Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1684-1686

On Oct. 17 — the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty — 80 groups in more than 30 communities across Canada called for a national, anti-poverty strategy to deal with the estimated 850,000 people who visit a food bank each month and the 4.8 million Canadians who live below the poverty line.
...
Most people in Canada think of poverty in terms of the “urban poor man sleeping homeless on the streets,” Gunn said. “The report points out most poor people are actually working,” but at “precarious jobs,” with few hours, no benefits and no protections.

“Certainly anyone working full-time in all provinces of Canada but one on minimum wage would be counted as living in poverty,” Gunn said.
Voices of Canada's working poor growing louder
By  Deborah Gyapong, Canadian Catholic News 
[emphasis JS]

 We already have human-less branch banks; restaurants with Chef Rob Robot in the kitchen; financial firms with online robo-advisors picking stocks; hotels with cute robotic bellhops; driverless farm equipment with computerized sensors dictating when to plow, plant, spray and harvest; automated lawyer replacements for everything from contracts to divorces; computer-generated AI algorithms replacing human football coaches in deciding whether to run, pass, or punt; news reports without reporters, written instead by computers; and on and on. The Washington Post reported that the "automation bomb" could destroy 45 percent of U.S. work activities, causing $2 trillion in lost annual wages.
Hightower: The Next Wave of the Tech Revolution Will Wipe Out Millions of Jobs—Maybe Even Yours
By Jim Hightower / AlterNet
October 12, 2017, 2:05 PM GMT
[emphasis JS]

 ...today’s 2.5 million professional home care aides have been excluded from federal minimum wage and overtime protections.
Letter to the Editor
Home Care Wages
STEVE EDELSTEIN
New York Times
Published: December 3, 2012

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1681-1683

Aristotle, for instance, argued that wealth should be sought only for the sake of living virtuously — to manage a household, say, or to participate in the life of the polis. Here wealth is useful but not inherently good; indeed, Aristotle specifically warned that the accumulation of wealth for its own sake corrupts virtue instead of enabling it.

For Hindus, working hard to earn money is a duty (dharma), but only when done through honest means and used for good ends. The function of money is not to satiate greed but to support oneself and one’s family. The Koran, too, warns against hoarding money and enjoins Muslims to disperse it to the needy.

Some contemporary voices join this ancient chorus, perhaps none more enthusiastically than Pope Francis. He’s proclaimed that unless wealth is used for the good of society, and above all for the good of the poor, it is an instrument “of corruption and death.”
Luck and virtue
Elizabeth Bruenig



1. Money doesn’t have to be an obstacle

2. Race doesn't matter;

3. Just work harder

4. There is a college for everyone/everyone can go to college

5. If you believe in yourself, your dreams will come true.

I began to question these beliefs to better understand how they are perpetuated in our schools and society.

 the five assumptions listed above can be dangerous because they reinforce the deeply held American belief that success is individually created and sustained. “If I could do it, so can you” is an echo of the “just work harder” assumption. It is the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” ethos to which so many generations of Americans adhere. Yet data repeatedly show how poverty, social class, race, and parents’ educational attainment more directly influence an individual’s success and potential earnings than any individual effort. We clearly do not yet have a level playing field, but this belief is all but impossible to challenge. Whenever we hear of another bootstraps story, we want to generalize. We disregard the fact that luck often plays a major role. And in generalizing and celebrating the individual nature of success, we disregard the imperative to rethink social and economic policies that leave many behind.
Grit Isn't Enough to Help Students Overcome Poverty—And It's Time To Stop Pretending That It Is
By Linda Nathan / Beacon Press
October 19, 2017



According to a new report published today by the New England Complex Systems Institute, mathematics can indeed be used to find a solution to income inequality. And as it turns out, the math points to targeted programs that redistribute wealth to the poor as the way to close the inequality gap and improve the health of the economy as a whole.
...
new research shows that a purely monetary solution to the US economy's current imbalance is insufficient. Bar-Yam likened this to trying to drive a car by focusing only on the gas and brake pedals, and ignoring the steering wheel. In addition to interest rate regulation, Bar-Yam's research points to a transfer of wealth to the less wealthy sectors of society as the most effective way to rebalance the consumption and production cycles.
Math Suggests Inequality Can Be Fixed With Wealth Redistribution, Not Tax Cuts
Daniel Oberhaus
Oct 17 2017
MOTHERBOARD



 

