WHY WORK IF THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE?

There are times when anecdotes trump data, make things clearer than abstract statistics can. This is one such time. The boss of a company that is losing $4 million every day has told his employees that they must show up for work forty hours per week “at high intensity” or leave the company, later modified to allow work-from-home if supervisors approve. Supervisors must meet with their teams on a regular base. Hundreds of outraged workers have told Elon Musk to take his job and shove it while they collect three months’ severance pay as they clear out their desks, if indeed, they had been in the office often enough to have the usual personal effects scattered around. It was not long ago that Musk’s demand of Twitter’s workers was the norm, so much so that it was implicit in a job offer. And in workers’ acceptance of that offer. That was long ago. Now Senators Richard Blumenthal and Elizabeth Warren head a group of seven senators asking the FTC to investigate whether Musk has violated certain agreements with the agency.