Mandating More Staffing in Nursing Homes

Interestingly, all people of all political persuasions think about today is getting control of government and mandating this, that, or the other thing. In my experience, mandates first of all breed intense resentment which leads mostly to outright disobedience, foot dragging, creative ways to claim to be meeting the mandate while not doing so, and organizing to wrest control of government from those who mandate and eliminate the mandates while at the same time inflicting your opponents with other mandates they dislike. It is an endless cycle of futility. Incentives work much better. While both the carrot and the stick are necessary in real life, the carrot should always be used first and the stick sparingly and only as a last resort. The biggest part of the worker shortage in all fields is that the top managers and executives get far too much and their pay is NOT based on real performance, not on consistent LONG TERM results. The actual workers are greatly underpaid to keep costs down so the big shots can get more. Get pay up for the workers, but only for those workers who actually work, not those who just put in time. A good manager should be able to tell the two apart, especially over a period of time. But he/she won't learn that out on the golf course. If they can't discern who is a productive worker from the fast talkers and idea stealers, they shouldn't even be in management, much less getting obscene levels of pay.