Dr. Maté plans to do nothing

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 893-895

Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don't get it right. They call it "9 to 5." It's never 9 to 5, there's no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don't take lunch. Then there's OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there's another sucker to take your place.

You know my old saying, "Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors."

And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don't want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.

As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can't believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?
...
Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:

"I put in 35 years..."

"It ain't right..."

"I don't know what to do..."

They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn't they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?
Charles Bukowski

Our Founders endorsed "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," not life, liberty and the pursuit of obsession. Work-related maladies (worsened by low-nutrition fast food and insufficient sleep) undermine the "life" and spirit of millions, thus our low national happiness rankings. Gallup polls spanning 2005-2011 discovered nations that work less and play more are happier, namely Denmark, Finland, Norway, and the Netherlands. Instead, we boast about the "liberty" to work ourselves into an early grave.
Why the Protestant Work Ethic Is a Menace to Society
By Robert S. Becker
AlterNet

The American manufacturing sector produces much more than it did in 1979, despite employing almost 40 percent fewer workers.
Standard of Living Is in the Shadows as Election Issue
By DAVID LEONHARDT
New York Times
Published: October 23, 2012
[emphasis JS]

Caring Economics, Riane Eisler

thanks to Rose.

Anti Wage- Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 890-892

Permit yourself to be stinking lazy.

Frank Delaney

 

The additional insidious suggestion by David Cameron, the cause of much mirth at Tory Conference, was that by choosing to tax this top slice less he was not gifting them a tax-break, because “when people earn money, it’s their money”.

The implication being that this money was not made using the work of low-paid people forced to claim benefits to supplement their income; not made using the roads, airports and ports we all pay for; not made by all of us buying their goods and service; not made under the protection of the same police, fire and health services we all paid for.

No. This money magically came into existence out of the very same anatomical orifice of these “doers” and “risk-takers” out of which the sun, evidently, shines. A result of their entrepreneurship and get-up-and-go; nothing else.

The1% should recognize a big fortune is usually built on good fortune

Alex Andreou

Asking the questions others are too intelligent to ask

 With close to 40 per cent of New Zealand adults receiving benefits now under our social assistance welfare model, it is obvious it doesn’t live up to its promoters’ billing of being a “hand up”, in any way. It is an abject failure, an indictment of the tragedy of targeted welfare

...

...the following package addresses what is needed to get back on this path, while ensuring no blowout of government finances.

    An unconditional basic income (UBI) for every adult – $11,000 after tax, whether you’re in the paid workforce or not. This enables more people to choose paid or unpaid work – or not to work at all. Most importantly more would be able to pursue what they want to do, rather than what financial penury forces them to do. We are a rich society so to compel people to opt for paid work or face the stigma of qualifying for a benefit has no logic.

RevivingValues of an Egalitarian Society in New Zealand
[emphasis JS]

Basic Income Europe

Thanks to C. L'Hirondelle of Livable4All

I'm not a great Alex Jones fan, but I think this is a good summation.
--Jack

Anti Wage-slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 887-889

All mothers work; almost all will work for pay outside the home at some time in their mothering lives. And no mother, no woman, created this ridiculously inefficient, human-hating social structure that plops all responsibility for children on the frail shoulders of individual families.

It was not a mother who invented a 9 to 5 workday and a 9 to 3:30 school day, but of course mothers take the rap for the resulting “latch-key child.” No woman devised the economic structure that rewards leveraged buy-out jackals with mountains of gold, while condemning the most essential people in the country — child-minders — to lives of grinding poverty.

The quarrel is not between mothers who work for pay and mothers who don’t. The quarrel is between those who care about children’s future, and the (mostly) men in government who just don’t get it.
Michele Landsberg
National Post

...it is becoming increasingly clear that workaholics do indeed need help. Researchers in New Zealand have found that people who work at least 50 hours a week are up to three times more likely to face alcohol problems. Earlier this month, the American Journal of Epidemiology reported on a global study showing that over-workers are between 40 and 80 percent more likely to suffer heart disease than others. The lead researcher of that study had previously found that middle-aged people working more than 55 hours a week tend to be disproportionately slow-witted, and to be more at risk for dementia.
...
“The workaholic operates on the fight-or-flight response, which leads to a drench of cortisol, norepinephrine, and adrenaline. It can lead to heart disease and heart attacks, diabetes, compromised immune systems, and gastro-intestinal problems. We know this, the studies are pouring out.”
The Truth About Workaholics
Chris Wright
AlterNet
[emphasis JS]

