No More Work? Part Two: The Political Part

Moving right along with No More Work; Why Full Employment is a Bad Idea by James Livingston, part two. Again, fair warning, there are going to be a lot of ‘f-bombs’ in this episode, we're really getting into Livingston's F! Work argument now.

In this Episode? Neoliberalism, Keynesian economics, productivism, capital and labor inputs, Nixon, the FAP, and, well, Trump.

Join the conversation on Patreon!

Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Livingston, James. 2016. No More Work : Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Related links:

Acid Horizon, "Data is Dead Labour"

Smith, Tyler. “Assessing the Effects of the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act”

Tax Policy Center, "How Did The TCJA Affect The Federal Budget Outlook?"

Weaver, Warren Jr. The New York Times. "HOUSE UNIT VOTES WELFARE REFORM FAVORED BY NIXON."

Transcript

Hey, before we begin, I just want to take a moment to say goodbye to a friend. I first met Christo almost 20 years ago when we were working at 131 Main, an ‘upscale casual’ restaurant in south Charlotte, where some other, older friends had connected me with my first bartending job - well, service bar, technically, but, besides the point. Christo was one of the kindest and gentlest people I’ve ever known, not to mention the biggest Matrix fan I think I’ve ever met, and more then once played Mr. Anderson to my Agent Smith. Often quick to provide a word of encouragement, when imposter syndrome at my being a ‘philosopher’ would creep in, and he was the first supporter of this podcast; so I feel it would be remiss of me not to let his loss go unmentioned here. 

If you’re struggling, please reach out to friends, loved ones, or other resources in your community. And if you’re not struggling, don’t wait until the next funeral comes along to reconnect with your friends and family - and, I know, I’m plenty guilty of not following my own advice here, maintaining relationships isn’t nearly as easy as getting lost in the daily routine, but I’m going to stop now before I start to ramble. 

Goodnight, Christo. 

Hello, welcome, and thank you for checking out this episode of Philosophy Versus Work, the podcast that examines the Ethics of the “Work Ethic” and other philosophical and socio-political questions regarding Work, Life, and Death. I am Michael Murray and I’ll be your guide on this philosophical journey. 

Episode 19: No More Work? Part 2 – The Political Part

Alright, let’s just jump right in, shall we? Here’s part two of No More Work. If you haven’t listened to the last episode, I recommend doing that now. It’s okay, I’ll wait…

No, seriously, you can stop and download the other one. I won’t stop you. 

Alright, fine, if you insist… as I was saying… 

Livingston is problematizing Marx’ socially necessary labor-time by focusing on socially necessary labor – and I suspect the “libertarian communism” author is making a similar move – a move that isn’t far afield from what Graeber is doing in Bullshit Jobs or what Weeks is doing in The Problem with Work. Livingston, however, is leaning on both what Marx has to say about “dead labor” (machinery and automation, though he uses the more modern, economist parlance of “plant and equipment”) mitigating labor costs, i.e., eliminating jobs (a task that’s in the capitalist’s best interests in order to increase profit). Note, Machines are “dead labor” in that labor (human work) was used to build the machinery and it was purchased, paid for outright, which then replaces labor (human work) in the production process – the Acid Horizon podcast has an interesting polemic up on AI and data as dead labor, it’s worth checking out. Link in show notes. Livinston’s also riffing on what JM Keynes predicted, positively, in terms of the promise of machinery freeing people from labor, as productivity increases. And, backtracking a little to ‘labor as the essence of man,’ on the political side of that argument, how Abraham Lincoln held up free (as opposed to slave, not free of cost) labor as the stepping stone to true freedom. 

