How long have you left?

I was at work today and doing a rare spell on checkouts. I was feeling a little burnt out so tills are always a great way to relax for a couple of hours and chat to the customers. Wednesday morning is always one of the quietest times in the week so there was never going to be a big rush or huge panic like at the weekends. I don't do it often but it makes a nice change to my usual shift which is non stop work and movement.

Sitting there relaxing, I was being fairly chatty and friendly with the customers as I told the one hundredth person that,

"I'm good today and how are you?".

After almost a decade with the company you can run out of new and interesting ways to say hello. Especially to the regular customers who can be in more than once a day. I Never understood that part myself.

We have the ones that come in the same time every day. the morning people for the fresh products and the evening ones for the nightly bottle of wine but for a person that shops about twice a week at most I just can't see the appeal of traveling to the shop more than once in a single day.

Anyway one of the regulars was chatting away and asked how long I had left? I'm guessing on my shift, but I was never one for giving a straight answer. Must be the Irish in me.

"Just another 30 - 40 years",

It depends on how the government treats people down the line. I'm still fairly young so I could easily be working up to 70 as a lot of people I see still do. She started laughing but in reality there will be very few jobs in retail 30 years into the future. If I stay there I should be fine but a lot of the regular staff will have been replaced and not too far into the future I would guess. We are already running on the smallest possible amount of staff and with the automation of ordering and checkouts advancing then it will soon be more cost effective to replace most of the staff with machines. And we all know that as soon as it becomes cost effective it will be done. All they will need going forward will be a manager to look after the place and a couple of bodies to stack shelves and keep the place clean. In reality it's just a matter of when and not if.

That is why we will need another form of income going into the future. I have no intention of working until 70 and never did. The plan has always been to make my money now while I can and then pick up property and investments to generate a passive income to support myself.

The dream would be to see STEEM become large enough to support people that have a decent stake through investments and using the blockchain. Obviously that is still a long shot but I do wonder where that price point lies. What value would it take for STEEM to be able to support me to the same level as my 40 hour a week job?

In reality it's not that much. At my current rate I can earn about 300 STEEM per month through my activities on the blockchain so if we got to $10 then it would be more per month than my current wage. Obviously if we rose to that level it would generate a whole new level of interest in the project and we would get a new wave of users so $20 is probably a better bet. It would still require a good few hours of work every week to keep the monthly earnings at a high level but with that kind of price we would attract more projects like @actifit and @steemhunt which can also generate an income.

The future holds unlimited possibilities for STEEM so it's just a matter of who is willing to help get there and buy into the vision. I know those numbers might seem crazy from where we have been sitting all year but in reality it wouldn't take that much to get us there. We have gotten to $7 before and that is with only a small minority of people even looking at this space. If crypto and STEEM attracted a few larger businesses and more people getting involved then it would become a very scarce commodity and a token with a lot of value.

All it would take is one dapp to break the barriers to the rest of the world and we could see people flood into this space to take part. It's not a guarantee but it is a strong possibility. If you don't fancy working until 70 it's up to you to make that choice and see where you can help to improve and build the chain that we all want to succeed.