5 ms·
I always like the idea Bertrand Russel raised where if a company realizes it needs half its staff that it would be best to instead reduce all staff to half-hour
by howeyc 11y ago
I always like the idea Bertrand Russel raised where if a company realizes it needs half its staff that it would be best to instead reduce all staff to half-hours worked then previous.
Not sure if this is the essay or not. Sorry for the off-topic if it's not this essay.
Too bad with the current additional requirements on employers it's not that simple (health insurance, social security, etc...). Plus the fact that I'm sure some people would prefer not to have 3 places of employment to fill X-hours per week of pay and would rather have 1 employer (simplicity, less commuting, etc). Still, a nice idea in theory.
Maybe if most work was able to be done remotely, and work was done on a contract basis?
- anaphor 11y agoI think the point was that once technology reaches a certain point where it's easy and efficient to do things we need (like produce clothes and food) then it's better to reduce everyone's hours by half or so (and keep paying them a living wage) rather than producing tons of useless crap and making everyone work 50 hours a week.
- trimtab 11y agoPerhaps, but the organization that is providing the work is still likely to want to make, sell and profit from as much crap as it can along with all the other crap makers.
- Al-Khwarizmi 11y agoImplement basic income and universal healthcare, via taxes. Remove pensions for retirement and unemployment (obsoleted by basic income). With this, and taking into account that a minimum wage is not needed with basic income either, you take away all the overheads of hiring a worker. Want to hire someone to work 1 hour a day for $30? Fine, as long as they agree. You then pay taxes for your earnings, and not for hiring people.
- mamon 11y agoMain problem with introducing basic income is that you are effectively punishing hard-working people for their effort (with taxes) and reward people that don't want to work with the free money. Unless you have millions of slaves or immigrants (or, futuristically thinking, robots) at your disposal this will make your country go bankrupt very quickly. Which is a common problem with socialism, but made exponentially worse.
- drcube 11y agoBasic income is for everyone, workers and the unemployed, rich and poor alike. Or at least it should be. Every dollar you earn should be a bonus, on top of basic income, or else like you said, you create disincentives to work. If you're referring to the "fairness" of the distributed tax burden, that's a problem with or without basic income.
- anon4 11y agoLots of people care very strongly about personal property, including the money they earn and don't want the state to take what they earn and give it to "useless freeloaders". I think that, if you're advocating for what amounts to asking everyone to carry the entire world together including the people who can't "carry their own weight", you need to unapologetically sell a philosophy of why it's good to help others. You can't wave away "fairness" for people whose mental process is "I have mine, you have yours, I'll only give you from mine if you give me from yours at equal or greater value".
- mamon 11y agoI see your point, but think about one thing: how many people are stuck in a jobs they hate just because they have to pay the bills? If you give them basic income that covers all their basic needs then first thing they will do is they will quit their jobs. Also, I can imagine that many women would leave their jobs to stay at home with their children (or to finally give birth to one). That's at least few millions of people that would immediately loose incentive to work. Fairness of taxes is mainly theoretical exercise because this world isn't and never will be fair. So we need to deal with the fact that people don't like paying taxes and will do many things to avoid it, including quitting their jobs.