I'm not a fan of basic income due to its inflationary effect that all-but neutralizes its spending power.
I also think that the monetary system is inherently imperfect. To put it mildly.
It is structurally unfixable and there is no possible utopia within it. Last, there is no other good option that I know of.
But pensions are not Basic Income, thank goodness. They're a payment into an investment fund that grows as lifetime earned income grows. They're an asset, exactly the same as a business is an asset.
In fact, pension funds invest in businesses.
Whether or not that fund is well managed is another discussion. Moreover, most people in the United States (at least) do not get pensions aside from a minimal social security payment. Which was also paid into a fund.
Working is only individually valuable when there are good jobs, or to fend off starvation.
What working is not is an immutable positive value that any de facto sweat shop owner can claim to offer the opportunity for.
At a certain point the social contract is broken and working becomes something, at the least, that is not virtuous to offer nor to fulfill. Except insofar as one's personal survival needs are concerned.
When there are only terrible jobs, then society should not feel morally compelled to work them. Especially when it has other income. And especially when a concurrent social value is to drop wages and benefits through the floor, by any means necessary.
For the sake of virtue, are business owners working underpaid second jobs "for the system"?
Are successful business owners widely coming out of retirement to work "for the sake of the system"?
We're not talking about volunteering at the old age home. We're talking about a real work schedule.
Society may have to work those jobs out of necessity, but they can and should tell people trying to morally shame them with a "come out of retirement and to work attitude" to go copulate with themselves.
Especially when the social contract between employers and employees is long-shattered beyond repair.
In society, there can be low paying jobs alongside well paying jobs. What there can't be is moralizing combined with decades of illegal shenanigans whose sole purpose is to suppress wages / job security (especially due to wages) and undermine working conditions.
"Productivity". Give us a break.
Unless your payment is compelling enough to get me to work, as a retired person the health of your business is not my morality nor my productivity. Your business is yours, and mine is my own.
Are those business owners going to come and "be productive" by cleaning my gutters after work? Are they going to "be productive" by doing my taxes?
>And if people don't work, or don't work nearly as much as they did before, then how is the system going to be sustained?
That may be the most communist mindset I've ever seen written out on this forum.
Being a WalMart floor employee is not a virtuous contribution to the system, above being retired. It's an agreement, for a certain wage, to be a part of the employee pool of the Walton family's for-profit vehicle.
Would it be virtuous to come out of retirement and work that job if it paid nothing?
Should the Walton's pay every red cent of their profit to employees, make nothing themselves, and run their business regardless and for the sake of the system?
The virtue is one's monetary needs, and the Walton's have to pay enough to meet the social contract requirement to maintain enough employees in their employee pool. If they don't have enough employees, then they aren't meeting the unspoken requirement. No amount of moralizing / whining is going to increase their social virtue. Only cash on-offer will.
Joe's construction or accounting business is not "the system" either. It's Joe's income vehicle. Retired people have their own income vehicles.
If the employer-employee relationship is a social contract, and not slavery, then working is no more "for the system" then making a profit is.
And if both are needed to "sustain the system", and the business owner can't draw enough people to work via a pay package, then the answer is to bring them in as partners.
If both are for the benefit of the system, and one person is going to be morally compelled to work, and another is going to be morally compelled to make a profit, and the pay isn't high enough to compel the employee, then they need to be made a profit partner in the business.
When I hear someone whining that they are worried about having enough workforce, I think that they are exhausting their vocabulary to avoid stating that they're too cheap to pay employees enough for the job.
I'm not saying that they have to be compelled to pay a minimum wage. Offer $1 an hour for all I would care. As long as the other side of that isn't to illegally / immorally undermine the labor pool.
But the other side of that is if they aren't paying enough to draw employees, then the "I'm going to employ people" part of their business is not viable.
The other side of it is not "people are too over-benefitted / over-privileged to work".
If you want someone to join a social contract, then you have to make a compelling enough offer. That's our only "system".
Anything else needs to be a partnership / significant enough profit split.
When the pay is rock-bottom, employees are scarce, and those profit shares are eventually legally compelled because "oh no, the system", then it's formal communism.
When the employees are legally compelled without partnerships, then its slavery.