The Very High Cost of Enforcing the "Work Ethic"

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12/27/2019 4:53:43 PM

Remember back in the 1992 election, Ross Perot ran against Bill Clinton and incumbent G. H. W. Bush?

Well most of his criticism fell on Bush, just because he was the incumbent. But then after Clinton was inaugurated, he tried to give a running commentary on Clinton's Presidency. He came to the subject of a Clinton campaign promise of "Creating Jobs". And so Perot got all excited and was saying as forcefully as anyone could imagine, "Do you know how much it costs them to create one job, I mean one job for one person for one year? It costs them $90,000! It would be better if they just cut that up 6 ways and passed it out saying, 'here go have fun for a year.'"

Well Ross Perot was being facetious. He did not really want that to be done. But what he had discovered was something already well known.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan had written about it more than a decade before. "Welfare is the cheapest solution."

So why don't we just go that way? Well, people like to believe in Social Darwinism, they like to delegitimate the poor. And this is all Libertarianism is, Social Darwinism.

And we have welfare, not to provide for the needs of the poor, but to regulate the poor.

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So all of this costs our society money. We could just go to UBI, and where that was not really needed, it is gotten back by taxes. So what is the problem? The money lets the poor participate in our economy, as well as meeting their basic needs. This makes our society better across the board.

So what is the cost of not doing this, of trying to enforce that non-sensical notion of the "Work Ethic"?

Lots of programs people for creating jobs and for welfare to work. Is there any advantage to this, creating jobs for which there is no demand?

Forcing people to submit to a program, just to get their welfare benefit?

How does that benefit anyone?

And then, do we really care about workers? If we did, we would make sure that their retirement and disability and health care benefits are absolutely guaranteed. We would put to rest at once the idea that Social Security could collapse, or be privatized, or that workers need to be saving money for a private retirement.

No, we would protect and honor workers, and they would do jobs which are necessary, not "created" by tax breaks or attacking unions or safety protections.

And while everyone has to pay taxes, as that is what keeps our economy going in an advanced industrial and information era, we would make sure that workers get the value of their labors. Their housing would always be there for them, and be affordable.

We would never let the surplus value be appropriated by the Financializer Class. They would be eligible for UBI or Welfare, but no, they cannot scoop up the fruits of our workers. And they cannot take large sums out of our economy, without paying progressive income and wealth taxes.

But no, we do not honor workers. The "Work Ethic" has always been a scam, just a denigration of social status for those who are not already rich.

You want to know what work is supposed to be, its more like the Buddhist notion of Right Livelihood.

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It's not like what we have, for most people that being what Marx called, "Alienated Labor".

We expend vast resources just to promote and enforce the ideology of the Work Ethic. And there are all kinds of collateral consequences too.

We need to start putting a price on this, as it is huge. It is the difference between the material utopia which we could be enjoying, and the crazy nonsense of anxiety, social stratification, crime, and environmental degradation which we do have. It is the cost of promoting a sham!

SJG

Yes - Yours Is No Disgrace - Live at Beat-Club - 1971 - Remastered
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TJ Street
tuscl.net

The Very High Cost of Enforcing the "Work Ethic"

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