America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great (9 page)

As a member of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans,
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I could easily fill this entire book with others’ inspiring rags-to-riches stories. If you think long and hard enough, you probably know someone yourself with a wonderful success story. My inventor friend worked very hard and part of his motivation was his own financial independence. But on the way
to achieving financial independence, he created many jobs, and I know others who also became financially independent because of their association with this man’s company. Sometimes the creation of jobs and the wealth that are side effects of someone else’s efforts and creativity get labeled as “trickle-down economics,” because inventing needed products creates jobs and opportunities for others and therefore should be encouraged if the aim is to have a prosperous society.

Many Americans understand this correlation between their own hard work and success, a cause-effect relationship that led to the can-do attitude that brought us to the economic table with the big boys of the world when we were still a fledgling nation barely fifty years old. As our country developed, so too did a sense of personal responsibility and pride in the ability to take care of oneself and one’s family. People were willing to take menial jobs in order to support their families with the intention of increasing their knowledge and skills, thus increasing their value and eventually moving them up the economic ladder. There were a variety of economic outcomes for persons depending on their productivity and value to an organization or to their community. In other words, the harder you worked and the more value you produced, the higher you moved up the economic ladder of financial success.

Of course, there are many in our society who bring only entertainment value, and American society is as enamored with celebrity as British society is with royalty. Although I have nothing against sports and entertainment, I believe there is a danger of getting lost in a fantasy world while neglecting the serious things in life such as education and productive work. The enormous salaries paid to sports stars and entertainers lead people to believe that they are the most important people in our society, or have the most important jobs. I believe they are as important as anyone else, but we must ask ourselves what will maintain the pinnacle position of our nation in the world: the ability to shoot a twenty-five-foot jump shot, or the ability to solve a quadratic equation.

Capitalism is a system that works extremely well for someone who is highly motivated and very energetic, but it is not a great system for someone who is not interested in working hard or for someone who feels no need to contribute to the economic well-being of their community. People in the latter group frequently rationalize about their value to society and develop a sense of entitlement to the fruits of other people’s labors. In fairness, I should add that some people work extremely hard and make significant contributions to society, yet choose low-paying careers or give away most of their
resources to others. Such individuals form an important part of the capitalist model. For example, you are unlikely to meet any successful person who cannot point to a teacher who played a significant, positive role in their development. In some cases it is a minister, priest, rabbi, or other spiritual mentor. Many such individuals choose a life not overflowing with material things, because they receive incalculable non-tangible rewards through the work they choose.

However, the important word here is
choose
, since these people have a choice, understand the consequences of those choices, and are at peace with their decisions.

I had to make a very critical choice toward the end of my neurosurgical residency, deciding whether to stay in academic medicine or go into private practice where I would earn substantially more money. Having grown up in poverty, I felt drawn toward private practice and the dream of financial independence. At the same time, I felt that I could make a contribution to medicine if I became a full-time academic neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins. After prayerful consideration, I chose the academic route, but after one and a half years, I was beginning to think I had made the wrong choice, because I was working very hard, fourteen to sixteen hours every day, doing a tremendous number of very stressful neurosurgical procedures, involving myself in several research endeavors, and making only $75,000 a year. I understand that to many readers that will seem like an enormous amount of money, but it really is a relatively meager salary for a fully trained neurosurgeon, even in an academic practice, who still has to pay off high medical school loans.

So I decided to join a private neurosurgical practice in Texas, which was going to pay me six times more than I was making at Hopkins. When I submitted my letter of resignation, it was not accepted and the powers that be convinced me that I was being hasty in my decision. They said that all of my grievances could easily be remedied and that a new salary incentive program was being implemented. I poured out my heart to God before I made the decision, trying to justify my reasons for leaving. But I felt strongly that I should stay and believed that I would be treated fairly and properly compensated for my work.

Ultimately I did decide to stay, and it turned out I could never have had the career that I’ve had if I had gone into private practice. Shortly thereafter I gained a great amount of international notoriety, which led to the writing of
my first book,
Gifted Hands
, which has sold more than one million copies. I became a popular and well-compensated public speaker, and I was invited to sit on Fortune 500 corporate boards. The salary incentive program at Hopkins worked very well too. All of this put me in a much stronger financial position than if I had gone into private practice.

Using my God-given talents, listening to my heart, and working very hard in a capitalistic economy certainly paid large dividends for me. My wife, Candy, and I were able to realize our dream of starting a national scholarship program for children of all backgrounds, with the goal of inspiring a new generation of incredibly bright, ethical leaders to take the reins of our nation. I make no apologies for the fact that I am considered one of the rich in this nation, but I am proud of the fact that our single largest annual expense (excluding taxes) is charitable contributions, and I happen to know that that is the case with many of our personal friends who are also well-to-do.

Choice is vitally important in the capitalist economic model, for people must have the freedom to choose not only what they want to do, but how much effort they want to put into their work. It is truly a wonderful feeling to be able to voluntarily help someone who has financial needs, which they are trying unsuccessfully to resolve. It is considerably less pleasant to be forced to give your hard-earned resources to others regardless of their circumstances. Americans traditionally have been the most generous people in the world, and we should recognize and celebrate that rather than extinguish such a wonderful trait with unfair taxation. Not only should we be concerned about unfair taxation, but we also need to recognize the deleterious effect of unfair business practices and overregulation.

