David Graeber (via azspot)
(via redcloud)
"This is the real burden of debt we’re passing on to future generations: the burden of having to work ever harder, while at the same time, consuming more energy, eroding the earth’s ecosystems, and ultimately accelerating catastrophic climate change at just the moment we desperately need some way to reverse it. Seen in this light, a debt cancellation might be the last chance we have to save the planet. The problem is that con- servatives don’t care, and liberals are still caught up in impos- sible dreams of returning to the Keynesian economic policies of the ‘50s and ‘60s, which based broad prosperity on continual economic expansion. We’re going to have to come up with an entirely different kind of economic policy. But if a post-jubilee society can’t promise the workers of the world an endless expansion of new consumer goods, what can it? I think the answer is obvious. It could offer security in basic needs — guarantees of food, housing, and health care that can ensure our children don’t have to face the fear, shame, and anxiety that defines most of our lives today. And above all, it can offer them less work. Remember that in the 1870s, the idea of an 8-hour day seemed just as unrealistic and utopian as, say, demanding a 4-hour day would seem today. Yet the labor movement managed to achieve it. So why not demand a 4-hour day? Or a guaranteed four months of paid vacation? It is very clear that Americans — those who do have jobs — are absurdly overworked. It’s also clear that a very large propor- tion of that work is completely unnecessary. And every hour saved from work is an hour that we can give to our friends, families, communities."
David Graeber (via azspot)
David Graeber (via azspot)
