Welcome to the Post-Work Economy

I live in france, which has had 10% unemployment for a long time now.

the 'post-work' meme is in part doing double duty with an ulterior motive.

the western nations of europe and the united states are highly over-indebted, with particular respect to public pensions and social security.

there is no way this money can be paid back without hyperinflation of sorts. and of course, the modern central banking system understands how to string along stagflation as long as possible using the emerging markets model for finding a debt sink to mop up western national debt.

( creating debt in the third world and letting it trade 'up' for u.s. debt and euro debt every time there is an emerging markets credit crisis where people sell emerging market debt to trade for u.s. debt, or sell u.s. debt to obtain u.s. dollars which is 0% yielding u.s. debt )

the thing is , 'post-work' and these other memes like 'universal basic income' are just methods of promoting the idea of a generalized welfare system that will replace existing larger PUBLIC obligations to provide social security and public pensions to the public.

just look at greece. they call it 'haircuts'. the problem is that you cannot take away pensions and social security , or even MENTION THE IDEA of reducing these legally obligated payments because it is politically untoucheable. HOWEVER, you can introduce a positive meme of money for everyone, and then get the general publics support for the idea. THEN , AFTER you gave this general support , you use the support to help CUT REDUCE and ELIMINATE much of the public pensions and social security obligations.

for example, the idea of 'means testing' social security sounds horrible to most fixed income recipients of s.s. ALL 60 MILLION OF THEM. however, once you get a whole new generation of people on board with the idea of EVERYONE GETTING PAYMENTS, it becomes politically easier to force very large cuts on the social security recipients even while you CONTINUE TO CHARGE S.S. TAXES at an increasing rate relative to stagnating incomes ( taxes effectively increase if they stay the same while incomes stagnate over a long period of time while inflation of cogs goes up )

this meme of universal basic income was not necessarily crafted by the neoliberal market fundamentalists that are seeking to feudalize the fixed income recipient class, but it is, ironically, being co-opted by them as a welfare smokescreen to GUT legally mandated public payments to the classes of people that actually paid and continue to pay into them.

Jeez you're cogent, diplomatic, polite, and helpful.

Thanks for this reply.

In general: I don't object to text as a medium, but to threaded posts as a format.

Thinking outside the box of owned land property - and how roads might be done better, for example - takes a lot more volume and research than is practical here.

But I appreciate the dialogue - thanks.

> and have the means to do so.

So what? Work is consented, not forced. If nobody wants to pay them better, they won't work. If they have the means to work, but don't want to work, what's the point of calling this a lack of motivation? It's basic supply and demand at work. Maybe society has to find a better way to employ those people. I think unemployment is sustainable. If you decide to work, you have more money, but an unemployed person will still have enough to live.

> Their taxes pay for your expenses.

Money is just an indicator, but it doesn't explain structural phenomenons. If you make abstraction of money, work is overrated. Automation removes a lot of necessary work. Haven't you seen how less people are need to grow food? Haven't you seen how many workers machines replace?

I'm now in a place of "discouraged unemployment". Meaning I had many interviews and did not get hired. The more unemployment you have, the more candidates will get discouraged to find a job. That's my situation currently. I think labor and the socioeconomic model need to change. You can't tell people to fit in a mold they don't like. Will a bank loan me money to work on my game ?

Other details you might not know: France is currently in a roar because the left government want to pass a law which is more liberal towards labor. France is pretty conservative in term of economic policy (despite the fact that welfare is generous). The fact is that in france, you literally CANNOT fire someone if you want to, or it's VERY difficult to do so. That might be the main reason people like me are in long term unemployment, and are refusing to make new concessions. I already gave my resume to the city company who deals with trash, and I got no answer. So in short, don't pretend you can advice everybody to work in fast food. That will only get votes for candidates like Sanders.

Yeah that's fine but we've really moved the goalposts here. OP mentioned that OP had never received student loans or disability payments. Somehow that inspired a rude comment based on some very developed-world assumptions concerning public infrastructure. Yes, in most situations we see, it's good for public infrastructure to be built using public money. That doesn't mean that someone who e.g. purchases a kerosene lamp to light her home at night should feel thankful toward the government officials who haven't yet nationalized and dismantled the container port that offloaded it, who haven't yet closed the dirt road over which it was hauled by truck, whose military hasn't yet run the local store that sold it out of business for insufficient bribery. Hell, all the infrastructure we're discussing might well have been built during a previous government that was violently overthrown by the current one! Who should she thank in that case?

When I was last in a "developing" nation, back in January, my hosts observed that the only existing paved road outside a large city, over which bus, truck, and agricultural traffic was solid day and night, was built and maintained by the federal government rather than the provincial one, because otherwise the money just disappeared. When we reflexively castigate those with questions about the use of public money (or frankly, in this thread, who are misunderstood to have posed such questions), we're protecting those who are glad for no questions to be asked. That's true in both "developing" and "developed" nations.