8 ms·

There is a difference between a job you like, and a job you do because you believe "work sets you free" or because you believe work is a some sort of value or a

by jokoon 10y ago

There is a difference between a job you like, and a job you do because you believe "work sets you free" or because you believe work is a some sort of value or a necessary pain everybody has to take part in. I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough. I hear so many people yelling about moochers and parasites, it's becoming weird. Everybody wants everybody to behave like superman, yet nobody realizes you can't educate everyone to have enough qualified workers. My great fear is that as time passes, more and more people decide to live like I do, and economies might change because people stop consuming.

marcoperaza 10y ago
>I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough. Why do you think that you should have the right to live off of other people's work? Welfare checks aren't fairy money, they're money that came out of other people's paychecks.
- gambiting 10y ago
  What he thinks is irrelevant. The system is in place to allow people without jobs to survive. We either have to have that, or guarantee that everyone has a job - I come from a former communist republic that tried to do the later, it's not pretty. I would much rather live in a country that let's him live off welfare than in a country that tries to shove a job everyone's throat.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    I'm not against welfare. I was responding to his assertion that he feels no obligation to work, even if jobs are available.
    - Eupolemos 10y ago
      But in reality there's more to it, right? Yes, jobs are available, but they also get filled quickly. There's no shortage. The unemployed can out-bid each other in a "how-low-can-you-go" competition, but that just leads to working poor.
    - GFischer 10y ago
      I didn't downvote you, but I believe it didn't come across that way (it's hard to gauge what you tried to convey across the Internet sometimes).
    - gcheong 10y ago
      But isn't this idea that work is some kind of moral obligation to society exactly the problem if it's true that work is going to disappear? Do you think his contribution to society is zero or negative simply because he doesn't have a job? Perhaps it's just easier to measure if you have a job what your relative contribution to society is because you can place a dollar value on it.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  " Welfare checks aren't fairy money, they're money that came out of other people's paychecks." That's true, but I increasingly don't mind. It's also money that came from your own paycheck if you were a high earner in the past.
  - twistedpair 10y ago
    It's also the money that subsidizes people to work the jobs that corporations don't pay enough wages to live off of (e.g. Wal-Mart 'Associates'). Everyone wants goods produced as cheaply as possible, but doesn't want to pay their producers living wages.
- IanDrake 10y ago
  Judging by the down votes you must be wrong. Welfare is indeed fairy money.
- wott 10y ago
  For example, because half of other people's work is bullshit. Or because a third of other people's work output is used to take them from home to work. Or because the amount on the paycheck is totally unrelated to the value a worker produces. Or because a quarter of other people's work is not about creating value, but about destroying it and driving all of us always faster towards a catastrophe. In short, because most of world organised around work is nonsense. So getting a bit of money to live poorly without work is not any more nonsensical. That's a way to see it.
  - jsmith0295 10y ago
    So why not try and fix the mismatch between the paycheck and the value produced by the worker rather than just abandoning the idea of producing any value at all? Even if someone is paid 10% of what they produce, I'd rather have them doing that for 40 hours a week than doing nothing and collecting a welfare check.
    - freshhawk 10y ago
      Because the people with a lot of power are actively opposed to any fix? A huge number of people want this mismatch to be fixed, but are wise enough to know they have zero ability to do anything about it. We're in the midst of discovering just how useless "consciousness raising" slacktivist campaigns are, and that was basically the last hope for being able to contribute to a solution for a lot of people.
    - sova 10y ago
      study: "I" would rather have "them" ... in discussions like this we must exchange perspectives with all citizens. From the highest to the lowest. Even to the lowliest we must see that their fundamental needs are the same.
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  Because he is no longer living on the back of other people. He is living on the back of robots and machinery. Hating him for once personal live style choices (aka salary-man) in a world that that discards those daily by the dozen- seems- slightly envious?
- Asooka 10y ago
  Why do you think that you have the right to own money? Those money aren't fairy money, they're money that came out of a government mint. You only have a natural right to the things that you make with your hands. Money that's handed to you is not a right, it's a privilege.
  - jomohn 10y ago
    but if i trade my time for money, then the money isn't handed to me by privilege.
- PrimalDual 10y ago
  So right now it comes from other people's paycheck but does it have to? Why don't rich countries like the US, Switzerland or Japan not print money to cover their spending? Inflation is not the problem it used to be and I actually think it's a much better measure of the economy's capacity than unemployment. Would inflation of 4% be that bad for the public and financial system anyways? In the US at least I strongly oppose tax-based welfare because I percieve it as a rigged system where the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share through loop holes and classifying their income differently than mine. But inflation in a sense is unavoidable and progressive since the more money you have the more you lose to inflation if you don't invest it. This is especially true if the cause of inflation is labor scarcity and not some other key resource like oil.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    >Why don't rich countries like the US, Switzerland or Japan not print money to cover their spending? Printing money is equivalent to a tax on all US dollar holdings. The value of the printed money is subtracted from everyone else's holdings by inflation. Doing this excessively, e.g. to fund the entire public sector, would cause an inflationary spiral, as everyone tries to get rid of their rapidly-devaluing dollars as quickly as possible.
  - aianus 10y ago
    The rich are even more capable of evading inflation than they are evading taxes. I'm sure Warren Buffet has proportionally less of his money in cash than I do.
    - jomohn 10y ago
      You have every option to store your wealth in other assets than USD.
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    Because if you continue printing money the inflation doesn't stop growing at some point. This is Econ 101.
- jokoon 10y ago
  Taxes are written in the law, and I'm not obligated to work a job by law. So your argument is solely a moral one. Jobs are mostly a first served problem or the result of privilege: education, network, etc.
  - jomohn 10y ago
    >Jobs are mostly a first served problem or the result of privilege. No they aren't, the easiest way to get a job is to get really good at something.
euyyn 10y ago
You don't think you have any duty to try not to live off welfare, as long as not many people do it?
- posterboy 10y ago
  Why the double negative? Are you that pessimistic? Edit: Make that a triple.
- clarry 10y ago
  I can think of all the bullshit jobs people do and then come to the conclusion that it'd be better for me to do what I can to contribute to society through research, participation in free software projects, volunteering, etc. Doing that I could be useful to thousands, maybe even millions of people. As opposed to, say, wasting the time of hundreds of people trying to sell them stupid magazines they don't need or want while leeching money off of the poor grandma who doesn't know how to say no. Alternatively, I could spend the time to build something that somewhere down the line could become a useful product to share with the world, or a profitable business that could pay back all the tax money I used up (and more). Doing a bullshit job 8 hours a day leaves me too exhausted to do anything particularly useful with the little free time I have.
  - euyyn 10y ago
    Most jobs are honest and do people a service, you don't even need to look hard or anything. If you want impact, and can write software, there's plenty of well-paid jobs for that in the US; Silicon Valley and elsewhere. That not only lets you contribute taxes instead of living off them, it also helps you be more productive, focused, and impactful. Is teaching a bullshit job? Installing solar panels in people's roofs? Doing the accounting that keeps a hospital working? Cooking or waiting in a small restaurant where the firemen next door have lunch?
    - jokoon 10y ago
      The former jobs you describe require education or experience, and are in limited supply. Waiting tables means you live on tips. It's not a job you can do for life.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>"work sets you free" As a side note, recently there's been a drive to not normalize fascist slogans or ideas in mainstream politics. Among those, "arbeit macht frei" is a particularly offensive one, since it was written on the gates of Auschwitz. Just saying. When someone quotes this kind of phrase to us, we should remind them where they got it from and refuse to treat it as normal. >I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough. Good for you! >I hear so many people yelling about moochers and parasites, it's becoming weird. Everybody wants everybody to behave like superman, yet nobody realizes you can't educate everyone to have enough qualified workers. I don't think people want to acknowledge how much social capital goes into enabling us "supermen" who actually do work for high incomes. If all the roads get cracked and the trains break down, I'm going to be a less productive worker because I have a harder time getting to work.
- gf263 10y ago
  They're just words, no?
  - dvtv75 10y ago
    It's just history, no? Although the "Just saying" part (from the GP) irritates me. You're not "just saying," because if you were there would be no need to explain that to us. It's little more than an underscoring of the passive-aggressive intent of a statement.
  - egh5oon 10y ago
    No, they are not just.
  - swift 10y ago
    No; they're a set of ideas and connotations existing in a historical and cultural context. What distinguishes words from mere sequences of letters is meaning.
- 10y ago
module0000 10y ago
> If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will Are you banking on the tax payers never reaching that mindset as well? Because it kind of breaks down if that happens.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  What's wrong with taking the opportunity while it lasts? You can't really think of problems like that, it doesn't lead you anywhere. If there is a hole to exploit the system, it will get exploited. No matter by who.
- robryan 10y ago
  Depending on where you are in the world living solely off benefits isn't very appealing to most. Much more likely that most will be forced into it rather than choosing it.
- jokoon 10y ago
  If more people go on welfare, they will be forced to stop over-consuming. The industry will adapt, and some regulations will change.
nnd 10y ago
> and economies might change because people stop consuming How an economy heavily based on excessive consumption is a good thing?
- jokoon 10y ago
  It's not a good thing, but consumption is what keep economies running fast, meaning more jobs and more everything. Just like planned obsolescence has its set of advantages, even if it is a despicable practice.

