Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics Universal Basic Income? Guaranteed Job?

Then the 62 people who control half the world's wealth will simply find a way to liquidate most of unnecessary peons of the planet. They will certainly treat us as they do any other redundant equipment in their factories.

Had you asked John Maynard Keynes what the biggest challenge of the 21st century would be, he wouldn’t have had to think twice.

Leisure. In fact, Keynes anticipated that, barring “disastrous mistakes” by policymakers (austerity during an economic crisis, for instance), the western standard of living would multiply to at least four times that of 1930 within a century. By his calculations, in 2030 we’d be working just 15 hours a week.

In 2000, countries such as the UK and the US were already five times as wealthy as in 1930. Yet as we hurtle through the first decades of the 21st century, our biggest challenges are not too much leisure and boredom, but stress and uncertainty.
What does working less actually solve, I was asked recently. I’d rather turn the question around: is there anything that working less does not solve?

...What does working less actually solve, I was asked recently. I’d rather turn the question around: is there anything that working less does not solve?

'
Rutger Bregman -- The Solution to (Nearly) Everything: Working Less[/color][/b]


[b][color=red]DON'T JUST DO SOMETHING --STAND THERE!
.

Thoreau boils housing down to the years of servitude yours may require of you. The cost of your house might be calculated in terms of books not read, walks not taken, sunsets missed, song-bird concerts not heard. Or as he puts it:

"If it is asserted that civilization is real advance in the conditions of man. . . it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required in exchange for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take ten to fifteen years of the laborer’s life. . . so that he must have spent more than half of his life commonly before his wigwam will be earned. . . . Would a savage [sic] have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?"

Roebroek considers traditional welfare benefits a “tool to discipline and belittle people.” 100 unsuccessful job applications will burn out even a university graduate – let alone a simple blue-collar worker. “A basic income will liberate people, stir them up from their lethargy,” for example by founding their own business or learning a trade. He rejects his opponents’ main argument that handing out free money will make people even more passive and reluctant to work: “On the contrary – the basic income creates social dynamics. People can unfold their talents, they will live differently, treat each other differently, because they have financial security.”