The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

https://mstdn.ca/@paulisci/110798058470040619

by latexr • 3 years ago

319 466 3 years ago

mstdn.ca

api• 3 years ago

It's always nobody wants to work anymore at the wages you are presently offering.

It's like concluding we've run out of oil because the price of gasoline went up.

JadeNB• 3 years ago

It's always nobody wants to work anymore at the wages you are presently offering.
It's like concluding we've run out of oil because the price of gasoline went up.

I don't think that these are really perfectly analogous—there really is probably the same, if not greater, supply of workers as there ever was if the wages were right; but, no matter how much we're willing to pay, there's less oil available now than there used to be.

svachalek• 3 years ago

We're very close to record highs. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=m...

If you're talking about oil in the ground, it's pedantic and not relevant to market pricing.

justin_oaks3• 3 years ago

Great analogy.

Yes, nobody wants to work at poor wages. And these employers usually offer poor wages, but they'll often complain about unqualified people too.

Sometimes it's rephrased from "Nobody wants to work" to "Nobody wants to work... for you"

randomdata14• 3 years ago

Of course, when you get down to the heart of the matter, it is really: The customer doesn't want what you have to offer anymore.

Not having enough revenue to pay the workers a sufficient rate is just a symptom of that.

lossolo11• 3 years ago

Or not wanting to pay more to your workers because of greed? I mean Louis Vuitton bag costs to produce probably 5-10% of the price that customer pays.

quelsolaar3• 3 years ago

To be called ”Long History” i think it should to extend beyond the current generation.

shapefrog• 3 years ago

Kids these days.

randomdata14• 3 years ago

...are great! I employ a number of teenagers and they are absolutely wonderful. The future is bright.

It's really just the late 20/early-to-mid 30-somethings who don't want to work. We have assumed it is because they are the "everyone gets a trophy" generation, but whatever it is there is a markable difference among the hires within that group as compared to those younger and older.

AnotherGoodName• 3 years ago

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

Socrates 400BC

afandian• 3 years ago

From the 'long' in the title I was expecing this to be more like 200 years not 20 years. There's good form for this kind of literature.

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/28169/what-is-th...

sjducb• 3 years ago

I was expecting lots of outraged Victorians lamenting the decline of modern work ethics

cableshaft2• 3 years ago

Scroll down slightly and someone else has posted an image with quotes that go back to the 1800s.

EDIT: Not sure how to link the direct link to the reply, but you can see it on this article on Snopes too: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nobody-wants-to-work-anymo...

MattRix• 3 years ago

His Twitter version of this thread goes back to 1912, I think the Mastodon one just got cut off somehow? https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/1682459194589433857?s=20

wredue• 3 years ago

2 Thessalonians 3:10

The odd suggestion that “nobody wants to work anymore” somehow just appeared this generation.

It’s in the bible dude, and undoubtedly has sentiments dating back millennia.

parrellel• 3 years ago

I dunno, he goes back to 1940. That seems far enough back to make the point with newspaper clippings. Definitely more than a single generation.

swayvil4• 3 years ago

Modern work is weird. All your energy goes into it. But at the end of the day there's no satisfaction. Just emptiness and exhaustion.

So you invest your remaining time in entertainments, drugs and shopping. Frantically groping for a scrap of joy.

My friends in carpentry call it "feeding the monkey". The monkey must be fed, one way or another.

gambiting6• 3 years ago

>But at the end of the day there's no satisfaction.

If that's the case then you need to find a different job. Plenty of people are really satisfied with what they do at work. I've accepted lower salary for years because the job I did was really satisfying and I'm still glad I was part of it.

wahnfrieden2• 3 years ago

Blaming workers for their poor conditions is elitist and fragile advice. There are not “good jobs” available for all or most. Your cushy PMC role is contingent on miserable labor supporting it. See the contractor/full time divide at Google or Meta for instance

coffeefirst• 3 years ago

Sure but these can be hard to find.

Let's suppose the factors that make people like their jobs are a sense of ownership, applying skills, having friends, a high level of trust, and a sense that they're contributing something useful (the classic example is the construction worker isn't laying bricks, he's building a house).

The hyper-financialized economy we find ourselves in loves meaningless Goals and OKRs, then does mass layoffs for no apparent reason besides investors like it.

This is a pretty stark misalignment in values and incentives. Of course people are unhappy with it.

mordae3• 3 years ago

Why must the burden of getting a job that is not shitty always seem to fall on the worker and never the employee or the state?

Why don't we have a law that says "if the boss is disrespectful to the worker, they pay the worker the average of their hourly wage for every such incident" while being rude to your superior would be considered a breach of conduct that, when repeated, would be grounds for dismissal?

Stop adoring the hierarchy and licking the boot.

constantly4• 3 years ago

Speak for yourself, I know many people who derive a lot of joy from their work and find it energizing, myself included.

wahnfrieden2• 3 years ago

“Not all men” type argument

Obviously rich people provide inspiration to many miserable workers to improve their conditions, doesn’t mean it’s achievable for most

cableshaft2• 3 years ago

I've enjoyed my work before (especially working on games I enjoyed), but I've never found it energizing.

Any mentally challenging work at the end of the day has alays left me feeling pretty low energy afterwards.

Also physically challenging (I remember working 10 hour days in a warehouse and then going home and having a quick bite to eat and then immediately sleeping for 10 hours, I didn't even have the energy to watch tv).

Also not physically or mentally challenging jobs either (as if just having to be present and 'on' during that time is enough to drain the energy).

The only times I usually still have energy to do something are in the mornings before work or on weekends, and that's pretty much when all the chores and errands and personal project work has to happen.

bluefishinit2• 3 years ago

I think those people are typically called the "clueless":

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

darkclouds• 3 years ago

Are you an AVN winner then?

op00to• 3 years ago

Taking too much joy in anything that can be ripped from you is hazardous to your mental well being. A well rounded individual is much more resilient than someone who lives for work.

mordae3• 3 years ago

I don't think that's relevant unless you state your age and it is well above 30. Until then you are inevitably clueless and usually sought after by the employers because you are full of energy and cheap to rent, chow and spit out when you burn out.

OO000oo• 3 years ago

Karl Marx insisted people need to relate to the product of their labor.

stevenwoo• 3 years ago

The mastodon items are modern American but isn't this alienation ala Marx or Hegel?

reocha• 3 years ago

What swayvil described sounds almost exactly like alienation in the Marxist sense.

wiseowise• 3 years ago

Modern work is weird. All your energy goes into it. But at the end of the day there's no satisfaction. Just emptiness and exhaustion.

As opposed to what? Works was always like that.

justin_oaks3• 3 years ago

To be honest, people generally don't want to work. In what way is this surprising?

goda90• 3 years ago

I think people do want to work when they can enjoy and feel pride for the fruits of their labor. But often the fruits of labor in our economic system either don't pay the bills, aren't worthy of pride, or are almost entirely enjoyed by someone else in exchange for a small wage.

IMSAI8080• 3 years ago

I think the spirit of the original comment is people don't want to do enforced work at someone else's behest in order to live. I agree a lot of people would choose to do some kind of work voluntarily even if they didn't have to. Many people on here are probably coders. They may grudgingly drag themselves out of bed to go and code whatever their boss says in their day job, but then go home and code whatever they want to code purely for the joy of building something. It's not that people don't want to do work, they just don't want to do work someone else prescribes. Sometimes prescribed work and work you want to do intersect, then great, but often that is not the case.

HDThoreaun• 3 years ago

I think most jobs just aren’t the sort that elicit pride in their worker. They still need to be done though.

michaelteter• 3 years ago

It comes down to how you define "work". People seem to want to put a lot of energy into doing stuff, sometimes stuff which is very hard labor or mentally challenging. The key is that they are most happy and willing to do this when they have a passion or a goal.

But when the "work" you are being asked to do seems pointless, or it seems like the vast majority of the benefit of your work is going to people who are already wealthy and powerful, there's much less motivation.

One of the most demotivating things is seeing your work thrown away. In the software world, we experience this often. Sometimes you can even finish a big project, really being proud at having built something great, but then something will change and render that product pointless (at least based on the current business plan).

After a few situations like that, one becomes more cautious. Performing heavy tasks on the whim of leader is less attractive.

pastacacioepepe2• 3 years ago

Source? I don't find this true at all. People simply don't want to do meaningless, consuming or alienating work.

kjkjadksj3• 3 years ago

Unfortunately unless you are doing something like working on your property or helping a neighbor, thats most work in this country.

