Baal HaSulam, “The Last Generation”: The unemployed will receive their needs equally with the employed.

In principle, this is how it should be today. After all, those who live in cities, having lost a source of income, are unable to feed themselves. They do not have livestock and land, and they do not know how to cultivate the land. However, a person, in any case, should have something to eat: It is his natural urgent need.

Question: If we are talking about a single system of humanity, each must perform some task, like a cell in the body. Then, where will the unemployed come from?

Answer: So, we have to organize society in such a way that everyone has something to do. But in reality, we are speaking about spiritual “employment.” As for its material counterpart, it can be minimal.

In the past generations people lived very simply. For example, a seller at the market could sell one pot during the whole day and that was enough for him. There were no cars, automation, productivity was low, and yet people worked a few hours a day and did not need more. Today, there is no need for so many workers. Instead, people will study, and in everything else assist and support each other.

Our task is to fill people’s free time productively. Today, about 90% of working activities of various kinds are redundant. If you burst this bubble and reduce everything to the level of healthy, good, rational life, there won’t be work for everyone. After all, we will produce reliable products with much greater durability, instead of short-lived products that need to be repaired or replaced. It turns out that a maximum of 10% of the working population will need to work.

Today, the overproduction of extra things, which are imposed on consumers by advertising, is well established, so these things are dumped and make way for new ones. This applies to manufacturing industries and medicine, and everything else. Whatever a person does, he does it to his own detriment. The pharmaceutical industry produces extra drugs; the defense industry produces military weapons; in short, everything is reverse compared to how it should be.

So, in the end, half a billion people will work, or we will divide work among everyone so each can work, say, two hours a day. And the rest of the time will be dedicated to spiritual work: People will study and learn to help each other, etc. It is necessary to guarantee the same level of living to everyone regardless of whether a person works or not because the point is not whether he works, but whether you can provide him with work. If you are to blame someone, don’t blame him but yourself.

So, you have to create the same standard of living for everyone. You can add to it respect from others, competition in giving to the benefit of the community. One can and should compete for the contribution to the common cause, for meritorious service to society:

– Look, how happy people are at my concerts!

– Look, how perfectly I manage the company!

Moreover, it is not just a director but the owner of a company. We don’t need to expropriate anything as it was done in Soviet Russia. If a man owns a factory, he takes care of uninterrupted production and of decent working conditions for his employees, and at the same time, requires that they perform their duties diligently. He is proud of what he does and receives the same salary as his subordinates or the unemployed. The remaining part of the scale of pleasure is filled by respect from others and nothing more.

Indeed, does the director’s body need more than the bodies of others? No. He has a company car and a chauffeur, but this is for work. And in everything else, he is like the rest.

Thus, we use the potential of everyone to the greatest extent possible. In this case, at the “animal” level, everyone receives equally with everyone else, but earns honor and respect at the human level. All this will work only if people become involved in the system of integral education.

Thus, we will take the correct course and strive for the general correction because our goal is not an “animal” existence, but the peak of human development.
[86623]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/27/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Last Generation”

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You Will Not Learn Without Trying
No To Unemployment, Yes To The Real Work
Shifting To The Economy Of The Future

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