Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1343-1345

What makes people sick? Infectious agents like bacteria and viruses, and personal factors like smoking, eating poorly and living a sedentary lifestyle.

But none of these compares to the way that poverty makes us sick. Prescribing medications and lifestyle changes for our patients who suffer from income deficiency isn’t enough; we need to start prescribing healthy incomes.

...

Sound expensive? A growing body of evidence shows that allowing poverty to continue is far more expensive than investing to help improve people’s economic well-being. Currently $3.8 billion — 5 per cent of GDP — is lost from the Saskatchewan economy each year due to increased health and social costs and decreased economic opportunities. In Ontario, this cost of poverty has been calculated to be upwards of $30 billion per year — far more than estimated costs of basic income implementation.

Basic income: just what the doctor ordered
                                                                 thestar.com
                                                                 Danielle Martin and Ryan Meili
                                                                 Published on Wed Aug 26 2015

                                                                                       (emphasis JS)

 It’s estimated that in five years over 40 percent of the American labor force will have uncertain work; in a decade, most of us.

Increasingly, businesses need only a relatively small pool of “talent” anchored in the enterprise –  innovators and strategists responsible for the firm’s unique competitive strength.

Everyone else is becoming fungible, sought only for their reliability and low cost.
...
But that’s not all. Ultimately, we’ll need a guaranteed minimum basic income. ...

Why the 'Gig' and 'Share' Economy Is the Last Thing You Want to Depend on to Pay the Bills
Robert Reich
via AlterNet

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
Henry David Thoreau