VerminOctopus1• 3 years ago

I think this depends on what your definition of “work” is. I’m going to assume the poster you’re replying to means your typical office, service, or labor job - most of which are as you said, meaningless, consuming or alienating.

justin_oaks3• 3 years ago

The term "work" may not be sufficiently precise. And that's how "Nobody wants to work" can be both simultaneously true and false at the same time, depending on what is meant by "work".

To say "Nobody wants to to engage in drudgery anymore" is true and always has been. To say "Nobody wants to be employed at a job that's meaningful and rewarding" is false (for most people at least; there may be exceptions).

toofy2• 3 years ago

im likely being too pedantic here so apologies up front if this is the case. if by “work” you mean, sacrificing your own dreams to make a boss’ dreams come true, then we’re probably on the same page. but if by “work” you mean, doing yard work, passion projects, etc… i’m not sure i agree. my parents are heading into retirement in a few years and i’m deeply concerned they won’t know what to do with themselves without work keeping them occupied. they’re both extremely lucky in that they immensely enjoy and are passionate about their work, tho.

even in my free time i have so many projects that take work but i absolutely love them.

i just wanted to chime in that people feel genuinely energized by work if it’s something they care about, something that matters to them, feeds their soul or whatever phrase you prefer. again, sorry to be the obnoxious pedant.

AndrewKemendo2• 3 years ago

Similarly …

400BC

Belphemur• 3 years ago

Always wondered if it was an actual Ancient Time quote.

Doesn't seem like it :

It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/?amp=1

mandelbrotwurst• 3 years ago

What is "Ancient Time"? Is that capitalization intentional?

Edit: Oh, maybe you meant "Ancient Rome"?

arp2422• 3 years ago

This is of course the famous quote from Socrates, and I absolutely hate this "argument". "Socrates was wrong in 400BC and it's wrong today" is one possible scenario, but it's also entirely possible that:

- Socrates was right in 400BC.

- at multiple points in 2,400 years there was a problem with "kids these days".

- Socrates was wrong in 400BC, but it's fair today or at other points in history.

It's just a complete non-argument.

Edit: and according to a sibling comment it's not even a genuine quote, but that doesn't matter: it's a non-argument whether it's a genuine quote or not.

The same applies to this "list", which is not a "long history" but just 19 quotes from the last 19 years from random people. Maybe some had a point and some didn't? Maybe none did? Maybe all did? That 19 people about of several hundred million complained about something (fairly or unfairly) in the last 19 years is just a non-argument.

Hizonner• 3 years ago

It's a non-argument in response to a stupid assertion generally made with zero meaningful evidence...

dsr_• 3 years ago

You missed the big one:

If you can find reliable evidence across time, space and cultures that humans have complained about the same X, then complaining about X is part of human nature in, at least, cultures that leave durable evidence.

pineaux• 3 years ago

Definitely not a non-argument. Its a circumstancial argument, that does not prove a whole lot, but its perfect against a unsubstantiated claim like the one its used against. It doesnt even have to have happened to be a good argument, because the counterparty does not give any facts either. Just a hollow statement. I love the Monty Python sketch on this subject: https://youtu.be/VKHFZBUTA4k

taneq2• 3 years ago

"No, it's always been the children that are wrong." - Skinnecrates.

latexr• 3 years ago

which is not a "long history" but just 19 quotes from the last 19 years

Maybe you’re not seeing them all, but there’s one quote per year from 2023 to (at least) 1940. 83 years.

BirAdam4• 3 years ago

The perennial nature of “kids these days” being insolent and otherwise generally poorly disciplined is that discipline is something to be cultivated within and not imposed from without. As a result, children who lack years of practice in discipline are not particularly well behaved. Adults tend to forget their childhoods, remembering only bits and pieces. In truth, every child was scolded for his/her bad behavior, and each generation tends to have the same bad behavior as the one before it. If each generation of kids were perfectly well behaved there’d be no need for raising, and there’d be no statements from old people such as “children are to be seen and not heard” or as “do not speak unless spoken to” or even as “get your elbows off the table”. That such statements are uttered and remembered by multiple generations proves that kids have made roughly the same “mistakes” over the course of those selfsame generations.

nitwit0052• 3 years ago

No, the adults remember. They get angry if you point out how they behaved when they were young.

The real complaint is "young people won't let me boss them around".

fbdab103• 3 years ago

Here I am just wondering why crossing of legs was inappropriate.

mihaic2• 3 years ago

What if people have always been complaining about this because it was always a problem that popped up and neede to be handled. Maybe any change in society meant parents can't use the same techniques to raise their children, and neede to evolve.

Overall, not sure how a complain popping up all the time means it's invalid. People have always complained about injustice, and it's not like that's ever gone away entirely.

mike109212• 3 years ago

As a long-time software engineer and related positions. When covid started it felt as if the world said "We worked enough we need a collective time off"

rightbyte• 3 years ago

More like, people realized how nice their life's were if they spent less time at work.

I did not understand how much my 45min x 2 commute was draining my stamina before I stopped commuting, e.g.

mike109212• 3 years ago

Yes, the commute removal definitely added a new perspective to many people who have been working in offices for many years. I ended up renting a small office near my house because working and being in the same place without any change felt dismal.

cmilton2• 3 years ago

Agreed. I will never work a job with a >10 minute commute another day in my life. On top of the time lost, you don’t even get paid for it. It costs you time and money to go to work.

jwells89• 3 years ago

The mental and financial toll of long commutes was (and still is, to a reduced extent) consistently underestimated. Doubly so if that commute is driven, where one must remain focused on driving and deal with associated frustrations the whole time.

SoftTalker3• 3 years ago

More like, people realized how nice their life's were if they spent less time at work...

... but still got paid.

swayvil4• 3 years ago

School, homework, part-time job, college, study, full-time job... it never ends.

For many of us, covid is the first taste of freedom we ever got. It was eye-opening and delivered some serious perspective.

This "not working" could be called a sane response based on good information.

cesarb• 3 years ago

School, homework, part-time job, college, study, full-time job... it never ends. For many of us, covid is the first taste of freedom we ever got. It was eye-opening and delivered some serious perspective.

Don't you have vacations? A whole month away from work or school every year should have given people that same perspective.

pelagic_sky• 3 years ago

To be fair, I've never wanted to "work".

swayvil4• 3 years ago

You clearly lack "passion".

I think there's a drug for that.

yosito• 3 years ago

Passion fruit?

m0rissette3• 3 years ago

Adderal

cmilton2• 3 years ago

This. When I started my career it wasn’t just “work”, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. That passion seems to be fading, and it was put into overdrive by the lockdowns. I can see a day in the very near future of giving up in this whole “work” thing.

cypherpunks012• 3 years ago

I found 2011 to be the most enlightening quote:

Man, what a weird week. Unless it's on their own terms, it seems nobody wants to work anymore.

It's the only one with any acknowledgement that agreeable terms may actually be needed in order to attract people to work. It doesn't take a PhD to figure this out!

Utah Phillips, one of my favorite storytellers and all-around anarchist and hobo has a line I was reminded of:

That’s when [Fry Pan Jack] told me – you know, he’d been tramping since 1927 -he said, “I told myself in ’27, if I cannot dictate the conditions of my labor, I will henceforth cease to work.” Hah! You don’t have to go to college to figure these things out, no sir! He said, “I learned when I was young that the only true life I had was the life of my brain. But if it’s true the only real life I have is the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for eight hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that at the end of the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition?” Fat chance!

From the track Bum on the Rod off the album The Past Didn't Go Anywhere with Ani DiFranco https://youtu.be/-rw4sd4AuJE

shove3• 3 years ago

In a similar vein, this poem by Pedro Pietri: Telephone Booth (number 905 1/2)

woke up this morning feeling excellent, picked up the telephone dialed the number of my equal opportunity employer to inform him I will not be into work today Are you feeling sick? the boss asked me No Sir I replied: I am feeling too good to report to work today, if I feel sick tomorrow I will come in early

influx• 3 years ago

I read that in Mitch Hedberg‘s voice.

irrational• 3 years ago

My company would call that taking a mental health day, which is considered a legitimate reason for not coming into work.

shove3• 3 years ago

IF I CANNOT DICTATE THE CONDITIONS OF MY LABOR I WILL HENCEFORTH CEASE TO WORK

cypherpunks012• 3 years ago

Yes, thank you! That's the related one I could not think of : )

WalterBright2• 3 years ago

agreeable terms may actually be needed in order to attract people to work

aka the Law of Supply & Demand.

