Work Reform

Only because of 50 years of middle class wages failing to keep up with productivity gains.

Por que, and I mean this with total earnest, no los dos?

UBI is always the star compared to increased minimum wage, since it allows a lot of decoupling of your access to basic necessities from your ability to work or find employment.

A world with adequate UBI, or similar arrangements, and (obviously) universal healthcare and a functioning education system and all that jazz, is a world where unemployment rates don't matter, where you don't need to create artificial jobs to accomodate for the large amounts of people who can't find work.

When you think about it, the entire concept of "this policy is good and should become law because it creates paying jobs" is pretty fucked up, why are people starving as a result of job roles in society being sufficiently filled? High unemployment is often a sign of a healthy and functioning society, yet with our economic system it's a sign of a dysfunctional society because not having paying jobs available means people can't obtain a decent standard of living.

And our system's response to this issue is to abuse it by subjecting the remaining available jobs either to extremely low pay, poor working conditions, little to no protections, OR to make the job inaccessible to most people, to make the (usually financial) barrier to entry so incredibly high that it creates an artificial shortage of workers.

Political rant incoming: And many people subject to this system are the first ones to claim that it's a necessary evil, that it's okay that our society relies on a large portion of the population being in poverty and forcing shit pay & working conditions on the majority of the labour force, because "if it were any different, then surely nobody would work the hard jobs". It's very convenient to ignore the fact that a large portion of people go out of their way and sacrifices their own time and earnings to do volunteer work, to participate in elaborate hobbies, often doing the same things which are thought of as "undesirable" under this economic system.

What's most funny (or maybe sad) is that the people that peddle this kind of anti-human rhetoric are often also right-wing "libertarians" and "anarcho-"capitalists who claim that people's goodwill and charitable donations would prop up the unfortunate in a society with little to no taxes (or my favorite, "society can and should totally be funded by regressive sales taxes and no other taxes"), no healthcare, or welfare at all for that matter, no public education, etc. It's absurd how they view the world like that, thinking the ruling class will willingly fund destitution out of society, but then do mental gymnastics to act like the idea that most people will voluntarily contribute their labour, even to the "dirty jobs", in a society where doing unpaid labour isn't unsustainable for them and where the "dirty jobs" aren't looked down upon and stigmatized like they are now, is absurd and truly an unsolvable paradox.

They couldn't imagine that people would want to keep their own home nice and clean and would give their own energy to make sure it stays that way – likely because they can't comprehend seeing their community, certainly not a society in general, as their home, they don't have any meaningful connection to the world around them and are only capable of seeing it in a selfish and individualistic manner, with "us" and "them", with castes based on shallow, surface-level judgements/criteria. They claim nobody would willingly do the hard and dirty jobs because they wouldn't, they think most people are as oriented towards doing the least amount of work possible as them, that people will only do things they need to do for others if there's a constant threat of lowering quality of life, despair, starvation, death, disenfranchisement/imprisonment, etc. looming above their heads if they don't submit.

I don't know how the hell the idea – that you, along with everyone else, can take a few hours out of their week to contribute to basic maintenance of society – is so hard for some people to wrap their head around. Have you never done housework/chores, or assisted your neighbours with some handiwork, or willingly done an ounce of community service by picking up & disposing of trash in public? Have you never volunteered to do social work? Hell, have you even had things you did at all not for capital gain, but because you were passionate about it or just cared about it? I'm pretty against being religious now, but when I was younger and went to church, we (a LOT of the church, a majority of the hundreds of members would regularly be involved) would frequently go on days-long "activities" which would just be things like assisting severely disabled seniors, helping children/middle schoolers with their responsibilities, cleaning & repairing places for members or organizations who needed the support, hosting events where everyone would bring their own food and all were invited to come, that sort of stuff. (I miss the days where I actually had the means to volunteer and didn't have 70K in medical bills, an all-consuming work life, and lack of funds for college that I had to prioritize LOL). I could swear that that's a pretty common thing across the country, but I guess not, seeing how people treat the subject of society's willingness to do for the community rather than just avoiding anything that's hard/dirty and doesn't benefit them. Maybe it's only when the big man upstairs is focused where these people are willing to do good?

Thanks, American-style capitalism, I hate it