[echelon]

> Contrary to the article, balance is impossible first because our economy and low-paying jobs are designed to lock people in them, creating a cycle of living paycheck to paycheck and barely surviving financially.

> designed [emphasis mine]

I'm not so sure it's designed so much as an emergent phenomena.

The world has gotten so caught up in value creation that it rewards the roles that are most able to create value or the roles that are non-fungible and necessary.

Because of globalization and immigration, the "non-skilled" jobs are conceivably not just available to 16 year old high school students. Immigrants that are just reaching the country and establishing their foothold increase the pool of available labor.

The increasing gulf between high paying and low paying jobs is a result of offshoring manufacturing and other types of labor that can be easily purchased at a substantially lower rate on the worldwide market. This has happened because our very own consumers want cheaper goods. And in the big picture, it's not a bad thing - every nation that follows the industrialization pattern has rapidly pulled themselves out of poverty and built up a strong, educated workforce.

> Even so, I suspect not every healthy person would choose to work, given the opportunity to not.

Personally speaking, if I had the freedom not to work, I would perhaps pursue my own goals or hobbies which may not bring value to the world in the most optimal way. It might even subtract.

[bloppe]

People were locked into work long before there was an economy to speak of. They were hunting, gathering, subsistence farming, spending hours gathering materials and building things from dusk till dawn. Even the poor are generally able to work much less than the historical baseline.

I'm not saying the modern economy is fair. It's just easy to lose sight of the fact that it inherently takes a lot of work to live.

[feoren]

> The world has gotten so caught up in value creation that it rewards the roles that are most able to create value or the roles that are non-fungible and necessary.

God I wish that were true. What would you prefer the world reward, other than value creation? Currently the world rewards whoever just already owns everything or whoever is the best at taking advantage of others; value creation has virtually nothing to do with it. A fast-food worker is creating value by preparing tasty fries; Mark Zuckerberg maybe created some value by helping people stay connected, but that's overwhelmingly outweighed by his value destruction if you look at his overall impact on the world.

> if I had the freedom not to work, I would perhaps pursue my own goals or hobbies which may not bring value to the world in the most optimal way

We have very different definitions of "value" then, because I suspect people pursuing their own goals and hobbies is one of the best ways to create value in the world. Of course we also need vast cooperation to create valuable things like the James Webb Space Telescope.

It just sounds like you're dramatically over-estimating how much "value" is produced by (A) the current top caste of rent-seekers leveraging the vast amounts of wealth they were born into into even more wealth by taking advantage of their fellow humans as much as possible, and (B) the vast amount of bullshit jobs that are literally worthless busywork. If you're sitting around writing poetry or building train sets, you're way ahead of both those groups in terms of "value creation".