Wasted Resources

Imagine how rich we, as a society, could be if we didn't have to waste so many resources on eating and getting sick?

All those billions of dollars in subsidies to farmers, ... all those grocery bills that prevent us from saving for vacations, ... all those ludicrously overpriced restaurant bills.

All the billions that go towards hospitals, healthcare workers, health insurance, glasses, dental work, etc., etc., .

Or is it more the case that staying alive costs money, and that in the end, all those resources are "wasted" anyway, because we all die? So it's more the case that we're going to expend energy and resources on things, and some people will pay and others will earn a livelihood from it, so we should stop complaining about things we can't really control.

And, once again, people will earn a livelihood from our expenditures. Just as we'll earn a livelihood from their expenditures. Giving people a livelihood isn't an expense we should begrudge. The poverty of most economic analysis is that it treats labour as this expense that it is rational to try to avoid. It is a "cost" to be minimized. As a result, if (according to the logic of political-economy) some people should be unemployed and destitute, so be it.

This is not a call to ignore efficiency. This is a call for the recognition of human beings' need to work and earn a livelihood. If (as a first principle) you treat labour as a cost to be avoided, don't be surprised if unemployment and poverty are problems for your society.

I support a Guaranteed Annual Income, but I place society's recognition that employing the people we produce is an inevitable fact of life first.