by jokoon 10y ago

marcoperaza 10y ago

>I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough. Why do you think that you should have the right to live off of other people's work? Welfare checks aren't fairy money, they're money that came out of other people's paychecks.

gambiting 10y ago
What he thinks is irrelevant. The system is in place to allow people without jobs to survive. We either have to have that, or guarantee that everyone has a job - I come from a former communist republic that tried to do the later, it's not pretty. I would much rather live in a country that let's him live off welfare than in a country that tries to shove a job everyone's throat.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  I'm not against welfare. I was responding to his assertion that he feels no obligation to work, even if jobs are available.
  - Eupolemos 10y ago
    But in reality there's more to it, right? Yes, jobs are available, but they also get filled quickly. There's no shortage. The unemployed can out-bid each other in a "how-low-can-you-go" competition, but that just leads to working poor.
  - GFischer 10y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but I believe it didn't come across that way (it's hard to gauge what you tried to convey across the Internet sometimes).
  - gcheong 10y ago
    But isn't this idea that work is some kind of moral obligation to society exactly the problem if it's true that work is going to disappear? Do you think his contribution to society is zero or negative simply because he doesn't have a job? Perhaps it's just easier to measure if you have a job what your relative contribution to society is because you can place a dollar value on it.
CalRobert 10y ago
" Welfare checks aren't fairy money, they're money that came out of other people's paychecks." That's true, but I increasingly don't mind. It's also money that came from your own paycheck if you were a high earner in the past.
- twistedpair 10y ago
  It's also the money that subsidizes people to work the jobs that corporations don't pay enough wages to live off of (e.g. Wal-Mart 'Associates'). Everyone wants goods produced as cheaply as possible, but doesn't want to pay their producers living wages.
IanDrake 10y ago
Judging by the down votes you must be wrong. Welfare is indeed fairy money.
wott 10y ago
For example, because half of other people's work is bullshit. Or because a third of other people's work output is used to take them from home to work. Or because the amount on the paycheck is totally unrelated to the value a worker produces. Or because a quarter of other people's work is not about creating value, but about destroying it and driving all of us always faster towards a catastrophe. In short, because most of world organised around work is nonsense. So getting a bit of money to live poorly without work is not any more nonsensical. That's a way to see it.
- jsmith0295 10y ago
  So why not try and fix the mismatch between the paycheck and the value produced by the worker rather than just abandoning the idea of producing any value at all? Even if someone is paid 10% of what they produce, I'd rather have them doing that for 40 hours a week than doing nothing and collecting a welfare check.
  - freshhawk 10y ago
    Because the people with a lot of power are actively opposed to any fix? A huge number of people want this mismatch to be fixed, but are wise enough to know they have zero ability to do anything about it. We're in the midst of discovering just how useless "consciousness raising" slacktivist campaigns are, and that was basically the last hope for being able to contribute to a solution for a lot of people.
  - sova 10y ago
    study: "I" would rather have "them" ... in discussions like this we must exchange perspectives with all citizens. From the highest to the lowest. Even to the lowliest we must see that their fundamental needs are the same.
Pica_soO 10y ago
Because he is no longer living on the back of other people. He is living on the back of robots and machinery. Hating him for once personal live style choices (aka salary-man) in a world that that discards those daily by the dozen- seems- slightly envious?
Asooka 10y ago
Why do you think that you have the right to own money? Those money aren't fairy money, they're money that came out of a government mint. You only have a natural right to the things that you make with your hands. Money that's handed to you is not a right, it's a privilege.
- jomohn 10y ago
  but if i trade my time for money, then the money isn't handed to me by privilege.
PrimalDual 10y ago
So right now it comes from other people's paycheck but does it have to? Why don't rich countries like the US, Switzerland or Japan not print money to cover their spending? Inflation is not the problem it used to be and I actually think it's a much better measure of the economy's capacity than unemployment. Would inflation of 4% be that bad for the public and financial system anyways? In the US at least I strongly oppose tax-based welfare because I percieve it as a rigged system where the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share through loop holes and classifying their income differently than mine. But inflation in a sense is unavoidable and progressive since the more money you have the more you lose to inflation if you don't invest it. This is especially true if the cause of inflation is labor scarcity and not some other key resource like oil.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  >Why don't rich countries like the US, Switzerland or Japan not print money to cover their spending? Printing money is equivalent to a tax on all US dollar holdings. The value of the printed money is subtracted from everyone else's holdings by inflation. Doing this excessively, e.g. to fund the entire public sector, would cause an inflationary spiral, as everyone tries to get rid of their rapidly-devaluing dollars as quickly as possible.
- aianus 10y ago
  The rich are even more capable of evading inflation than they are evading taxes. I'm sure Warren Buffet has proportionally less of his money in cash than I do.
  - jomohn 10y ago
    You have every option to store your wealth in other assets than USD.
- mixedCase 10y ago
  Because if you continue printing money the inflation doesn't stop growing at some point. This is Econ 101.
jokoon 10y ago
Taxes are written in the law, and I'm not obligated to work a job by law. So your argument is solely a moral one. Jobs are mostly a first served problem or the result of privilege: education, network, etc.
- jomohn 10y ago
  >Jobs are mostly a first served problem or the result of privilege. No they aren't, the easiest way to get a job is to get really good at something.

