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(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2020, @09:01AM (6 children)
Americans are confused - its not socialism they are opposed to, its reality.
Disclaimer: I am a turkey.
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You have the right to remain dead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2020, @11:02AM (5 children)
If job performance reliably makes the difference between comfort and misery, and this is true in a relative way over a wide range of performance levels, then people will perform well and the economy will be OK.
Add some welfare because we hate to see useless bums starve to death, and add some taxes to divert the resources of the industrious producers to those useless takers, and pretty soon you've disconnected job performance from what people get to have. Nobody will do the difficult yucky work. Nobody will work long hours. As the economy collapses, the taxes increase in a hopeless attempt to deliver the promised comforts, but that drives more workers to give up.
We have a choice: let the least-productive suffer, or collapse the whole economy so that we all suffer. There is no long-term way to prevent all suffering.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2020, @02:50PM
> There is no long-term way
But, but, but, aren't the robots going to do all the dirty work?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Thursday November 26 2020, @03:17PM (3 children)
Some people actually enjoy working. Just look at how many people do volunteer work after retirement.
There's a reason for increased incidence of depression and anxiety after a layoff, and it's not all economic. For those ofwho aren't lazy bums or spongers, earning your way in the world gives a sense of control over your life, a certain pride in not being a perme-taker.
24% hate their jobs; but for the 63% for whom it's just a job, it still supplies an emotional sense of self-sufficiency.
And for the 13% who are really into what they do, the money is just compensation for dealing with the idiot bosses and slacker co-workers, because they got into it because it's what they were interested in, not because of the money.
In other words, if you weren't doing it as a job, you'd probably take a "meh" job so you can be doing it as a hobby.
The real problem is helping the 63% find ways to join the 13% who really enjoy their work, not to "increase productivity ", but increase happiness. Happy people will, as a side effect, be more productive.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 27 2020, @01:16AM (2 children)
That 13% is really out of touch.
I saw a man earn his pay. You think I could find a volunteer? Really?
He came over to unclog a sewage pipe that ran across a basement ceiling. It was well beyond what could be handled from above, having clogged slowly over decades. He needed a powerful motorized cutter blade to clear out the gunk, and for that he needed access to the inside of the pipe. He took the end cap off, and that pipe became a shit rocket nozzle. He then worked for hours. He had to change blades, because the one meant for large pipes encountered enough resistance that it stopped the motor. (this motor was the size of a lawnmower engine but electric) By the end of the day he was covered head to toe in human shit, some recent and some decades old.
I've also watched road workers put down tar in the heat of a hot Florida day. That didn't look fun at all. Do you have volunteers for that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 27 2020, @02:15AM (1 child)
I give up! Was it Runaway?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 27 2020, @03:35AM
Naw, it was Mike Rowe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Rowe [wikipedia.org] if you don't know who he is.