You’ve heard the opposing arguments for decades. On the right, the position is that too many handouts and a wide social safety net makes people lazy and fosters an entitlement attitude so that people no longer feel the need to work hard or have discipline, determination, drive, and ambition to do better in life. They claim that hard work, long hours, a fiercely competitive attitude, and getting ahead of other people earns them a life of plenty, and creates jobs for other people. Then on the left, the position is that people simply don’t get paid enough to be able to live modestly, raise a family, have healthcare, and enjoy old age.
The reality is that there is truth in both sides of the argument. There are many places all over the world where people abuse and game the system that has been created to help them, which fuels the fire of hard-working people who are doing their share and contributing taxes to pay for the system. Cases of lazy young men who will do anything to dodge a hard day’s work, and instead lay about drinking and smoking in pubs paid for by their benefits, and single pregnant teenage girls getting free housing and food benefits, or immigrants living in luxury houses with 7 or 8 kids and claiming huge benefits to pay for it all are very common. But it is most definitely the case that hard-working people sometimes with multiple jobs just can’t even afford to keep decent food on the table for their families because their wages simply can’t pay for the everyday cost of living.
There are so many negative ramifications from having people in society who are unable to make ends meet. They often can only afford poor quality food which has a negative impact on their family’s health, they have no time to tend to the needs of their kids because they are working a ridiculous amount of hours, they can’t afford healthcare so many die or live terrible lives full of pain and suffering, and when they are old many people are forced to live in cold houses with minimal food because they were unable to save enough money for retirement. And these are just the people that scrape by, many others are homeless and living on our streets and under bridges, or they resort to crime because they are so desperate, many of which end up being incarcerated.
The irony is that the lives of the people who are doing quite well would benefit from an adjustment which helped those hard working people who are treading water. Significantly less crime, reduced homeless people on our streets, less welfare, healthcare, and prisons required which all reduce taxes, and overall neighborhoods and communities would improve because people have the time to spend keeping up with the maintenance of their homes and gardens, and more time to spend with their kids to feed them better meals and keep them out of trouble.
Nutopia raises the bar so that all people can live comfortably but modestly and none of the negative conditions caused by hardship are present anywhere in the community. To have this happy life, people agree to to a modest amount of work as needed by the community, and the Guardian System ensures that all people are doing their fair share. People who are dodging work, being lazy, putting minimal effort in to their work, avoiding work by faking illness, or repeatedly contributing shoddy or poor quality work, are easily identified and are penalized. Cases of this deliberate abuse are few and far between for a number of reasons, including the fact that only a modest amount of work is required, people can easily switch to more rewarding work whenever they want, and one’s “status” in the community is valued more by people compared to the old world where wealth and possessions were all that mattered.
