Take a look at the current output of how people spend their lives, especially in the Western world. What do they spend their time doing, why do they do so, and what do they do with their income/wealth and resulting rewards?

On an axis of jobs "essential or tangibly useful to society" on x and "compensation" on y, we see that it is almost a negative linear function. The NY garbage workers, who when they go on strike for 3 days the entire city shuts down, are paid a rate that post-taxes and with NYC standard of living is near zero savings or pleasure spending. Daycare workers, nurseries, teachers for small and medium children, who all do the most important human task of educating and domesticating the next generation get paid poverty wages — often to the point where most such workers are either already wealthy, retirees or old people, or on welfare and barely making ends meet. Yet the average accountant, without whom surely most companies would pay more taxes, is compensated like a king (above the 70,000 happiness index for sure, not counting bonuses and lifestyle and business expenses and supposed career trajectory and prestige).

Because of the Puritanical work culture that founded the country, it seems that there is almost a ceiling to the level of utility that can be gotten from a job. If it is derived from the usefulness and purposefulness of the work (social workers, those making daily lives significantly better), society in some way has determined that there should be less monetary compensation. IN general, the trend is more uselessness or suffering warrants more compensation. And, the few people and jobs who have the luxury of impact and wealth are 1) in very scarce jobs (model human rights lawyer, ESG investor in NYC) and 2) heavily gatekeeped jobs (old money making itself more interesting for socialization and dinner parties).

It seems, when looking at outcomes, that "one is not paid money to do things, however useful or important, that one actually enjoys or derives meaning from"... instead, one is compensated because they are intentionally NOT deriving joy or meaning. They are being paid because they suffer, and if they chose not to suffer their new job would not pay nearly as much.

This is highlighted by the rise of administration — and the Obama standard of saying "if we fix healthcare and all the costs by rightfully eliminating 2-3 million middlemen and note takers and price approvers, then what would all those people do?" So it's not a market that exists because of efficiency or even value. It's a universal awareness of perpetuating BS and inefficiency and as a direct result, not helping people, because without it god forbid there would be less need to work.

Public discourse rooted from the base assumption of "people will become parasites and completely unproductive if left to their own devices or given access to the basic needs". But, economic model doesn't apply to reality —- entire UBI idea is not that people don't want to work, but people want to work at the things they like to work in. In fact, if a society has people not working at things they hate and that are unnecessary, then the people will likely rejoice in their ability to do the things they love. Prison example: most cherished tasks are the supposedly useless jobs/work (where you don't get paid/can't keep pay) like librarian, prison laundry, cleaning, etc. Without this labor or daily purpose, prisoners go insane and feel far more punished — even if it is not personally useful work, it is cherished because it is USEFUL. People want to be USEFUL while generating wealth, not only after they have it.

Typical peasants/serfs worked only a few hours a day normally (outside of harvest/specific seasons where it was all day of brutal labor, which came down to maybe a month-1.5 months max a year). This is WAY less total work than the perennial 9-5 grind minus some days or weeks.

MODERN MORALITY: NOT THAT YOU "SHOULD" BE WORKING, BUT THAT YOU SHOULDN'T BE DOING ANYTHING ELSE