Nifty39293• 3 years ago

This Utah Phillips quote sounds like it came right out of Atlas Shrugged.

wak903• 3 years ago

My goodness what an insulting thing to say about the man

mrighele• 3 years ago

This post on Twitter (pardon, X) [1] by the same author goes back for longer (at least 1912). I guess he crossposted on both and somehow the Mastodon version got truncated.

[1] https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/1681790405615173632

winternett2• 3 years ago

The gig economy has worn many out... The promise of services like social media, Uber, Political Parties, and airBnB that promised to create wealthy entrepreneurs fell flat on it's face after making the people at the top of the pyramids very wealthy.

I think that social media really tipped the balance of fairness in the working world... With social media, suddenly Trust fund Babies could fake success, and promote schemes that helped them to profit. The Social Media model was set up to raise Trust Funders and Popular individuals far above everyone else, and it killed hopes of upward mobility for people who didn't fall into any fame or wealth category unless they became famous for negative reasons or for ridicule.

It's not that no one wants to work anymore, it's that people are tired of weak work schemes, and being used and then thrown away in order to elevate others. It's not until real opportunity for growth, entrepreneurship, and excellence returns that things will begin to get back to normal.

Talking about is as "Nobody wants to work anymore" is an injustice... Millions of people are working very hard every day on content creation that rivals TV programming and others are regularly posting their best and fully composed and edited work on Internet sites daily, most without any pay in HOPES of being discovered for their work, as proof of that.

tetris11• 3 years ago

I think you've really hit the nail on the head there. People are absolutely happy to work dog hours on something they're passionate about, or something that is meaningful (to the world, or to a company, or anything higher than themselves).

But to take those same people, use them up, and then discard them... it makes them lose hope that their work is meaningful. Why try, when the world tells you repeatedly that it does not need or value you?

The only people I can see being happy with this arrangement might be more libertarian minded, where the goal was never outside the scope of their own self betterment.

dclowd99017• 3 years ago

If someone isn’t successful in making money on that work, though, it means it isn’t very good. I know it’s not a 1:1 result, but in reality, if you put in the hours and you make things people want, you will be successful.

The problem is everyone who works on something they’re passionate about (even if they suck at it) thinks they ought to be compensated, even if their contributions amount to exactly Jack shit.

Meanwhile, I do decent carpentry on the side and am hit up _regularly_ for it, simply because I’m willing to show up. And I make as much per hour as I do in my day job.

The work is out there to be passionate and make things and be successful, but you 1) have to show up and work and 2) have to not suck at it.

winternett2• 3 years ago

You can be a baker and make the best cakes in the world, but if your shop is located in the wrong place (like a dark alley with no foot traffic) where no one knows it exists, your business can fail if you don't also learn marketing, and possibly move to a better positioned (but more expensive of course) spot. A better spot, and marketing lessons though, are hinged on having the money to make that happen... Many people can't pay for advancement because they aren't profiting off of their work to fund expansion and growth.

The ideal that people don't succeed because of the quality of their work is a fallacy... Many people who do succeed who have a shoddy/marginal history of work is also yet another example of why that ideal is not accurate.

pmulard2• 3 years ago

I disagree with your premise - just because someone doesn’t make money on their work doesn’t mean it’s not good. We live in a capitalistic society, where the laws of supply and demand rule.

You’re able to make good money in carpentry by simply showing up, because there aren’t many carpenters left. Just like my cousin is able to do the same with landscaping. It’s all work fewer people are doing.

Other friends of mine, some of the most talented and hardworking people I know, have tried their stints on broadway, television, journalism, etc. and are struggling massively. Is it because they aren’t good? Of course not. It’s because there are 1,000 people lined up behind them who are just as good. And there’s another 1,000 behind that group who aren’t quite as good but are willing to do it for poverty wages.

overgard2• 3 years ago

I don't think that's true. Think about musicians -- someone can create incredible music and never make enough to support themselves, it happens all the time. Same with visual art. It has much less to do with quality and more to do with social trends, having a certain "look" or identity, etc. Sure, hard work and not sucking are the prerequisites, but they aren't enough on their own.

FactKnower692• 3 years ago

if you put in the hours and you make things people want, you will be successful.

What thing does a landlord make? What are the hours on the job of owning dividend-paying securities? Being successful in this economy has literally nothing to do with "making things people want" and "putting in the hours".

z7• 3 years ago

Noam Chomsky:

"For two millennia the idea of getting a job was regarded as a fundamental attack against basic human rights and human dignity. Why? Because getting a job means accepting servitude to a master. It means saying, 'Okay, I'll rent myself to you for most of my waking life and I will follow your orders during this period.' That was considered an utter abomination. By now it's sort of taken for granted. But should we take it for granted? Or should we go back to the ideals of working people, classical liberals, Cicero, all the way to Abraham Lincoln, saying that this is not a decent way for human beings to live, that people should be in control of their own work and their own destiny. One of the founders of classical liberalism, Wilhelm von Humboldt, captured the point very lucidly. He said, suppose an artisan creates a beautiful object on command, in a job. We may admire what he did, but we despise what he is: a tool in the hands of others. That was common belief right through the nineteenth century. We now accept that renting yourself into servitude is one of the highest goals in life – an idea that would have been an abomination for 2000 years."

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6MU5zQwtT4&t=3540s

bmmayer1• 3 years ago

What evidence is there of people 2000 years ago claiming that having a "job" was a "fundamental attack against basic human rights and human dignity."?

mikestew• 3 years ago

We may admire what he did, but we despise what he is: a tool in the hands of others.

Chomsky can be so full of shit at times. I’d like one piece of writing from before the 19th century, perhaps just a morsel of evidence that this was a “common belief” among anyone but the elite that have time to sit and write things all day.

ajsnigrutin• 3 years ago

When did anyone want to actually work? Everybody strives for as much as possible of money at at least possible work needed to get that money.

But the question has edge cases where some reforms should be done.

1) On one hand you have businesses that want people to do a lot of work for not enough money and then complain... in my country, that means that either the right government gives them foreign workers, because they "care" about the business, or the left government giving them foreign workers, because they "care" about the people (even if foreign).

There are many ways to solve that (eg. minimum wage for foreigners should be higher than the average for local workers in the same field, so if local workers doing job X get paid on average Y amount of money every month, you shouldn't be able to get a foreigner unless you pay that foreigner eg. 10% above average Y.. so you first have to try to get a local at above average local pay to do it, and if there are really no locals available, even at above average pay, only then you get someone from abroad.

2) The second problem is, that in some countries (eg. mine), you still have a relatively large percentage of people not working and getting social benefits... on one hand, social benefits are needed to help people when there is no work available, on the other, with all the benefits possible, some abuse of the system and maybe some under the table work, you're better off than someone actually work 8h per day.

Forcing someone to get a job at a company is impossible, since they intentionally act incompetent and no company wants someone who doesn't want to work and just wants to get fired, but community service could still be an option. Depending on the physical capabilities (if you're a paraplegic, you can't be picking up trash by the highway) some community service tasks would be given out, people who should be job-seeking (without that, you can't get the benefits) would calculate that an actual job pays more, and the taxpayers would get something back for the money they pay for "lazy bums", who suddenly wouldn't be as lazy as before, since they'd be keeping the streets clean. Sure, it's not a perfect system, some nuances between the ideal and realistic have to be solved, but social benefits abuse has been rampant in many many countries, not just mine (former socialist one), but even large and "organized" ones, such as germany ( https://www.dw.com/en/duisburg-police-make-arrests-impound-l... )

quelsolaar3• 3 years ago

Historically, the working class movement, did see work as honourable, and the capital as less so, because they lived of the work of others. There was a lot of pride associated with doing a good job and to provide for your family.

usrbinbash8• 3 years ago

It's pretty simple really.

If the reward from working is barely enough to cover the necessities, then there is technically no difference between working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an indentured servant, other than a vague notion of freedom, which in that case is the freedom to decide between working and living on the streets.

And people don't like being indentured servants. History should have made that clear by now.

People want perspective. In the past, a working man could support a family of five, buy a house, a car and afford vacation once or twice a year, plus save enough to retire comfortably.

Today people, despite burning themselves out in their job, struggle to pay rent in a flat shared with other working people, after loading themselves up with 100k in students debt, and no chance in hell to ever own property of their own.

If the powers that be want people to be willing to work, that work has to pay off.

If it doesn't, well...we're at the beginning of a retirement wave unprecedented in human history. 2 low-birthrate generations to follow. And our entire economic system is designed around constant growth.

I leave doing the math on that as an exercise for the reader.

nine_zeros7• 3 years ago

This. I don't understand why this is up for debate. Working hard does not buy a house, a convenient apartment, a promotion to higher income, equity at low prices, a lifestyle where one can find partners and settle down, kids, kids education.