Each year, American taxpayers spend nearly $1 trillion trying to help the poor, according to a recent study by the Cato Institute. It’s easy to miss that headline number, though, because the money flows into and out of scores of federal, state and local government programs.
…
Consider a thought experiment: Divide $1 trillion by 46 million and you get around $21,700 for each American in poverty, or nearly $87,000 for a family of four. That’s almost four times the $23,050 per year federal poverty line for that family. It’s intriguing to think about converting all of this to a cash payment that would instantly lift everyone in poverty up to the middle class.
The Wrong Way to Help the Poor
By GARY E. MacDOUGAL
New York Times
Published: October 10, 2012
[emphasis JS]


[He goes on to say " For a variety of reasons, of course, that’s not possible…" But doesn't give the reasons. Later in the article, he writes, "another factor is the natural reluctance of advocates, Congressional staffers, think tanks and providers of services for the poor to see their favorite programs cut or consolidated. Few are willing to give up authority over their piece of the program pie." -JS]

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 883-886

Take, for example, the so-called "Easterlin paradox," which teaches that when a person's income rises beyond what's necessary to meet their basic needs it does not increase their happiness. This doesn't match the standard capitalist economic assumption that rising personal wealth leads to increased individual fulfillment. Yet it's been proven time and again. And economics ignores this. Our textbook models remain unchanged.
Why We Must Stop Fetishizing Economic Growth
By Robert A. Johnson
AlterNet
September 25, 2012
[emphasis JS]

THE list of longshore jobs that technology has rendered obsolete is long and poignant. Mr. Curto’s tower workers are gone. The cube workers, who calculated the cubic volume of loose cargo, are gone. The coopers, who sewed torn sacks and repaired broken pallets, are gone. The water boys, working in the steamy reaches of the hold, are gone, as well.

In the 1960s, when New York was the world’s busiest port, there were more than 35,000 longshoremen on the city’s docks. Today, there are 3,500.
On the Waterfront, Rise of the Machines
By ALAN FEUER
New York Times
Published: September 28, 2012
[emphasis JS]

If the concept of the Unconditional Basic Income encourages laziness, why would any right minded parent pass on an inheritance to their children?
The Unconditional Basic Income. All Your Questions Answered In 800 Words
September 26, 2012 by bstard4bristolmayor

[Adam] Smith saw that over time wealth would follow the release of constraints on human inventiveness and imagination. The larger the group invited to play, the more spectacular the results. For all the ignorance and untrustworthiness in the world, he correctly perceived that the overwhelming majority of human beings could indeed be trusted to act in a way that over time is good for all.
John Taylor Gatto,
The Underground History Of American Education
[emphasis JS]

Plenty, Says Bucky

Beautiful Mad Scientists

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 880-882

MADRID —  …She was squatting with some friends in a building that still had water and electricity, while collecting “a little of everything” from the garbage after stores closed and the streets were dark and quiet.

Such survival tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace here, with an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and more households having adults without jobs. So pervasive is the problem of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution.
…
For a growing number, the food in garbage bins helps make ends meet.
Spain Recoils as Its Hungry Forage Trash Bins for a Next Meal
By SUZANNE DALEY
New York Times
Published: September 24, 201

I am a Chinese. … the way Chinese works makes Americans look lazy on the hindsight. That’s pretty much true regardless of where the Chinese are from. But this doesn’t mean that they like it. Trust me, nobody like to work their sanity off while at the same time not being the ultimate beneficiary of their own hard work. Does waking up before the sun rises, sticking yourself up in one place, and then coming back when the sun sets seem like a life fulfilled experience to you? How about doing this everyday except weekends? I, and also every Chinese I know, including people in senior management, do not like this idea at all, regardless of how well paid we are.
comment
A basic income guarantee – a dream or a future reality?
1000 petals by axinia blog

“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.” This may sound like the pronouncement of some bong-smoking anarchist, but it was actually Arthur C. Clarke, who found time between scuba diving and pinball games to write “Childhood’s End” and think up communications satellites.
The ‘Busy’ Trap
By TIM KREIDER
New York Times
June 30, 2012
[emphasis JS]