Firstly, if every Amazon worker (or other low-skill job) educated themselves into a better job, there’d be no low-skill/low-wage workers. I think many of us wou

Firstly, if every Amazon worker (or other low-skill job) educated themselves into a better job, there’d be no low-skill/low-wage workers. I think many of us would really dislike living in a world where these sorts of jobs support even a moderate lifestyle. For example, someone doing the dishes at a restaurant. Therefore, we do find these jobs valuable as a society and we want people to do them. Secondly, are we really sure that if everyone suddenly educated themselves into a better job that there would be enough better jobs to go around? It seems unlikely. Particularly with increased automation. My point is that the “get a better job” argument isn’t a strong solution to providing for everyone’s needs. We’re pretty clearly getting worse in this area as a society, with stagnating wages and fewer opportunities for entry-level work which can make ends meet. At a point, if this trend continues, you get riots and revolution when people feel they don’t have another choice. We aren’t necessarily close to that, but if these trends continue, that’s more people making less money with higher prices. At some point that leads to desperation for enough people that violence happens. Just look at Russia or France in the past couple hundred years. My meaning with that is that it’s not just someone’s own responsibility, but that there is some level of social responsibility for maintaining a baseline.