If you are so happy not to be working, then you obviously have enough money not to be getting any government checks for food, rent or medical care. Voluntary sloth should not be subsidized in any way by the shrinking population of workers in the USA.
Pollster1:
In other words, if decent people will pay for their food, medical care, and housing, parasites will choose to stay at home. Only a liberal would think this was a positive.
Conspiracy Guy:
I’m too stunned at the lack of logic being applied and too pressed for time this morning to make a real response to the article.
Good observations, among many others among the comments on this thread.
However, I don't think AP "reporter" Calvin Woodward has any concept that his words are "illogical."
Think ahead a few years, to a future in which robots are going to be routine elements of everyday life. They'll be functioning as chambermaids in hotels and hospitals. They'll be visible behind the counter at fast-food places, and in the bakery, deli, and prepared-foods sections of every grocery store. They'll be doing road work in every town, and driving trucks and - eventually - cars.
In the more distant future (say, in 20 years or so) there will literally be no reason for anyone to do any kind of manual work at all. Robots will be in homes, doing most every chore. As robots are employed to make more robots, only the poorest will live without them to attend to their physical needs.
By that time, the concept of "work" will have changed completely. It will be seen as something optional, that people do mainly for the psychic rewards.
This AP reporter is simply getting the jump on history. As are the Democrats (and some Republicans) in Washington. Huge changes are coming, and I have no idea where they are going to take us.
Raising the cost of employment to employers means less employees. The CBO never addresses that
I continue to be appalled, but not surprised, by the leftist’s assault on truth and logic. Here they are not just advocating, but cheer-leading! In their twisted world, individuals that are capable and able to work, and currently are doing so, will leave the workforce and/or reduce their hours because others will be paying for the benefits that they want and need. So, instead of being self-sufficient and providing for themselves, they will be parasites, burdening the rest of productive society with higher taxes.
And this is a good thing???
Come on AP you’re slipping.
Why don’t you tell us how giving amnesty to 20 million illegals and allowing them to bring in their families, bringing the total to around 60-75 million, will also be a bonus to the economy because they will never go on the govt dole.
After all the illegals come to this country with the dream of working and paying taxes to provide Obamacare and welfare to the bums in this country that don’t want to work.
Right AP?
“Yesterday, Washington’s official non-partisan bean-counter, the Congressional Budget Office, dropped a bomb. By 2024, says the CBO, Obamacare will reduce the size of the U.S. labor force by 2.5 million full-time-equivalent workers.”
This may be happening in N Californicator land since the first of the year.
My wife and I are both retired citizens. One of the things we do is to try and avoid traffic jams and crowds when we go out for lunch and to do our errands.
So, when we go out to lunch it is usually after the so called lunch hour, 12:45 pm to 1 pm.
Since the first of the year, we have noticed two interesting trends:
1. Even less people than normal in the good restaurants and better so called fast food places for lunch. Problems, finding a parking place rarely occurs now.
2. There is a what appears to be a mini rush hour re heavier traffic from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm, like we used to have after 3:30 pm and then @ 5:30 pm plus or minus a half hour. The drivers don’t appear to be going shopping or after school kids. Usually just a driver and no passengers, lining up at the traffic lights. Also, more than usual construction pickups during this time period are in the traffic mix.
My wife knows many friends and others, who have had their work day hours cut to 4 to 6 hours per day. Walmart, other chains, and independent stores are cutting the daily hours for their employees since the first of the year.
A younger relative couple living in an East Bay county are seeing similar traffic patterns re a new mini rush hours. The husband is getting home about 15 to 25 minutes early. He said the end of the work day traffic is a lot lighter, and the going to work traffic is about the same. The wife usually does her shopping and errands from 2 to 3:30 pm before picking up their kids at school. She said that the traffic loads during that time are similar to past years’s after 3:30 pm.
Yesterday on 2/5/14, my wife and I saw the same weird traffic pattern, a mini rush hour from 1:30 to 2:30 pm.
Then, at 5:30 pm we took a dinner for a church couple with one of them recovering from a hospital stay.
The traffic should have been heavy at that time, and it was about the same or less than the earlier 1:30 to 2:30 pm.
Fifteen minutes it was even lighter when we came home.