The Economist has an interesting piece up about the failure of economists to produce anything actually useful or prevent the rise of 'Trumpism,' as the author so glibly puts it.
Muckraking aside, the article does make a good point about utility (read: value) being not just a function of the availability of ready cash for the working class. Indeed, when properly taking into account the natural human desire to contribute, it seems that value has almost nothing to do with money at all.
I would, indeed, suggest that value from the perspective of certainly the working (if not the middle and upper-middle) classes is mostly a measure of the prevention of idleness. This suggests a flaw in the idea of a universal base income experiment being conducted in some Scandinavian countries. Then again, they get so much right I should be surprised if they hadn't yet thought of a way around this problem.
