Social class isn’t the same as financial success, IMO. And I’m of a mind to view the conflation of social class and economic class doesn’t help and more often hurts in discussions around how to address poverty and income disparity.
I agree that there are correlations between wealth and social class; and to a lesser degree, correlations between wage income and social class exists.
And while being accepted into a particular social class that is associated with greater wealth can make some things easier, it isn’t a requirement. True that one might have to work a bit harder for a bit longer to get to a particular wage income level; but I don’t see anything wrong with holding this expectation as the baseline for society.
I agree it might not be possible for some people to not work because there will always be people that want more more more, like a million square foot house, and no amount of societal advancement will ever quench that.
However, we should aspire to the goal that at a minimum, when you’re born to this Earth, if you elect not to work or learn, you at least will not starve and suffer and should have a bare minimum comfort level for someone to survive.
We have enough food and resources for that for at least everyone in the US, but people still live in poverty and starve because most of the resources are wasted or hoarded, again, as a consequence of a few owning the supply chain. So such dream will never be achieved.
death from starvation in the US is virtually unheard of. Even as a form of abuse as opposed to economic deprivation it generates headlines for newsworthiness.
100%, I saw MN recently passed a bill for free school lunch (and maybe breakfast?). I don’t know where to draw the line, but an eighth of children suffer from food insecurity. The US is wealthy enough that we should have zero hungry children.
I’m on board with saying nobody in the US should go hungry, but let’s at least feed the kids. I grew up lower middle class but we always had food, I can’t imagine being a child and not having something to eat.
I don’t agree with this. If you’re a perfectly healthy, capable human being born onto the Earth you should get to just say “yeah not for me thanks” and the rest of us all feed, clothe, house, etc. you?
No, the goal is to have everything automated such that the feeding/clothing/housing part all become practically free.
That doesn’t negate working for luxury though. But right now we can grow many foods with just robots. Again, using wall-e as an example.
Yes, we still need engineers in case something breaks down, but those people can make money to live a higher standard of living. But someone who chooses to not work doesn’t need to if they don’t want to.
I think common definitions of “food insecurity” overplay the problem. Considering that there are already federal free breakfast and lunch for kids from lower income families at school, should that be extended to all income levels? Don’t get me wrong, my kid ate free meals at school because of how my district choose to apply COVID funds, but come on, you think I needed that?
What does heaven have to do with it? You’re welcome to be 100% lazy but I don’t think it should be on me to help feed/clothe you with 0 extenuating circumstances. If you get hungry that’s on you.
I would suspect that most actuarial kids have little to no experience with food insecurity.
But your response seems as callous as the Minnesota representative who voted against expanded free lunch because he’s never met anyone in Minnesota who is hungry.
The heaven example is to point out the perfect scenario where no human work is needed. You seem to want people to work, even if work isn’t necessary.
But it’s not on you. The automation makes it practically free, if the automation was publicly owned.
Here’s an extreme example, say food is all that humans need to work for.
Automation right now enables 10 people to operate machinery such that they can grow enough food to feed 1000 people.
What’s so wrong to say that the 990 need to work so little, that most of them don’t need to work at all if they don’t want to? The amount of subsidy is so miniscule at this point that if you expand that to 10000, or 100000, you see that your reluctance to “feed lazy people” becomes trivial.
And yes, those 10 people that operate the machinery are “working”, and they can live a higher standard of living if they want to. But at least these those who choose to not work don’t need to starve.
I don’t think having some kind of dividing line between economic levels where those who can provide for themselves are expected to do so is callous, or at least it is way less callous than the economic reality of scarcity. Where do you think that line should be? Free basic food for all? Or what multiple of FPL possibly adjusted for COL?
I suppose in your scenario I’d be onboard, but I think it strays a bit into fantasy and a bit into the notion of whether we’re talking fewer hours worked or literally 0.
Food is cheaper as a percentage of incomes today than historically because of improved productivity. In theory that cost could approach 0 as productivity goes to infinity, but it isn’t there yet.
I think your argument is a more philosophical one, that as an American you have some right to a minimum living standard, which we do have through basic food stamps, welfare, medicaid, etc. I’d be supportive of ensuring a more significant living standard for children, but for any person simply because they’re American? Sure, they shouldn’t starve because we have loads of food, but a healthy 23 year old decides he just doesn’t feel like doing anything I’m pretty comfortable with the government subsidy being very low.
Yes, it is a philosophical thought experiment, but it also reveals the direction in which our society wants to march into the future.
A society where people allow automation to do most of the work, and people can enjoy most of their lives doing what their heart desires, walking dogs in the park, painting, creating music, without the worry of how lucrative those things are, or where their next meal will come from, is significantly better than one where people are required to work, whether that work is needed or not.
If we think that the aforementioned former society is a goal we want to get asymptotically close to, then the current capitalistic approach isn’t the right one, because right now people worry about food in the US not because there are not enough food, but because a few companies own all the food supply. The basic needs and the automation thereof of this futuristic paradise cannot be capitalistically operated, it has to be a publicly owned nonprofit. The more we stray from that, the less likely we approach this paradise, and the more we approach a dystopian nightmare.