> Money seems to be inversely related to the amount of work you do, and it has been that way for thousands of years.
>If you see paintings from the Renaissance or Middle Ages commissioned by the wealthy, they show peasants portrayed as living lazy, idealic lives out in the beautiful woods. The rich, living lives with little to no actual work, were incapable of understanding what the life of a serf was actually like. The serfs, living brutal lives, barely eeking out a living by the sweat of their brow, were likewise unable to comprehend living a life where they could have lots of money and power for doing no work, like their lords did.


Actually, until very recently in history, money wasn't related to most peoples' work at all. Work was what you did in order to grow enough food and keep warm enough to stay alive.
As far as the paintings go, I think you may be thinking of the "noble savage" concept of the 19th century. Art and literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance is extremely conscious of the harshness of life in general, and for peasants in particular. It's a major theme. You're right, there wasn't a lot of sympathy there, but from what I've read from that time period it seems to be more in response to the era's general world view than deriving from a "we're better because we're rich" attitude.

Incidentally, it wasn't until the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, when we had a middle class for the first time, that the rich had "nothing to do." You know all those decadent pursuits of the rich - fox hunting, hawking, and so on? There used to be a point to things like that: keeping the predators (both animal and human) out of the crops and livestock was pretty much a full time job and was just as necessary to survival as what the average man-in-the-field was up to.

I know what you're getting at here, I'm just nit-picking as somebody interested in history. :-)

> Why? Maybe it's just me, but when you do the kind of work that involves physical labor, there is a sense of satisfaction when the job is finished that no other kind of job can provide. Mental labor lacks this one essential, which is (IMHO) why there are so many office workers who are "workaholics"... because of the diluted nature of their work, it takes much more of it to provide that same sense of satisfaction that comes from doing a small amount of quality physical labor.

Interesting theory. At various times I've done both mental and physical jobs, and all I can say is, when I've been doing one type for a while I'm usually longing to quit and do the other type. I guess all that proves is that we need a bit of both to be well-rounded individuals.

> Physical labor is often dangerous and risky to the person doing it, it often requires an incredible amount of energy and skills, and it's the type of work that you can only do when you're still in the prime of life. Without physical labor, the nonphysical kind would be impossible. It's the farmers, the ditch diggers, the construction workers, the burger flippers who build our infrastructure and keep it standing, yet we consider them cheap, expendable, uneducated, and undesirable. These blue-collar workers get paid much less than white collar workers do.

You're right in that everybody who works should be considered equally valuable to our society. However, the world has changed this century in the extent of the options available for the uneducated. Think about the jobs you give as examples: farming and construction are jobs for the uneducated? Not where I come from. And just about every burger flipper I've ever met isn't treating it as a lifetime career. Most of them are doing it to help pay their way through a degree.

> If individuals were paid according to what they actually put into the system (quality and quantity), nondeundisirregardless of their status, I think our society would function much better, individuals would be happier, and the whole general mishmash of everything would improve.

You're probably right, but it sure beats me how that could be measured in any meaningful way during a person's working life. I have two jobs right now. One of them I get paid WAY too much for (I hope my boss doesn't read this) and one of them I don't get paid for at all. If you can work out the weekly monetary value to society of having properly edited sports reporting on the Internet, or of having harbour search and rescue crews available 24 hours, do tell. And how do either of those measure up in importance against, say, the guy who welded the rivets on the Coastguard boats, or the people who dug the hole for the foundations of the office building I'm sitting in now, or the woman in Taiwan who probably got paid about $1 a week for making the clothes I'm wearing?

> Please don't get me wrong, I'm not a communist infiltrator or anything, I'm just a newbie to adulthood, trying to make sense of the world around me. How far off-base am I?

Hehe. You *must* be a newbie to adulthood. I don't know if there *is* any sense to the world around us, but if there is I sure haven't worked it out yet. :-)

Brunnen-"let me know if you do, OK?"G