Jobs are a RIGHT, not a privilege. All are entitled to employment.

I put this in social issues as I feel that's what suites it best. Please move it if another section would be more applicable.

Anyway, I knew the title would probably make some people angry. Namely the crowd that thinks being alive doesn't entitle you to anything. While I mostly agree, in respect to certain things, I feel employment is a RIGHT (as it stands right now) and that every single last citizen of the USA is entitled to have a good paying job.

Why do I think this? A very simple reason. You and I, as citizens of the US, are forced into participating in "The System" This is a system that has taken things like food, water, and shelter, and made them into commodities instead of things you can simply provide for yourself, as our species has done for thousands upon thousands of years. If we are FORCED into living within the system, then we are entitled to the means to do so. We are not allowed to "opt out" and leave the chains of economy and currency behind. This is what entitles all of us to employment.

The only way I feel employment would NOT be a right, is if property tax was abolished. I'll try to explain the connection.

To survive a human being needs air, water, food, and shelter. These things, at a point long ago, were "free" to everybody on earth. You inhale and fill your lungs with air that nobody owns, and you don't have to pay for. You drink from a river to satisfy your thirst with water nobody owns, and you don't have to pay for. You hunt animals and forage for fruits and veggies to fill your belly, that's free and you don't have to pay for. You build a shelter off the land, that's free and you don't have to pay for.

Most people would agree that people have a very basic right to life. If you don't have a right to live, then laws about murder make no sense. The anger people feel when a loved one is killed makes no sense. We all (most of us at least) naturally know that the ability to grow and live your life is the most basic right of them all. Yet many feel that the means to live are not a universal right. This makes no sense..

Now what's the connection to property tax and a right to employment?

Employment provides you with money. Money is REQUIRED to live. You CANNOT live, legally, in the USA without money. Unless the government wants to allow the citizens of this country to survive without money, then the government is required to provide us with a means to obtain money IE: employment.

I have already listed the things required for any human to survive. Every last one of these things, with the exception of air, is gained from land. Wood or fiber to build shelter, animals and plants to feed one's self, and rivers and lakes to provide water.

If each of us had an appropriately sized plot of land, and the required skills, we could live completely free of employment or money. The catch is, we are not allowed this.

How do we obtain land? We are forced to buy it. Assuming you some how obtain land without buying it, either by it being gifted to you, or trading goods for it, you still are required to remain within the system, and generate money. Why? If you got a free piece of land, and can support yourself through hunting, fishing, foraging, building your own shelter, why would you need currency? Taxes.

If you own land, you are required by law to pay property tax on it. Long ago lords would accept animals, or crops to pay a tax on their land. While this is still a form of forced participation in the system, at least such types of payments did not require the land owner to procure money to remain on their land.

Some will say you could sell crops, or manufacture goods to generate income to pay for your taxes. Why? You are working on your land to support yourself so that you may live. Why does the dollar factor into this? Because we are forced participants in the system.

And this isn't even taking into account how the government has allowed industry to contaminate many rivers and lakes to the point of being unsuitable for drinking water. Or how even if you were allowed to live on your land without being taxed, there would still be regulations put upon you about how many animals you can hunt, or what types, or what time of year. Until the day when the government allows me to live on my land free and clear, without any sort of payment demanded or rules as far as how I can support myself, then the government is also required to ensure that I have employment to pay to live.

There is a simple universal concept that I have brought up many times already here on ATS. It's that if responsibilities are placed upon you, without your consent (paying money to live, in this case) then equal rights must also be granted (the right of guaranteed employment)

I'm sure some will disagree, but I'd be happy to further defend and discuss my viewpoint with anyone who questions it. I'm not one of those people that feel they deserve the world simply for being born. I do however believe that I am entitled to life, and if the government has decided that to live I am required to generate money, then it's the governments responsibility to guarantee me the means to generate that money.

Thanks for reading!

**Edited for spelling mistakes**

It would have been a right had FDR gotten the second bill of rights passed.

reply to post by James1982


James,
I completely agree with your words. If we are forced to live in 'the system' I also believe we should have the right to work. Star & Flag! Greatly written post!
-Katharos

I would argue that everyone has the opportunity to work. Somewhere. It might be a horrible job but it's a job and it gives you money. Almost anyone can get a job if they try hard enough and if they work for it. If you don't work for it, and you don't try, you don't have the right to work.

You have no rights.

You may think you do, but you don't.

