I think there's actually two slightly different stigmas here.

The first stigma is the whole "high achievement" type thing. The one where people would look down on me for, say, spending five years at university so that I could work for a non-profit organisation for a thousand dollars a month. I'm sure a lot of people would call me a Loser for that.

The second stigma is "self sufficiency". People do not like other people who get a free ride. My parents know a couple of middle-aged guys who do absolutely nothing for a living whatsoever except go on vacations, because they can mooch off their rich elder brothers.

Also, when France tried the 35 Hour a Week Workday thing, and it did nothing to lower unemployment. Companies didn't hire extra workers to pick up the slack, worker productivity plummeted, and a lot of companies (well, the big ones) just picked up and left the country.

I don't have a work ethic at all. I have a "finish a job you've started" ethic and a "do a good job ethic" but I don't have a "must be working all the time" ethic. So I'm not working now. I need to go back to work soon because my savings are getting a little thin. I don't like to spend money, which is why I don't find work very important. I'm simply not a terribly materialistic person, so I don't need money to get stuff, nor do I have any interest in "keeping up with the Joneses."

Which makes me pathetically lazy. I don't DO anything unless I have some sort of obligation to do it. Do I read wonderful things while I'm idle? No, I read books that sound the same and don't enlighten me in any way. I sit at the computer and play stupid games.

I like me better when I have obligations, because my muscles feel better as I move more. My mind feels better when I use it more. And my soul feels better when I interact with the world.

It's not a lack of worth ethic that we need, but some moderated worth ethic. We need an ethic that makes it important to work enough to get something done, but not so much that we pile up stashes of cash we don't have time to use.

And, of course, as Omnot said, some things that don't recieve payment are very significant work, such as raising a child. This kind of work does use your mind and your body and get you moving, so it should count as work-ethic motivated work.

edited for typos

I noted there were issues with the system I stated, this is one of the major ones. It may be a philosophical issue with the system - One of the goals of this system was to at least soften the work ethic, but if a critical mass of the population actually took advantage of the idea, it would probably collapse. In theory, if you're willing to shoot taxes up sky high, this might work, especially if your UCE was tax-free (as it's a government stipend), but there are psychological issues in that if you tax too highly, noone's going to be motivated to work any harder for more pay.



As a note, that was not what I was advocating, what I was trying to note was that a while back, around half a century ago, we did have this dream of having less work hours due to automation (it was considered something good, to aspire to). These days, however, even with automation in place, people working harder. What happenned? When did the idea of automating workplaces become so evil?

I do know the answer. It was when people started losing jobs because of it. Noone let go of the concept of needing to work, so the full impact of automation was never realised, as it seemed automation was taking jobs from hard-working people. Also, automation still required some sort of monetary input - we couldn't use them as cheap slaves, since sophisticated machinery costs a lot to maintain, so people would still need to work. I'm not denying that the idea never worked, I'm just a little lost as to the reason everyone turned their back on the idea of working less.



Bingo.



It's one of the major motivations, yes. The fact is, the jobs and the job-seeking aren't all entirely compatible, and as a result, you can say that there aren't really enough jobs to go around. Instead of stigmatising those who cannot work, why not decide to change the system so they either can work, or so that being incapable of finding a job doesn't make people throw you into the dustbins of society. We have a major stigma against anyone who takes payouts without "working for it", and frankly I'm not sure this helps those who are simply incapable of finding work (for whatever reason).