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Comment by gnusty_gnurc | Hacker News Reader

I tend to think work gives some sense of purpose to a person’s life. That’s incalculably valuable.

This was why when Argentina swapped out a job guarantee (plan jefes) with a UBI-type program, many of the women who did the job guarantee jobs of caring for the elderly, etc. kept doing the work in spite of the government telling them it wasn't "necessary" any more.

While it's theoretically possible that they might have spontaneously started doing these jobs if a UBI program had been initiated I'm not aware of any example where this has happened.

Yes. Many types of extremely valuable work in our society is not valued by the market and so is not compensated.

Caring for the elderly, caring for children, my elderly neighbour who sometimes picks up trash on the street, etc.

There are all kinds of crucial work our society desperately needs done, but which are often not even conceptualized as work because there's no wage attached to it.

Also, commercialization can create fake economic growth.

For example, suppose in the past one spouse worked a job for a wage/salary and the other spouse cared for some of the couple's ailing parents, provided childcare, and cooked for the couple's children and parents. Now instead, the second spouse also works a wage job, both spouses pay higher taxes some of which go to caring for the old people, and with the extra income they instead purchase prepared food and pay for daycare. The economy grew a lot because formally unpaid labor is now being paid for, but is everyone better off?

Note: I don't think women should be limited to being homemakers, this is just an example.

If you like your job that's a very useful benefit.

If you don't like your job and you don't think it's actually worthwhile it serves as a reminder that you're wasting your potential, and that can be incredibly detrimental.

You can hate your job and still see that it serves an important purpose.

You can also hate your job and see that it serves no purpose, or worse that you are doing harm (like working collections for predatory lenders or in a factory that churns out bombs that will be dropped on someone).

You can even love your job and see that it serves no purpose!

That's mostly the work that you want to do. The work you must do when being forced by economic factors, especially the extra job one might take in order to make ends meet, gives a sense of dread to a person's life. We can talk about a sense of purpose when people are more-or-less financially stable (at least nothing threatening their first level in Maslow's pyramid) and they get to pick whatever they get to work on. But when you're one step away from homelessness, the sense of purpose and the value derived from that takes the backseat.

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