The “Aspen Ideas Festival Spotlight Health” conference is over. It is late Sunday afternoon and I am having tea at a restaurant listening into the conversation at a table nearby. A table of four people are talking about how their employees fake job injuries so that they can get payments from employers while enjoying time being lazy when they ought to be working. The consensus at the table is that laborers are sneaky thieving cheats and that employers are continually the victims of fraud and conspiracies of employees. The nature of the cheating may be completely fabricated injuries or can be actual broken bones or serious injuries which are less fake but then the lazy employees take extra time in recovery. They are saying that employees who can sit on a couch at home can sit around at work, even if they are injured. They are saying that the law favors cheating employees over honest employers. They are saying that a good way to defend oneself is to hire a lawyer to request papers from lazy fake injury workers because employees are too stupid to be able to complete papers – they say nothing about the power differential of them having lawyers and the laborers presumably not having them. When an employee gets an
I have been listening to this for about 30 minutes and all four people at the table continually say how awful workers are.
Aspen is one of the most expensive places to live. The people here are either rich or they are here to serve the rich – there is no industry or work here except to serve the people who are passing time in leisure. The Aspen Institute hosts a conference, but with tickets being $2500 for their main 3-day event, it is an exclusive gathering for select people. I attended a less expensive pre-conference for people in health policy, but still, it was a luxurious conference.
It is beautiful here for sure and the weather is nice.
I dislike the attitude that the rich sometimes have when they spend time in isolation among themselves and come to resent people without money. I favor government infrastructure which promotes equality of wealth distribution such that at least everyone’s basic needs are met.
I do not recognize a tendency of workers to fake injuries. I feel that human nature is to take pride in one’s work and to be productive when their needs are met and they feel secure in their lives. I feel like it is the duty of people with money to promote health and well-being among those whom they employ, and for so long as poverty and ill-health exists, it is the responsibility of the government and regulators to be more aggressive in taking wealth from the rich to uplift the status of their workers.
People who are able to live in Aspen and employ workers are elite and wealthy. They ought not be in conflict with workers at all. I dislike that inequality has made some rich people antagonistic toward people with less means.