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1678-1680

A network of inventors and investors, hundreds of university engineering and math departments, thousands of government-funded research projects, countless freelance innovators and the entire corporate establishment are "re-inventing" practically every workplace by displacing humans with "more efficient" AI robots.
...
 Robots are now performing millions of surgeries every year.
...
While online retail giants have already eliminated hundreds of thousands of sales clerks by radically restructuring how consumers make purchases, AI systems are poised to gobble up the jobs transporting those products. The first big targets are America's truckers, who number 1.8 million and have some of the few remaining, decent-paying jobs not requiring college degrees.   
Hightower: The Next Wave of the Tech Revolution Will Wipe Out Millions of Jobs—Maybe Even Yours
By Jim Hightower / AlterNet
October 12, 2017, 2:05 PM GMT

 Human-Free Farms: In a 1.5-acre remote farm in the UK, Harper Adams University and Precision Decisions recently harvested their first crop of barley. The twist? The farm is run autonomously. Instead of human farm workers, Hands Free Hectare uses autonomous vehicles, machine learning algorithms and drones to plant, tend, and harvest.
Why the World Is (Still) Better Than You Think—New Evidence For Abundance
By
Peter Diamandis
Oct 12, 2017
SingularityHub

 Heaven prefers no one, but the sensible person prefers heaven.
Lao Tzu
Tao Te Ching

 

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1675-1677

Machines will be able to do our work for less, without the need for a lunch break or eight hours of rest. This dilutes company costs, increases profits, and for socially aware enterprises, makes the widespread implementation of UBI much easier to swallow.

Universal Basic Income: The Full Rundown

09/12/2017

Nikhil Reddy

 It’s fairly common to feel a passing urge to quit your job when you’ve hit a rough patch, says Nancy S. Molitor, a clinical psychologist in Wilmette, Ill., and a public education coordinator for the American Psychological Association. But the idea is surfacing in more employees’ minds these days, she said.

...

Sometimes an employee wants to quit because of an untenable working situation: an overbearing boss, a difficult co-worker, a crushing workload. Often, the reasons for feeling upset and wanting to quit are legitimate, Dr. Molitor said.

...

SUZANNE LUCAS, who writes a blog called the Evil HR Lady, says in a column for CBS News that it’s generally a bad idea and “just darn rude” to quit a job on the spot. But she notes exceptions that would justify a quick departure — for example, if staying in a job would put you in some kind of danger (a violent co-worker, say, or a safety violation), or would make you break the law or violate your ethical or religious standards.

Grand Exits That Never Earn Applause

By PHYLLIS KORKKI

Published: March 23, 2013

 [emphasis JS]

Work, Sleep, Work, Sleep, Work

Work, sleep, work, sleep,

Work, sleep, work, sleep,

Work, sleep, work, sleep,

Work:

Work, sleep, work, sleep,

Work, sleep, work, sleep,

Work, sleep, work, sleep,

Work.

Oh free me please with gentle ease

From work, sleep, work, sleep, work!

This odium, pounding tedium

Of my work, sleep, work, sleep, work.

Just whisk me off to lands afar

From work, sleep, work, sleep, work -

That grinding train of rhythmic pain

Called ‘Work, sleep, work, sleep, work.’

Poor neural circuits fizzle and pop

In work, sleep, work, sleep, work,

In trying to make some sense of all this

Work, sleep, work, sleep, work.

But Hark! I see a golden gleam -

A saving spirit of hope:

‘You’re fired! ’ He screams. What news to bear,

This wondrous hangman’s rope!

So now I’m free, released from all this

Work, sleep, work, sleep, work -

Eternal peace and rest for me, no

Work, sleep, work, sleep, work.

Mark R Slaughter

 

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1672-1674

As a stocker. I mostly work, don't have time to do much of anything else. Or at least, don't feel energized or motivated to. If I didn't have work, I'd probably spend a bit too much time playing video games and going on youtube or other time wasting sites. But I also think I'd be more motivated to draw, paint and actually write and work on the comic book stories I have stored inside my head. How many more like me exist in this world, where we want to do more creative things with our life but have to make money, and that takes most our energy?
xinic5
comment

The solution – receiving troves of support from the likes of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Richard Branson – is universal basic income.
Universal Basic Income: The Full Rundown
09/12/2017
Nikhil Reddy

Widerquist writes, a UBI would cost “less than 25 percent of the cost of current US entitlement spending, less than 15 percent of overall federal spending, and about 2.95 percent of Gross Domestic Product.” It would immediately lift more than 43 million people out of poverty, including 14.5 million children.
...
The cost of not eliminating poverty? It’s over $3 trillion a year.
Why We Need a Universal Basic Income
By Keri Lee Merritt
BillMoyers.com
September 19, 2017
basicincoerobotb