When I was in college, one of my summer jobs was supervisor for highway cleanup crews. I directed groups of young men who picked up debris along the highway with huge plastic bags. It was quite a difficult job because the weather was so hot and there was very little shade along the expressway. Needless to say, the guys weren’t all that enthusiastic about the job. As the supervisor, I wanted us to do a good job, so I began to think of ways to give them incentives.

“You guys don’t really want to be picking up garbage in the hot sun, do you?” I asked one day after gathering them together.

“You got that right!” they shouted.

Then I said, “Why don’t we start when it’s cool out? How about six in the morning?”

“Six in the morning?” they shot back. “You must be crazy. What are they teaching you at that fancy school?”

I then went on to explain that they could work much more efficiently during the cool weather, and that I would pay them for eight hours of work if they could fill a hundred bags with garbage in seven or even six hours. Whatever amount of time it took, I would still pay them for eight hours if they accomplished the task. Well, you have never seen people work like these young men worked from that point on. By eight o’clock in the morning they would have filled more than two hundred bags with garbage and cleaned whole stretches of highway.

Those in charge of the program were flabbergasted. They were always saying, “Carson’s crews are amazing, but we never see them.”

This, to a large extent, is what the capitalistic economic model is based on. Giving incentives to work hard not only worked for them, it works for society at large. Now, I could not give the men the rest of the day off because they had to punch timecards, but as a result of their hard work, I was able to allow them to have leisurely days with extended lunch breaks and walks in the park. If I’d had the authority to pay them more money for more work, they would have been happy to continue working to make more money. Without any incentives for productivity (capitalistic model), they were quite content do nothing, which unfortunately is the by-product of any system that bases wages solely on head counts (socialistic model).

There is definitely room to argue about whether the fruits of one’s labors should be equally distributed throughout the society or whether one should be able to directly benefit from working harder than others around him. When I was an eight-year-old boy living in Boston, I had an opportunity to earn a whole dollar and a delicious-looking candy bar with nuts and caramel in exchange for shelling several bushels of peas for a neighbor who had just purchased them from the farmers’ market. Six of us agreed, and all we had to do was sit in the kitchen and shell peas. Although it was more fun to be outside playing, we didn’t have to sit in the hot sun and we could talk while we did the work, so it wasn’t as much of a chore as it could have been. The idea of earning money and getting a nice-sized candy bar to boot was more than enough incentive for us to agree. Four of us worked extremely hard all day while two boys did virtually nothing. I was among the hard workers and at the end of the day, when the rewards were handed out, I was somewhat dismayed to see that everyone received the same compensation.
The four boys who did all the work protested, but the two other boys claimed that they had done just as much, and they prevailed.

Some would say that there is a parable in the Bible that supports the two boys who did nothing, found in Matthew 20:1 – 16. In this parable focusing on grace, a land owner hires workers to work in his vineyard, agreeing to pay them a certain sum for a day’s labor. In the last hour of the working day, he hires more workers and at the end of the day pays them the same as the ones who had been working all day. The early workers are disgruntled and feel that they have been treated unfairly, but the landowner accurately points out that they had been paid the wage that was agreed upon; therefore, nothing unjust had been done to them. Furthermore, he makes the point that he has the right to do with his own money as he pleases.

This parable seems to score points for both sides, because on the one hand it advocates equal pay for everyone regardless of how much work was done by any particular person, and on the other hand it argues for the sovereignty of the landowner, who should be able to use his money any way he wants. Many capitalists would side with the early workers, while many socialists would side with the late workers, but I think the point of the parable is that you should do your own work in a responsible manner, be satisfied if you are paid according to the agreed amount, and not worry about what someone else is getting.

Each of the early workers also had the knowledge and reassurance that they would have a full day’s worth of remuneration that day and could afford to feed their families. The workers who arrived later in the day would have experienced more angst and stress in their search for work until they met up with the generous landowner. The landowner, by offering the various jobs, enabled each of the workers to experience a sense of accomplishment that they were able to provide for themselves and their families through their own efforts. The landowner could have decided to hold on to his money and spend it on something else, or place it somewhere safe (away from tax revenue collectors), rather than expanding his business.

It only complicates your life when you begin to worry about what everybody else is doing and how much everyone else has. An overreaching government might decide in this case to confiscate much of the money of the land owner and redistribute it in a more equitable fashion, at least according to its value system. Then again, if the government did not interfere, the early industrious workers would soon learn how to negotiate a better contract, since the land owner clearly had plenty of money and needed a lot
of work to be done. This is how capitalism works, assuming that people are able to make decisions for themselves in their own best interests.

The seeds of capitalism are sown early during the educational process in this country during which young people are rewarded for superior academic performance with high grades, ribbons, medals, and various other types of recognition. They begin to develop the mind-set of winners and a can-do attitude, which is essential for success in the capitalist model. Some school districts today discourage differentiating students based on academic performance because they feel that it makes the students who do not achieve as well feel inferior. And some people feel that all teachers should also be treated the same and that it is inappropriate to reward superior teachers or to penalize inferior teachers. Such a system, however, seldom produces outstanding teachers or outstanding students. If mediocrity becomes the norm, the quantity of outstanding producers will decline, as will general prosperity.