[pmorici]

I happened upon the r/AntiWork comments section from time to time before that Fox News segment and it always struck me as full of people who were making every excuse not to take responsibility for their own circumstances and who have a fantasy that low skill jobs should some how pay enough to be life long careers instead of viewing them as stepping stones to bigger and better things.

[enragedcacti]

A lot of the most popular threads had less to do with lifelong careers and more about being treated with basic human decency by your employer (and telling them off when the labor market turned in worker's favor).

That said, to address your point head on, is it possible in the US for everyone to move on to "bigger and better" things? I don't think so which is why we have so many adults with families in min. wage or lowing paying jobs. There is no pool of well paying jobs for them all to move into, there is no magic solution where everyone can have their needs met just by pulling harder on their bootstraps.

So the question then becomes: should a person (or two people) working a full time job be able to provide for themselves and their family? I think the answer to that question is yes. You might disagree, but I don't think its fair to write them off as having a "fantasy".

[monkeybutton]

There are a lot of low skilled jobs in a service economy. I imagine that a significant fraction of all jobs are low skilled ones. Not everyone is chasing the hustle or whatever either, so there's a significant amount of people will be working those low skilled jobs their whole lives. What quality of life do they deserve? Does society want a permanent underclass that are treated miserably?

[mojzu]

There's also a lot of overlap between these jobs and ones that were essential to keep society running during various lockdowns, so the value these jobs provide doesn't seem to be reflected in the remuneration.

What I don't understand is why many see it as acceptable for any business to pay less than a living wage under any circumstance, it's just a roundabout way of making taxpayers pay for a businesses labour force

[gruez]

>so the value these jobs provide doesn't seem to be reflected in the remuneration.

that's because remuneration isn't based on value, it's based on market conditions. value merely provides an upper bound. as an extreme example, clean water provides near infinite value to you (you need water to survive, so you're willing to pay infinite dollars for it), yet you can get it from your tap at less than a penny per gallon.

>What I don't understand is why many see it as acceptable for any business to pay less than a living wage under any circumstance, it's just a roundabout way of making taxpayers pay for a businesses labour force

But those people on welfare would receive welfare regardless of whether they're hired or not? I don't see how that's "making taxpayers pay for a businesses labour force".

[pmorici]

I don’t believe your premise that such a large share of the available jobs are low skill that there is no room for people to move on to something better. If you look at fast food for example I’m seeing there are about 2.5 million workers which is a tiny percentage of the overall workforce. Looking at the age distribution of the US work force you could staff every fast food restaurant with only 16-19 year olds and still only be employing about half of that age groups work force.

https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11b.htm

[enragedcacti]

why would you seek out statistics for one single industry that you perceive as low skill rather than just finding low wage statistics specifically?

44% of U.S. workers are employed in low wage jobs with a median annual wage of $18,000. [1]

Sure we can staff fast food with only 16-19 year olds but what about every other sector of the service industry and the myriad of other "low skill" jobs? are there 40 million plus "high skill" jobs out there waiting for the taking? The answer is no. [2]

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-2019-almost-half-o...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/21/low-wag...

[stathibus]

That is the "sanewashed" viewpoint. The original message of r/antiwork was that nobody should have to work to live a comfortable life in modern society, and their needs should be provided by others who do.

[Miner49er]

> should be provided by others who do.

No, I don't think this is accurate. They wanted to abolish work for everyone, not for a select few.

[minkzilla]

What would provide for people? It seems to me we would either all starve and die, AI would do it for us (impossible in its current state), or we rely on effectively slave labor of poorer countries (which would mean work is not abolished for everyone).

[Miner49er]

Here's Doreen's website. A lot of early posts on the sub were from here: https://abolishwork.com/about/

They use a specific definition of work, so they maybe aren't necessarily anti-work in the way you are thinking.

[minkzilla]

Thanks for the response. There are some interesting ideas on hat site. I guess this is another example of something discussed extensively in the rest of the thread, the name/slogan of the movement not using the conventional meaning of terms.

[smus]

You cannot structurally expect everyone to have a good career in the us. It is not currently mathematically possible. Please don't delude yourself into thinking the economy could function the same as it currently does without lifelong service industry workers

[achenet]

there is no reason to believe that a service worker can't have a good career.

This may not be the case now, but that can change.

I'm always wary of paraphrasing Graeber, but it's possible that living in a world where a small handful of individuals own the majority of the wealth has led to the market rewarding various jobs in a way that creates more misery than is strictly necessary - for example corporate lawyers being paid hundreds of thousands because they can help billionaires get even richer, while farmers producing the most important of all resources, food, are constantly hovering around the poverty line.