If you came up in American schools, Karl Marx is probably not a name you associate with Abraham Lincoln – odds are your knowledge is limited to Honest Abe, a log cabin in the backwoods of Illinois, the Civil War, the Emancipation Declaration, the penny, and the assassination… and of course his time hunting vampires, you know, the important stuff. So, Lincoln’s position in labor politics (beyond slavery), letters exchanged between Marx and Lincoln, and Lincoln’s leaning on international Communist parties to restrain European support for the Confederacy, may surprise you (yes, Communism existed well before Lenin and Stalin). As a bit of a teaser, we’ll go over this in some detail later down the line. I’ve decided to include an episode on Marx and Lincoln close to the end of the next section. But, quickly, I’ll note the following; as Lincoln stated in his 1861 “Annual Message to Congress,” “Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” Early in his tenure, Lincoln differed from Marx in thinking there was no inherent conflict between free labor and capital, but his position evolved over time as more and more of the American labor force moved from self-employment to waged employment – opposite of what he’d originally projected; that waged labor was a kind of training and capital accumulation period that would inevitably lead to self-employment (and, therefore, true freedom).

Keynesian economics is, in brief, the opposite of neoliberalism, which arose as a response to Keynesian macroeconomic theory, and holds that direct government intervention in the market is necessary in order to stabilize market forces; for example, jobs programs, transfer payments (entitlements, welfare, etc. that use taxation to transfer surplus wealth to the unemployed and working poor (and what would today be called the underemployed), regulation of the private sector, progressive taxation, etc., what’s commonly called demand side (or trickle up) economics. Holding that supporting market demand (the ability of the public to purchase goods and services), to include debt spending on public works projects and transfer payments, produces the most stable and prosperous economy – an economic model that has proven successful around the world – often, since the 80s, to the chagrin of, and in open opposition to, the IMF and World Bank. Personally, I’m sure it’s just coincidence that the Great Decoupling, when, beginning in the 80s, the steady rise of wage incomes in time with productivity broke dramatically from wealth and productivity, and, I’m sure only coincidentally escalated on par with inflation, occurred when the US policy moved from Keynesian to Neoliberal economic theory.

For Keynes, the use of automation to increase productivity and reduce labor-time meant that, as a society, we’d have less work to do – and that this was a good thing! Keynes predicted the reduction of the work week to a mere 15 hours, in order to produce all of the ‘things’ we need and can buy, with machines doing the rest of the (manual) work. 

Regarding this increase in productivity (without an increase in necessary labor), notes Livingston, and I’m editing a bit here for brevity, quote

Once upon a time, in the nineteenth century, economic growth was driven by net additions to the capital stock and the labor force. In other words, growth was built on more machines… and more workers operating those machines. In the parlance of economists, net private investment rose, capital stock per worker increased, and both employment and labor force participation rates did, too. … Since 1919, growth has worked differently. Thereafter, net private investment declined, and employment in goods production did, too, but growth didn’t stop, not even in the 1930s. … If growth no longer requires new additions to the capital stock, or net private investment [capitalists reinvesting profit into their companies in order to generate growth to create jobs, etc., you know, ‘trickle down,’ neoliberal economics] corporate profits become pointless, superfluous, even dangerous, because they can’t be reinvested in productive ways. They’re surplus capital, nothing more, nothing less. 

And if growth requires neither more capital nor more labor, less work and more leisure become the key not just to the good life, as John Maynard Keynes insisted, but to life as such.

Another note on net private investment; this was the alleged point of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which, according to the Tax Policy Center, since 2018 have added between one and two trillion dollars to the national debt, and per the Senate Budget Committee, if extended another 10 years, (and they almost certainly will be, this was a major factor in Trump suddenly flipping on being in favor of House Republicans voting in favor of expanding the debt ceiling) could add another 4-5 trillion to the national debt; these contributed next to nothing to jobs and wages. The American Economic Association recently interviewed Eric Zwick, one of the authors of a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, regarding the TCJA (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act), and notes Zwick, Professor of Economics and Finance, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business – once the home of Friedrich Hayek and the intellectual ground zero of neoliberalism, to this day, ‘the Chicago School’ is synonymous with neoliberal economic theory and policy –  “It [the TCJA] basically generates an increase in labor demand, which should have some employment effect. There is limited evidence of direct employment effects in the short run after the reform. There's a wage response that's on the order of a half a percent to a percent of income that seems to be concentrated at the very top of the worker earnings distribution, such as CEOs.” Where one recommendation proposed increased individual earnings of between 4 and 9 thousand dollars, thanks to the Trump tax cuts, the real impact was more like 500 to 1000 dollars – and even that is based on averages that we now know include the fact that the gains were concentrated at the executive level. For average workers, there were no appreciable gains derived from the Trump tax cuts. Wages did not see any appreciable gains until after the so-called Great Resignation was underway. Those who benefitted the most from the Trump tax cuts soon became the same people bitching that ‘no one wants to work anymore.’ Gee, I wonder why. 

