1,956
edits
Basic labor: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
(Created page with "'''Basic labor''' (for lack of a better term) is the bare minimum amount of labor that a society would need to sustain everyone's basic needs. <tab name="[See more clarification]" collapsed> Basic labor is '''not''' ''the cost of living'' expressed in work hours. That's a different metric{{npn}} which tends to be higher than basic labor. Basic labor '''is''' the labor it '''physically''' takes to produce enough food, maintain enough housing & infrastructure,...") |
No edit summary |
||
| (4 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown) | |||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
'''Basic labor''' (for lack of a better term) is the bare minimum amount of [[labor]] that a society would need to sustain everyone's basic needs. | '''Basic labor''' (for lack of a better term) is the bare minimum amount of [[labor]] that a society would need to sustain everyone's basic needs. | ||
<tab name="[See more clarification]" collapsed> | <tab name="[See more clarification]" collapsed> | ||
Basic labor is '''not''' ''the cost of living'' | * Basic labor is '''not''' the work hours an average person might need to afford ''the cost of living''. That's a different metric{{npn}} which tends to be higher than basic labor. | ||
* Basic labor '''is''' the labor it '''physically''' takes to produce enough [[food]], maintain enough [[housing]] & infrastructure, etc. | |||
Basic labor '''is''' the labor it '''physically''' takes to produce enough [[food]], maintain enough [[housing]] & infrastructure, etc. | * Basic labor is a fair response to the old anti-welfare rhetoric "If no one worked, no one would produce food and we would all starve!"<br />It's worth '''quantifying''' how much work it actually takes to fulfill basic needs, such as [[food]]. | ||
* Basic labor is not a matter of simply labeling job professions as "essential" or "non-essential". For example, carpenters are "essential" in the sense that without carpentry, no one would have a home. But basic labor would include only the ''minimum'' amount of carpentry work it takes to build enough homes for everyone and maintain them at some basic livable standard. Basic labor wouldn't include the more cosmetic renovations typically done by richer people or businesses. | |||
Basic labor is | * There is no need to have one universal definition of "basic needs". There can be multiple estimates of basic labor, each specifying clearly what is counted and what is not. | ||
It's worth '''quantifying''' how much work it actually takes to fulfill basic needs, such as [[food]]. | <!-- | ||
</tab> | MAYBE ADD: Some people may be offended by the term "basic labor" as if it sounds like some sort of authoritarian dictatorship where everyone is told exactly what job they must do for the rest of their lives. But basic labor is a concept that can apply to any free-market economy just as well. If you can think of a less dystopian name than "basic labor", post it in the comments. | ||
--></tab> | |||
The exact amount of labor can vary, depending on... | The exact amount of labor can vary, depending on... | ||
| Line 19: | Line 20: | ||
===Housing=== | ===Housing=== | ||
{{empty}} | {{empty}} | ||
==Relation to other economics== | |||
Basic labor is not part of the lexicon of classical economics. Governments tend to be more caught up in things like GDP, economic growth, and keeping people as employed as possible - with little regard for whether the jobs are [[health effects of overworking|harming people's health]], and little regard for affordable living. If we want a world where people are less exploited, we're going to need a new set of economic concepts, including the concept of basic labor. | |||
Technological progress reduces basic labor but doesn't necessarily reduce ''total'' labor. Economic growth has a tendency to find new forms of consumption, which create new jobs that make up for the ones lost to technology. Even if we see extreme automation in the future, we might still end up just as overworked as ever, with ridiculous fabricated jobs that would be seen as normal and necessary to pay the bills. The cure for this is to systematically [[reduce the work week]].{{npn}} This is already viable today (no need to wait for robots to take over), as basic labor is already much lower than total labor. | |||
==See also== | ==See also== | ||