A nation of slaves

An unconditional basic income[1] would speed up a paradigm shift from the current "work or starve" society. Maybe our grandchildren will look back to this time and make funny jokes about digging and filling holes...

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

> Workers in Germany average a little over 35 hours a week, compared to the 42 hours worked in the UK.

Flat out wrong as per the source cited. The difference is only 0.7 hours, both for full time employees and for all employees (the numbers above mix the two).

> German law guarantees 30 working days of vacation per year (and I am told medical leave for attending a spa resort on top of that).

Nope, it's 29 days on average, but only 20 mandated by law (for a 5 day working week). And medical leave is, of course, only available if you actually have medical problems (and paid for by your health insurance or retirement provider).

Thank you for clarifying. Too often North Americans state "it's like this in Europe", without researching what the actual facts are like. I have Uncles who are still quoting facts that are 30 years old and may never have been accurate to begin with ;)

This is a stressful topic that gets overwhelming quickly. Things are shifting but it's a slow shift and one that is going to be extremely painful before it gets better. Some interesting work going on with worker coops, parecon, post-scarcity economics, etc... As one of the linked comments noted "Looks like we've built higher-phase communism accidentally. Ooops."

The Keynes article he briefly touches on is fantastic

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/1...

"Yet there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy. It is a fearful problem for the ordinary person, with no special talents, to occupy himself, especially if he no longer has roots in the soil or in custom or in the beloved conventions of a traditional society. To judge from the behaviour and the achievements of the wealthy classes to-day in any quarter of the world, the outlook is very depressing! For these are, so to speak, our advance guard – those who are spying out the promised land for the rest of us and pitching their camp there. For they have most of them failed disastrously, so it seems to me – those who have an independent income but no associations or duties or ties – to solve the problem which has been set them.

I feel sure that with a little more experience we shall use the new-found bounty of nature quite differently from the way in which the rich use it to-day, and will map out for ourselves a plan of life quite otherwise than theirs.

For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter – to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us! "

For the record, Stross is not North American: he lives in Scotland.