Is there any point to working?
For Americans, it's just the time we waste while waiting to consume. As more and more of our jobs are taken over by machines – why are we still hung up on working?
There is the small problem of distributing the wealth but, once our bosses let go of the idea of needing us to show up just to get paycheck – I think we can get our economy back on track.
What we need in America is for our vast consuming class to go pro – to demand to be paid to shop. Retailers already pay for ads to get our attention so why not cut out the middle men and just get paid to go shopping? Imagine how full the malls would be if people stopped working by choice, rather than by circumstance.
The last Superman movie, "Man of Steel" had $160M worth of promotions tied to it. The movie only grossed $291M and, at $10 a ticket, that means about 30M people saw the film. Rather than paying Warner Brothers to make another retelling of the Superman story, why don't the advertisers just GIVE $5 to everyone who sees the movie? More people would see the movie, so the studio would be happy – and that $160M would be spent in the economy, giving everyone a boost.
The top 100 movies last year grossed $11Bn last year so, if we figure they could pay out 50% of the box office, that's $5.5Bn = enough money to give $25,000 to 220,000 professional shoppers. If we apply this logic to other industries as well, we could put millions of pro shoppers to work right away and THEN there would be a demand for more jobs.
We certainly need to do SOMETHING because, as you can see from the chart above, China's spending patterns are falling off dramatically. Surprisingly, the money their Central Bank is pumping into the bank accounts of the top 1% isn't trickling down to the bottom 99% and even the top 1% are starting to cut corners because – SHOCKINGLY – when they don't hire and pay workers, the workers…
