Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1835-1837

Actual experience, from the richest country in the world to some of the poorest places on the planet, suggests that cash assistance can be of enormous help for the poor. And freeing them from what President Ronald Reagan memorably termed the “spider’s web of dependency” — also known as forcing the poor to swim or sink — is not the cure-all for social ills its supporters claim.
One billion people in developing countries participate in a social safety net. At least one type of unconditional cash assistance is used in 119 countries. In 52 other countries, cash transfers are conditioned on relatively benign requirements like parents’ enrolling their children in school.
Abhijit Banerjee, a director of the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, released a paper with three colleagues last week that carefully assessed the effects of seven cash-transfer programs in Mexico, Morocco, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Indonesia. It found “no systematic evidence that cash transfer programs discourage work.”
The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor
By Eduardo Porter
NYT

You must suffer to earn money. You are expected to “earn a living.” “Earning a living” means enduring your job and paying your dues like everyone else, in order to prove you’re worthy of subsistence in the eyes of capital, and in the eyes of those among your fellow hapless wage laborers who have internalized the Protestant work ethic.

And you must suffer in the proper way: silently, while  performing “positivity.” It’s not enough to be structurally exploited by the need to sell your hours to employers so you can survive.  It’s not enough to conceal your misery about it, either. You must also express gratitude for your job. After all, it could be worse.  You’re lucky to have a job at all!  If you speak up about your  suffering, you risk being branded as “difficult” or “entitled” – a  complainer who deserves their fate.

This is what passes for a work ethic in the USA: the logic of the abuser, writ large.
D. JoAnne Swanson
The Anticareerist

The seeds of human well-being are sown during pregnancy and the early years of childhood. Research shows that mothers who are able to stay home longer (at least six months) with their infants are less likely to experience depressive symptoms, which contributes to greater familial well-being. Yet in the United States, one-quarter of new mothers return to work within two weeks of giving birth, and only 13 percent of workers have access to paid leave
What a Society Designed for Well-Being Looks Like
Tabita Green
yes!