Stop Here or Keep Going?

I’ve reached a point on the Noon and Night quilt where I have to make a decision. I’ll give you a sneak peek at another block:

I keep “seeing” this quilt in my head with a border. Several borders, actually. I have completed enough blocks that if I stopped now and added a couple of borders, I would end up with a good-sized throw. On the other hand, I have enough pieces already cut to make another dozen blocks, which would give me a twin- or full-sized quilt. I am not sure if I should keep going and make the extra blocks or if I should stop where I am and add some borders. I think this quilt needs to marinate for a couple of days while I decide.

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I’m always happy when fall gets here, for lots of reasons, but this year I am especially looking forward to it. This has been a difficult summer for the husband, and he doesn’t get stressed out easily. The lack of people willing to work for a paycheck has been a constant strain. He agrees to take on work based on the crew he thinks he is going to have, and then people quit. Or their vehicles break down. Or they have personal crises. Our Craigslist ads for help go unanswered. I’ve never seen him this exhausted. He knows he is, and he is working on fixing it, but it’s not like he can just stop and do something else. He’s got to get the current commitments through the pipeline. We’ve been talking to other builders and everyone is in the same boat.

I just love it when people say, “Well, employers ought to pay more and then people would want to work!” Okay, let’s have a little math lesson. The numbers are simplified here for illustration. Let’s say that someone is collecting $3000 a month from the government in unemployment benefits (funded by employers, remember), factoring in the current $600 a week extra payment. (By the way, the husband and I could live on $3000 a month; we could not live extravagantly, but we could manage.) Is that person going to get off the couch and actually WORK for $3000 a month when they can get it for free? Heck, no. So what is the incentive level that is going to motivate them to get a job? Will they work if the employer pays them $4000 a month? Some might. Some might not be inclined to work unless they can get $5000 a month. Is that employee adding enough value to the business to justify that level of pay? Employers aren’t giving out participation trophies. And keep in mind that that is actually costing the employer more than $5000 a month when things like payroll taxes, unemployment, worker’s comp, and other benefits are factored in. The employer has to pay far more—and far more than likely makes sense economically for that employer—to motivate someone receiving unemployment benefits to go out and get a job. The employer may, in fact, decide that it no longer makes sense to stay in business.

You know what motivates people to work? Hunger. Not knowing where the next dime is coming from. And I should probably point out that business owners don’t get to collect unemployment benefits. We fund our own unemployment. It’s called savings.

Call me a selfish libertarian. I no longer care. I am watching my husband work himself into the ground and I am not interested in hearing about what employers “ought to do” from people who have never owned a business and had employees.

Get off my lawn.

It’s supposed to be cool again today before another warmup, and I need to keep working on the garden. You know—growing my own food and taking responsibility for my life and all that.