Go out into the " free" world and exercise some of your " rights" and tell me how that works out for you.

You might want to wake up and realize the only one who is going to get you through this hell we live in is yourself.

So wake up from your dream of grandeur and realize your going to have to justify why an employer should pay you a wage instead of demanding one gives you a job.

I always laugh at road crews

2 guys leaning on shovels, 2 directing traffic, 3 looking at plans, 1 guy working

if you make jobs a right, productivity hits rock bottom, and nations like china and india beat us to a pulp on costs

and who pays ? the taxpayers ? who does that work ?

The title doesn't upset me a bit.. Let's just call it what it is. Socialism. If we truly want the nation to take this route, stop playing word games and hide/seek about what we;re all talking about and let's have the public debate.

I'll fight the thing tooth and nail to the end. I'll say that upfront...but if the overall nation honestly chose this in an open way, I guess I'd have to learn to live with it too...what else? If honestly, this system is chosen. For what it is.

Just my two cents.

Interesting viewpoint.

I only fear that if the government provided you with the means to generate income so you could pay the mandated taxes you owe for living, it would be a forced job that you did not like. What are the odds that you would be given a list of government sponsored "jobs", and one or two that you like are on the list? And what are the odds you would be able to keep living where you are at? Most likely, in such a scenario, all of them would be government jobs like a contract to go build a highway several states away (or maybe in your same state, but in the next county or a couple hundred miles from your home). Or if they evaluate all of your skills and place you in a government sponsored job for which you are suited, what if there aren't any where you live? What if your professional skills are computer programming, but the only available job is in Washington, DC? Chances are, someone living in DC will get the job, then you have to pick something else.

There are a whole host of problems when you think about government provided employment...

reply to post by Zaanny


I am plenty awake my friend. I don't propose the government actually provide jobs for everyone that requests it. Aside from many other issues, I don't condone such extreme levels of government involvement in our lives.

What I do propose is the abolition of property tax for private citizens. My declaration that citizens have the right to guaranteed employment is a "tit-for-tat" response to the government's demand for property tax. Basically a "If you want it this way, then we'll have it this way, but then you too have a responsibility"

I'll totally agree that nobody has the right to a job, as soon as the government admits they don't have a right to extort money from me.

reply to post by syrinx high priest


Yep, your absolutely correct. Assuring everyone a job without respect for the value that person can actually provide would be a disaster. That's why the better option is to abolish property tax.

All of this based on the concept of money. Money is the driver.

Why do we value anything that is inanimate?

We were screwed the moment we changed the name from "personnel," to "human resources."

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Absolutely, the government providing jobs for every person would definitely be an aspect of socialism, which I don't support. The alternative is getting rid of property tax.

The whole idea behind this thread is that the government can't have it both ways.(I mean, they CAN have it both ways, they can do whatever they want via force and violence) Either they remove the requirement for people to generate income in order to survive, or they guarantee the ability to generate income. Any other alternative is denying the most basic right to life.

I am talking about what is morally right here. If you kidnap a person and tell them you will only feed them if they do chores around your house, but then don't give them any chores to do, that's not right. Obviously kidnapping someone is wrong in the first place, but in a sense we are kidnapped into the system, as we cannot choose to opt out.

reply to post by totallackey


Exactly.

You shouldn't need money to simply live. People lived for ages without money. You lived by the sweat of your brow and your hard work. The difference is that hard work directly benefited you. Instead of the current system where you slave away your whole life to support others without a choice.

The idea that we shouldn't need money to live has nothing to do with saying we have a right to live without doing any work. Having to do work is guaranteed (well, unless you belong to the class of trust fund kiddies) The idea that we shouldn't need money to live in the most independent and hard working idea out there. It's the idea that anything and everything that I require to live will be supplied by my own skills and labor, and that the value I'm generating to support myself won't be stolen by force.

reply to post by James1982


One has the right to live and to die. Beyond that, life is a series of decisions. Period. Society owes one nothing. Make good decisions and survive, even succeed. Make no or poor decisions and suffer. It's called free will. Use it or lose it.

I must admit that is probably the most compelling, most logical, and best thought-out reasoning for this 'right' I have heard to date. But it errs in one simple assumption: the idea that rights are granted us by our government.

The entire concept of inalienable rights makes this impossible. Any right bestowed by a government can also be removed by that self-same government. Thus, it becomes impossible for any government to bestow inalienable rights, because their act of bestowing the rights makes them alienable.