When those cuts went through, I was working for the kind of large corporation that was supposed to reap large benefits from the TCJA, which was supposed to, in turn, according to Trump and McConnell, increase hiring and increase wages. That didn’t happen. What did happen, and what was reported happened with most large firms, they bought back stock. My employer went on a buying spree, taking over small firm after small firm, but also, between 2017 and 2018, buying 4 major firms valued together at over 5 billion dollars; expanding their portfolio and laying off hundreds of people around the world, every year. To my knowledge, they’re still doing just that, and their stock price is higher than ever – it’s taken a dip recently, but peaked at almost $900 per share in December 2024. Before the TCJA kicked in, they were sitting around a hundred bucks a share. Now, granted, most of that growth has occurred since 2021. Following Trump’s TCJA, the stock tripled in 3 years, but then almost tripled again in only 2 years following Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act – take from that what you will. 

Livingston, getting back to the point, bases the idea of socially necessary labor on productivity, the actual work that needs to be done to produce all of the widgets needed in a growing market, but critically highlights that that amount of work is constantly, and ever more rapidly, decreasing, and, as a result, primarily of plant and equipment (machinery and automation, robotics, cybernation, etc.), that this increased productivity requires neither more labor nor more capital. 

Sidenote, as our late capitalist, financialized and information driven economy becomes ever more based in IT, think of this as Moore’s Law as applied to the economy. Moore’s Law, for those not familiar with the term, goes back to an observation by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965 (that he updated and increased the rate on only 10 years later, as tech advances had already seriously outstripped his original projections), that the number of transistors on a circuit board will double every two years with minimal cost – basically, this is why industrial and consumer electronics are always getting better and faster, but also getting cheaper at the same time. Taken in combination with planned obsolescence – originally an idea from the automotive industry in the 1920s as industry protection from market saturation, no one who has a car needs to buy a car, unless you force them to need a new car – information technology, given better tech will be available cheaper (to produce) in only 2 years, is the perfect widget to benefit from this death of labor. 

Since these increases in productivity don’t need more labor or capital investment, more labor and capital (corporate profits) are surplus, in the literal sense, wholly unnecessary to the economy. There is no justifiable economic reason, based in the real functioning of the economy, not to increase taxes on corporations to fund transfer payments, and, well, as Livingston says, “fuck work.” If there is no economic reason for corporate profits, or full employment, then the reason is political, and (making a bit of a Foucauldian move here) that means political action can be taken to change it (and, do so without negative impact to growth or productivity).

As an alternative to socially necessary labor, Livingston puts forward an emphasis on socially beneficial labor – and, I’ll note, Weeks and Graeber draw similar conclusions. Before digging into that though, I’d like to add something I think Livingston leaves out. Now, he does get into productivism as a kind of ideology; that we’ve internalized, one, a compulsion to be productive, and, two, a belief that leisure equates to idleness, which in turn equates to immorality, which, combined, means we have to work, even if the work is pointless or we hate the job – I’m not going to go into this here though, mostly as I think Graeber does a better job of analyzing this phenomenon in Bullshit Jobs, but also because this will come back up when we get to Max Weber and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, as well as Freud and Civilization and its Discontents and trying a psychoanalytic approach to history and work. 

If Livingston is right about productivism and socially, let’s say, un-necessary labor, and I believe he is, I think we need to deal with the problem that modern work has become Politically necessary labor. Work and poverty are, or at least have become, necessary to the maintenance of the political and economic status quo – poverty wages, for profit health insurance, the steady decline of public investment in schools, teachers, universities, etc., lack of federal political support for maternity (or paternity) time, paid vacation, shorter work weeks, or establishment of a ‘living’ wage – see Bernie Sanders’ recent grilling of Trump Treasury nom, hedge fund billionaire Scott Bessent and his commitment to not increasing the federal minimum wage from its below poverty line $7.25 (a person earning the federal minimum wage working 40 hours per week, every week, with no time off, will earn less than half the federal poverty line, and be fully reliant on government aid to survive – poverty wages are nothing less than the government subsidizing wages, but providing all the benefits to the capitalist class); these are all necessary components in guaranteeing the cheap labor that in turn guarantees higher profits; but, more importantly, they’re all necessary in maintaining a populace that is too busy with work and too focused on immediate financial needs to ponder big political questions (like the problem of work). In other words, Aristotle and Arendt were right. 

