...should be one of the proper roles of government, either by providing an actual income or by making basic services such as housing, health care, food security, education, etc free.
I have my own perspective about work and jobs. I dropped out of high school and performed unskilled (first) and later somewhat skilled trade work until I was in my 30s, then went back to school, earned a doctorate, and became an academic scientist by my 40s. I'm now approaching retirement after 20+ years in academia.
I returned to school when I realized that most of the employer's I'd worked for up until that point in my life regarded my time-- the actual hours of my life-- as the primary asset, often the ONLY asset, that I brought to the labor market. Employers who offer those kinds of "jobs" seek to buy the most precious asset any of us owns, the very hours and minutes of breath we have on the planet, for the lowest price possible. When I understood that, I also realized that I would never be satisfied with a "job" again, ever. I needed a calling, a career, whatever-- work that I performed because it interests me, compels me, and defines me. And of course I need to be paid for doing it.
The last 23 years have been so much more rewarding than my early working years were, or ever could be. Of course, I had to go deeply into debt to achieve it, a debt that I cannot ever repay (there are not enough years left in my working life to repay my student loan debt). This is where a minimum universal income comes in, one sufficient to permit Americans to obtain a public education, and gives them the opportunity to do MEANINGFUL work instead of drudgery to line someone else's pockets, literally selling the hours of our lives in exchange for some degree of economic security.
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