnitude would take decades to recognize, but it would ultimately be catastrophic for our national prosperity and strength.
Belief and Purpose
Americans are a religious people. According to a 2006 Harris poll, 73 percent of us believe in a Supreme Being, more than twice the percent of believers in either the United Kingdom or France. In a 2009 Newsweek poll, almost 90 percent of respondents said they believed in a spiritual being, and 78 percent said that prayer was an important part of their daily life—larger percentages by far than any other developed nation. Per capita, Americans donate more of their resources to churches than the French donate to churches, universities, and all other charities combined. Our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, cites the role of the Almighty in validating our revolutionary course, and our currency declares our trust in God.