Sidenote, you can also view this as a reason neither the Left nor Right, with some few exceptions (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC), have demonstrated any real interest in reducing prices to deal with inflation – which note, has long since departed from real monetary and supply/demand logic, leaving just price inflation (as opposed to cost or exchange rate – we have, likewise, long since left the territory of monetary policy and Fed action, or at least Fed action alone, being able to resolve the problem) as evident in massive corporate profits simultaneous to diminished consumer confidence, increasing household debt, and flattening wages. Biden’s IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, is unlikely to have any real effect on prices for years to come (if it happens at all, depending on what Trump does over the next few years, which, of course, will be sold as the fault of the IRA itself rather than the failure of the Trump administration or Congress to properly fund or enact its provisions). Inflation itself has dramatically diminished since 2021 – though, it needs to be said, we’ve just hit three straight months now of inflation gradually creeping up; while Trump’s plan, tariffs and mass deportations, will likely increase prices in terms of real costs; thus increasing conditions of financial need, and the stresses that come with it, further reducing political engagement, increasing the resentment and fear MAGA relies on, and prompting more to be willing to work even more for even less. Addressing the actual problem would require fiscal policy, and that means raising taxes, instead of interest rates, particularly corporate taxes and capital gains. Absolute anathema to the ascendant, modern Republican party. 

Alright, I know this is a lot, but we’re almost through it, I think we’ve got the biggest theory issues out of the way, and, of course, I highly recommend giving the book a read, it’s pretty short and I think it goes without saying Livingston goes into a lot more historical detail (market economic history, Christianity and capitalism, race and gender, Keynesian economics, uncritical (or perhaps complicit) bipartisan support for work, etc.) to support his argument than I have time for here.

Now, I’ve brought up neoliberalism a few times, but it isn’t really part of Livingston’s argument per se. I do want to drop a pin in some recommended reading though, as neoliberal economic and political theory plays a major role in how that surplus profit has been managed these past almost-50 years. I’m recently finished listening to the audiobook of David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism (and by brief, it’s like 250 pages), and it’s a fascinating, if a bit dry at times (it is a history book, not a polemic on economics, until the conclusion, anyway), survey of the theories, policies, and global effects of neoliberalism – spoiler, despite its claims to prosperity (and jobs) for all, the effect has, universally, been the return of class power via consolidation of wealth and “accumulation by dispossession” to the top; a new aristocracy via oligarchy. And this was published in 2007, so I can only imagine where the image of Trump’s second inauguration and the front row Tech ‘Br-Overlords’ really hammer home that argument. I highly recommend checking it out if you’re interested economic history. 

From the ‘official’ description on its Oxford University Press page:

Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so.

Its spread has depended upon a reconstitution of state powers such that privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized. State interventions in the economy are minimized, while the obligations of the state to provide for the welfare of its citizens are diminished. David Harvey, author of 'The New Imperialism' and 'The Condition of Postmodernity', here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage.

Every US President since, and including, Reagan, up until Trump, has been a neoliberal of one stripe or another – personally, I find it kinda difficult to peg Trump economically. His naked, self-interested transactionalism, vacillating from mercantilism to protectionism to imperialism… he certainly fits the bill of those that benefit most from neoliberal policies, but his (at least rhetorical) opposition to globalism and organizations like the WTO and IMF… I don’t know. I suspect 10, 20 years from now someone far better versed in economic theory and history than me will write some groundbreaking text on Trump-o-nomics. 

