The Jobs Paradox: How Jobs cause poverty
Jobism is the belief in jobs as a solution to all social and economic problems. "That 50 per cent, or more, of society's labor is wasted has been known "We find all the no-life-support-wealth-producing people going to their 1980 jobs in their cars or buses, spending trillions of dollar's worth of petroleum daily to get to their no-wealth-producing jobs. It doesn't take a computer to tell you that it will save both Universe and humanity trillions of dollars a day to pay them handsomely to stay at home."
The biggest obstacle facing the implementation of a guaranteed livable income is the idea that jobs are the only solution to poverty. However, quite the opposite is true. Jobs demand that people work regardless of whether the work is necessary and regardless of whether ther work is harmful or dangerous to the worker, the consumer or the planet.
Even if the government created make-work jobs to relieve poverty there would be massive waste of natural resources --people would use resources going back and forth to work each day, they would need infrastructure and workplaces. Not to mention the tragic waste of human life.
The irrational committment to the work ethic by both right and left means that parents still would not be allowed to be with and care for their own children because it is not 'real' work. Clearly it would be cheaper to implement guaranteed income instead of workfare or government job creation. All the resources used to support the infrastructure of the job system could be used to meet people's real wants and needs.
In addition, poverty and consumption related problems also use up masses of resources, time and energy.
The job system is a massive diversion machine - wasting precious resources (natural and human) to create mountains of crap. Just so that people can have jobs.
Examples of how resources are diverted, all of these would be impacted by a guaranteed livable income. Social Control (Force/coercion) Social Control (Manipulation/distraction) Money industries Infrastructure Alienation industries - substances Alienation industries
- activities Illness & social problem industries All of this sounds like heresay to people who want jobs, or who want to keep their jobs. The best way to counter a "jobist" mindset is to ask exactly what do they intend to produce to solve their poverty problem? Then it must be determined whether the product is a) necessary and b) is of benefit. If people say they have a good 'green' job like teacher, professor, social worker, writer, etc., it must be pointed out that the money that pays their wages comes from the harvesting of trees, mining of minerals and oil, the production tobacco, alcohol and junk food etc. Most importantly their wages depend on the consumption of such things. No consumption of cigarettes and alcohol and oil, etc, means a huge loss for huge industries. The key thing that must happen is for matter to be transformed to money. So if all money comes from nature and consumption, there is no clean money or no green jobs under our current economy. Next: Paying for War or Paying for Peace |
