I watched "Where to Invade Next" last night.

[JDPriestly]

18. K&R. Working people should claim the rights that are inherent in their humanness.

At-will employment is wrong from the get-go.

If you work, you should work hard, and you should have the right to respect for your work in the workplace.

We need a more cooperative, "in it together," ethic in our workplaces. If you work for a company or a boss, you and the boss are on the same side, and that should be clear from day one.

The adversarial nature of our workplace is harming all of us. It causes unnecessary despair, infects our political sphere, distracts us, destroys our lives and makes our economy balky and inefficient.

When people work in harmony, when employees feel free to express themselves and believe that they are contributors and not just automatons, then our economy will work better.

Until then --- we will continue to be far less efficient than we could be.

Germany is an example of a country in which workplaces are more efficient than here. I am not particularly pro-German, but I lived there as well as in France, Austria and the UK. Relationships in the workplace in Germany and training for future employees are the best that I experienced in any country. That German workers have the right to excellent training (an apprenticeship system when I worked there as well as free university tuition today) and are well prepared for the workplace when they start to work makes a great difference in terms of the quality of products and work the people do.

As I saw it, German workers felt proud of their skills and worked hard but were rewarded with lots of paid time off, more security in their work than we have, universal healthcare, the training I mentioned plus excellent child-care far superior in some ways to ours. (The teachers were perhaps not as well trained at the elementary level in terms of learning psychology and techniques as ours at the time I was there. That was some time ago.)

Anyway, I agree with the OP completely.

I dearly love America, but we can do much better.