So, if neoliberalism, per se, isn’t part of Livingston’s argument, why do I bring it up? Well, I believe it helps explain why, as Livingston points out, the Right and Left are both wrong about political projects aimed at full employment, specifically, why they’re both on the same side on this issue. No More Work is more concerned with that they’re both wrong and that we, the body politic (the voters) need to do something about it, and that they, elected Republicans and Democrats, are neither of them on the side of the working class. 

From the get-go, Livingston notes, quote

These days everybody from Left to Right … addresses this breakdown of the labor market [its failure to do what it’s supposed to exist for: rationally allocate the society’s wealth via incomes, i.e., jobs] by advocating full employment, as if having a job is self-evidently a good thing, no matter how dangerous, demanding, or demeaning it is. But “full employment” is not the way to restore our faith in hard work, or playing by the rules, or whatever (note that the official unemployment rate [when written in 2014] is already below 6 percent, which is pretty close to what economists used to call full employment). Shitty jobs for everyone won’t solve any social problem we now face.

He continues, later on, quote

Today, the Left, broadly construed to include socialists, liberals, and all manner of intermediate positions, has just one answer [to the question of what happens to society, morally, productively, etc., ‘when the work runs out?’]: full employment. So does the Right, broadly construed to include libertarians, conservatives, evangelicals, and the ample bandwidth in between. All parties want, above all, to create more jobs.

Now, this seems to not make much sense. How is the answer to the lack of work to create more jobs? Well, for that, I am going to defer here to Bullshit Jobs (2018), which I also referenced in episode 6, “Toward Meaningful Work.” 

Graber identifies the problem as such, quote

… rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.

These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”

The phenomenon of bullshit jobs also draws Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism into the conversation, in his discussion of Market Stalinism, where we left off before the holidays. 

Republicans and Democrats, informed by neoliberal economic theory – the mainstream theory of the past 50 years – have actually, in supporting capitalism, produced a phenomenon that was supposed to exist only in Sovietism – the creation of jobs, almost from whole cloth, that don’t do anything, don’t produce anything, and, generally speaking, earn more than the jobs that do, in order to keep the economy moving, increase, or at least maintain, the flow of wealth from the public to the capitalist class, and maintain the public in a state of enough financial need that they have no choice but to work and no time to consider larger issues – what I’m calling politically necessary labor. 

If there is no economic basis for it, then full employment has to be a political issue, and if that’s the case, we need to be asking “who benefits,” If not the worker or the economy? Based on growth and productivity, more labor adds nothing. It’s just work for work’s sake. Bullshit jobs. Surplus labor and surplus profit. 

So, let’s talk about what Livingston proposes post-work; disconnecting income from work (universal basic income) and socially beneficial labor. 

There are two big historical moments for getting from conceptualizing ‘the problem of work’ to ‘fuck work,’ the Great Decoupling (which Livingston doesn’t go into per se, though he does, as noted, go over the labor market, growth, production, and income) and the Nixon administration’s Family Assistance Plan (the FAP). 

First, income. Livingston notes we need to disconnect income from work, but also points out that we’ve already done this; and in more than one sense. The earnings of wall street brokers and chief executives, like gangsters and drug dealers, have no rationally measurable connection to their productivity. They earn exponentially far beyond their labor-time at work. Likewise, those who do reproductive or “care” work (traditionally dubbed “women’s work,” i.e. nursing, teaching, housekeeping, child-rearing, etc.) earn dramatically less, if anything at all, for the work they do – sidenote, this is one rationale for why men (allegedly ‘should’) earn more. As the so-called bread winner, they earn both what their job is worth, as well as the money to pay their wives for providing for the reproduction of his labor and the  future generations of the labor force. If we’ve already disconnected income from real work, then disconnecting income from work broadly speaking ought not be difficult. It’s not an economic problem; it’s a political one. 

So, the political proof that it can be done, and that the rhetorical, political fears that direct transfer payments to redistribute surplus wealth (the public being “on the dole”) will result in people refusing to work, thus resulting in societal, economic, and moral collapse by everyone sitting at home and watching daytime TV are baseless, lies in the basic income experiments in the US and Canada in the 60s and 70s. The example par excellence being the FAP. A program so successful, and so disproving of these unfounded fears, that it simply had to be stopped. 