We are talking about the basics, not avocado toast or international vacations.

The juice just ain't worth the squeeze in America any longer.

rdudek• 3 years ago

It's not up for debate. The ruling class is making it a valid point without offering a solution to the problem. It's a lot easier to whine and complain versus actually tackling the issues at hand.

BirAdam4• 3 years ago

I would make two observations here. First, costs are up. Not just housing and school, but also cars. Additionally, people are required to have smart phones. Most clothing is of poor quality and will need to be repurchased. Food is of poor quality if it’s cheap and therefore health costs get higher.

Second, in a low interest rate environment, any crazy idea gets funding. This squanders time and resources as many bad ideas get funded which would otherwise be laughed away. The low interest rates also encourage monetary inflation which first pushes up asset class prices, and later filters into retail prices. Wages are always the last segment to see price rises as pressure must be put on businesses to raise the price of labor. Essentially, when a company cannot get employees they will begin raising pay for open positions or they will go out of business. This pressure takes time to build. We see it now in fast food and groceries, and we saw it some time ago in the blue collar trades.

The major fix for this is higher interest rates… significantly higher. People would need to be willing to accept a slower growth rate in exchange for more predictable and more stable long term growth.

m0rissette3• 3 years ago

I mean maybe I have work ethic or am lucky. But I don’t struggle to pay mortgage, buy cars, or go on vacations and I am the sole breadwinner for my family… but I also started programming in 3rd grade in the 90s, didn’t go to college so have no debt, and live a pretty non materialistic punk rock life.

mordae3• 3 years ago

Take care of yourself. One burnout because of an unreasonable boss compounded with illness and good luck.

tomrod• 3 years ago

That's part of it. But yeah, say you got massively unlucky, like a ministroke or a really bad car crash, affecting your ability to bring in cash and that took much of your savings.

Safety nets are needed, and typically are underfunded. With one in place, most people can rebound to their most able.

Vespasian• 3 years ago

And you happen to be in a field that boomed (several times) during your career and was (and to some degree still is) a quite dynamic environment.

I'm glad it worked out for you (and me) but we must acknowledge that luck is indeed a significant contributor.

Let's imagine that instead of getting into programming you began working odd jobs in a field that is generally low income. Some would make it to the top but most will not move forward despite working hard.

From a personal anecdote I have a close relative who is an incredible hard worker in a job adjecant to elder care. As far as I can tell their work ethic is higher than my own (no time for water cooler talks or "code is compiling") but unless things change drastically they will never make more than minimum wage.

It's fair to say that natural skill plays a big role. Despite best effort they wouldn't be abel to get a programming or othe office job because just finishing their apprenticeship took increadible effort and diligence.

In their mid twenties their parents still support them (a little bit) and being anything close to a sole bread winner is highly unrealistic.

There are economic reasons why some people are paid better but I'd say "pure luck" is a larger portion then most of us would like to admit.

Some people get a yacht and a nice holiday home for their 12 hours shifts and some get to pay their rent.

yjftsjthsd-h• 3 years ago

but I also started programming in 3rd grade in the 90s, didn’t go to college so have no debt, and live a pretty non materialistic punk rock life.

Likely luck then; would you be in the same place if you didn't happen to be interested in a field that makes big money with no formal education needed?

tap-snap-or-nap• 3 years ago

What is freedom if you are working for a top down authoritarian hierarchy ? Be it legal person or a real one. Do we get to enjoy any democracy at work ?

TheCaptain48152• 3 years ago

I recall a Twitter thread where a lawyer mentions she couldn’t afford the apartment she rented as a law student now that she was an actual lawyer 10-15 years later.

momirlan2• 3 years ago

i agree 100% , but what is the solution to that ? just raising wages en masse erodes the power of money and leads to inflation.

pstuart2• 3 years ago

I thought it was the influx of new money printed, which we've done in the form of Quantitative Easing, multiple bail outs, etc.

dclowd99017• 3 years ago

It seems like the primary consumer of our money is the artificial lack of housing inventory brought upon by the ability of folks to own more than one property.

I suggest (and have suggested numerous times) that we disallow ownership of property for profit. Create a system that allows people to “buy” property short term through government loan structures that have very low interest rates and allows them to create an equity building mechanism early on. On paper it would have all the benefits of purchase with all of the benefits of leasing as well.

The flood of new available property would absolutely crash our current economy, since it’s so extended on property ownership, but we did it wrong and we need to correct.

lifeisstillgood2• 3 years ago

Inflation can be combatted by taxing it out of the economy - the issue is who do we tax. One should always tax the rich first - like robbing banks that's where the money is

usrbinbash8• 3 years ago

The economic system seem to be more than capable of plunging itself into an inflation with stagnating wages already...and still rake in money left right and center.

vsareto5• 3 years ago

The housing market is probably permanently ruined for individual family buyers as long as they are competing with businesses/individuals buying multiple residential properties as investments.

Subsidies or government backed contributions won't be the answer. Universities have a societal function and could conceivable operate without profit in mind, but they still chose to be greedy and act like for-profit businesses once government backed loans became a thing. The government tried to fix access to education by directly injecting cash via students instead of fixing it through the universities. Taking the same approach with home buyers would be a mistake because real estate obviously is meant to be for-profit and acts that way, so they will obviously raise prices as well.

So you'll probably need to fuck over a lot of banks, investors, construction and real estate companies to get housing prices accessible to the wider population and change economic interactions in that market. I wouldn't count on that though - the government will probably choose to fix it through backed loans or subsidies again, if they do anything.

mostlylurks• 3 years ago

You could remove all the arcane laws, regulations, and zoning which make constructing new houses ludicrously expensive. Most people would be perfectly happy to live even in a shoddy log cabin built by them and their family if it meant they would could save those hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars they would've spent otherwise to improve their lives in other ways. This alone could be enough to shave decades off the career of the average person.

You could disallow corporate ownership of dwellings of any sort, and heavily tax ownership of more than two homes per family unit.

You could provide significant tax benefits to lifestyles that approach self-sufficiency, such as people in rural areas that grow their own food.

You could mandate a quota of completely remote workers for many industries, encouraging the diffusion of people and opportunities across the country, instead of everyone rushing to expensive cities in hopes of finding work.

bbarn2• 3 years ago

I have heard the argument that a negative effect of the post WW2 "feminist" movement (by that I mean women in the work force) has had the long term effect of causing prices to simply adjust to the dual income household, to the point that now it is a necessity. It is a privileged family today that can afford to live comfortably on only one salary.

kjkjadksj3• 3 years ago

Theres another level to this going on in certain places too. Its not enough to have both partners working. Now in places like the bay area if you want to be competitive in the housing market, both partners have to be working high income jobs not just working at all. Even if you have a great title, if your partner doesnt, you will be lapped by people who have vastly more buying power than either of you can ever muster together.

I wonder if this creates some serious perverse incentives in the dating scene in these parts of the country. Like people who understand this economic situation and unfortunately write off what might have been great partners because their line of work will never afford the standards of living their dual high income peers are able to achieve.

lokar• 3 years ago

I think piketty would disagree. Productivity per worker has gone up but the share of profits going to workers has gone down. This is not some kind of inflation driven by scarcity.

ricardobeat2• 3 years ago

For this theory to be correct you’d need the total work hours being provided to employers to have doubled accordingly.

pastacacioepepe2• 3 years ago

Why put feminist between quotes?

supertrope3• 3 years ago

Women entering the formal workplace and gradually more and more jobs becoming available to both genders has also inflated traditionally “female” occupations like teachers, nurses, and childcare. When someone who could have trained as a lawyer had to instead become a teacher that kept teacher salaries lower. Nuns serving as teachers made Catholic schools affordable. Now many Catholic schools have a one two punch of the economic opportunity cost of becoming a nun being higher than ever and declining enrollment.

eggy• 3 years ago

Privileged? I worked very hard to get that point of "privileged" to have had two single-job families. In the beginning I worked at different jobs out of necessity and in part, to see what suited me and what suited the work. I learned many different skills that helped me in my personal life - construction, housebuilding, coding (since 1978), electronics, welding, machining, technical diving, industrial rope access, organizational risk management, and leading large teams on world-class, one-of-a-kind projects. I was raised just below or at the poverty level.

I believe the level of lifestyle you may want precludes you from making a single-income household. I am very content with few things even when the times are good. A hike or walk with the family outside doesn't cost much unless you're shopping and eating out all the time while sipping $5 lattes. Plus childcare would cost a pretty significant chunk of rhe second household income, so why not let one parent be with the kids fulltime?

fullshark• 3 years ago

Elizabeth Warren made that exact argument.

https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-...

usrbinbash8• 3 years ago

That argument, like all arguments that somehow equate wages with inflation, would hold water if the productivity of the workforce was constant.

