I’ve heard about this really cool idea of time bank where you would deposit time (by doing something that you knew how to do and that another person needed) and then you would be able to withdraw some of the time you had previously deposit (that is someone else doing something you needed to be done and can’t do). If the idea works there would be lot’s of things we could get without paying cash and we could do something that we are good at to help others. It’s an interesting idea, as everybody is good at doing something and probably needs something done that doesn’t know how to do.
But the really good issue it raises is that all the work, all the jobs, all the tasks are worth the same. One hour of walking an old lady’s dog worth’s the same thing as one hour of babysitting your child, or painting your house or washing your car. This could be the first step of society to recognize that a street cleaner is worth the same as a surgeon… they both are indispensable to society, but today the distance between their salaries is so big that it should make us (that are part of these society) ashamed.
I’m not defending the same salary to everybody… I really don’t believe that, all I’m saying is that the salaries shouldn’t be to low (in Portugal a street cleaner makes less then €400 month) nor to high (a plastic surgeon in private clinics can make easy €10000 month). Only when these huge differences begin to disappear can we say that we all are worth the same in a society that needs us all to work properly.