Socialist advocates for labor have failed to adopt radical 2.0, which is "We want a share of the unearned income." The radical challenge to the dominate ideology can not succeed so long as radicals refuse to reject the obsolete idea that wealth comes from human labor.
We are parasites on nature. Consuming and wasting more than we need so we can produce as much as possible is stupid. As machines trend our economy toward full-unemployment we need to accept the result, wages shift to unearned income.
Advocating upper and lower limits on income makes better sense than impossible equality. Getting our radical policies right could bring popular acceptance. Let's challenge the obsolete worship of work, and point out that growth would be unnecessary without wage-dependence.
If rent, dividends, interest, and appreciation are different from welfare please quibble. Unearned income of some kind has always been the external and fundamental source of wealth. We knew it when we stole God's animals from the forest and made sacrifices to the offended gods of nature for what we had taken.
Radicals need to support sharing of unearned income, although it has been seen as the income of parasites by radicals. So it is. Even while working hard for extra, now we must accept that we are planet parasites all.
Barry Brooks