I've never read/seen that word before, I had to look that up, thanks, again, for hooking up the vocabulary!
You highlight another great point - wherever we are, there will be jobs that require minimum skill, therefor, minimum wage. Do we want to be a society that lets people work full time and still be homeless? I know I don't. I know I would gladly subtract from my (trust me) minimal wages to ensure less of my fellow human beings are subject to abject poverty. These are people, just as important and special as you and me, they deserve the opportunity to be the makers of their own destinies. If it means paying $0.12 more per box of mac and cheese, are you fuckin' kidding me? Add it. Don't ask me.
So when I hear about stories like the Panama Papers, it makes me seriously question reality, the plane I live on, if this is all real.. it just blows my mind how so many people can be so absolutely greedy and disregard the billions they share their world with..
I simply can't fathom how it could be possible. You have so much and yet, you need, so much.. more...
It hasn't been studied, but it will be. Affluence is a disease, just as narcissism and depression
Happy to help with the vocabulary for the cause! Besides, not only is it a cool concept but it just fairly drools with sophistication as it slides casually off the tongue, "arbitraaaaaage...." Girls love it too, cuz they dig sexy French words and because guys who know that word are usually one percenters, themselves. (/s)
Either there will be dirty/low skill/low caste jobs that wouldn't ordinarily pay a living wage or they will be automated, eliminating the need for a human worker at all. We need to address how our society will actually work in the coming Midas age of a robot working class.
One way to do that is to put a floor under wages. John Henry is already immortalized as the apocryphal hero of the battle of man vs machine and of course we know how it turned out. If we allow the corporate overlords to continue ruling our country, every job that can be done by machine will become a job they won't pay a living wage for- and soon enough, that will be most every job. Intellectual work is NOT safe from this; there are now far more trades on the exchanges executed by computer than humans. Yes, even arbitrage can be automated- fuck, on Wall Street it already has been for years.
The Panama Papers scandal is proof that it's not about the money; it's about power, and negative power- to destroy, to starve- is easier than other kinds. We're about to hand the power over the future of the human race to a non human construct that does not share human values, only that of profit.
Global warming is a nice day in the park compared to that.