I did a few searches on Google.
“is it necessary for everyone to have a job”
“is it necessary for everyone to work”
“why does everyone need a job”
The responses Google provided were of no relevance to my questions. This is Google, arguably the biggest search engine on the planet able to find information about countless things from all over the world.
Yet no one else seems to be asking or answering these questions. That bothers me.
The reason I ask these questions is because I have been thinking a lot lately about things like the recession, high unemployment, benefit fraud and the various other problems with the economy.
Part of this is likely down to my own current unemployment, giving me more time to think about things. I spend day after day filling out dozens of application forms for jobs that I think, without wanting to sound snobbish, I may be too good for with my education and experience. Then there are other jobs that I simply do not want to spend my time doing and getting stuck in a rut. Just looking for work in itself takes as much effort as a real job, and comes with no reward.
But in this world, it is vital that I have a job. It is vital that I am earning a wage. It seems ridiculous to me. My wife is working full time and somehow what she earns is not enough to keep us both comfortably. So I am forced to try and earn my own money. Now I don’t mean this to say that I think she should be the only one to work, I am saying that if roles were reversed and I was in full time employment and she was not, then I should be able to provide for her and not expect her to be working herself.
In fact I would like to be in that position, doing something and able to earn enough so that she need not go working 9-5 anymore.
9am til 5pm five days a week. With a commute either side and endless overtiredness. Barely any time to enjoy not being at work. What kind of life is that?
But this is small scale. I am talking here about the difficulty for two people living together to earn enough to support themselves.
This difficulty spreads to most families in the world and even to more harsh extremes.
So it seems painfully clear to me, that the system that requires everyone to be working and earning in this way is not effective.
Too many people are unemployed and unable to support themselves, through no fault of their own. So many are looking for work but there simply is nothing for them. You will find hundreds of people are applying for one position that becomes available, leaving a vast majority without a way of earning. There are not enough jobs in the world for it to make sense to expect everyone to have one.
Too often the wrong person for the job gets it, but that is another matter.
There are a lot of people on benefits who are not looking for work or trying to do their bit for society and simply scrounging off of the populace who do. Somehow they are able to live comfortably off tax payers money while the tax payers themselves have to struggle when their hard earned wages are taken from them.
There is far too much that is wrong with the way employment and benefits are organised, and it desperately needs a restructure.
I believe that not everyone does need a job. I believe that in an ideal world, money itself would be abolished (not practical for a few reasons). People should work for the betterment and survival of the human race, not for their own personal greed.
There are enough resources in the world for everyone on the planet to live comfortably. Enough so that third world countries can be saved from hunger and famine. Yet, the greed of humans does not allow it.
Everything that is done, it seems, has to be done for a profit. If an idea is thought to not be profitable it is ignored. Because of this flawed thinking we lose so many things that could actually bring progress in technology, day to day life and even in arts and entertainment.
But the people at the top enjoy this arrangement and do not spare a thought for the people that they leave behind. George Carlin explains in a routine that the rich take all the money and do not pay taxes. The people in the middle do all the hard work and get a small amount for their trouble; just enough to keep them going. The people at the bottom, with nothing, are there to remind the people in the middle to keep working.
It’s not like this is a new problem either. Recessions have been popping up fairly regularly over the last few decades at least. It’s either that our world leaders are incredibly inept at their jobs and unable to learn from past mistakes, or that they are happy with the way things are.
In Star Trek, the human race has abolished money and discovered that people do better without the drives of greed and personal gain. It may seem silly to use a fictional television show as an example, but when something has got it right, why ignore it?
In Star Trek, nearly everything is automated or done by machine. The humans roles are to maintain the machines, to research advancement, to explore the universe and finally medical staff to take care of everyone. This society could not exist in a greed driven world. The minimal amount of jobs mean that a huge majority would be unemployed. If money existed, then the majority would not survive (as they struggle to now).
Besides this, the existence of money is a barrier for our progress. People would fight against the new machines that render human work obsolete because the release would cost them their jobs. To truly progress, this needs to not be an issue. People should be allowed to be relieved that their lives are being made easier.
I was discussing my thoughts with a friend recently and he said that this idea of the future simply could not work because people only work for their own needs. If work was an option, people would not do it.
I believe to an extent this would be true, much like we have today with the benefit scroungers. On the other hand, I believe that there will be people who want to work and try to make things better. These people will also be the right people for the job. These people will be the ones who want to do it and have a true passion for it, not the ones who have doctored resumes and say what their employers want to hear.
