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Comment by alexb_ | Hacker News Reader

>When you get that first paycheck, it’s not paying for what you already did, because you already did it. It’s paying for you to continue doing what you’re now doing. It’s fueling your work. It’s providing you the freedom to continue that work. It’s an unleashing of potential.

What? This makes zero sense to me. I work for money. I do not work because I like working, and the money is just "unleashing potential". Similarly, Colgate makes toothpaste because they know the supermarket will buy it. There is risk they won't, which they accept in return for a profit margin.

>the money doesn't matter. Money you can print. We have experienced that in this financial crisis. You can arbitrarily increase it. The question is, whether the corresponding goods are present. The poverty in our society isn't a precariat problem. It is an elite problem.

This is insane.

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There are many jobs that you could be working at. Why are you doing your job and not some other job? It is because this company created the prerequisite environment for you to be able to do this job - an agreement to pay you for the work. If you don't like doing the work, then you are doing it because you don't have the required resources to be able to stop working.

I kind of agree with you: when you quit, your employer has to give you your paycheck even though you won't come again..

I think the argument is not that you are not working for money, it's that within the first two weeks that you worked you already payed bills. In a way that means you provided the capital before you did the work. So the money always comes first, which is the basis for his argument. The company then pays you which allows you to keep paying your bills but you cannot pay your bills with future income, hence money always comes first and thus allows you to work in the first place

Except until you get the money, you haven't paid the bill - you've at best shifted it. If you put it on a credit card, for instance, until you pay off the credit card, you haven't paid what you owe. The credit card company has paid the bill, and now you owe the credit card company (plus interest for them assuming your debt).

When you get that paycheck, only then can you actually pay your bills, to whomever holds your debt at the time. To put it another way - you can't pay someone if you don't have any money in hand.

You are not arguing against his point though, you are shifting it. His point is that it has been paid and you are saying the same thing. His argument is not about who paid the bill (if it was you or the bank) the argument is that it was paid and you seem to agree with that I think?

€ A different way of putting it is to imagine you had 0$ and a job that pays you in two weeks. Now you cannot take any credit since that means the bank pays for you (so the money comes first then the work). What do you do now to survive two weeks? The answer is that you need money to be able to work, not the other way around.

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