Could society function if people weren't forced to work?

[Smith_3]

Let's say the government decided to pay every individual a check of a certain amount, with no questions asked, that was sufficient to live a modest life. These people could not afford to own their own property or to buy expensive cars but they would have enough to buy clothes and food and have shelter of some kind. Unlike current welfare programs however, there would not be any demands made in terms of these people looking for work. The only incentive to find a job would be that whoever wanted to have more than this modest life, their own land for instance or expensive goods, would have to get a job.

Could society function? Or would eventually no one be working anymore and the whole thing would collapse?

[lostnotforgotten]

1. Many Would Want To Work Out Of Boredom Or Social Pressure Or Ambition

eom

[Bill McBlueState]

2. where would the government get the money for these checks? n/t

[Smith_3]

5. From those who produce wealth.

[Beer Snob-50]

9. in your discussion,

I don't think those that earn would earn enough to produce the money needed to fund this (make sense?)

[CJCRANE]

10. Most people

(even the rich) receive money from the government in one form or another. Having a minimum guaranteed payment would just be a way of simplifying it.

[cali]

3. people would work.

for many, many people, work is a creative urge and outlet.

[nuxvomica]

4. Most people would work anyway

People seem to desire activity and accomplishment, so the money is not the only incentive.

[Toucano]

6. There has to be work.

I think we could evolve into a society without the need for money, but I think there will always be work.

[CJCRANE]

7. It's an interesting idea

because it avoids the "Welfare trap".

[The_Commonist]

8. I think most people would work...

But not necessarily work that earns money.
I would work on art and music.
If it didn't matter whether or not I sold anything, I would have more time to work on art and music.
In fact, I would probably work harder than I do now, because my money-earning job can be boring, so I slack off, but working on art and music would not be boring.
If I sold some art or music for money once in a while, that would be great, I would probably reinvest that money back into creating more art and music.

Something like that...

[old mark]

12. I worked all my life at jobs I disliked just to pay bills to support my

creative needs. I hated most of my working life, literally have no friends or anyone from that period that I would even care to speak with today.
I did many creative things over those years, none of which ever made money, certainly never enough to cover the expense of doing them, let alone to make a living. I finally was able to find work in an area I could tolerate long enough to earn a small pension and retire. I will begin receiving Social Security in a few months, and will be able to actually live frugally on those combined incomes.

What is very funny to me, is that when I was working I managed to invest money in the stock market, and I did well enough that the money supported myself and my wife for quite some time after I retired, and will till the SS takes over. Seems like I could have been a rich guy if I had cared about being one.

The American system is built on working lower class people to death, while the well off live off their labor. The middle class is starting to feel some of that burden as the really rich get nervous about their "entitlement" to ease and control of the country.
I like the idea of a guaranteed income, but it would never fly here for reasons of politics.
Look how long we have had no real healthcare system, how many brainwashed jerks still oppose it in any form.

mark

[GKirk]

11. I think that this basic premise

can be studied in several different societies.

I believe that Kuwaiti citizens are all paid from the oil income that is received from the government. Also some Native American tribes pay their members from casino profits.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

13. Yes, I think so

Merely because most people like to be doing things rather than just laze around.

[Lyric]

14. I think we'd see a lot of artists and a lot more communes

with people growing their own gardens and raising their own chickens.

[Laelth]

15. People would continue to work.

In my experience, most people want to work. Most people, in fact, would continue to work very hard in profit-generating professions (to the extent such jobs are available). We'd all be richer under your proposed system because the poor people would have enough money to spend to get all their needs met (unlike the current system where the poor don't have enough money, can't get their basic needs met, and weigh down the economy due to their lack of spending power).

What you describe would be a better world. Sadly, though, I must agree with old mark, above, who explains why it would be very difficult to enact a law that does what you propose. We have a lot of brain-dead people in the U.S.

:dem:

-Laelth

[Juche]

16. Some oil rich mideast countries have that

I think they hire foreign help to do all the manual labor over there and the Kuwaiti citizens work in lax government jobs.

Retirees are arguably in that situation if they have decent pensions and social security. However I don't think psychologically it is the same since retirees are more physically wore out than younger people and they may have had enough of working by that point.

[Raspberry]

17. But, what would you do

with people who wouldn't choose to spend their income on food, clothes, or shelter? Most would, some wouldn't. Should those people still be homeless or hungry? What about their kids? How do you decide how much is enough? Interesting idea. Don't know if it would work or not.

[cherokeeprogressive]

18. My golf game sure would improve.

Maybe that dream of a single-digit handicap isn't such a silly thing after all.

I like your idea.

[Heidi]

19. That's sort of how it works in Switzerland.

Nothing collapsing so far.

[KittyWampus]

20. You almost describe Alaska.

[rug]

21. If that happened the DU servers would crash.

[The2ndWheel]

22. It's too perfect

There has to be a trade off. We have to be giving something up for that, and I'm not talking about giving up work as that something. A modest life, and not being able to buy homes or cars for lack of money isn't giving up anything either, since we can already do that without this proposal. What are we giving to get?

[Silent3]

23. Some day that's likely, with a fairly decent standard of living.

Suppose we solve these to hurdles:

1) Developing abundant renewable energy.
2) Figuring out how to combine material abundance with ecological living.

While that could be a tall order, I don't think there's much available middle ground: We do those things, or suffer a major collapse of civilization. I'm cautiously optimistic we'll figure it out (although maybe too late to fix a lot of global warming damage).

Suppose we do figure these things out. Then what? I don't see anything stopping us from reaching a level of technological sophistication where automation and robotics produce a vast quantity of material wealth and valued services. The world economy will largely become a self-perpetuating machine, needing minimal human supervision and guidance, a machine that takes inputs of energy and raw materials and turns those into goods and services.

The greatest challenge I see in the future (looking ahead maybe 25-50 years) is not being able to provide a decent standard of living for everyone on the planet, but how we avoid drowning in a sea of refuse from the material wealth we should be able to produce given abundant energy and just a little more improvement in automation.

And then, of course, there's the matter of figuring out how to fairly distribute such wealth. A big part of the problem is deciding what "fair" means. Even today, without imagining futuristic automated wealth production, it takes a whole lot less human effort and sweat to, say, build a house or bake a loaf of bread than it did a century ago, and it was even harder a century before that. We have to do less to make more.

At a certain point it gets crazy amplifying that while simultaneously believing the word "deserve" applies in a neat, clean, clear way to the relationship between the efforts people make and the material rewards they receive. That's already pretty distorted in today's economy, and unfortunately it's easy to imagine these distortions only growing worse in a time when everyone could easily have a comfortable standard of living without working at all, with plenty left over after that as rewards for effort (or just sheer dumb luck).

To get back to the OP's question and the hear-and-now, I don't think we're quite there yet, I don't think the effort of those willing to work would be enough to provide for all of those willing to settle for just getting by, but I think in the not-too-distant future, we'll get there and a bit beyond.

We'll always have poor people because poverty is, to some extent, a matter of relative not absolute wealth. If freely available medical care were good enough to keep most people alive and healthy to 100 years old, would it be seen as a tragedy and an unfairness if the poor die at 100 but the wealthy live to 200?