Does a good life require good work? The potentials and challenges of providing good jobs for everyone

This paper addresses a possible tension between the well-being of workers who produce goods and services and the rights of those whose own well-being is dependent on these goods and services. Accordingly, the paper is structured as follows. Section I discusses the implications of the tension between the right to well-being and the well-being of workers who produce some of the necessary conditions for well-being. In Section II, I examine how to measure a good job (2.1) and the challenges of providing good jobs for everyone (2.2), based on a subjectivist conception of what constitutes a good job. In Section III, I propose a toolkit of policies to promote the goal of good jobs for all, while addressing the obstacles outlined in 2.2. Specifically: Raising base wages and reducing wage ratios (3.1); workplace democracy (3.2); democratic balanced jobs (3.3); supplying workers’ representatives outside the workplace (3.4); accelerating automation (3.5); Working-time-reduction (3.6).