We know that it isn't. Productivity of the workforce is ever increasing. The generated wealth simply doesn't make it to the workforce.

KptMarchewa• 3 years ago

That would only make sense if productivity divided by half.

On the other hand, people's requirements have simply inflated to much higher standards, while technology semi-automated some of the housekeeping stuff - washing clothes, dishes, making food, heating, cleaning.

brazzy• 3 years ago

And people don't like being indentured servants. History should have made that clear by now.

History has also made it clear that people can be made to endure living conditions they don't like or a very long time.

I submit that, historically, life for the common people was far, far more often barely tolerable or even intolerable, than agreeable.

We like to hear about peasant and slave revolts in history classes, but overall those were few and far between.

afpx• 3 years ago

A lot of people echoing each other online isn’t much of a revolt, either.

SoftTalker3• 3 years ago

In the past, a working man could support a family of five, buy a house, a car and afford vacation once or twice a year, plus save enough to retire comfortably.

I think this is a bit of a rose-colored rear-view mirror, and to the extent it's true it's a pretty brief period of time historically. Most people in most times had to work pretty hard. If you were a farmer, you worked pretty much all the daylight hours every day. Immigrants in the early part of the 20th century worked very hard, often the man running a small business or doing factory work and the woman cleaning, sewing, cooking, bookkeeping, etc. for hire. And all of that is when the men weren't off fighting a war as a conscripted soldier.

The "working man" who could support a family on his income alone was a product of the post-WWII economy. And he didn't really have to save for retirement, he had a defined-benefit pension (the kind that bankrupted many of their employers in subsequent years).

The fact that today, people can feel pretty picky about the terms of the work they do is a sign that times are pretty good, despite what people may think and say.

usrbinbash8• 3 years ago

and to the extent it's true it's a pretty brief period of time historically.

That is true, but understandably, people are not thrilled about the prospect of their conditions being worse than those their predecessors experienced.

Especially not if, at the same time, they experience an uninterrupted period of economic growth and ever growing profit margins for the corporations they work for.

majesticglue• 3 years ago

this is the problem of believing things are "better".

it's better in terms of people not having to do brutal physical labor.

but it's worse it's ever been in terms of mental labor and mental health. For older folks they may not understand, and we as a society as a whole not understand, how much mental impact growing up with social media and endless amounts of stimulation has an affect on the entire generation. Social media is still incredibly new only several decades old, with every year getting more and more stimulating. We have no idea the consequences of such over a long term impact on mental health.

You may think "just don't go on it" but it's a whole different story for younger kids, when everyone in your peer group is on social media. If your entire social network is dependent on social media, "just don't use social media" becomes incredibly difficult, and you become exposed to algorithms designed to ceaselessly deliver dopamine to your brain.

On top of that work, has become a lot more and more mentally draining vs physically draining, making it way harder to factor how tiring it is. As someone who studied Neuroscience in undergrad, the biggest takeaway for me learning it was Neuroscience is still an extremely new science, and our understanding of the brain is very very limited, funnily enough despite how much advancements we made with ai. So understanding people's mental exhaustion is very difficult to measure.

Endless mental dopamine delivery, combined with rapid technological pace requiring younger individuals to learn more and more, faster and faster,

I argue, that "times are not as good" as people think they say. There is a different kind of pain involved from working long hours in more natural/stable but physically arduous tasks in the fields or whatnot, vs 8 hours in some confined space indoors of having to constantly learn something new of an ever-changing landscape of new technology without stability where you can be rendered useless in a span of a couple years (ie artists and ai image generation). The pain of being in some confined space is not new to the older generation, but it certainly is getting worse because of how faster automation is rendering certain knowledge and jobs useless much faster than it ever did.

welshwelsh• 3 years ago

A working man can still support a family of five, buy a house, a car and a vacation once or twice a year. He just needs to be realistic.

House: you can still find houses with plenty of room for ~$100k. It just needs to be in an affordable area: think McKeesport, not San Francisco.

Car: for $5k you can get a 2005 Ford Focus or Honda Civic. They're reliable cars that will get you from A to B perfectly fine, easy to repair and fuel efficient.

Education: a Computer Science degree from WGU costs $18k for the average student, and can be as low as $4k if you accelerate.

Career: plenty of remote software jobs paying above $100k, which can fund a good life in most of the US.

I get it though, the average person wants a nice house in a wealthy area with good schools and low crime and two new cars and gets a degree from a school they can't afford in a field without high paying jobs, and they cannot even code. That's completely their fault, no sympathy from me.

For those people, there's an easy solution: just don't have kids. Kids are crazy expensive, and not required for a good life.

I hope what you say is true- mass retirements followed by a plummeting birthrate. We surely do not need so many people, when the overwhelming majority are useless. Robots will be here soon anyway to replace most of the workforce

monsieurbanana• 3 years ago

You forgot those damn avocado toasts

pram• 3 years ago

Now this is some “folksy wisdom”

nradov4• 3 years ago

Progress on robotics has been extremely slow. I doubt that we will see a robot that can repair a broken air conditioner in our lifetimes.

But I agree that a lot of the whining is due to expectations that are decoupled from reality. A recent survey of college students showed that they expected to earn an average starting salary of $103K. Most are in for a rude awakening.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2022/05...

mstipetic• 3 years ago

A society that views children as cost has things very backwards. They are the prize and the whole point of this game.

carlosjobim7• 3 years ago

For those people, there's an easy solution: just don't have kids

I think most people have started to notice that this is the actual purpose of all these insane policies against workers in the industrialized world. Every vise imaginable is being used to squeeze young people. From rent and real estate extortion, taxes and tributes, to inflation. Then the solution given to them is "Oh just don't have children. You don't deserve to procreate since you have to keep working for us to be comfortable."

There is another word for the kind of policy being supported by you.

alisonatwork4• 3 years ago

I think it's important to note that the good old days of a working man being able to support a family of five was only true for a brief period of history in a handful of elite countries. In most of the world, and for most of human history, it hasn't been the case that any single person working 40 hours a week could provide a luxurious lifestyle for a large family. While some lament the loss of this golden age their grandparents experienced, a much greater number of people around the world have seen their living conditions improve markedly since the time of their grandparents.

That doesn't take away from the point that ideally no one should have to work themselves to the bone just to afford a humble lifestyle, but if middle class people in developed countries are really asking for perspective, I think it's worth bearing their relative privilege in mind.

muro2• 3 years ago

First it was "support a family of five", then "luxurious lifestyle" then "humble lifestyle". Except for the "luxurious" one, it was possible pretty much at any time in human history, including now.

hotdogscout• 3 years ago

This is my experience in Brazil.

Also, wasn't this golden age in the US fueled by concentrated demand for industrial goods after the second world war? Without an unprecedented imbalance in the economy I cannot see this happening.

Some people that hate imperialism also demand it's spoils back (?).

kaashif3• 3 years ago

It is funny, people somehow think that a momentary episode of utter economic dominance after all other economic powers had been bombed into dust should be the norm.

And the 50s and 60s weren't that great for e.g. black people or women in the US either.

coldtea4• 3 years ago

I think it's important to note that the good old days of a working man being able to support a family of five was only true for a brief period of history in a handful of elite countries. In most of the world, and for most of human history, it hasn't been the case that any single person working 40 hours a week could provide a luxurious lifestyle for a large family.

Keyword "luxurious".

People first and foremost want to be able to have a roof, food, some leisure time, and so on, not luxury.

And people could have a lot of that for more than "a brief period of history in a handful of elite countries". Between common wrong tropes, movies, and ignorance of history, the past is hugely downplayed as to these aspects.

The "industrial revolution" era of Marx and Dickens time, actually worsened (for the first 2 centuries or so) the working conditions and increased the working hours for huge swaths of the population. People had to be forced (via law, violence, and destruction of their prior livelihood) to go work in factories (and many fought hard for keeping their rural way of life).

phpisthebest4• 3 years ago

All of that is true, even in the US. It is a false narrative that the "middle class is collapsing" in the US

There is a very narrow band, and very specific regions in the US where that is true unfortunately for the the rest of us the people and regions where this is the reality those people hold outsized control over the media, and government so it gives the appearance it is a universal reality. The World Is Becoming a Better Place[1]

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5s6aZCPSg

Iulioh2• 3 years ago

Honestly that's a valid criticism

BUT

I would point out the wealth distribution in our economy.