EDIT: and as a mathematician, I would appreciate a proof of your "mathematically impossible" proposition. :)

[smus]

Sorry, I think you missed my point. My point is that our economy is currently structured with so many jobs paying too little, having no benefits, no pto/healthcare, that "people should just get a better job" argument doesn't hold water numerically. I think the solution to that is to ease the wealth gap.

:) :) :)

[JSavageOne]

For me antiwork is just anti forced wage labour. If we had a universal basic income, then that would be accomplished and people would be free to work on whatever they want. If technology is advanced enough to be able to afford this which I'd argue is already the case, I don't see why this shouldn't be the case.

[nradov]

Technology isn't advanced enough to be able to afford this. Have you ever actually worked in a factory or on a farm? Have you done the math to calculate how much taxes would have to raise in order to give everyone a UBI at even the US federal poverty level? This is magical thinking disconnected from the reality of how the economy works.

[batshit_beaver]

Related to this, but is there ANY explanation out there from proponents of UBI that would clarify how UBI can be done sustainably and perpetually, without causing runaway inflation where UBI is always below poverty level anyway?

I'm obviously too retarded for such an advanced concept, but in my head there's no scenario where a utopian UBI-based society is possible, even with more advanced tech. To allow everyone to have food, shelter, and other necessities regardless of their usefulness to society, at the very least we'd have to have severe birth rate restrictions, strong law enforcement, and other fun authoritarian systems that would no longer qualify the environment as a utopia in the eyes of UBI supporters.

Seems like yet another liberal pipe dream that is entirely disconnected from reality, though I'd love to be proven wrong, if anyone has some good reading suggestions on this subject.

[JSavageOne]

Personally if I were in charge, I'd start by slowly phasing it in via distributing it from the proceeds of a land value tax (the most efficient tax, Henry George called this a citizen's dividend). Then the UBI amount is anchored and there's no possibility of runaway inflation.

[batshit_beaver]

I still don't get it. If rich people own land with value X, and you tax it and produce Y amount that gets distributed to everyone, doesn't that Y directly increase the cost of food and shelter or any other thing that the poor people would want to buy?

Moreover, what's to stop rich people from selling their land? Or abandoning it and moving to another country?

UBI doesn't make any sense to me as CONCEPT. Sure you can find some creative ways to raise some money this year and give it to the poor (or everyone), but how do you create a such a system that continues to function over years and decades?

Money that is given to someone just for existing inherently has no value, so it cannot possibly have much purchasing power. The only things it can buy are things that are subsidized by the government anyway and exists already, such as low income housing and food-stamp-eligible food. What I don't understand is that people seem to think UBI would somehow result in a higher standard of living for people who are already in low income housing and on food stamps, and I just can't think of a mechanism for that.

[mlyle]

> I still don't get it. If rich people own land with value X, and you tax it and produce Y amount that gets distributed to everyone, doesn't that Y directly increase the cost of food and shelter or any other thing that the poor people would want to buy?

You seem to be presuming inelastic supply of all of the stuff they'd ever buy. This is relatively true for some stuff (housing supply in the largest urban markets).

But, most of these things are elastic and/or have larger world markets to bid against. Food, consumer goods, housing in other markets, etc. Therefore, while a UBI would be somewhat inflationary, it would still increase the purchasing power of the poor and lower middle class.

> The only things it can buy are things that are subsidized by the government anyway and exists already, such as low income housing and food-stamp-eligible food.

This isn't true, but this is the biggest benefit to UBI: unwind the administrative apparatus involved with entitlements, and remove the lower income regions which have over 100% effective marginal tax rates. A complicated patchwork of programs can be simplified and reduced in scope (SNAP, section 8, EITC, disability insurance, etc..) and we can ensure that people always have a positive marginal incentive to work. Milton Friedman himself proposed a UBI in a form of a "negative income tax" to avoid these economic distortions.

[thebean11]

I don't think it's the case yet..the unemployment rate is under 5%. What jobs do you think could be eliminated?

[gruez]

>For me antiwork is just anti forced wage labour. If we had a universal basic income, then that would be accomplished and people would be free to work on whatever they want

What type of living conditions are we looking to guarantee? If your baseline is "prehistoric living conditions", I'm sure it's quite affordable. If it's "21st century middle class america" it will be ruinously expensive. Incremental improvements in technology can eventually bring us to a point where we can afford to give arbitrary fixed standard of living to everyone, but not if that standard of living is constantly increasing.