Expert Calls for ‘Economic Disobedience’
Submitted by Ginny Grimsley of News and Experts, www.newsandexperts.com
The national mood remains anxious, worried. We
have millions of Americans out of work, many of them Baby Boomers who’ve
seen what they worked for these past 30 years disappear: a predictable
career, financial security, home equity, retirement
savings. The foundation they’ve worked so hard to build seems to have
collapsed before their very eyes.
“They feel lost. They see hedge-funders and
investment bankers as having hijacked the American Dream from the middle
class,” says Peter Weddle, former CEO of Job Bank USA, Inc., and author
of
A Multitude of Hope: A Novel About Rediscovering the American Dream (www.AMultitudeofHope.com).
“Boomers – and all working Americans, for that
matter – feel as if all of the opportunity has been sucked out of the
land of opportunity, and they don’t know how or even if they can succeed
in this changed world.”
But America is still the leader of the global
economy and its future is as bright as it ever was, Weddle says. Why?
Because Americans are individually prone to innovation and creativity,
and collectively, the most diverse pool of workers
in the world, he says.
“For all the unresolved immigration issues we have
in the United States, we still have the best workforce on the planet.
Our diversity gives us a huge advantage over the competition in the
global economy,” Weddle says. “We have every
kind of talent the world has to offer, while other countries such as
China, India and Japan have very homogenous cultures so everyone
basically brings the same talent to the table.”
That talent, however, is being wasted. The U.S.
workplace has become an investor-driven market, a place where workers
are treated as disposable cogs who are costs to be minimized rather than
capabilities to be maximized on-the-job, Weddle
says. The only way out, therefore, is something he calls “economic
disobedience.” If every American stands up and demands their right to
be employed as a person of talent – and if they then elevate that talent
and bring it to work with them – they can reclaim
the American Dream, Weddle says.
He sees Baby Boomers already beginning to do this.
The number of 50- to 64-year-olds enrolled in college jumped 17 percent
from 2007 to 2009, according to the National Center for Education
Statistics.
“These are the people who see this time as a
moment of liberation – a chance to reinvigorate their talent so they can
perform at their peak on-the-job,” Weddle says. “And that self-reliance
and individual determination is how our country
will recapture its mojo.”
A national human resources expert, Weddle says
people don’t necessarily have to go back to school or reinvent
themselves. But they do need to identify their talent – their innate
capacity for excellence – and take a proactive approach
to integrating it into their career.
“It may be a gift for getting things organized,
for resolving conflicts, for explaining complex topics in simple terms,”
he says. “Every single one of us has a talent and when we apply it at
work, our job satisfaction – and our pay – goes
up.
“Instead of work being a four-letter word, it
becomes something to get excited about and to feel good about. We
rekindle our self-confidence, self-respect and determination and we
produce an economic revolution that restores democratic
capitalism.”
About Peter Weddle
Peter Weddle, a former recruiter and human
resource consultant, is the CEO of the International Association of
Employment Web Sites, a trade organization. He has written or edited
more than two dozen non-fiction books regarding careers
and employment; “A Multitude of Hope” is his first work of fiction.
Weddle is the founder and former CEO of Job Bank USA, Inc jobbankusa.com electronic employment services company.
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