We have the inalienable right to freedom of speech. No government may (theoretically) deny anyone the right to speak their opinion. This right existed, according to the US Constitution, before the United States of America and therefore it is not subject to the United States of America. The same goes for the right to freedom of religion, to keep and bear arms, to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure, etc. The right to employment did not.

Therefore, it is impossible by definition to have an inalienable right to employment. The best that could happen would be an entitlement to employment.

In addition, employment is an agreement between two entities: the employed and the employer. A right to employment would then be, under our present system, a mandate on some to employ others. Such a right cannot by definition exist, because in order to force one person to be an employer, that persons right to employment would be violated.

Should the government provide the employment, there exists another problem: the wages to pay the employee must come from taxation. The only possible way this could occur without private employment would be for every person to pay 100% in taxes, which could then be used to pay them for their employment. It would be little more than a never-ending symbolic passing of currency from the employing government to the employee, back immediately to the government, then again to the employee. There would be no monetary gain for employment.

Yes, a well-reasoned proposal, but unable to be implemented. It would be easier to force government to accept produce or livestock in lieu of taxes and remove all restriction on land usage.

TheRedneck

reply to post by StreetGlide


And if my choice is to support myself through my own hard work, and not support others without a choice, then tough luck?

Again I'll repeat the whole idea to this thread is that the government has no right to demand I make money to live, and then not guarantee the right to make money. Simply remove the requirement to make money to live (property tax) and the whole issue disappears.

reply to post by TheRedneck


I'll agree with your assessment of what "rights" really are. They aren't something granted, they are something we all have. We don't loose them, they just get violated. Whether or not something gets done about the violation of said rights is a different story, but our rights remain even if they aren't respected.

However I believe that while true rights are something that cannot be removed, only violated, there are also what I'd like to call circumstantial rights.

If you damage my property to the extent of one thousand dollars, I have the right to collect one thousand dollars from you. I didn't have the right to collect $1,000 from you until you damaged my property. This example might not be the best but I hope you understand what I'm getting at.

So, in the case of my idea that employment is a right, it only BECOMES a right after the requirement of earning money to survive comes about. You remove the requirement to earn money to survive, you then also remove the right to employment. That isn't exactly taking someone's rights away, because that specific right only exists because of specific circumstances.

It comes back to the idea of equal application of rights and responsibilities. You assign a responsibility, then certain rights come into play depending on the responsibility. When I brought this up before I said rights must be GRANTED equally with responsibilities, which was worded badly. As you point out true rights cannot be granted or removed. These types of circumstantial rights only arise during certain scenarios.

I'm in actual agreement with most people here who say the government SHOULDN'T provide jobs for everyone. I think it's a terrible idea. But as long as the government requires people to earn income to survive, then the guaranteed ability to earn income becomes a right, because without it you are removing the most basic right to life. Which is why I said before, the best choice is to simply get rid of property tax for private citizens, then there is no issue of lopsided rights and responsibility.

So essentially you demand a job and people don't have the right to not hire you.

Okay, go mop up the bathroom with a toothbrush.

Don't' forget the toilet bowl and the urinals.

And don't forget to get the grout in between the tiles.

reply to post by enjoies05


You mention that you must "work for it" to have a job. Employment is equal to survival in the current setup of our country. I'll agree 100% that to live you must put in work. The issue here is how that work is done, and where the value it generates gets applied.

I keep talking about equal rights and responsibilities. This concept goes both ways. With a right, the right to life in this case, you also have the responsibility to work, to earn your keep.

It's just the logistics of how that work translates into survival that becomes an issue. Owning my own piece of land, hunting and foraging for my own food, building my own shelter is all work. Hard work, at that. That work and value it generates directly benefits me, as it should.

I take no issue with the idea that everyone has a responsibility to put effort and work into surviving. I do take issue with the government dictating the means in which my work and effort translates into survival.

reply to post by EvilSadamClone


That would be private employment. As a private business owner is not the entity dictating that a person generate income in order to live, they aren't the entity charged with the responsibility of providing the means of generating income- the government is.

Do I want everyone to work for the government and be assured a job regardless of their actual value they provide? Absolutely not. I simply want the government to be fair (what a foreign concept, huh?) So if they require income to live, it's their responsibility to ensure everyone has the means to generate income. I don't like, or want it that way. That's simply what's fair and right. It would also be fair and right to NOT guarantee a job, as long as they also don't require property tax. That's the option I prefer. And that's the bottom line, and the whole idea of this thread.