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[metalhead]

Many restaurant managers started out flipping burgers.

Many people would be far more effective parents and spouses, and better citizens, if they were able to make a decent living at a job which isn't particularly taxing. People talk incessantly about how terrible the younger generations are at parenting, but then insist that the only choice that should be available is a career path that involves decades of non-stop "skilled" work that ends when you die.

Would society really be worse off if people were able to go flip burgers 25 hours a week and then direct the bulk of their time and energy at being present for their loved ones? Why is that a less valid use of one's time than punching a time clock?

 

[Akka]

Because people should be inspired to seek more skill than required to flip burgers and not just settle for that.
Flipping burger should be just to prove that you're willing to work hard and show up and you're ready to do more.
It should make you want to learn more, even if it's just to learn to be a short order cook, and maybe move up to a chef.

Many restaurant managers started out flipping burgers.

This reasoning is pervasive (especially in the US) but is just an absurd Hollywoodesque filter over real life. For two reasons :
- Life is not an arena. People should be able to live their life doing average jobs without being constantly required to do "more" or to "prove they can work harder".
- This idea of everything being always a stepping stone for something better is just, in the end, a Sponzi scheme. You can be #1 only if someone is #2, and you can only be "above-average" if there is the other half of the population which is "below-average". If everyone who flip burgers does it to aspire to more, you end up with 100 chefs and 0 people flipping burgers.

The ugly mindset hiding behind this is simply "I don't give a crap about the low-earner, they can live wretched lifes, they exist only to make me feel better and superior". Of course, saying that is a lot less glamorous than going on with heroic movie speech about looking up and rising to the occasion - but when you rise through the ranks, it means people are left there to fill said ranks.

 

[Borachio]

Perhaps someone can explain it to me, but what I've never really understood is why top earners actually need to earn so much.

And why low earners supposedly don't need as much money to live on as everyone else.

Surely one human being's needs are, within fairly narrow limits, much the same as another human being's needs.

 

[rah]

While most of the posts here reek of 'participation trophy' thinking.

Would society really be worse off if people were able to go flip burgers 25 hours a week and then direct the bulk of their time and energy at being present for their loved ones?

This post makes me pause and think the most. I guess there are always going to be those that must always strive to something better or they just won't be satisfied and they can't conceive of any other way or that there are those that don't feel the same. I have to admit that I fall in that category. But this has made me pause. Which I guess is the best you can ask for.

x-post, I will agree that the top end shouldn't have to make so much more and the low end shouldn't make that much less.

 

[Akka]

While most of the posts here reek of 'participation trophy' thinking.

Isn't that just a way to negatively frame the idea that "life shouldn't be an arena" ?

 

[rah]

No different than your negative frame.

absurd Hollywoodesque filter over real life.

It's just a different opinion. Neither can claim the 'Golden Truth'
That's what this board is for, to discuss it.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I don't think anyone can argue with the idea that people would be happier and have better family/social lives if they at least had the option of only working 25 hours a week in undemanding jobs and still take home a decent wage. The question is how do you go about making that a workable option for large swathes of people, and what would the consequences be.

 

[Lexicus]

The ugly mindset hiding behind this is simply "I don't give a crap about the low-earner, they can live wretched lifes, they exist only to make me feel better and superior". Of course, saying that is a lot less glamorous than going on with heroic movie speech about looking up and rising to the occasion - but when you rise through the ranks, it means people are left there to fill said ranks.

One of the rare times I agree with you 100%.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I don't think anyone can argue with the idea that people would be happier and have better family/social lives if they at least had the option of only working 25 hours a week in undemanding jobs and still take home a decent wage. The question is how do you go about making that a workable option for large swathes of people, and what would the consequences be.

Here's that "woven in" sense of superiority. Go work in a fast food place, encounter a steady stream of jerks letting you know how superior they are since they have a "demanding" job to cry the blues about and figure you're paid to be a dumping ground and make them feel better about themselves, and then get back to me about how 'undemanding' it is.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Here's that "woven in" sense of superiority. Go work in a fast food place, encounter a steady stream of jerks letting you know how superior they are since they have a "demanding" job to cry the blues about and figure you're paid to be a dumping ground and make them feel better about themselves, and then get back to me about how 'undemanding' it is.

I was obviously replying to metalhead's statment about working for 25 hours a week and having the bulk of your time and energy left over for family life and loved ones. In the same post he talked about this as a job that "isn't particularly taxing". If you have an issue with burger flipping being described in such a way then take it up with him, it wasn't my statement.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I was obviously replying to metalhead's statment about working for 25 hours a week and having the bulk of your time and energy left over for family life and loved ones. In the same post he talked about this as a job that "isn't particularly taxing". If you have an issue with burger flipping being described in such a way then take it up with him, it wasn't my statement.

My bad.

Consider my response an "in general" to all the various participants in the conversation who have expressed basically the same thing rather than as if it was aimed at Manfred personally. It is something that, as I described it, is "woven in," and very few people are not affected by it, to some degree.

 

[metalhead]

There are few jobs, period that I'd consider to be especially taxing if you worked them for 25 hours a week. Having put in plenty of hours in food service, I'd say that how taxing it is varies greatly, depending on the type of place you work in, and the time of day. Most of the time I found it to be an agreeable job. Filling the cold box and tending the trash room were my favorite, because you could just do them by rote memory and let your mind wander. Back then you could even have a cig in the trash room.

