Tag Archives: Work

Explaining The Value Of Labor To Leftists Who Hate The Concept Of Work, by Tyler Durden

Posted on February 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

To hate work is to hate survival and to hate life itself. Every simpering wimp who thinks its the duty of the rest of us to support him should be thrown off the dole and left to find out the value of labor on his own. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Go to any social media feed today and you’ll find an endless array of zennials entering adulthood who are discovering that they are indeed expected to work, struggle, sacrifice, and make their way up the ladder of life like 99% of all human beings.  The next generation is finding out, slowly but surely, that they will not be YouTube celebrities or Instagram influencers or Big Tech executives; they will not be raking in easy money or be showered in gratification.  Many of them have stacked up sizable college loan debts in exchange for degrees with minimal demand.  Even if they have a legitimate goal they will have to work hard to achieve it.  

Reality is hitting younger Americans like a freight train and they are enraged. In response, many of them are sadly turning to leftist movements like the “anti-work movement” and the “quiet quitting” movement in retaliation.  While the Reddit born anti-work movement has slowly faded in the past six months, the overall agenda continues on in other forms. 

There has been a rising narrative among young people regarding skilled labor vs unskilled labor.  Their position?  That there is no such thing as unskilled labor and that workers need to be handed a “living wage” no matter their level of contribution.  Either that, or they need to stop working altogether while others pay their way.  If they don’t get what they want, they plan to burn the economy to the ground.

That kind of sentiment sounds like insanity to anyone that understands free markets (or reality), but to naive young adults with visions of immediate success, it might sound like wisdom.  They have been tricked into thinking that the laws of supply and demand no longer apply to labor, but they do.  Here are some questions any person should ask themselves when they stumble upon that internal existential crisis of career and future.  Are you actually being “oppressed”, or are you being paid exactly what you are worth and it’s making you feel inadequate?  

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Posted in Business, Economy, Governments, Labor, Morality

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Children Must Be Made To Work, by Paul Rosenberg

Posted on April 25, 2022 | Leave a comment

Spare the work and spoil the child. Spoil the children and they never grow up. From Paul Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:

Children are ignorant, but not stupid; small, but not insignificant. And while the role they are able to play in the world is necessarily limited, it need not and should not be zero.

Children need to work and to contribute to their families; not so much for the sake of the family, but for their personal development. Children need to learn responsibility at a very early age; they must know that they can contribute, and since their natural tendency is to evade work in favor of play, they must be made to work.

The level of their work should be matched to their abilities, of course, but the phrase, “You’re part of this family and you have to work too,” is something they should hear at a young age. Work must become part of family life for them. More than that, it probably should not involve monetary payment: this is about self-responsibility and being a contributing member of the family. Money can come later, as their work expands. Family is more important than money, and should stand above money.

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Posted in Education, Morality, Philosophy

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“Super-Welfare” Guaranteed Income For All Isn’t a Solution–It’s Just the New Serfdom, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on November 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

To the degree that serfdom is political powerlessness and near-zero access to the processes of accumulating productive capital, super-welfare guaranteed income for all is simply serfdom institutionalized into a Hell devoid of purpose, pride, meaning, community and positive social roles.

Jean-Paul Sartre famously wrote that Hell is other people. While this is undoubtedly true in cocktail party and workplace settings, in socioeconomic terms,Hell is a scarcity of positive social roles–the sources of positive identity, pride, purpose, community and meaning.

Since meaningful work is the source of positive social roles, Hell is a lack of meaningful work.

Unfortunately for us, the Keynesian Cargo Cult economists that dominate our world have zero grasp of humanity’s need for positive social roles and meaningful work. In the myopic view of the Keynesians, humans are nothing but consumer-bots, heartless beings who chew through the Earth’s resources in their limitless quest for more of everything–what the Keynesian Cargo Cult worships as “demand.”

Tragically, this blindness to humanity’s need for meaning and the elevation of spiritually empty consumerism to a Secular Religion leaves the Keynesians incapable of understanding this timeless truth: the only possible result of robbing people of their livelihood is despair.

Chief Keynesian Cargo Cultist Paul Krugman seems sincerely mystified that more state welfare isn’t eliminating this despair, when lack of positive social roles and dependence on the state is the source of this despair.

Why Middle-Aged White Americans Are Dying of Despair is obvious: their opportunities to secure positive social roles are diminishing.

Once meaningful work vanishes, so do positive social roles.

This is why “super welfare” guaranteed work for all is just a new version of Socioeconomic Hell. Being paid to do nothing does not provide meaningful work or positive social roles, which are the sources of positive identity, pride, purpose, community and meaning.

To continue reading: The New Serfdom

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Posted in Economics, Other Views, Philosophy, Psychology

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Why Europe Stagnates——-The Work Versus Welfare Tradeoff, Michael D. Tanner and Charles Hughes

Posted on September 2, 2015 | Leave a comment

It’s hard to quarrel with facts, so dedicated welfare statists will simply have to ignore the following facts. From Michael D. Tanner and Charles Hughes at the Cato Institute, cato.org:

If welfare benefits become too generous, they can create a significant incentive that encourages recipients to remain “on the dole” rather than to seek employment. Benefits in European Union (EU) countries vary widely, but in many of them, benefits are high relative to what an individual could expect to earn from a low-wage or entry-level job. For example, for a single parent with two children in 2013—

• Welfare benefits in nine EU countries exceeded €15,000 ($18,200) per year. In six countries, benefits exceeded €20,000 ($24,300). Denmark offers the most generous benefit package, valued at €31,709 ($38,558).
• In nine countries, welfare benefits exceeded the minimum wage in that country.
• Benefits in 11 countries exceeded half of the net income for someone earning the average wage in that country, and in 6 countries it exceeded 60 percent of the net average wage income.
• In Austria, Croatia, and Denmark, the effective marginal tax rate for someone leaving welfare for work was nearly 100 percent, meaning that a person would gain virtually no additional income from working. In another 16 countries, individuals would face an effective marginal tax rate in excess of 50 percent.
• Benefits in the United States fit comfortably into the mainstream of welfare states. Excluding Medicaid, the United States would rank 10th among the EU nations analyzed, more generous than France and slightly less generous than Sweden. Thirty-five states offer a package more generous than the mean benefit package offered in the European countries analyzed.

Many European countries have recognized the problem and have begun to reform their welfare systems to create a better transition from welfare to work. In fact, the United States is falling behind some European countries with regard to welfare reform.

Countries that are serious about reducing welfare dependency and rewarding work should consider strengthening work requirements, establishing time limits for participation, and tightening eligibility. Perhaps more important, countries should examine the level of benefits available and the effective marginal tax rates their welfare systems create, with an eye toward reducing disincentives and encouraging work.

http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/work-versus-welfare-trade-europe

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Posted in Government, Labor, Other Views

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