"Now what happens then when you introduce technology into production? You produce enormous quantities of goods by technological methods, but at the same time you put people out of work. You can say, "Oh but it always creates more jobs. There will always be more jobs." Yes, but lots of them will be futile jobs. They will be jobs making every kind of frippery and unnecessary contraption, and one will also at the same time have to beguile the public into feeling that they need and want these completely unnecessary things that aren't even beautiful. And therefore an enormous amount of nonsense employment and busy work, bureaucratic and otherwise, has to be created in order to keep people working, because we believe, as good Protestants, that the devil finds work for idle hands to do."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Alan Watts, Money, Guilt, and the Machine, 22:00
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Basic_income
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Basic income
94 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Basic income →
Related Quotes
"With a basic income, more people can choose for themselves whether to work full-time or part-time, making their own t…"
"The economic impact of the UBI together with the three tax changes in the US would be roughly as follows. First, bank…"
"Unless we abandon the work ethic of another era, ... lives may be wasted because of blind insistence that everyone mu…"
"The State ... should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility; in establishing a national minimum, it should…"
""Jobs for every American" is doomed to failure because of modern automation and production. We ought to recognize it …"
"'Suppose there were a man, a slave, a labourer, getting up before you and going to bed after you, willingly doing wha…"
"If you read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Article 25, it says people have rights to adequate food…"
"The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-econo…"
"I'm always concerned about, more than anything else, the waste of human potential. ... So much intelligence is wasted…"
"Basic income grants freedom and security without strings attached. It automatically supplements low wages without bur…"