Bank of America is raising its minimum wage for employees to $20
This thread is plagued by a rather insidious idea that has bubbled up in recent history: the idea of &quot;human capital&quot; in terms of the &quot;greater good&quot;.<p>Sentiments like &quot;people shouldn&#x27;t be doing jobs that can be automated&quot; or &quot;machines should do the work instead, we need <i>more useful</i> jobs for those people&quot; stink of the ideas that 1) people must serve some societal purpose, 2) that they are not fit to decide their own purpose, and 3) they are not fit to determine what has value <i>to them</i>.<p>These values are actually now embedded in U.S.A. policies and major non-profits, like &quot;No Child Left Behind&quot;, and the Gates Foundation, or &quot;School to Work&quot;. (A tangent: we aren&#x27;t enabling people to <i>learn</i> and to <i>think</i>, we are teaching them to follow directions. Curiosity seems to be a waning capability of many kids and we seem to be slipping towards a Soviet style of teaching in public schools - which discourages self-generated thought and questions.)<p>I&#x27;m not bringing this up because I&#x27;m a Luddite. I rather like the idea of automating things, actually. I don&#x27;t think our current, popular, justifications are healthy.<p>Rather, on an interpersonal level, I think some of the justifications in this thread are codependent, controlling, and uncaring.