euyyn 10y ago

You don't think you have any duty to try not to live off welfare, as long as not many people do it?

posterboy 10y ago
Why the double negative? Are you that pessimistic? Edit: Make that a triple.
clarry 10y ago
I can think of all the bullshit jobs people do and then come to the conclusion that it'd be better for me to do what I can to contribute to society through research, participation in free software projects, volunteering, etc. Doing that I could be useful to thousands, maybe even millions of people. As opposed to, say, wasting the time of hundreds of people trying to sell them stupid magazines they don't need or want while leeching money off of the poor grandma who doesn't know how to say no. Alternatively, I could spend the time to build something that somewhere down the line could become a useful product to share with the world, or a profitable business that could pay back all the tax money I used up (and more). Doing a bullshit job 8 hours a day leaves me too exhausted to do anything particularly useful with the little free time I have.
- euyyn 10y ago
  Most jobs are honest and do people a service, you don't even need to look hard or anything. If you want impact, and can write software, there's plenty of well-paid jobs for that in the US; Silicon Valley and elsewhere. That not only lets you contribute taxes instead of living off them, it also helps you be more productive, focused, and impactful. Is teaching a bullshit job? Installing solar panels in people's roofs? Doing the accounting that keeps a hospital working? Cooking or waiting in a small restaurant where the firemen next door have lunch?
  - jokoon 10y ago
    The former jobs you describe require education or experience, and are in limited supply. Waiting tables means you live on tips. It's not a job you can do for life.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>"work sets you free" As a side note, recently there's been a drive to not normalize fascist slogans or ideas in mainstream politics. Among those, "arbeit macht frei" is a particularly offensive one, since it was written on the gates of Auschwitz. Just saying. When someone quotes this kind of phrase to us, we should remind them where they got it from and refuse to treat it as normal. >I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough. Good for you! >I hear so many people yelling about moochers and parasites, it's becoming weird. Everybody wants everybody to behave like superman, yet nobody realizes you can't educate everyone to have enough qualified workers. I don't think people want to acknowledge how much social capital goes into enabling us "supermen" who actually do work for high incomes. If all the roads get cracked and the trains break down, I'm going to be a less productive worker because I have a harder time getting to work.

gf263 10y ago
They're just words, no?
- dvtv75 10y ago
  It's just history, no? Although the "Just saying" part (from the GP) irritates me. You're not "just saying," because if you were there would be no need to explain that to us. It's little more than an underscoring of the passive-aggressive intent of a statement.
- egh5oon 10y ago
  No, they are not just.
- swift 10y ago
  No; they're a set of ideas and connotations existing in a historical and cultural context. What distinguishes words from mere sequences of letters is meaning.
10y ago

module0000 10y ago

> If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will Are you banking on the tax payers never reaching that mindset as well? Because it kind of breaks down if that happens.

angry-hacker 10y ago
What's wrong with taking the opportunity while it lasts? You can't really think of problems like that, it doesn't lead you anywhere. If there is a hole to exploit the system, it will get exploited. No matter by who.
robryan 10y ago
Depending on where you are in the world living solely off benefits isn't very appealing to most. Much more likely that most will be forced into it rather than choosing it.
jokoon 10y ago
If more people go on welfare, they will be forced to stop over-consuming. The industry will adapt, and some regulations will change.

nnd 10y ago

> and economies might change because people stop consuming How an economy heavily based on excessive consumption is a good thing?

jokoon 10y ago
It's not a good thing, but consumption is what keep economies running fast, meaning more jobs and more everything. Just like planned obsolescence has its set of advantages, even if it is a despicable practice.