Google is worth more today than Ford was at its height and it employs less people. Workers are not being adequately compensated for their work.
I'm only lazy because I do have money. Work is not rewarding enough and I have enough to live on. At least I can admit this arrangement is fucked up, even if it benefits me. The reality is that a more equitable society would benefit me more as more people would be free to research cures for cancer if they weren't flipping burgers.
[–] analfaveto ago
I wasn't calling you personally lazy. It was the impersonal "you." The rant was directed at the average American "victim" of today.
Who is going to decide what is adequate pay? You? Trump? Some wise professor at Harvard? The party that won the last election? Are we going to have an endless list of professions and how much each person working in each one of them "deserves" to be paid? Do all surgeons deserve the same pay or are we going to have subdivisions within that list? Do you want to go the socialist route? Because that has gone so well the thirty-odd times it has been attempted, right?
We need burger flippers as much as we need cancer researchers. With automation coming strong, we may not need burger flippers in the near future, but the overwhelming majority of people who are flipping burgers right now do not have the potential to become cancer researchers. Those who do have the potential already have the means. Grants and loans have been available for a very long time.
[–] lipids ago
Universal basic income. It removes the coercive nature of employment which enables low value jobs. It removes the welfare cliffs that existing programs succeed from. It enables people to take risks like starting their own business. It supplements the income of those in low wage jobs so they don't fear poverty.
It's expensive to be poor and too many industries exist to exploit the poor. These industries do not create wealth but extract it.