Why is it that when a woman pays a babysitter to take care of her kids, the babysitter is working, but if the woman herself stays at home to care for her kids that’s not considered work? Her caregiving is not rewarded financially; and she will not receive social security compensation for the years she spends at home with her children. Thus, a stay-at-home-mom becomes a moniker rather than a title and society claims she has no job.

Why is it that when a man pays someone to take care of his elderly father, that caregiver is working, but if he quits his job to do this work, then he is considered unemployed and we might even mock him for living in his parents’ basement?

The too simple answer is, of course, money. We live in an economic system that runs on interest-burdened money. Any activity that is unpaid is not considered 'work;' it is just behavior. We have created a system in which we only consider an activity work when we are making profit for a company.

Why is it that when a person pays a gardener to maintain her yard, that is considered work, but if she would rather spend her days cultivating her own garden than going to an office and sitting in a cubicle, we would say she is slacking off or too lazy to work?

How has our relationship with “work” gotten so distorted? Could we perhaps repair our relationship with work by taking money out of the equation? If money were not the object then would we suddenly realize a wide range of other ways of conceiving of work? One way of taking money out of the equation is to pay every citizen a basic income, also called a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

A woman collects bird songs. She loves observing, recording, and cataloguing them. She has learned an enormous amount about birds and their calls and their behavior. And she spends a lot of time on this hobby. She doesn’t get paid for it because she doesn’t have the right academic credentials. Is this hobby of hers less valuable than the same work performed by the professor in the ornithology department at the local university?

What would happen if we changed our relationship with work so that instead of privileging commuting to an office to work for a corporation we began to value the activities that make us come alive and allowed each one of us to spend our time on those. How many other aspects and ills of society would we solve and repair as a result of that change?

We are fond of telling young people to find their passion and yet we offer them a very narrow range of activities in which to do so. We teach them that only paid work is useful and desirable. We excoriate our sons and daughters to get a job and to stop wasting time in the garage with their bandmates. Most people believe that, even when a person is doing work which appears to be useless, if he or she is earning his livelihood by it, then they are contributing members of society. Most of us cheer on the supposedly happy workers with congratulations and praise as long as they are "industrious" enough and nevermind that they may be depriving themselves of pleasure in the “sacred” cause of labor. Pleasure in itself doesn’t seem to be enough of a reason to be given respect in society. Nor does nurturing, caregiving and compassion.

One man produces a great deal of content online. His writing is entertaining and he has a growing following. Perhaps he could monetize this but most of his time is spent sitting behind a desk and devoting his gifts to the profits of a company. How to evaluate which of the two “jobs” provides more benefit to society: entertaining his friends and followers or writing marketing materials to sell widgets.

In our current system the answer is always the one that is rewarded financially.

It has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labor is good in itself. There are those that fear that if we paid everyone a basic income people would get lazy; they would sit on the sofa all day long and watch tv. Well, some of us would certainly do that and perhaps reduce our carbon footprint to a minuscule amount by staying put. Perhaps this would benefit society more in the long run than if that same person were “gainfully” employed. Which accountant can tally up the costs and benefits?

But eventually most of us would grow tired of just sitting on the couch all day long. Perhaps we would emerge into the air and begin to walk. Just take a walk. How much healthier would we be. How many fewer resources then paid to hospitals and allotted to doctor’s visits if we walked and gardened and socialized with our neighbors. What if we were to take our “‘hobby” and begin to call it our work.

What if, when we took our children to work for the day, it would be to a river or stream or to write poetry with us or to paint a picture or to play guitar. What if our children learned the value of these things rather than the value of making money for a CEO. What kind of world would we create? How much happier would we be? How much less stress if you knew your basic needs were met and you had the freedom to do what you love. Is that a vision worth striving for? You can call me a utopian and dismiss this vision as impossible. Perhaps it is, but perhaps it is YOU who is the utopian to believe that our current economic system which has exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet can continue indefinitely.

The UBI represents a fundamental shift of the primary message our society sends to its citizens. The current system demands, "you must prove that you deserve to live." Basic income reassures, "No matter what, you are worth it; we're in this together." The Universal Basic Income expands our definitions of work, it stretches our imaginations and repairs the relationship between humans and work restoring dignity to mothers, to caregivers, to gardeners, to artists, to creativity, to nature lovers. It’s a vision worth working towards.