Notes Livingston, “On April 17, 1970, the House of Representatives voted 243 to 155 for legislation that would install a guaranteed annual income for all American citizens in need.” The House at this time was under Democratic leadership, 255 to 180, and the committee vote ahead of the general floor vote was, at the time, considered a serious win for Nixon. As reported by the New York Times, March 6, 1970, 

WASHINGTON, March 5— President Nixon's proposal to guarantee every American family a minimum income supplied in whole or part by the Government was overwhelmingly approved today by the House Ways and Means Committee. … The vote was 21 to 3, an auspicious beginning for a controversial program that is now expected to win easy approval on the House floor later this month. All Republicans on the committee supported the bill; the three negative—were cast by Democrats…”

Yes, you heard that correctly, government provided basic income was a Republican plan. The conservatives of the time, the Democrats, opposed FAP bills in the House and Senate, though parts eventually passed in the Senate, under ultimately burdensome qualifications and partial funding. Spoiler, conservative opposition to the FAP played a major role in coalescing the beginnings of the modern conservative movement (Christian conservatives that feared diminishing the Protestant/Work Ethic and the racist, segregationist conservative ‘Dixiecrats’ exiled in the wake of the civil rights movement, fundamentally opposed to improving economic conditions for black folk in the South) that elected Ronald Reagan and ushered in Neoliberalism.

Now, to be fair, not all Democrats that opposed the FAP, did so on the basis of work-ethic or racism. Cheyney and Rumsfeld, and likely this was a core position of the Republicans, viewed the FAP as an alternative to programs like Medicaid and Social Security; the idea being once the FAP was implemented in full, the other social safety net programs (the welfare state) could be gradually shut down. At least some Democrats saw the FAP as a threat to the legacies of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. 

Back to Livingston.

Now, if you want to get into the details here, check out the “New Jersey Graduated Work Incentive Experiment” (1974) the dissertation by Heather Ross, then a PhD candidate in economics at MIT – a quick Google search will get you a link to the full PDF – and research relating to it. In short, her research became the basis of federal policy after the Brookings institute forwarded it to the OEO (Office of Economic Opportunity, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheyney), more think tanks and more experiments got involved, in the US and Canada, and they all showed basically the same results. Notes Livingston, regarding the New Jersey experiment, “The typical income supplement for this experimental group, which was balanced by race, was $1100, raising family income to $5348 (in 2014 dollars, roughly $32,000 [recall, this is that same adjusted for inflation poverty line discussed in episode 13 – so, this is not a particularly generous ‘handout’ people could actually live on. Even at a whopping 20% of their annual household income, this was just enough to get working people just above the poverty line]). Livingston, again, “The control group lived on that much less, right around the official poverty line of $4000.”

The biggest question, politically, was the issue of “work effort,” the presumption that it would decrease and people would work less if they were given supplemental income. 

He continues, “The most important of those results [in Rumsfeld’s report of the OEO studies] was that ‘work effort’ in the experimental group – the one getting something for nothing – barely changed: ‘There is no evidence that work effort declined among those receiving income support payments. On the contrary [!][Livingston’s emphasis], there is an indication that the work effort of those participants receiving payments increased [my emphasis] relative to the work effort of those not receiving payments.”

To me, the OEO’s ‘work effort’ results aren’t surprising. Today it’s well documented that access to better, healthier food, better living conditions, more time to spend on things like homework (with a parent or mentor), access to information technology, etc. produces better outcomes for children and adults and that these people that were able to take advantage of more and better resources, and less stress resulting from financial need, would actually have more effort for work. While those without such support, facing greater stress (and likely depression and/or malnutrition) would demonstrate less effort in what they can do. 

One interesting data point in these studies is that, despite the relative rise in “work effort” by those receiving payments, women in payment receiving families reduced working hours, on average, by about 5 hours per week. Seemingly to take care of their families, assist with homework, etc. On average, the family size of those receiving payments in the New Jersey study was 5.8. 

Let me say that again, because this feels insane to me. The average family in the study was about 6 people, living on, with the supplement, $5348 per year (or about thirty-two grand, adjusted to 2014 dollars, when Livingston was writing this). This is what politicians and pro-business interests like the Chamber of Commerce were terrified would cause people to drop out of the work force. That $1100 payment, adjusted for inflation from 1974 to now, would amount to just under $7000. No one, anywhere in this country, even with a strong support system, could live on $7000 a year, let alone support a family of 6!! 

