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Post by Infinite Ego on May 13, 2017 13:30:02 GMT -5
How many of you would trade your job / career / profession for a guaranteed, lifelong basic income that resulted in you being paid *just* barely enough to get by with all your needs met a just a few material wants, but, all your time would be free to do whatever you wanted to do?
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Post by Infinite Ego on May 13, 2017 14:37:51 GMT -5
I have an easy gig so I wouldn't want to trade in for basic income, personally, but I think it should be an option for people.
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Post by chrissh on May 13, 2017 14:55:49 GMT -5
Would you lecture your own curriculum for basic income if you didn't have your present academic freedom?
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Post by Infinite Ego on May 13, 2017 15:39:06 GMT -5
My life would change little, I think, I just wouldn't talk about my reading and writing in public. No, i wouldn't lecture.
I've been in the classroom for 25 years come this August and I've noticed a few generational shifts such that, the current crop of undergrads are almost unteachable. I still have the same number of good students but the remainder are getting terrible to the point of pathology.
They are highly distracted with almost no work ethic, no interest in anything that lasts more than a few minutes, and seem rather helpless to find anything despite having google. It's not technology they are lacking; they expect everything to be *delivered* rather than searching.
The current mentality is that "this is supposed to be fun." I had a student in my office the other day who was actually in tears because her paper project was making her life terrible. She literally told me, through tears, that "This is so fucked up! This is my last semester and it was supposed to be fun and I can't even party with my friends because of this paper!"
The number of kids on campus who are actually mentally ill is rising and they are causing real problems; I have students who drop out suddenly and I wonder what happened to them only to find their Twitter feed open to the public and you discover that they are lost in a fantasy world of cosplay and can no longer function in the real world properly. Or, if not cosplay, it's beer or whatever.
Too many are working bad hours or two jobs and they are zombies.
Too many are on campus as social experiments and they just cannot think above the level of concrete perceptions and are trapped in identity thinking -- i.e., conceptual thought is beyond them.
Anyways, I'm not complaining. We get the students we get, and I just reorganize my work life around them. I spend fewer days on campus ever year and do nothing I don't want to.
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Post by chrissh on May 13, 2017 16:05:29 GMT -5
How are your school's enrollment standards?
Do you think qualifying students should have basic income so they aren't spread thin by those zombie survival jobs? Do you ever recognize potential or intellectual talent that dissipates under banal stress?
I do think it's ideal for people to engage with their communities in some way or another, to be of and with their society somehow, but with all these millions of people that can take so many different forms. The state of subsistence jobs vs. wealth doesn't make a very convincing case for "arbeit macht frei".
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Post by Infinite Ego on May 13, 2017 16:37:05 GMT -5
our enrollment standards are surprisingly high....tougher to get into our campus than most in the system.
honestly, no, I've never seen a student and thought, gee, if only this student wasn't burdened by X Y or Z they'd be thriving. It seems to me that the kids who are going to do well do so regardless of circumstances.
I agree, I think a basic income should come with some strings attached re. public engagement and contribution to the collective welfare.
I asked my students last year how many would be interested in a basic income and almost all were 'for it' and then I asked how many would be in favor of a *maximum* limit to wealth and only three were down with that. I asked to think about that contradiction and why they wouldn't be getting a basic income. LOL.
About 1/3 of my students honestly believe they are going to be "rich and famous" -- this system is so ingenious at getting people to fuck themselves over that it amazes me, and I'm not amazed by much.
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Post by chrissh on May 13, 2017 17:10:27 GMT -5
Yeah that's the deal breaker for socially involving most people, that there might be costs or limits to realizing their desires. It's unacceptable.
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Post by Infinite Ego on May 13, 2017 17:56:31 GMT -5
classic anomie theory
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Post by brucestevens on May 13, 2017 20:49:10 GMT -5
If one of the things I got was education for my kids, then yes. My job is a good job - schedule up to me, well paid, my boss has no idea what the fuck I do, but I will stop working as soon as I can. The act of working and listening to someone else's shit stinks.
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mirth
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Post by mirth on May 13, 2017 21:09:41 GMT -5
I'd take the basic income....however what I like to spend my time on , would generate some money at least...so not sure how that works. Which is playing live and making music and art.
If debts and all that was covered...i would make so much art and music... 20 albums a year maybe? All completely different. Haha.
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paulc
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Post by paulc on May 14, 2017 2:41:02 GMT -5
I suspect a great deal of the dissatisfaction amongst working people is the sheer fucking pointlessness of so many jobs. Essentially just to keep the hamster wheel turning until popping your clogs. Certainly many grad jobs. But that gets into very deep territory very quickly. What is, indeed, the point?
I agree: some sort of community involvement - maybe even only a couple of days a week - might give people some feeling of involvement/connection/common cause.
We're never going to be Bhutan, but if we're going to automate everyone out of 'gainful' employment, perhaps that's the way. Although we would, presumably have to upend the system in order to prevent the predation of capital upon the rest of us.
God forbid we could skew the system towards education for it's own sake once again. Sedition.....
But to answer the question: I would seriously consider it, but I suspect the standards of living in the old country on such an income would fall a way below Chris' requirements.
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Post by chrissh on May 14, 2017 10:21:25 GMT -5
I suspect the standards of living in the old country on such an income would fall a way below Chris' requirements. Oh if "survival as a birthright" was actually implemented today, I suspect life would still be perceived as martyrs vs. parasites, and quality of life would not increase harmoniously. There's a deep stigma about people who don't have much money or who don't aspire to have lots of money. It'd take a while to shake out various ways people actually contribute to society and develop a baseline sense of "human dignity" so everybody could get on board with the shared project of making life worth living. |
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Post by Infinite Ego on May 14, 2017 10:59:12 GMT -5
the neo-Calvinism that informed a lot of American values takes pride in inequality and seeing your neighbor, an enemy of god, go down in flames.
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paulc
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Post by paulc on May 14, 2017 15:15:29 GMT -5
Yep, there's a weird dichotomy of sense of entitlement/feeling that your neighbour is not entitled.
I think a lot of rich folk from rich backgrounds feel they worked very hard to be born into a life of privilege.
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Post by sonicdeviant on May 14, 2017 17:57:35 GMT -5
Well, for me--free time implies that I want to be able to afford the tools to help me fill that time. Couldn't get the cool gear without the day gig. I like how things are now. Of course, things are getting ready to change. I have to get a real job now and hopefully replace the income I'm losing. But whatever. Life goes on.
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