Anti-Job, Pro-Freedom Quotes Of The Week 110, 111 plus

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296 million people in the USA used 97 quadrillion BTUs of energy (the BTU, or British Thermal Unit, is a measure of energy equivalent to a kitchen match which allows us to compare different energy sources). To put that huge number into perspective, each of us used about 328 million BTUs during the year, the equivalent of 96,000 Kilowatt hours of electricity. A Kilowatt-hour is about 1/3 more work than a horsepower-hour, so we used about 128,640 horsepower-hours, or the equivalent of 147 energy slaves working for each of us 24/7, all year long.
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Now think about your energy slaves as you go about your day. Every time you leave a 75 Watt light bulb burning, one of these very strong energy slaves is pedaling away as hard as he can to keep it going for you. If that 25 mpg car has a 100 horsepower motor, it’s the equivalent of 1000 strong people. If you add up all the power we Americans use, on average, to light and heat our homes, transport us, etc. and convert it to the human energy equivalent, it's an unimaginable opulence by the standards of all the humans who came before us.
How many ‘energy slaves’ do we employ?
Jennifer Barker





Basic Income. All citizens are given a monthly stipend sufficiently high to provide them with a standard of living above the poverty line. This monthly income is universal rather than means-tested- it is given automatically to all citizens regardless of their individual economic
circumstances. And it is unconditional - receiving the basic income does not depend upon performing any labor services or satisfying other conditions. In this way basic income is like publicly-financed universal health insurance: in a universal health care system, medical care isprovided both to citizens who exercise and eat healthy diets and to those who do not. It is not a condition of getting medical care that one be "responsible" with respect to one's health. Unconditional, universal basic income takes the same stance about basic needs: as a matter of basic rights, no one should live in poverty in an affluent society.
Erik Olin Wright