People should have decent, well-paid work, yes, but that’s not ambitious enough. We believe people should have more time off, and be liberated from the shackles of wage labour.
Liberate all from the shackles of wage labour, yes, most certainly.
Let’s have a thoroughly haute bourgeois society then. The proper inheritance of acquired asserts so as to free people from both wages and the State.
If you don’t want the state to administer UBI, what’s the idea here? That there’s some National Endowment Fund that you inherit shares in when born, and which presumably you relinquish back to the next generation when you die? How does the maths look on that – the income (less necessary reinvestment for inflation-proofing) from a fund of 400k or so is arguably liveable on, with wages to top up if desired rather than being a survival necessity, so grant of 100k or so at birth, hope for 7%ish compound growth until early adulthood? You’d still get a useful income from a more feasible sounding 25k or so if it was given at birth and you weren’t allowed to touch it for a while, but you’d still need to substantially fund your 20s and 30s at least.
Gives you the bourgeois freedom to spell things wrong. (There’s no beating a public school education:its beatings are the best)
Ponies for all!
Ponies for all!
And when they’re hungry, let them eat chocolate cake!
I wonder if anyone has ever taken one of these precious little dears down and explained to them that paid employment means that you are producing something that someone wants. That is, you are making a real contribution to other people.
Unpaid employment, more or less by definition, means you are not producing anything anyone wants. And therefore are probably wasting your time. Certainly wasting mine.
So people should stop doing the latter and start doing the former. As there are a limited number of parasites any society can tolerate and even the most radical, when they eventually take power and become responsible for their economic policies, tend to agree with the Good Book that those that do not work shall not war. Lenin for instance.
Err, that would be “eat”. Not “war”.
@ SMFS
That is an isolated quotation from one of Paul’s letters taken out of context. Matthew X 10 directs the Twelve to take no money with them because those whom they visit should feed them. Their work of healing the sick, cleansing lepers, driving out demons (in modern parlance curing mental illness) which He ordered them to do without charge was doing what people wanted.
@John77,
The context was that the early church held everything in common. The problem was that Paul found that a percentage of the people were spending their time in gossip and idleness. The problem of socialism in all times and all places. This was preached against in several of his letters to encourage people to work. Paul also worked at his trade whilst on his missionary journeys so as not to be a burden on those he was visiting.
God, I would *LOVE* to no longer have to kill myself to be able to afford to stay alive, I’d get so much work done.
I create loads of stuff that people use without paying me, as do millions of people – have you never heard of hobbies? Having no wage does not mean not producing anything anybody wants. If I was relieved form the burden of having to try and obtain sufficient funding to be able to afford to stay alive I’d be able to produce more.
@ Mohave Greenie
Actually, not quite all the early Church, just most of it. Trying to explain all that and that widows (in fact all women) could not take paid employment in Jewish society so that Paul’s stricture only applied to lazy men was a bit much to explain simply