Barry,
I saw your message the first time and my response would have been that
"reducing the work week" doesn't evade, buy into or ignore anything.
Reducing the work week is not a person or a thing but an activity that
people can do or advocate. Nor do advocates of reducing the work week evade,
buy into or ignore the issues you mention. Your message assumes that people
are capable of having one idea at a time. That's not a very respectful view.
The fact that you have resent your message suggests to me that you feel a
strong antagonism toward concrete proposals to reduce work time. Your
counter-suggestion appears to be the sharing of unearned income. I have no
objection to some kind of guaranteed basic income, but plenty of objections
to seeing it as a panacea. By portraying reduced work time as a "threat" to
a basic income, you fall into a sectarian trap that can only discourage
people from considering any alternative to the present system.
If I were given a zero-sum "choice" between a universal basic income and
reduced work time, perhaps I would choose the basic income. However, faced
with the real world task of convincing people to make some kind of
commitment to change, I choose to advocate reduced work time as a way to
lubricate the immobilized social-economic-political imagination. Sorry if
that offends you.
Barry Brooks wrote,
>Reducing the work week is not the answer to unemployment.
>
>It evades the question about the concept of our earning our livings.
> Is life a gift, or do we earn our livings?
>
>It buys into bad assumptions about exclusive wage respectability.
> In the U.S.S.R. constitution they had, "If you don't work, you
> don't eat." With capitalism profit is a good form of income.
> Unearned income will rise as the need for human labor is cut.
>
>It ignores the needs of people who are too young, too old, or too sick
>too work.
>
>It accepts the false assumption that we have a shortage of human labor.
>
>If rich people can live on unearned income why not let others have the
>choice
>of not working? Finally, we must share the unearned income.
>
>While lots of work goes undone, it is only because the most important
>work is,
>and should be, unpaid. If people had secure income they could do that
>neglected
>unpaid work. (Day care/paid replaces motherhood/unpaid)
>
>Making subsistence dependent on work is barbaric! The worship of work
>has gone too far.
>Respectability should be based on something that is not destructive.
>Ethics for slaves will not find much useful application in an automated
>world.
>
>Barry Brooks
>http://home.earthlink.net/~durable
>
>
>
>
>
Regards,
Tom Walker
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