Per Statista.com, “Percentage distribution of household income in the United States in 2023,” roughly half of US households earned less than $100,000. The largest group, 15.7%, earned between 50 and 75 thousand, and about 14% of households, roughly 38 million people, living below the official poverty line – which it also notes has been reduced to $26,500 for a family of 4 (this is seriously what a family of four is expected to earn and actually be able to pay for housing and groceries? The definition of the poverty line). In 2023, the US labor force (civilian and active-duty military) was around 271 million people – this includes all able to work, including employed and unemployed. Presuming a fairly high cap of $50,000 a year (still well below what a person can be independent on, in most of the US), we’re talking about around 80 million able-to-work people – presuming 40 million households (31% of 131 million total households, per BLS and census data), and average household size of 2.5, and trying to account for children… receiving a benefit of $7000 per year (inflation adjusted Nixonian FAP), which would cost about $560 billion. Now, yes, that is, by any calculus, a lot of money, it’s also a little more than half of what an extension of the Trump cuts is expected to cost. Per year.  And unlike the Trump cuts, this puts $7000 a year directly in the hands of those who need it most and provides direct stimulus to the economy (in a Keynesian sense) to the tune of half a trillion a year. Or, we could just keep funneling money up to our newly crowned oligarchy. 

So, we have the economic proof that neither decreasing labor nor increasing capital (surplus wealth) have any impact on productivity or growth. Historical data that transfer payments, rather than making lazy, slothful, unproductive (immoral) people, actually supports people to do more. And we know the old middle-class guarantor jobs in manufacturing (and, I would add, fossil fuel extraction, sorry Donnie) are never coming back. There is no economic sense in it. Technological advancements constantly make automation cheaper and faster – and on the fossil fuel side, we already have massive transfer payments being made here to support dying industries. Livingston’s conclusion, taking these factors together… let the robots take the jobs, bring on the transfer payments to the public, and fuck work! 

And that leads us to Livingston’s most important question, what do we do after work? What does the post-work Utopia look like? What do we do, when there’s no more work? (This being the utopian version, and not Arendt’s dystopian slide into totalitarianism)

In short, we follow the golden rule, we transition into a care economy, we ‘be our brother’s keeper.’ We do the socially beneficial labor, “what has long been characterized, dismissed, [and] denigrated, as women’s work” – freed from socially necessary labor (that has “become practically speaking, worthless”), we take on the work worth doing – which somehow, and, ironically, to me anyway, doesn’t move Livingston’s needle on “meaningful work” projects – the kind of work that has never had a ‘commensurate market price.’

This, it’s important to note, especially now, will not be easy; and, I’m forced and a little shamed to admit, is largely because of, well, men. 

Here’s another failing – to no fault of Livingston’s – of the text having been written in 2014. Notes Livingston, quote

Hanna Rosin [American writer, podcaster, and senior editor for The Atlantic] has recently predicted the “end of men” [she later turned this into a book in 2021] as a result of the Great Recession. The phrase is playful hyperbole, of course, but the empirical groundwork of her argument is the significant decline of labor-force participation by men since 2008. What happens when men become useless because they don’t work? Are women taking over the world because jobs of the traditional, masculine kind – you know, in factories, in manufacturing – are disappearing? Does the world turn upside down when the absence of work makes men superfluous?

Well, to answer your question James, no, not necessarily, but it does result in two elections of Donald Trump. Especially given the results of the 2024 election. This same issue, the recession of men from the labor market, the attrition of these “masculine” jobs, and the subsequent rise in women in the labor force and correlate increase in care and service sector jobs, is, so far, pretty generally agreed to be the major contributor to Donald Trump’s support from traditionally Democrat-voting men; working cl ass, labor union, and, especially, young men (without college degrees), that are increasingly perceiving their future financial security ebb away. Trump’s politics of resentment and nostalgia offers an ideal opiate to these men’s fears. Will Trump actually do anything for them? Well, based on his proposed policy positions and the people he’s putting in leadership positions… No, not even remotely, if anything things will get far worse for them; but, he offers them scapegoats (immigrants, women, trans people, and ‘woke’ liberals in blue states and cities) to redirect their anger, and he addresses them (and their perceived grievances) directly, where they are, on ‘bro’ podcasts like those hosted by Joe Rogan and (explicitly) right-wing ‘bro’ podcasts like those hosted by Theo Von or Ben Shapiro, and so they feel seen and heard – even though he’s gaslighting them. 

