No Guaranteed Livable Income means we will continue to destroy our health, our children's health and the health of the planet.
The lack of a guaranteed livable income affects people's health in the following ways:
- Millions of jobs depend on the consumption of unhealthy products;
- Poverty imperils people's health and shortens their lives;
- The relentless pursuit of more economic growth economic is destroying our environments and this will also destroy our health.
- Other ways that we can only guess at -- constant rage from living under the thumb of the economy's tragically warped values; living in constant fear of being poor, of not being able to get our teeth fixed, of not being able to have nutritious food every month, of not being able to buy crucial health suppliments, of not being able to get to appointments because of no money for the bus; of not being socially isolated because; of having sensory deprivation from losing connection to the natural world, constant sadness from the inability to be with those we love because we have to go to our jobs, a sense of "a life wasted" from the inability to do what we love because we have to go to our jobs, the inability to dream, to play, to think because we are so worried about ending up poor.
Trading our health (and children's health) for jobs
The attempt to produce fuller employment by inducing people to consume more products such as fast foods, tobacco, alcohol, soft drinks, donuts, caffeinated drinks, sugared foods, processed foods etc. has caused widespread ill health.
Not only does the repeated consumption of certain products make people sick, it also makes all forms of life progressively sicker by polluting the air, water and soil that gives us all life.
The best illustration of the trading of health for jobs is the is the cola industry.
Coca-Cola is the largest private employer in Africa.
Their goal is to get more people to switch from drinking water, to drinking coke.
Getting people to switch from health-giving water to ill-health producing liquid sugar is a highly rewarded 'job' and produces economic growth. But in addition to ruining health, many industries also ruin the environment.
Vast amounts of energy and resources are wasted on simply promoting and convincing people to take up unhealthy habits.
"In 1997, Coca-Cola spent $277 million to advertise its sodas. Pepsi spent close to $200 million."
Harmful industries do not see themselves as impoverishing people, but as benefactors, because they 'create' thousands of jobs. Jobism interprets anything that makes jobs as 'success' even if it destroys people's health and drains natural resources. This is a massive suicidal and ecocidal ideology because it is totally disconnected from physical reality.
Convincing people, especially children, to habitually consume soft drinks is part of a 'death-cycle' economy -- an economy that rewards unhealthy and destructive economic activities. In a life-cycle economy, millions of people would not lose their livliehood if people all decided that (free) water was 'the real thing' not coke.
That society has become entirely disconnected from the physical world around us --including the health of our actual bodies-- has led us to the tragicomic circumstance where society glorifies 'working hard' even when this means destroying the very things that we rely on for life: the air, the water, the land, the community, and even our own and our children's health.
Poverty makes you sick and dead
There are mountains of research showing that poverty is a killer. Income is the main determinant of health even in 'rich' countries.
Link between poverty and disease
Health Canada's determinants of health:
The health costs of letting people, especially children, live in poverty is so vast that business leaders and governments do not want to know about this 'bottom line' because it would be too shocking, and too incriminating.
One study has shown that it costs $30,000 to $40,000 for one homeless person per year for service and emergency shelter costs with an average of $11,410 being spent just on criminal justice costs. (Volume 3, Costs of Homelessness in British Columbia, B.C. Government 2001)
"The pathways between socioeconomic status and health are well documented. The path that leads from poverty to poor nutrition and on to infectious diseases and chronic conditions is generally well understood." Health Impacts of Social and Economic Conditions, Canadian Public Health Association, 1997.
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Millions of people only have jobs because people continue to consume cigarettes, coffee, junk food, soda pop and the propaganda put out by mainstream media. Millions of others have jobs only because people are getting sick from cancer and from consumption-related causes such as obesity. Still others have jobs only because millions of people are ending up broke, homeless and in the jail system.
An economic system that is dependent on increasing consumption is also dependent on having the 'freedom' to destroy people's health, children's health (affecting them for life) and the health of the planet.
Demanding or coercing people to consume non-essentials to keep or create jobs is destructive, unethical and irrational. A Guaranteed Income would save people's health, it would save people from having to do harmful and/or life-sucking jobs, and, it would save the planet (the source of all life, wealth, and health) from being destroyed
Next: Destroying Nature for Jobs
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