Genesis 3:19 KJV
in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
For most of the time humans have been on the planet, and indeed for most of the people on the planet, "sweat of thy face" to eat has been the norm. If you were out in the wilderness you had to WORK. Physical labour to hunt, cultivate crops or raise animals to eat and live.
As time went on a class of people arose all over the globe who accumulated enough wealth or by some other means no longer had to physically work to eat. These persons could engage in speculative activities unrelated to living and eating. People who had to do these things provided them with food via the excess of their work.
I'm gonna skip ahead to 2020. Up to that point in modern America, the vast majority of people engaged in trade of labour for money in order to get the "bread". Very few people actually directly raise or acquire food by their own hand. We work at some job and get paid currency that is traded for food. A large number of people are dependent upon people who do a lot of physical labour for their money. Truck drivers. People who stock the shelves in supermarkets. People who work cash registers. People who cook food. People who deliver food. etc.
All of these jobs pay relatively little. Essentially, the less skill a job requires the less compensation you can expect to do it. Even Albert Einstein can wash a dish. He may not WANT to do that but he can. There is no shortage of people who can wash dishes. I won't even get into artificial intelligence and automation.
Often those who are unable to do other types of work are essentially forced into low wage labour. Some of this comes down to IQ. Some down to lifestyle choices. Then you have other kinds of people.
There is a whole industry in which people make money from money. Their "work" produces nothing of value to other people other than money. They do not provide food, clothing, shelter or anything else "tangible" or necessary for living. They only make money. All they do is create "income" that is totally separated from supplying some good or necessary service. The thing is, so long as these kinds of people are in the extreme minority you can have them. But what happens when the people who do "productive" things start "creating income" and don't need to do "work"?
This came to mind because I was reading about the hard time employers have finding people to fill positions. In my travels, I have never, ever seen "help wanted" signs to the extent I am seeing now. As a matter of fact, a casino I frequent has decided to close an entire floor for half the day due to lack of staffing. Back to the article though.
One point the article made was that online investment accounts exploded during the pandemic. Also, and this is the main point here, bitcoin went through the roof. This left me wondering if, due to the government handing many people disposable income while at the same time shielding them from eviction, there was a creation of a new class of investor: The ordinary joe who couldn't possibly invest 1k or more into a vehicle like stocks and bitcoin on the income of their normal job who suddenly had thousands in assets.
Imagine you had a full-time job that paid you 20k a year that you absolutely despise but dealt with because you needed the job, Imagine the government effectively dropped 10 grand in your lap between the eviction moratorium and direct cash. Imagine you invested 5k in bitcoin?
Bitcoin was 6.5k/coin in March of 2020. it was 11k/coin in July of 2020. Say you got that cash and stiffed your landlord. That 5k investment increased 50x by March of 2021 to 58k/coin. So you know have 250k dollars if you cashed it all out.
Would YOU go back to a 20k job that you despise?
Are you seeing the picture I'm painting here?
Even if you don't despise your job, would you really want to spend 8 hours or more a day doing something you may not want to do for 1/10th of the income you made from sitting on your butt or going to the beach or whatever you like to do.
For a lot of people, me included, the answer is:
N to the O.
So what does a society do when the people who are depended upon to do physical labour decide to check out of the market? No way you're getting a job as a dish washer or drive-through window order taker for 250k/year.
I don't know for certain that the above is exactly WHY so many have exited the "low level" job market but if it is true to any significant extent this may be a serious disruption to life, particularly in cities. Rural people know full well that no work = no eat, etc. And if the costs of labour has to increase to high levels to entice people to re-enter the workforce, those goods and services are going to explode in cost.
If this is situation is true to any significant extent it may also be a sign of what would happen under a universal income scheme: If you give out enough, people may simply exit the market, inflate the cost of labour to the extent that many businesses will fail (or cannot expand past mom-and-pop stage) and/or inflate the costs of goods by bizarre amounts.
Something to think about.