Like I said before, American behaviorist B. F. Skinner said the working poor should really be the billionaires because they earned it. BTW, does anyone have a quote on him on that? He did say it. We read about it in a community college psychology class in 1995. He was talking about positive and negative conditioning, and he thought was the best ways to get work results. But he also said that was his social theory. But I was also going to add, maybe they should also be paid more for jobs that are harder. Jobs that involve longer hours with more strenuous and stressful labor, especially physical. Maybe they should just get paid more? And maybe that could be required by law? Thoughts?
Also, I was thinking more about this. What about equal pay, so to speak. Either universal basic income. Or, people should get paid more or less a flat rate. Because why should jobs, like lawyer or doctor, pay so much money? When they are just status jobs? Based on your education, not how much work you actually do? Or there were the ideas of Huey Long. Long was a senator from 1932 to 1935 and governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932. He was assassinated in 1935. Long wanted to redistribute wealth by capping fortunes at $100 million and limiting annual income to $1 million. There's also the idea of democratic socialism. They say we'd never have that where I live, the US. But people thought we'd never get some of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal ideas, many of which were kind of socialist. And there is still the idea of universal basic income. I wonder if anyone anywhere in the world has ever even tried that. The only problem with that would be if people refused to work. I didn't believe that was ever really a possibility. Until the age of COVID a couple of years ago, when they said some people did refuse to return to work. But the solution to that is to make is mandatory that you have to do your fair share, and work at least 8 hours a day.
Skinner! I remember thinking of my apartment life during college as being like a skinner's box. This was a chamber in which an animal would receive operant conditioning.
I've been thinking more about what psychologist B. F. Skinner once said. I was also reading around 1988 about poverty in the US. There is some disagreement on how poverty is defined here. Some say poverty should be defined by absolute deprivation and some say relative deprivation. Absolute deprivation is the lack of basic needs, while relative deprivation means you don't have as much in comparison to others in your country. Well, poverty should be measured in terms of relative deprivation obviously, everywhere in the world. And everyone should have a basic living wage, a good one. From the lowliest janitor to the chief CEO of a big corporation. Plus I am beginning to wonder about status jobs like medical doctor and lawyer. In the US they both make a lot of money. But as I've said before, I am not really sure what medical doctors even do now. They're not true scientists and most of what they used to do is covered now by scans and blood tests. It's really just a trade like plumber or electrician. So why do they make so much money in the US? Maybe like B. F. Skinner said, we should totally rethink who makes the most money. People who work longest and hardest should, like he pointed out. Or like Senator Huey Long said, we really should cap salary. No one anywhere should make over a certain amount. Not even billionaires really. And like the idea of universal basic income says, even if you don't work you should make a good living wage. (The only problem that is that people might just decide not to work. So, make it mandatory that able-bodied people work. Or, if they are unemployed that they search for a new job. And really search in good faith, not just pretend to search.)
So anyways my solution to poverty, or at least the worst forms of it, are threefold. And these ideas would work even in countries that don't have democratic socialism. (The US will probably never have democratic socialism. The establishment would never allow it. And plus with our two-party system and separation of powers at the federal level, it would be very hard to do anyways.) • People who work long hours at hard jobs should just make more money. Actually, a simpler solution would just be to do away with prestige jobs. In my country, for example, being a doctor is still a prestige job. They make a lot of money and drive fancy cars. In most other countries being a doctor is a calling. In places like the UK and Canada they make very little money, at least as compared to doctors in the US. Other prestige jobs include lawyer, college professor and so forth. • We need universal basic income. Along with the requirement you work. Martin Luther King, Jr. thought this was a good idea too. And it could be done in my country. If the rich just paid their fair share in taxes. • And, we need to define poverty in terms of relative deprivation, not just absolute deprivation. Like I said, I read about this in that sociology class in 1988. Relative deprivation means if everyone has two smartphones in the US, maybe you need only one. No, that's not true. People need two smartphones for security and privacy. And just to separate their personal and work life. It's not just a luxury, and it's wrong to look at it that way.
Also I was thinking, about universal basic income. Some say that if people are paid for doing nothing they'd just stop working. But, you could have universal basic income with its more comfortable standard of living for people who work. And I mean for people who work really at any job. And if they aren't working, and especially the government suspects they are deliberately not finding work, they could have basic income, or welfare payments. Just enough to live on, until they work again.
A basic income can work on some points(social)..........we(NL) have that elderly(aow),handycaped,unemployed, kids, ect..................on some points good(could be more strict), but also greatly misused and badly checked(fraud). Wen it comes to work or being able to..............humans are made todo things/work(evolution) be useful.........I dont mind paying/working(taxes) for society but so should everybody else that can Better thing is basic food/water/roof/education/ect............world/planetwide.............sigh Mzzls Ps. problem lies more in the fact that people need a basic income(money/society/price of living/world)?
Sometimes I think the freeway is just like B.F. Skinner's "Skinner Box", with a controlled environment, laws, a given number of lanes, and general knowledge and thus expectations of outcomes given any stimulus: a lane change without a signal for example. It provides a positive or a negative stimulus, and our minds understand these signals and behavior is learned and changed. I feel like that has a purpose. It is protecting the environment, and the result when that isn't happening on the freeway (I'm from the U.S.) is smoggy skies; the more of which cause debilitating respiratory conditions, sometimes permanent and then sometimes also fatal. My grandmother had COPD and emphysema, and I remember my mom's anguish at her difficulty with breathing, and finally with everything that relies on it. Sometimes I wish for only positive experiences on the freeway. When I remember grandma, I guess I sort of know how selfish that is; sort of how I feel about relaxing attitudes about substance use, moral effects of having the medium for learning be the same medium where we see adult oriented material, and general rebelliousness in group settings where it's better we remember that someone hopes we'll behave. The driving behavior is discouraged and eliminated just like if you shock the lab animal instead of feeding. I've gotten in the habit though of avoiding the discouragement.
This is a conversation I had with my AI about how we must defend ourselves when society's direction robs us of our ego, our dignity, our maturity, and especially (more generally) our mental wellness/social wellness/emotional safety. We deserve to understand ourselves as relevant and purposeful and equal and if not, I supposed in the discussion first an analysis (what happened?!) and then self-expression to the contrary will replace what negativity had been contributed...: Me: Microsoft Edge's AI:
