James d. Gwartney

Increase Your Value to Others
In a market economy, financial success reflects the ability to provide others with value. This is
true for both employees and businesses. If you want to achieve high earnings, you had better
figure out how to provide others with services they value highly.
As previously stressed, improved knowledge, higher skill level, and experience
generally increase productivity and enhance one’s ability to provide valuable services to
others. As a result, investments in human capital—education, training, and other forms of skill
acquisition—can improve both productivity and earnings. But other personal attributes also
influence productivity. Two of the most important are personal attitudes and thinking
entrepreneurially. The importance of these two attributes as a source of productivity is closely
related to what psychologists call emotional intelligence (EQ). Many psychologists now
believe that EQ is more important than IQ as a determinant of personal success.
(93)
 Economists
have often not focused on these vitally important sources of personal productivity.
(94)
How does one’s personal attitude impact productivity and success? Consider the
following simple thought experiment. Suppose an employer is evaluating two potential
employees. The first has the following set of attributes: honesty, dependability, persistence,
reliability, trustworthiness, respect for others, desire to learn and improve, and ability to work
with others. The second has a different set: disrespect for others, unreliable, quarrelsome,
contempt for education, vulgarity of speech, blaming others for problems, dishonesty, and
reliance on alcohol and drugs. If you were the employer, which would you hire? Predictably,
most would hire the first candidate because those attitudes are success-oriented. Other things
being equal, employees with these positive attitudes are more productive. In contrast, the
second set of attributes are failure-oriented. They will undermine productivity and the ability
of the employee to work with others.