If it was more equable would this luxurious lifestyle for all still be possible ?

arrozconcosas• 3 years ago

There were a lot of people working very hard in the 50s and 60s, not having luxurious lifestyles. My grandparents had 6 kids on a farm because they all had to work to make ends meet, and lived in a modest farm house. They grew their own food, and didn't have what some would describe as 'luxury'. My other grandparents had a 1000 square foot home with 5 boys in it. Both parents worked and a vacation consisted of driving 4 hours to a nearby big city once a year, not going to Machu Picchu or the Amalfi Coast.

gmadsen• 3 years ago

its also the case that people want different things. Even if all work could be remote, there will still be people that will pay most of their income to live in NYC or SF, because when you are living in those places you are not just paying for a roof over your head. You are getting opportunities professionally and culturally that do not exist elsewhere

eli_gottlieb2• 3 years ago

You talk about the "relative privilege" of middle class people in developed countries as though the cause for their declining standard of living was other people having more, as if their "slice of pie" was being cut in pieces and given away. That's not how economic growth works. When China and India grow, the total productive power of the world economy grows. So now the world ought to be able to support "luxurious" standards of living for more people, but in fact we see fewer people enjoying such lives. So where's the output of all our work going, eh?

cool_dude852• 3 years ago

plus save enough to retire comfortably

Individual saving for retirement was cooked up in the 80s. You used to get your pension and be set.

bluGill6• 3 years ago

If you were lucky. Many did not get a pension at all though. And many others had a pension that went bankrupt so they go nothing. The 1980s (starting before then) were reforms on a system that wasn't working well for many.

paintman252• 3 years ago

"If the reward from working is barely enough to cover the necessities, then there is technically no difference between working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an indentured servant, other than a vague notion of freedom, which in that case is the freedom to decide between working and living on the streets."

What an incredibly privileged perspective. Do you think that actual indentured servants would agree with you on this?

nradov4• 3 years ago

Here's some perspective. In lower cost areas of the country it's still totally possible for a single worker to support a family of five, buy a house, a car, and afford a vacation. But in that idealized version of the past that you're describing the normal standards of living were much lower. The typical worker's house was small with everyone sharing one bathroom. The car was unreliable and dangerous. The vacation was a road trip to go camping. Now it seems everyone's expectations have risen.

I do agree that demographic changes are going to cause economic problems. That is basically unavoidable now.

pclmulqdq• 3 years ago

A big part of this seems to be the idea that a highly-educated urban professional ought to have a better life than a journeyman plumber in a rural area. The reality is that there is a lot more supply of educated professionals and a lot more demand for city life, so it should not be surprising that wages in formerly-elite jobs are being depressed and cost of living is shooting up. In the meantime, the plumber's economic situation has largely improved with the booming economy and the dwindling supply of plumbers.

If you want a high quality of life today and aren't worth $10+ million, the best way to get it is to get out of a city.

throwaway33381• 3 years ago

For most jobs real wages haven't gone up at all adjusted with inflation. Others have mostly gone down in wages, most specifically service type jobs which are critical for basic needs. When you can't afford to live why bother?

WalterBright2• 3 years ago

Consider the share of the GDP sucked up and dissipated by the government. That inevitably results in a general lower standard of living.

The government has grown enormously in my lifetime, sucking up much (most?) of the productivity increases.

lordnacho• 3 years ago

Likely true. But there are plenty of large businesses that are effectively the same. Larger than a lot of government departments, holding a monopoly-like position in some good/service, can't be killed. These orgs are just as good as government at overpaying people.

IMO the productivity loss is misidentified as a government issue, it's actually a large org issue.

Nifty39293• 3 years ago

"then there is technically no difference between working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an indentured servant"

A common fallacy. There are light-years of difference. An indentured servant is bound to serve a particular master. A free worker, even earning only enough for necessities, is still free to decide how to meet those necessities, and who to work for under what terms. That's a lot of freedom. No, of course they will not have as many choices as a rich person. But they are very far from indentured servitude.

benreesman2• 3 years ago

You’re going to get a bunch of static because of the objectivist leanings of all the “temporarily impoverished tech billionaires” on HN and pg’s rare miss of an essay about the scarce reagents of the United States manufacturing economy during the Cold War.

But you’re fundamentally right. It’s really easy to manipulate indices like the CPI (and oh boy do they have some interesting ideas about what people need in life), and it’s really easy to exploit summary statistics like the arithmetic mean to drag “average standard of living” metrics around with a few categories of goods (mostly consumer electronics) to push the absurd notion that anyone outside the investor class is doing as well as they were 10, 20, 30, 40, … years ago.

The United States burns 45% of its corn and smaller but still ridiculous percentages of its other big agricultural outputs as ethanol at a net disaster on carbon emissions. We let poor and homeless people interact with courts and ERs in vast numbers who need housing assistance, basic medical care, and sometimes substance abuse treatment at (people debate this exact number) somewhere in the hand-wave 10-100x range of a markup. Cops and judges and the amortized cost of lawsuits against police departments and ER doctors and ER nurses and ER equipment have a cost structure closer to a military than cheap, tax-subsidized housing and registered nurses.

The United States has absurd surpluses of arable land, exploitable energy, deep-water harbor capacity, riverine transport capacity, exploitable mineral resources, highly desirable and massively under exploited coastal real estate, you name it, it’s easier to list things that are in any way intrinsically scarce here…Coltan maybe?

The United States is in a position unique in history in which its sovereign debt is denominated in its own currency and that currency is the world’s reserve currency and that sovereign debt is the “risk-free return” r-nought embraced by modern global finance. This means that we can tailor the money supply exactly to the level of productivity that it’s used to represent, which means that being a politician or economic regulator is as easy of a job (if your goal is the public welfare) as it definitionally can be.

The United States is basically the only developed nation with no intrinsic demographic challenges (the ones that are ravaging all the other developed nations) because there is a seeming boundless supply of (statistically) young, law-abiding, productive people who still have kids wanting to immigrate here across a porous land border.

Scarcity or want of really any kind is a very, very, very expensive “luxury” (it’s not quite a Veblen good but it’s certainly conspicuous consumption) that we as a society seem prepared to spend whatever it takes to get.

Once you strip the paint jobs off of either Foucault-style postmodernism or Randian objectivism (a challenge that Noam Chomsky describes as a real feat of linguistic manipulation) you’re left with effectively the same actionable value system of there being 2 kinds of people in this world: for the lefty kleptocrats the individual is robbed of agency and identity because they are the product of constructed forces external to them (I mean, except for us of course), for the righty kleptocrats the individual is robbed of agency and identity because they aren’t smart or motivated enough to invent Reardon Metal and therefore insignificant (I mean, except for us, of course).

The action item that falls out is the same in both cases: drive capture to keep the “right people” running things.

The result is the same in both cases: if you do a halfway honest plot of productivity and genuine standard of living against the decades, you get divergent lines that seem to be training for an Olympic gymnastics qualification.

The most dangerous man in the world isn’t a Navy SEAL or a Zeta, the most dangerous man in the world is a man with nothing to lose, which is why we’re up to 4 mass shootings a day (by Mother Jones’s definition but pick one), which is per-capita more than Syria.

This little brochure is a bit hand-wavy on the math and takes a bit of poetic license, it’s not meant to be the book that someone needs to write about this. So it’ll be a trivial exercise to pick it apart in that god-awful “>”-prefixed bad-faith style, but it’s not going to be a fundamental intellectual or epistemological or ethical error that’s going to motivate people to do so, it’s that this is not a comfortable thing to see in the mirror.

sebastos• 3 years ago

I'll bite:

The action item that falls out is the same in both cases: drive capture to keep the “right people” running things.

This rings true, and seems an insightful point. But I lost the plot in the following:

The result is the same in both cases: if you do a halfway honest plot of productivity and genuine standard of living against the decades, you get divergent lines that seem to be training for an Olympic gymnastics qualification.

I don't really get how this "result" follows, or what prescription you're hinting at. Are you just saying we're very productive but fail to distribute among the citizens? That seems like a garden variety left talking point, which is a bit.. anti-climactic. Not that I even agree or disagree overmuch, but the tone of your post made me think you were building towards a more heterodox take. Am I missing something?

phpisthebest4• 3 years ago

>a working man could support a family of five, buy a house, a car and afford vacation once or twice a year, plus save enough to retire comfortably.

I would say my family history is that of a "working man" that closly fits that narraive..

My grandfather was a WWII vet, after military service was a factory worker that raised 4 kids, in their own home.

