Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1437-1439

between December 2011 and February 2014, the Department of Work and Pensions reported that 2,380 Britons previously on disability support were found dead no more than six weeks after receiving notice that they were having their benefits cut because they had been determined to be “fit for work.”  
Despair Fatigue 
How hopelessness grew boring 
David Graeber   
The Baffler 
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 How can women reconcile an interminable workday with the lion’s share of housekeeping and childrearing?

Neither option on its own is desirable; together, they are unbearable. Life shouldn’t be reduced to a balance between waged work and housework, a balance between work and work. Instead, if we are concerned about fixing the “time bind,” we should do the unimaginable: ask for more time.

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A basic income would provide a minimum living standard.

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A basic income would offer a social safety net—especially important in a time of economic instability. But it would also change the lives of its recipients in more qualitative ways. The basic income would ensure that individuals were financially solvent regardless of their jobs, decoupling economic status and employment. By offering money unconditionally, without a requirement for work or education, a basic income would offer financial support without stigma, unlike the current welfare-to-work system. Further, by giving individuals money that did not come directly from salaries, the basic income would also offer freedom and autonomy independent of waged work. Together with a shorter workweek, it would mean that individuals would be less dependent on their own labor to get by. It would give them room to explore their interests and ideas outside of work. It might very well give them more time.

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Thinking about a world with more time would entail a more theoretical shift: it would mean decentering waged work from a feminist conception of a better life. Since the second wave, much of feminism has upheld waged work and work outside the home as a way for women to find independence and freedom. Mainstream feminists have often praised the workplace as the site of great gains for women and encouraged women to work and better the conditions of their workplaces through activism, professional organizations, and legal campaigns.

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But waged work is itself constricting and demanding—hardly liberation itself. As women have entered the workplace, the kinds of jobs they take have often declined in quality, paying less, demanding more, and becoming more unstable and restricting. Work does not foster independence or freedom when individuals cannot choose where they work or the conditions under which they do so. Placing work at the core of a feminist demand obscures work’s problems and blinds us to life outside of it. 

Less Work, More Time

Madeleine Schwartz 

Dissent 

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...no matter how hard you work, someone still has to do the crap low wage jobs. So even if we all busted our asses, a lot of us will still get left behind. Which kind of destroys the just work harder theory.

While the right wing advocates the best solution as eliminating minimum wage all together so everyone can work (work for less). Liberals always advocate raising minimum wage to a so called “living wage” so everyone can get ahead.

Conservatives counter that raising the minimum wage reduces the number of jobs and to some extent they are right, if it’s not raised gradually over time in small increments. Meanwhile, the democrats are right that it does help working families. What they fail to mention though is the unintended consequence is it creates an even wider income gap for the unemployed.

So what’s the solution? A Basic Guaranteed Income which is designed to replace the current welfare system by eliminating the government middle man and agencies and instead just give the money directly to everyone.

That’s right every adult in the U.S. from the homeless guy on the street corner to Bill Gates would get a monthly check for $1000. Children would receive $400 per month.

In fact once a Basic Income Guarantee is put in place, it does make the argument for needing to raise the minimum wage pretty weak since poverty would be eliminated. One may also argue that a minimum wage is no longer needed anymore since everyone has enough money for the basics now. So it gives democrats that income floor they have been fighting for and it gives republicans that argument to go forward with free market capitalism now that we’ve solved the welfare problem.

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The rich will still be free to make all the money they want, but they’ll be living in a better society where everyone’s standard of living improves instead of just having 2 classes of society, “the haves” and the “have nots” that exist. 

Dispelling the Working Harder Myth when it Comes toIncome Inequality and Why We Need a Basic Income Guarantee Instead 

Allen Bauer 

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