Livingston, however, and, again, this was written pre-Trump, offers an alternative in terms of advocating for ‘women’s work’ as socially beneficial labor, but faults the denigration of such, one, as women’s work, and two, as undervalued by the market (but, if we disconnect income from work, the latter problem no longer matters). 

In referencing ‘traditional women’s work’ (“social work, health care, education” and the like), he states, quote

Why doesn’t ‘emotional labor’ pay a living wage? Or, put it this way: Has most labor time [not hyphenated] become, practically speaking, worthless, because the market can register the cost of socially necessary labor time [again, not hyphenated, and I don’t know if this is an intentional departure from Marx or just a personal grammatical choice and has no specific, different meaning] and compensate its performance accordingly, but can’t let us reward socially beneficial labor time – what has long been characterized, dismissed, or denigrated, as ‘women’s work?’”

In a word, yes. 

On the one hand, we have an option in terms of work that both needs doing and is socially beneficial – as opposed to making ever more widgets (and ever more waste – sidenote, check out Netflix’ recent documentary “Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy”– it’s an unfortunate choice of title, but it’s a well-researched and witty, if dark, commentary on the massive amount of damage consumer culture, especially: Amazon’s retail-as-immediate-gratification, planned obsolescence and fast fashion, is causing); but, on the other hand, there’s the problem that this is, traditionally, low waged work (if waged at all). 

So, here’s the ultimate problem; capitalism – specifically late capitalism as accelerated under neoliberalism – is presently succeeding in doing what past capitalism alternatives (communism and socialism) have failed to do, it’s ushering in its own demise. It’s causing the ‘end of work.’ Thanks to advances in technology and the dead labor of machinery and automation (plant and equipment), growth and productivity are outpacing increases in labor and capital investment, and neither are needed any longer to increase growth or productivity. Full employment is a pointless goal. We already live in an economy of surplus wealth, not to mention surplus things, and we are approaching a horizon where growth and productivity will become self-sustained (or perhaps, more accurately, sustained by dead labor), no longer needing labor or capital inputs to create more surplus wealth. Thus, what comes after work, as we know it, also dies? 

Says Livingston, quote

The first thing we do is kill all the bankers. Just kidding; we need them to keep the books.

No, the first thing is, we think through what it means to detach income from work. Then we invent practical means of doing so. We don’t have to start from scratch just because for the last fifty years, liberals, conservatives, and all those in between have been addressing the wrong issue, “full employment.” Instead, we start with Nixon’s Family Assistance Program, and see where it leads us.

End quote. 

He concludes that with the disappearance of jobs that pay living wages, and with minimum wage (even at $15, as he notes in 2014) being unlivable, guaranteed annual income becomes a social necessity, not a hand-out. No longer obsessed over affording basic needs, we’re free to think ‘the big questions.’ As Livingston proposes, questions like, “why should I love God better than this day? What do I want to be when I grow up? Where’s the remote?” Not exactly, I think, what Aristotle had in mind, but, hey, it’s a start. 

Alright, next up on the agenda, a return to Kathi Weeks’ The Problem with Work. Previously, I only really addressed a key method in my thinking about work and politics, non-teleological utopianism, that was informed by this text. Utopia, not as a goal, but as an ongoing political project. This time, we’re unpacking the theory and praxis - the philosophy and politics. In the first half, I’m looking at anti-work - the refusal of work as political action, as Weeks describes it, the diagnostic and deconstructive dimension of the critical theory of work - and in the latter half, the demand, the prescriptive and reconstructive aspects - the details of the non-teleological utopian project we previously touched on in Episode 10. 

‘til next time. 

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