I don't think anyone can argue with the idea that people would be happier and have better family/social lives if they at least had the option of only working 25 hours a week in undemanding jobs and still take home a decent wage. The question is how do you go about making that a workable option for large swathes of people, and what would the consequences be.

One way to do so would be to have a high minimum wage and a robust basic income. Make it so that a 2 income household can pull in a solid middle class wage by working a total of 40 or 50 hours a week.

You'd also need to move all benefits provisions, like health care, maternity/paternity leave, etc. to the federal government, to minimize the cost to employers of having to employ extra people, so there would be no significant penalty for having significantly more employees on one's payroll.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

One way to do so would be to have a high minimum wage and a robust basic income. Make it so that a 2 income household can pull in a solid middle class wage by working a total of 40 or 50 hours a week.

You'd also need to move all benefits provisions, like health care, maternity/paternity leave, etc. to the federal government, to minimize the cost to employers of having to employ extra people, so there would be no significant penalty for having significantly more employees on one's payroll.

Yes but where does that money come from? And what happens to the overall productivity (and standard of living) of a society if large swathes of the workforce suddenly start working a lot less in general, and ditching demanding* jobs entirely?

*however you wish to define that.

 

[Akka]

No different than your negative frame.

It's just a different opinion. Neither can claim the 'Golden Truth'
That's what this board is for, to discuss it.

I explained the "hollywoodesque filter" at length : the idea that people "just need to work" and then will "rise up through the ranks" is just about prettying up a system in which some people are crushing others to stand above them, because to "rise through the ranks" you need others to make up said ranks, and to be #1 you need others to be behind, and to be "above-average" you need to have an average, and by its very definition it means that half the humanity is "below-average".
So in the end, this is just a glamorous filter focusing on the people able to reach the top while looking away from those who can't. Building a system in which only the higher part of the pyramid is considered "worthy", and the bottom part is here just to be used by said top.

From this factual reality, you can either say "screw those who aren't at the top" (at which point they can get the idea that if life is really an arena where the winners take all, why not start drawing knifes and make oneself the winner - which lead to the famous bloody revolutions we have witnessed countless examples through history), or you can consider that people have a right to have decent lives even if they aren't part of said top, and redistribute wealth to keep a tolerable amount of inequality.

 

[metalhead]

Yes but where does that money come from? And what happens to the overall productivity (and standard of living) of a society if large swathes of the workforce suddenly start working a lot less in general, and ditching demanding* jobs entirely?

*however you wish to define that.

In an increasingly automated work force, I'd say that such an outcome is exactly what we will need to maintain social order. I don't think people will ditch demanding jobs at all; the people who do those jobs and stick with them are doing them because they like them. Some people are just driven that way. If someone needs a job done, they will figure out how much they need to pay someone to get them to do it, same as happens now.

As for the money, it already exists. You could give every American $7,000/year, for only 11% of our country's GDP.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

In an increasingly automated work force, I'd say that such an outcome is exactly what we will need to maintain social order.

As for the money, it already exists.

Yeah sure, when the robots really do take over (as workers that is) then it sounds brilliant, but we're not at that stage yet so you can't just switch to that overnight. But yes it sounds like a good end goal (although why stop at reducing to 25 hours a week, why not 0 hours).

How does that money already exist in a meaningful sense?

 

[metalhead]

Total yearly income in the United States is about $16 trillion. A basic income of $7,000 per person per year adds up to about $2.2 trillion, and that's without figuring in cost savings of getting rid of the myriad state and federal programs, and tax breaks like EITC and mortgage interest deduction, you would eliminate in favor of a basic income.

So the money is there, without even touching the $50 trillion+ of private wealth which exists in the United States as well. It's not as expensive as it sounds at first blush. Some economists even believe that you can give a sizeable basic income and make it revenue-neutral, without having to do anything other than cut some tax breaks and welfare programs. It can essentially pay for itself.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

How does that money already exist in a meaningful sense?

That would be a question to ask the one tenth of one percent of the population who are holding most of it...most of whom performed absolutely no useful function in order to be in that position other than being born at the right time and place.

 

[rah]

7 grand a year would barely cover dog food. Your concept requires considerably more money that that.
And while I'm a big supporter of higher taxes for the wealthy, they are not an endless source of money to spend on the rest.

If this utopia is so desirable, and AFFORDABLE, (and I'll concede that if there was a responsible/successful way to pay for it, i'd support it) why hasn't any country figured out a way to do it. I have not read one idea posted in any thread here in that regard that is sustainable.

 

[metalhead]

7 grand a year would barely cover dog food. Your concept requires considerably more money that that.

That's 7 grand per person, regardless of age. A family of 4 would receive $28,000/year, which is above the current poverty line (though $7,000/yr is below it for an individual). As that is more than a lot of households live off of, I'd wager that families would do a lot better than dog food. Keep in mind, the purpose of UBI is not necessarily to provide a middle class standard of living. It serves several purposes, but that is not really one of them. What it would do is put a middle class standard of living within easy reach of most people.

There are all kinds of sustainable ways to do it. Non-CMS federal entitlement spending is currently about $400 billion. Individual tax breaks, including on capital gains, total at least $1.15 trillion. That gets you within $700 billion right there. $700 billion is doable as additional revenue to come up with - and you don't technically need to come up with it anyways. At least some of that shortfall would be made up for by increased economic activity. The rest can be recouped simply through structuring the program - such as by reducing your SS spending by setting $7k/year as a floor, but then simply paying retirees their SS instead of the basic income.