If everyone didn’t have to work to get paid there would be nothing to buy. There would be no products, no commerce, no asset to purchase. We might be grazers and eat grass or bark, but no good thing could come from such a condition.
I think that there are always people who want more out of life than the lowest common denominator. Those who build and maintain the robots will do so in order to make the big bucks and buy a mansion far away from the non-producers.
I would almost agree with another poster that those on the dole should be sterilized, but considering the spread of porn and the rise of sexbots, the non-producers will likely unbreed themselves out of existence.
“There would be no products, no commerce, no asset to purchase. “ — Texas Songwriter
That’s not true. Kuwait is a country that shared their oil wealth with the citizens. There was a time when every citizen received a huge income just for being a citizen. It is still a pretty sweet deal. (And no, I am not advocating stealing oil in the USA to redistribute to the citizens.)
It would be like if you were part of a large extended family and it was discovered that there was a billion-dollar oil field on the land of a patriarch who willed it to be divided among the family. Suddenly everyone is rich.
There is no need to work for the purpose of survival. But goods are still bought and purchased.
This goes back to my earlier statement about how wealth is created. It is not created by tax. It is not created by printing money. It is created three ways: work, innovation, and exploitation of natural resources (in the above examples that is oil).
Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating a living wage / government income. I am saying it is not automatically leftist. Nixon apparently supported the idea. He was fairly conservative.
“The problem with a guaranteed income is the ability of that income to utterly destroy the will to work any harder than minimally necessary.” — mountainbunny
Many people who are very rich keep working because they love to work. Many people who are very poor still refuse to work in spite of the consequences. But I agree that there are many people who go through life only doing the minimum required.
Kuwait does have its problems. Rich citizens do not want to do menial jobs. So what good is it to be a millionaire if you have to pay $80,000 for a fast food burger? How did they solve this? They imported labor. More than half of the population in Kuwait are foreigners / non-citizens. These people do NOT get the government pay, but do have good opportunities to make money.
But the NEED to work in order to survive may become obsolete due to technology. The kids movie Wall-E depicts the dilemma this might create. There is something in the human spirit that needs to work and innovate, but not necessarily just to survive.
Conservatives need to keep in mind that big companies like Apple benefit from the protections of our Republic which are extended by the consent of the governed. The innovators did “earn that”. The workers do “earn that”. Steve Jobs did “build that”, but it could not happen under a totally corrupt regime. It had to happen where the consent of the governed afforded them the necessary protections to innovate and be rewarded for it.
We need to quit looking at ip laws as if they are natural law. They are not. They are a social contract. Citizens need to get a fair deal for their end of this social contract.