Forum Post: If you don't support this, it's because you are stupid. I am serious

First, I should say that effective people will not go to any great lengths to convince people they aren't stupid.

THE IDEA:

The US has plenty of wealth, which is why wage levels are high enough that the cost of living prevents the unemployed from competing with workers in foreign countries on the basis of price, such as Bangladesh where many workers make less than $50 per month (http://www.bbs.gov.bd/webtestapplication/userfiles/image/National%20Accounts%20Reports/OTHER_REPORT/Wage%20Rate.pdf). That would not be enough for a US worker to even afford food, much less housing or health care.

Companies can encourage people to work less to create jobs by paying them a higher rate when they do so. For example, the first 24 hours of work in a week are paid at 1.2x an employee's normal rate, and after that at a 0.7x rate so that someone who works 40 hours per week is paid the same amount.

People with reputations in economics and politics fall into two groups for why they won't support this: 1) They don't listen to people without credentials, or 2) I said they wouldn't.

Paul Krugman, with 900k Twitter followers, falls into the second group as do many other people. They are not going to support this idea... again, because I said they wouldn't. That might sound ridiculous to someone who doesn't know much about the situation but it's true.

Yoko Ono, however (3 million Twitter followers and is following the second highest number of people in the world), has not supported it because she prefers change to happen as a general movement, not through someone with a reputation in the current system. This is because she wants to be able to think that people are not stupid, and that the world does not depend on her being able to survive.

This is quite possibly the most important event in history, at least for intelligent people who care about things like violence, terrorism, and suicides (and not just their favorite TV show). The list of problems it would fix:

• A small chance [you], or people [you] know, will be killed
• Mass shootings like the ones at Aurora and Sandy Hook
• Unemployment and associated problems, including wasteful government spending
• War and its effects like someone you know joining the military and being killed
• Rapes
• Unexpected events in general that cause harm and could have been avoided if people were smarter
• Occupations that appear to be unethical having a 'wage premium', including the sex industry and finance
• Nonviolent crime, like computer viruses and scams
• Unwanted climate change like global warming
• Smart people being unhappy because they feel more responsible for problems
• The fact that the human race is getting stupider as time goes on due to genetic selection
• Biased feedback for games like WoW or Aion that lead to people wasting time on things that do not have the intended result
• Starvation in Africa
• Friends or relatives committing suicide because of relationship problems or depression
• High cost of college in the US and the inaccuracy of attendance at an 'elite' institution as a signal of ability despite that many people perceive it to be accurate
• 'Nice' people going to prison or being accused of crimes, such as Aaron Swartz who committed suicide
• Economic sanctions against nations such as North Korea that are seen as unethical
• Intellectual property law that causes obvious inefficiencies, such as the patenting of round corners on electronic devices
• Government corruption in places like China
• Female persons, or even male persons, not being able to attain important positions in society because of a lack of time

If you support this, just say so in this thread. More details, as well as other random stuff, at Open to Change. Proof that the rich aren't "evil" and that the only reason problems exist is because people let them:

If Yoko Ono were to try to get people to use this idea and was unsuccessful, I would expect that she would then allow herself to die. So if you don't support this idea, you are also saying that it's fine for that to happen.

If people reply to this thread, the next step might be a petition or something. With enough signatures, it would get media attention just like various petitions to the White House have gotten media attention. Unlike petitions to build a Death Star though this would actually work so media attention would lead to change.