This morning I read about the bakers union refusing to accept the contract offer from bankrupt Hostess. If they don’t come to terms, Hostess will close and Wonder Bread, Hostess Twinkies, Fruit Pies and Ding Dongs may be gone forever. This is a big deal in our country because Hostess’ annual sales are $2.5 billion, they employ 18,300 people, and operate 33 Bakeries and 570 Bakery Retail Outlets. But most importantly, Hostess CupCakes are the perfect snack around a fire on a campout in the cool mountains of Colorado. I am 56 years old, and I love Hostess products just like I did when I was a kid.
I think the bakers union is making a mistake. Since we won the cold war, more than 2 billion people have entered the global work force, most of them wanting exactly what a Hostess Twinkie symbolizes, the American dream. Many of those who were liberated from the lack of opportunity in their government dominated economies are now highly motivated to do whatever it takes to prosper. In their newfound freedom, they want to innovate, learn, work, sell, and enjoy the profits. Advancing their skills is the door to production, which allows them a better life. We won the cold war so more people could govern themselves, increase their own value and self-worth, and prosper. Many of them are doing it.
In his book, That Used To Be Us (2011), Thomas Friedman emphasizes two developments that have changed the world forever. One is globalization. Globalization impacts every one of us right now. The production of and the prices of the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the electricity we use, and the food we eat are all impacted by globalization. We need to understand globalization and how to function productively in a globalized marketplace or we’ll be discouraged that the things we did before don’t work any more. If you are a Christian, I suggest you start by reading Thomas Friedman’s older book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999). It will explain some of the changes you’ve seen, even in your church. In addition, The World Is Flat (2005), also by Friedman, is a must read for anyone who desires to succeed over the next twenty years.
The second development is the information technology (IT) revolution. Here are two examples of where we are going: in the future we will need fewer teachers because, increasingly, teaching is done more accurately and more effectively by computers. With every gain teachers unions make to increase funding their own members, they are providing financial incentive for the schools to replace them with computerized education. It will happen. It’s just a matter of time. Another example are the janitors in oil refineries in Baton Rouge who can’t clean toilets unless they know how to use the computer to check in, order supplies, and report problems. Do any of you remember having to talk to someone to schedule a flight, reserve a hotel room, or make a long-distance call? Not anymore. Those jobs were not outsourced. They were replaced with IT systems. On November 11, 2012, 60 Minutes reported that manufacturers in American are looking for over 3,000,000 new employees right now, but they can’t use unskilled, unmotivated workers. They need competent workers who can think critically, communicate accurately, and who can collaborate with others. Manufacturers today are not simply looking for people who will show up, but for those who can program, operate, and maintain very expensive, complex machinery.
The workers at Hostess need to be grateful to have a job at all. Europe just slipped back into recession, which is where we may be headed. For their own good, Hostess workers need to get back to work and to take every extra moment they have to take classes to prepare them for the 21st Century workplace. Every community now has tech schools that help people learn a skill. In January of 2012, for those with less than a high school degree, unemployment was 13.8%; those with a high school degree and no college, 8.7%; those with some college or an associate degree, 7.7%, and those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, 4.1%. If we want to work, we need to assume the responsibility to make ourselves competent so we can offer enough value that another is willing to pay us well.
I recently led a roundtable discussion on the east coast that was attended by a very successful businessman from Dallas who was a strong Christian. In the roundtable he said he hadn’t been to church in years because it offered no value to him. The group largely agreed. 21st Century Evangelicalism has an opportunity to do a better job increasing the value of Sunday morning worship in the lives of our hearers. Life is more than spirituality and morality. Life also requires competency, wisdom, understanding and production. I believe Christ wants everyone to be better off. I think if we will do what we have encouraged the Hostess bakers to do, stop negotiating for more money, but instead be grateful, increase our value to those we serve, and produce a better product, then we will all be rewarded.
7 replies on “I Love Hostess CupCakes!”
What does “we won the cold war” actually mean? Lorraine Vandeberg
What does the 21st Century Christian need to do to increase the value to Sunday morning worship? Do you mean by incorporating videos into the service…more “high-tech” things?
Video and other “high tech” items are communication tools, but they do not increase intrinsic value. To increase value, Sunday mornings will have to improve the spiritual dynamic, the quality of the ideas presented, and the core relevance of the service. The church in the United States is in rapid decline and is increasingly considered irrelevant. Rather than simply repackaging the messages of 20th Century Evangelicalism, or trying to make them more acceptable, we need to seriously contemplate the New Testament Church, how to communicate it and present it for this next century, and be willing to increasingly become exactly what Christ intended as described in the New Testament. Thus, the purpose of this set of blogs.
After World War II, there were two prevailing spheres of influence. One was The United States and other primarily western nations that believed government was to serve the citizens who elected them, individual civil liberties, free enterprise to encourage the creation of wealth and service, and other western principles. The other was the old Soviet Union and it’s allies who believed the communist party could provide the most equatable form of government implementing strong state control of the courts, the economy, production and all services.
The result of the contrast between these two views of governance is the primary lesson of the 20th century. In every centrally controlled society, innovation and creativity was thwarted, individual liberties were sacrificed for the good of the state, and poverty was rampant. Even though they claimed to be working for the good of the people, people in these societies desired the benefits only freedom could provide. The western allies, though, saw that the government was not the source of freedom, but that the absence of excessive government involvement allowed the freedom that created innovation, prosperity, and growth so a higher percentage of the population was living comfortably than ever before in history.
These two world-views clashed, and that clash resulted in an arms race that just about led to global thermonuclear war. Ronald Reagan is credited with finally ending the cold war, and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent dismantling of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War was over, thus releasing the workers who hadn’t been given the freedom to become productive to finally be able to produce in free markets. The result I mention in my blog is that the unexpected result was high paid western workers now had to compete with highly qualified but lower paid workers.
What people really need to do is get off there butts and want to work. I own a business and my family has many more, and there are apps coming in but the willingness to work is not there. Too many people are happy just to be on food stamps and not work. I think we should get the free-loaders of the stamps and get a little desperate to fine work and provide for themselves.
Well said, and it’s true. As long as we borrow from China and others to pay people not to work, they won’t. We know people will do what they are paid to do. If we pay them to have babies, they will. If we pay them not to work, they won’t. If we pay farmers not to grow crops, they won’t. On the other hand, if we pay people to get an education, they will. If we reward them for keeping committed relationships, they will. If we pay them to produce, they will. So our choice is simple: What do we want people to do? If we want them to not do anything and be paid, they will. If we want them to become engineers and get paid for it, they will. Or better yet, if we want others to determine what they want, and pay people accordingly, that is the free market and, with that system, people will compete to meet the needs of others, thus needs are met, people are paid, and everyone has the potential to grow. This is a general response, and there are certainly exceptions, but this is the big idea.
You really ‘speak’ layman’s language, Pastor Ted…a member of our family will be impacted by this issue & you’ve helped me to ‘see’ it for what it is! Thank you.