Let me eliminate some of that illusory rose tint from your worldview. That home with 2 adults and 4 kids was a 950 square foot 1 bathroom box on .25 acres of land, with no garage, basement, or luxury of any type. my family still owns this property.

In comparison me a single man, lives in a 1300 sqft home.. by myself, with 2 car garage, full basement, etc. My home is considered "basic" by modern standards, some would even consider it below minimum standards for a family of 4...(I bought this home from such a family because they felt it was too small for them)

No builder would ever consider building either my home (which was built in the 60's, nor my grandparents home (built in the early 50's) as today home sizes need to be 1500-2000 square foot, each bedroom needs it own bath, kitchens need to be near professional quality, etc etc etc etc etc.

In short home prices are sky high because buyers would never consider, and probally could not legally, raise 4 kids in a 1 bath 950 sqaure foot home.

We often to not actualy compare apples to apple when we look at the conditions of the past. Sure a man could buy a home for his family in 1950... That home was about 1/2 the size of todays home, and had FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR less amenities and comforts of the modern home

grecy3• 3 years ago

Obviously this depends entirely on the country and region.

My grandfather immigrated to Australia in 1948, got a job assembling cars at the Ford plant, and worked there until he retired.

My Grandmother never worked. They bought a very nice house, had two boys, never really had any debt, plenty of money in retirement.

A generation later my Dad was earning $10k/year as a teacher, and my mum and dad bought their first very nice home for $30k.

So today how many people earning $100k/year can buy a home for $300k?

(As reference, my partner earns $78k/year and bought a modest home for $480k the month before covid. Now there is not a single home in this small town for less than $600k.)

lazyasciiart3• 3 years ago

In short home prices are sky high because buyers would never consider, and probally could not legally, raise 4 kids in a 1 bath 950 sqaure foot home.

I live in a place the same size as you, minus the garage and the land, as a family of 3 so far.

There are plenty of potential homebuyers who would kill for this, and I know of nowhere in the USA that it would be illegal. The problem is that cities limit the number of homes that can be built to ludicrous low density setups like "one house on 2 square acres", and there are enough homebuyers who will pay for the house three times that size with a bathroom per bedroom that the builder doesn't bother to worry about the potential buyers who are not being served and have to move out beyond the edges of public transit to afford anything. And these density limits remain because old people swan around moaning that it's inhumane to build studio apartments when everybody wants a 12 sq acre bathroom, and why are there people in tents on the street?

tmnvix• 3 years ago

If the reward from working is barely enough to cover the necessities, then there is technically no difference between working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an indentured servant, other than a vague notion of freedom, which in that case is the freedom to decide between working and living on the streets.

Slave/indentured servant -> live-in servant -> servant -> service worker -> self-employed service worker (contractor)

At each step along this 'evolution', the beneficiaries of the labour have freed themselves from the burden of supplying some of the resources needed by the worker (shelter, food, holidays, sick pay, health insurance, safety and other equipment, education/training, etc). In theory this has been balanced by increased monetary compensation. When that compensation isn't enough for the worker to meet these needs, what should we expect? That they become indebted?

red-iron-pine3• 3 years ago

People want perspective. In the past, a working man could support a family of five, buy a house, a car and afford vacation once or twice a year, plus save enough to retire comfortably.

Maybe during the 1950s, when two (2) World Wars had blasted multiple empires to dust and essentially gutted a generation of workers aka males between the ages of 18-40.

Sure enough the US, still standing after entering the wars late and not seeing huge casualties or direct combat in-country, was positioned to lead a post-war economic boom.

Now it's back to pre-war conditions, which curiously enough, resemble the Guilded Age, and its associated strikes

DropInIn2• 3 years ago

Was that for a particular "kind" ot man?

Because I can't help but note that in North America that there were plenty of people who couldn't do so but were of the "undesirable classes"....

And the reason those who could afford such were able was because they were effectively standing on the backs of those "less privileged".

Afaict, even when it's not racial such things still existed in most places at the time.

skrebbel• 3 years ago

My theory is that this is all true, and it’s fantastic. Generally, over the last century, in year X, nobody wants to work anymore compared to year Y (Y < X).

This is a success of social democracy and it is a success of technology. We can afford to have people work less hard and still be richer than we ever were. It’s the success story of western progress and the rest of the world is going through the same steps as we speak. That a few old-fashioned managers are surprised they can’t get people at the same bad terms as before is just a symptom of a very positive development.

BirAdam4• 3 years ago

Interesting opinion. I’ll need to think on that for a bit. Thanks for offering it.

ChoHag• 3 years ago

Correction: It's the success story of western progress at the expense of the rest of the world, which must find its own way because we've ripped up the steps.

grecy3• 3 years ago

FWIW, we haven't just ripped up the steps, we're actively standing at the top pointing a gun down.

Do you know why Switzerland exports the 2nd most processed coffee of any country in the world [1] while Ethiopia (where coffee was "invented" remains extremely poor, only exporting raw beans? Because the IMF and World Bank would send them back to the dark ages if they attempted to do anything different.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096413/main-export-coun...

virtuous_sloth• 3 years ago

Look at @paulsci's post history including on X-Twitter. He's done dozens of these tours through the newspapers on many similar subjects.

sneed-oil2• 3 years ago

It might also be due to demographics in Western countries. If the ratio of workers to total population decreases while the demand for work remains the same, there will be less competition for jobs and workers will be able to demand higher pay. It also depends on how many can be replaced by machines.

cmdialog• 3 years ago

I will never work to make money for someone else ever again

DANmode• 3 years ago

Mercenary, then?

Or looking to start your own thing?

lopkeny12ko3• 3 years ago

As a tech lead, the big problem I see now is that people are not hungry anymore. The best engineers I've ever worked with were consistently asking for more and leveling up the team at the same time. Now, the post-covid hires, especially the junior engineers, just do the bare minimum to scrape by, and they seem totally unbothered by it.

One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day "walking her dog." I even called this out during a formal performance review and her behavior hasn't changed at all. (Work-from-home abuse is another component of this observation.)

nine_zeros7• 3 years ago

As a tech lead, the big problem I see now is that people are not hungry anymore. The best engineers I've ever worked with were consistently asking for more and leveling up the team at the same time. Now, the post-covid hires, especially the junior engineers, just do the bare minimum to scrape by, and they seem totally unbothered by it.

Because they see management not pulling their weight for the pay they get. Why should lowly paid junior engineers work harder than management who are just sitting back, dumping poor decisions on them?

One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day "walking her dog." I even called this out during a formal performance review and her behavior hasn't changed at all. (Work-from-home abuse is another component of this observation.)

Wow, blame someone for having a healthy life.

lopkeny12ko3• 3 years ago

What do you consider a fair pay for junior engineers in order for them to contribute at the capacity they're expected to? Our fresh college grads are paid a total compensation higher than $200K. Is that not enough to expect working, at minimum, 8 hours a day?

xwdv• 3 years ago

It’s not “work from home” abuse.

You’re not really paying people to be at a computer working exactly 40 hours a week. You’re paying people to solve problems and create value. There is not a 1:1 correlation between time and results in this field. Most days I only need maybe 3 or 4 hours to take care of work related stuff.

As long as people do what is asked, why should they worry about burning out the extra time that remains?

jen20• 3 years ago

I work for a pretty successful company (by any measure), and have had multiple startup exits before that, and I would know it was time to retire immediately if I started thinking like you.

One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day "walking her dog."

I once came up with the idea for a product which has generated several hundred million dollars in revenue on a dog walk in the middle of the day. This morning while on a dog walk (on Sunday), I came up with the solution to a problem which has been vexing a team of 8-9 people for many months and will unblock millions of dollars of potential.

The very notion that someone is not working because they are not in front of their computer screen marks you as someone who is wholly unfit to be a manager of people. 80% of the job of a software engineer is thinking.

Now, the post-covid hires, especially the junior engineers, just do the bare minimum to scrape by

The entire industry would be better off if people just DID LESS. Complexity abounds because people want to be seen to "be doing something" to impress people like you. Again, 80% of the job of a software engineer is thinking.

Work-from-home abuse is another component of this observation.

If you think people don't work at home, you should see what they do at an office when they can make small talk with other incapables.

MattPalmer10862• 3 years ago

Yeah... I used to go for walks to think. There is much evidence that it helps people in general, but I know it does for me.

I got dinged on my performance review for being away from my desk. Didn't stay long at that company.

throw9away62• 3 years ago

A low of people get jealous when you work smarter. They think that results don’t matter as much as self inflicted sacrifices. Many of them work in the C suites

almost_usual3• 3 years ago

One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day "walking her dog." I even called this out during a formal performance review and her behavior hasn't changed at all. (Work-from-home abuse is another component of this observation.)

