Basic labor
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 is not the cost of living expressed in work hours. That's a different metric[new page needed] 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 also a fair response to the old anti-welfare rhetoric "If no one worked, no one would produce food and we would all starve!"
It's worth quantifying how much work it actually takes to fulfill basic needs, such as food.
The exact amount of labor can vary, depending on...
- what's considered a basic need, and
- the current level of technological development...
...but in general, in the modern world, basic labor is just a small fraction of the actual labor that people do.
Estimates
Food
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Housing
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