The argument of "I can't find someone to clean my house for $10/hr, so everyone must be lazy" is specious at best. Occams Razor says that you're mostly likely n

The argument of "I can't find someone to clean my house for $10/hr, so everyone must be lazy" is specious at best. Occams Razor says that you're mostly likely not soliciting labor from the right people. It's likely that a broke teenager or an addict who needs a fix would be willing to work at the low end of the pay scale. You don't get to make proclamiations about the american work ethic because no one answered your flyer. It's not productive to turn the poor into an "other" or a "them". They are obviously people just like us, with pride and dignity just like we have. The fact that they don't want to clean up other peoples' messes for $10/hr doesn't mean that they are "lazy"...it means they are normal people who don't want to do dirty jobs for low pay. One of the things that a BI will do for us is weed out the people who don't want to work. Ideally, the people that we interact with in commercial situations will want to be there, as opposed to lazy and incompetent people taking up slots just so they can get a small paycheck. It could be a like a streamlined version of our current welfare state: jobs for those who want them, a modest living for those that don't. There are people in our society who suffer from mental illness, addiction or have social problems that prevent them from being able to focus, show up on time or be a part of a team. We can ask them to clean our houses for a cut rate or we can get serious about solving the problems that effect so many of our fellow citizens. None of us would be on hacker news if we hadn't gotten lucky in so many ways. Instead of calling people "lazy", We should be eager to help those who weren't so fortunate.