Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1786-1788

These days, those benefits are explicitly geared toward getting mothers away from their children and into the workforce as soon as possible. A few states require women to enroll in training or start applying for jobs the day after they give birth.
Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression.
By Michael Hobbes
[emphasis JS]

Contrary to the cliché, the vast majority of millennials did not go to college, do not work as baristas and cannot lean on their parents for help. Every stereotype of our generation applies only to the tiniest, richest, whitest sliver of young people. And the circumstances we live in are more dire than most people realize.
Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression.
By Michael Hobbes




You’re less in favor of the whole job guarantee idea, which Bernie Sanders and others have endorsed, and would rather see a guaranteed basic income.

[David Graeber:] That's correct. I'm someone who doesn't want to create more bureaucracy and more bullshit jobs. There's a debate between job guarantee—which you’re right that Sanders is now endorsing in America. It’s the idea that governments should ensure that everybody has access to at least some kind of job. But the idea behind universal income is you just give people enough money to live on. After that, it's up to you how much more you want.

And, again, I personally think that the job guarantee would just create more bullshit jobs. Historically, that's what always happens. And why would we want the government deciding what we can do? Freedom means our ability to decide for ourselves what we want to do with ourselves and how we want to contribute to society. It seems as if we've conditioned ourselves to think that even though we talk about freedom as our highest value, we don't really want it. And basic income would help provide exactly that. Wouldn’t it be great to say, “Okay, you don't have to worry about survival. Now go off and decide what you want to do with yourself."?
Your Job Doesn't Matter
Eric Allen Been
Vice
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Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1783-1785

I am 35 years old—the oldest millennial, the first millennial—and for a decade now, I’ve been waiting for adulthood to kick in. My rent consumes nearly half my income, I haven’t had a steady job since Pluto was a planet and my savings are dwindling faster than the ice caps the baby boomers melted.
Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression.
By Michael Hobbes

Juha Jarvinen, one of the triallists who is 39 and married with six children and a dog, told the BBC:

    "I felt like a free man. I got out from jail and slavery...I felt I am back in society and I have my humanity back, so I was super happy."
Finland is giving each citizen a universal basic income and it's changing lives
Louis Doré
Indy100 

 The conclusions are damning. “The United States already leads the developed world in income and wealth inequality, and it is now moving full steam ahead to make itself even more unequal,” the report concludes. “High child and youth poverty rates perpetuate the intergenerational transmission of poverty very effectively, and ensure that the American dream is rapidly becoming the American illusion.”

The UN explicitly lays blame with the Trump administration for policies that actively increase poverty and inequality in the country. “The $1.5 trillion in tax cuts in December 2017 overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and worsened inequality. The consequences of neglecting poverty and promoting inequality are clear,” it concludes. “The policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship.”
The United Nations Just Published a Scathing Indictment of US Poverty
Jeremy Slevin,
TalkPoverty.org

 

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1780-1782

But even bullshit jobs provide income for people to survive on. Why is that such a bad thing in the end?

[David Graeber:] So, the question is, if society has the means to support all people, which it does, why is it that we insist that workers sit there filling in a hole and then digging it out all day? It doesn't make a lot of sense, right? In social terms, it seems like arbitrary sadism.

Your Job Doesn't Matter

Eric Allen Been 

Vice

[emphasis JS]

 

What is all this anxiety and competitiveness for? Not much seems to be the answer. The majority of people who find work don’t enjoy it. Other studies support this view. For example, climbing the ladder and earning more money does not seem to improve emotional, day-to-day experiences of well-being. There is, rather, a threshold of income where this reaches it peak, estimated to be approximately $75,000 in the US in 2010, but varying depending on the cost of living. This is not to say that all the work that gets done in the economy contributes nothing. Increases in national income and productivity do correlate with increases in self-reported levels of happiness and life satisfaction and innovation and productivity obviously help in the distribution of important goods and services (e.g. food, healthcare). But the critical question is whether humans should be the ones doing all the work? My answer is that we shouldn’t, not if it doesn’t make us happy and not if the machines could do the majority of it.

Why You Should Hate Your Job

John Danaher

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Debra Soh, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, self-deported from the academic track, sensing that the spectrum of acceptable perspectives and even areas of research was narrowing. Dr. Soh said that she started “waking up” in the last two years of her doctorate program. “It was clear that the environment was inhospitable to conducting research,” she said. “If you produce findings that the public doesn’t like, you can lose your job.”

Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web

Bari Weiss

NYT 

May 8, 2018

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1777-1779

…a culture that is far too obsessed with work. I argue that we should reject this obsession. Work, suitably-defined, is a bad thing and we should try to create a society in which it is no longer necessary. In saying this, I build upon a long tradition of “antiwork” thought – one that stretches back to the writings of Karl Marx’s son-in-law Paul LaFargue, through to more recent writings by Bob Black, André Gorz, Kathi Weeks and David Frayne. All of these thinkers agree that work reduces well-being and contributes to social injustice.
The Case Against Work
John Danaher

  In most countries, people have to work or, at least, prove that they are seeking work or unfit for work, in order to survive. Many employees, especially those at the lower-end of the income distribution, have limited options when it comes to work: if they exit one unjust arrangement they will have to enter another. Furthermore, there is significant variation in employee protection around the world. The US, with its tolerance of “at-will” employment, doesn’t provide much protection for employees. And even in countries with more adequate protections, there is a significant gap between what is provided for in legislation and what happens on the ground. Many employees don’t know their rights or are afraid to exercise them for fear of aggravating their employers – a classic illustration of the dominating influence of employers. Furthermore, many employers don’t abide by the letter of the law. The result is a structure of work that significantly undermines freedom.
Why You Should Hate Your Job
John Danaher
[emphasis JS]

It's become a high-risk profession, says Henrietta Van hulle, executive director of PSHSA, which provides occupational health and safety training for Ontario nurses.

"Nurses have been hit, slapped, punched, kicked, stabbed with a variety of objects. They've been spit on, not to mention the psychological trauma of being verbally abused," says Van hulle.

Statistics Canada reports that in 2005, 34 per cent of nurses said they were physically assaulted by a patient. In Ontario, more than half of all injuries from violence in hospitals happened to nurses.

And acts of violence and aggression are severely underreported, the group says, because there's a general belief that "it's part of the job," she said.
Think you've got a tough job? Try being a nurse
Kas Roussy · CBC News · Posted: May 08, 2018
CBC

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