If you're after parasites, lazy software developers aren't the low hanging fruit. People who pull in multiple thousands a month plus from dividends, bonds, rental and stock portfolios are where the real fat is.
Weirdly American culture has twisted these people into paragons of success while the people who do all the really tough and necessary work are paid poor wages, made to feel like shit about it at the same time and tricked and cheated when they try to unionize.
> People who pull in multiple thousands a month plus from dividends, bonds, rental and stock portfolios are where the real fat is.
those people risked capital to obtain that income. There's this idea that capital is "lazy" and people who risk it doesn't deserve the rewards that come with such risks.
> There's this idea that capital is "lazy" and people who risk it doesn't deserve the rewards that come with such risks.
No, you are confusing capital with work: you can tell by looking at which of the two is subjected to much higher taxation, which is the concrete evidence that society judges the people doing it as less deserving of retaining the rewards that come with it than the less-taxed activity.
In my opinion people should only be able to earn money through work. After all, if everyone stopped working and started living off their investments, there wouldn't be any capital gains.
The problem isn't that capital is lazy, it's that the interest rate can't actually reach 0% and the capital market can't actually reach an equilibrium so it is stuck at some low interest rate floor instead of going all the way to 0%.
The idea that your net worth should grow based on how much you own is absurd. You should instead be paid more for your work and then get to increase your net worth that way. That's better for everyone involved except for those who don't want to work at all.
How does one avoid the inequality, though? One could be working 60 hours a week at fast food joints and not make anywhere close to a part time software developer. As a result, the “lazy” developer is generating more tax revenue. There are too many possibilities to make it “fair”, unless we get rid of the income tax. Even if everyone paid the same amount, it wouldn’t be fair, unless everyone made the same amount of money. Which also doesn’t seem fair.
It's not a complete avoidance. Rather, i'm just advocating that we don't build the idea of less work on the shoulders of people who work more. That seems to me to almost codify the need for some people working more, and that seems a slippery slope for _some_ people getting good work-life balances and others not.
My argument is that we _all_ should qualify for a work-life balance. Not depend on some people not getting a good work-life balance.
I agree that the original commenter's last paragraph was a bit unnecessary, but let's not kid ourselves either: if everyone put in a solid 2 hours a day doing good, essential work all good, essential work would be done in 6 months. Most of our time at work is spent doing things which are either pointless or downright damaging.
Not to disagree with your general direction though, but i don't honestly think i could boil what i do down into 2 hours. On paper? possibly. In practice i spend far more time thinking about problems, taking breaks from problems, etc - than i do actually writing the solutions. But i'm not claiming i'm any good heh, just that it often takes me hours and hours.
Your assertion is generally correct i think in efficiency sake. Ie when i put in 14h days, i'm exponentially paying a higher tax on my efficiency by putting in extra hours - i'm over worked and tired, i'm far from my best. But i still think i can more work done in those 14h than i do in 8, or especially 4/etc.
Moreso I'd say your hours might be very good and productive but you are counterbalanced by 10 other people doing absolute shit jobs.
How many people work as prison guards watching over people on harmless drug offenses in the US? How many soldiers are stationed or fighting in pointless wars? How many loggers work in the Amazon, or how many poachers? I'd much prefer they take some of your work instead.
Unless there is an universal income, and unless entry jobs can be better paid with 20 hours, that's how it is going to be.
Employers have this mentality of workers either work 40 hours or are not hired, it's all-or-nothing.
So if workers CONSENT to do all the work and get all the money, it's only fair that a fraction of that money is sent to those who have no work and no money.
Workers have a better chance of negotiating their work time than the unemployed. And if they can't because they will be replaced by somebody else who will work 40 hours, then it's a political problem that needs fixing.
But meanwhile, I'd rather get welfare than suffer at work. It's not like capitalist society has a sense of "community", so I don't feel like there is a need to participate.
