rigorousintuition.ca

Maybe we should be asking ourselves what society should be working towards rather than just handing out more made up jobs to keep people busy. Then again, keeping the workers demoralized often silences dissent. I mean, who enjoys leisure time anyhow? Just how much cash can we squeeze out of this Earth mother bitch? Money is the bayonet on the rifle of capitalist dogma. A completely synthetic substance that DEVALUES all life and the resources that build it! Enjoy your slave trade for until the collective WE are willing to admit that food, water, shelter and healthcare should be provided for ALL, and not just those who've "earned it" we are creating gross disparity. Who's life shall we not value? Lest it be your own. Grandma can't assemble a widget anymore, put her out to pasture.

The one-armed machinist who Stern hires to work in the factory is not a machinist at all. The guy's elderly and already shows evidence of regular beatings. Stern hires him because the Nazis usually killed off the disabled first—they were of no use to them. Being healthy enough to work was one protection against being killed, and Stern knows that working in the factory is this man's only hope. Schindler's skeptical—more than skeptical—but Stern barely mollifies him with the assurance that the machinist is "very skilled."

It doesn't work for very long—the Nazis shoot the man—but it does give Schindler his first real opportunity to side with the Jews against the Nazis. He's angry at Stern for hiring such a clearly unqualified worker, but when he complains to the Nazis about the death of one of his workers, he echoes Stern's words: "quite skilled."

The word "skilled" shows up again and again: Schindler's convenient justification for saving people's lives. He can't say, "Shooting those people is incredibly wrong and I'm going to step in and stop you." If he did that, he'd be the next guy shot. Instead, he has to pretend he's only interested in results; "skilled" workers are important to the war effort.

As the movie goes on, he extends that justification to everyone he can. He even invents a convincing whopper about needing children "to polish the inside of a 45 millimeter shell casing" because only their tiny hands are sufficiently "skilled." The killing of the machinist, like the death of the little girl in the red coat, was a moral revelation for Schindler, one that motivated him to get into the business of saving people rather than exploiting them.

Ya hear that folks, your only worth to the world is how many $50 t-shirts you can sew an hour. Love peace, or love money...tough choice.

BUILD WHAT YOU TREASURE. TREASURE WHAT YOU BUILD!

Hey, even useless eaters have their value. After all, who else do they have to look down on?

Universal Basic Income nor guaranteed jobs seem the answer to me but ….

Basic human rights should include:

1. A clean and safe place to live.
2. Income for necessities of food, clothing, and the like.
3. Health care
4. Education
5. Access to media
6. Help in obtaining and maintaining these rights.

Providing these items to all would solve many social problems (homelessness etc.) and provide many jobs or more meaningful jobs to many.

Perhaps could be viewed as socialism but seems just common sense and morality. No one asks to be born. Would not eliminate crime but would be a kinder and safer society.

minime » Wed Jul 17, 2019 11:18 am wrote:Hey, even useless eaters have their value. After all, who else do they have to look down on?

So true.

Iamwhomiam wrote:How are those who are unable to work to survive? Social support systems cannot be abandoned, as the need will only become greater over time.

Yes of course a robust "safety net" must always be in place. But many of the existing 'social support' systems are band-aid remedies to the manifold problems brought on by having a permenent stock of unemployed workers. There's no intention to abandon those who cannot work.

Also, the federal job guarantee proposed by MMT economists (Wray, Kelton, Mitchell et al.) includes full healthcare and other benefits—obviating that patchwork of programs that only play catch-up and never get at the cause. (And in any event, something like Medicare for all should be in place.)

It should be less expensive in the long run—and regardless of the cost, it ends the suffering caused by layoffs and unemployment.

PufPuf93 wrote:Basic human rights should include:

1. A clean and safe place to live.
2. Income for necessities of food, clothing, and the like.
3. Health care
4. Education
5. Access to media
6. Help in obtaining and maintaining these rights.

Why not just add "a job" to the list? Like FDR did:
Bernie Sanders has updated his own list, but FDR is a more sure sell.

PufPuf93 » Wed Jul 17, 2019 8:21 pm wrote:Universal Basic Income nor guaranteed jobs seem the answer to me but ….

Basic human rights should include:

1. A clean and safe place to live.
2. Income for necessities of food, clothing, and the like.
3. Health care
4. Education
5. Access to media
6. Help in obtaining and maintaining these rights.

Providing these items to all would solve many social problems (homelessness etc.) and provide many jobs or more meaningful jobs to many.

Perhaps could be viewed as socialism but seems just common sense and morality. No one asks to be born. Would not eliminate crime but would be a kinder and safer society.

The best part is that it demonstrably works, no need to argue over it.

I have a right to a place to live, money to pay for the basics, including internet, free healthcare, free education and a local office whose job it is to make those things available to me and more generally help me get my shit straight.

The end results are crime and homelessness rates way below US levels.

I haven't worked in ten years so I get a paycheck from the government instead, no strings attached (not counting the hoops I had to jump through to qualify), and so does about ten percent of the working age population. Obviously services and housing quality varies by where you live. Oslo and Bergen are pretty shitty compared to the tiny village I live in, simply because they have to service a lot more people.

I'm more ambivalent on the jobs guarantee. As long as you have the right to say no to whatever shit job they find for you I'm okay with it, but if they start forcing people to move halfway across the country to fill a vacant position cleaning floors then hell no. Having to do something you hate shouldn't be a requirement for help.

Both.

thrulookingglass wrote:Maybe we should be asking ourselves what society should be working towards rather than just handing out more made up jobs to keep people busy.

lookingglass, if you read about the job guarantee proposal in the MMT thread, you'll see that no one has proposed anything like "handing out more made up jobs to keep people busy". Rather, the first thing the proponents of a job guarantee say is: we should be asking ourselves what society should be working towards (instead of worrying about "how to pay for it").

The job guarantee idea goes hand in hand with universal healthcare, free college education and an array of Green New Deal projects for a clean environment. Those seem like things we should be urgently working towards.

And even if job guarantee workers are only "digging holes and filling them back up again"—an excuse I heard the other day from a Democrat—so the fuck what? In the first quarter of 2019, more than 190,000 American workers were laid off. Trump supporters will claim that those workers should all be able find a new job the next day (because they read some bullshit about 1.2 jobs for every worker) and those who don't find a job right away are lazy and prefer to leech off the rest of us. (This reflects their own ethic, the ultimate personal capitalist dream of "never having to work again"; they're the ones who talk most about winning the lottery.) The fact is, most of those laid-off worker's lives will be disrupted and there will be much pain.

Give them a job immediately. Another reason: Employers don't like to hire people who've been out of work. The presently idle "buffer stock" of unemployed breeds chronic joblessness and the class of discouraged workers who finally drop out in defeat.

Another bullshit excuse from both sides is "job guarantee workers will tend to be untrained in their new job, and thus inefficient." So, a question for those concerned with the Efficiency Fairies: Which is more productive: an idle worker or a working worker?

Another objection is, "many of the laid off are white collar or high-tech, and they won't accept hole-digging jobs." That's just stupid because the Green New Deal is going to require all specialties, talents and skill levels available.

Further, I'll predict their work will have greater meaning than most of their old private-employer jobs, as they understand that what they're building—schools, hospitals, houses, R&D centers, solar installations—you name it—is for the public good. People might be a little extra attentive when building their own house.

thrulookingglass wrote:Grandma can't assemble a widget anymore, put her out to pasture.

A job guarantee isn't for Grandma, a job guarantee is for anyone who wants a job but can't find one.

Sounds like a neat idea to me. General Motors ain't gonna do it.