Good for her, it takes confidence to do this.

Overworking engineers into burnout isn’t a healthy career path.

bluefishinit2• 3 years ago

I was going to say, she sounds like someone I'd want in management. Confidently putting life before work in the work/life balance is the way to avoid burnout, maximize creativity and hire amazing people.

DanAtC• 3 years ago

So what?

jasonlotito3• 3 years ago

do the bare minimum

That's doing their job. You are complaining you aren't getting free labor. They are meeting the requirements.

people are not hungry anymore

People aren't willing to do things for free.

One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day "walking her dog." I even called this out during a formal performance review and her behavior hasn't changed at all. (Work-from-home abuse is another component of this observation.)

Sounds like bad management/leadership. If you are complaining about how she spends 2 hours of her time rather than on the results, and you are complaining about people not giving you free work...

I never had this problem. I had the opposite, encouraging people to work only the hours they should so they don't burn themselves out.

But hey, prove me wrong. Work for free. Let me know, I have stuff I can shovel your way and you can do it for free. Prove to me that you practice what you preach.

add-sub-mul-div• 3 years ago

I've seen the same thing in others and in myself, but I'd put it as pre- and post-Agile/Jira. The industry used to be full of enthusiasm but now it's like Office Space.

brtkdotse• 3 years ago

I think it’s because we’ve realized we’re not building a better future but rather Yet Another Online Ad* System.

* “online ad” can be replaced with “gig economy” if you like

SoftTalker3• 3 years ago

Interesting observation, it hadn't occurred to me but I think you're right. My dissatisfaction with software work started right around the time that agile practices became popular. The work changed, and started feeling like less of a craft and more like flipping burgers.

FBISurveillance• 3 years ago

Good for her! Taking care of personal well-being and spending time with loved ones while being productive enough - otherwise you'd have left her go, right?

Why the default assumption that everyone wants to participate in a rat race and play office politics to get a chance to be promoted?

zmgsabst• 3 years ago

How do you connect the available rewards to extra effort made? — do your team members trust that you’ll follow through?

In my experience, that behavior happens when rewards aren’t clear and/or don’t happen: when you fail to reward or even punish an animal for putting in effort, they stop. If being “hungry” is exploited by businesses but doesn’t result in rewards, why would sane people continue? — there’s productive areas of their life they could invest that same effort.

quasarsunnix• 3 years ago

I walk my dog two hours a day.

I just work around my meetings (sometimes can take the meeting whilst walking) and ensure I still work 5-8hrs on tasks.

Is your gripe that you think she should be glued to her desk 9-5?

I don’t know what her role is, but as a software engineer I can’t say I’d ever be interested in a job where someone wanted to micromanage me like that. As long as the work gets done why care?

cognivore2• 3 years ago

I'd be willing to bet that the problem is the work isn't getting done. I've seen this many times now. No one is going to care how much you time you spend walking your dog if you're getting your work done - you only draw attention to yourself when you're lacking, and then your manager starts looking for reasons, sees you work 20% less than expected, and then what would you say? You'd call them on the carpet, too. I'd give them a part time job since that's what they seem to be capable of.

I've religiously filled out time-sheets, in various forms) for 30 years, and I don't think they have been looked at more than a few times by my managers since my work gets done, and more. But I know for damn sure the laggards get scrutinized.

A_non_e-moose• 3 years ago

As a tech lead, the big problem I see now is that people are not hungry anymore.

What incentives need to be aligned and how, to starve them a bit more and make them hungry again?

cognivore2• 3 years ago

I see this too, and not just post-COVID. 10+ years ago we used to have "Let's Learn This Now!" where the developers would agree on particular subject and then learn and discuss it on our own time, and occasionally it would lead to improvements in our development. We went through Ruby (on Rails), Angular (nope, not even) to React (meh), queuing (ZeroMQ mostly), Asp.NET MVC, Redis, Docker, Octo, NoSQL dbs - the list goes on (even custom mechanical keyboard building). It was a lot of fun, and it was nice to have all the perspectives and interesting ideas shared.

Now there is only a few of us that still attempt this, as the rest are not interested in anything beyond their job description. Honestly in the last 10 years the phrase "That's not my job" has entered the company's phraseology when previously it was perceived as an opportunity for growth or even just cross training. Hell, that's 90% of how I advanced up the ranks - taking on new responsibilities.

A dev manager we had a while back, who has been managing developers for 20 years, told me that a lot of the problem is passion vs money. Many recent developers are in the industry because they heard that software development is good money, so they got a CS degree. But they're not as interested in the continuing education that is a necessity for the career, and only those with a passion for it thrive. He sees them dev'ing a few years, realizing it's not for them, and then trying management, and then dropping out of industry because they're not interested in the effort to excel.

But if you have a passion for software development, love tech, and the whole 9 yards, work is just doing what you like, and you enjoy it (well, when your company isn't screwing it up - that's a different problem).

linuxftw• 3 years ago

There was a lot more interesting work 10+ years ago. All the interesting bits have been commoditized.

itsboring4• 3 years ago

As a kid, when people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said programmer. So that’s what I did.

The money vs. passion thing rings true, but at the same time, I’ve found that channeling passion to my employer doesn’t really reward me in the way I want. When I go “above and beyond” my job description, the reward is actually a punishment: more of the shit I don’t want to be doing.

Instead, I set aside some time to work on open source stuff. I actually feel a sense of ownership then. I’m not working to make somebody else rich, and I can do things my way and in my own time.

lopkeny12ko3• 3 years ago

Couldn't have said it better myself!

JoshuaEN• 3 years ago

What's the point in being "hungry"? To fill the pockets of some soulless corporation and hope they'll pass down some scraps while making record profits?

I have worked at the same place for 5 years; worked hard, continuously received great/exelecent reviews, several promotions, but I have only just kept up with inflation the past few years (and am probably net negative accounting for the timing of the rases), and before that it was 2% effective (for top marks). Plus "post-COVID" forced RTO, with all the costs associated with that.

All in all, I am paid around the market rate (for the area) for my prior role, despite having performed at my current role for 2+ years now (with continued high marks).

I still put in an honest 8 hours of work, but no more (mostly). Sometimes I wish I could be like those who work a little as possible and likely get paid almost as much (or more if they joined after), but that's not who I am.

somenits• 3 years ago

On this, the communists and paleo-conservatives can agree:

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. Preamble, The Communist Manifesto

(Of course, Marx had no love for ancien regime, while the conservatives did.)

coldcode• 3 years ago

One of my favorite old songs: Big Rock Candy Mountain (https://genius.com/Harry-mcclintock-big-rock-candy-mountain-...) covers it well. The last verse ends in:

There ain't no short-handle shovels No axes, saws or picks I'm a-goin' to stay where you sleep all day Where they hung the jerk that invented work In The Big Rock Candy Mountains

BirAdam4• 3 years ago

I really like the Restarts’ version of this song.

projektfu3• 3 years ago

From a small business perspective, turnover is a lot higher, and a lot more of it is because the employees are simply not doing their jobs and have to be let go. I think this is the tight labor market at work, actually. Good workers are being retained because there is enough demand for them. If they move, they are not on the market, they're recruited and cherry picked. The available ones responding to ads have usually been let go before for cause.

A single example of people complaining each year does no more to debunk the observation than the complaints do to affirm it.

This forum frequently talks about the 10x performer, the 1x performer, the 0.1x performer and the negative performer. In other industries, maybe you won't have a 10x, but you can definitely get ranges from impressive performance to destructive interference in your employees.

What we really need is to study engagement and effectiveness in various industries to determine whether there's trends of more hard work or more slack, but in lieu of that we will find journalists interviewing the guy at the diner for the story, and that will become the zeitgeist.

I personally feel like things are more hectic and busy than ever before, and I don't know how much of that is due to the increased distraction power of all of our "tools". Or whether it's a symptom of aging or long COVID or whatever.

spamizbad• 3 years ago

From a small business perspective, turnover is a lot higher, and a lot more of it is because the employees are simply not doing their jobs and have to be let go.

Many of these small businesses were tying up a ton of talent. During COVID, their workers left to go work for larger companies and (in the case of the service industry) took office jobs.

To add to this, a number of these small businesses engaged in PPP fraud by taking out loans to designed to keep payrolls going but ended up "spending" it on an owner's draw. This was not the intention of the program: It was to stabilize the workforce. But by shedding headcount, these businesses handed over a ton of labor to white collar employers. They're likely never getting those workers back.

And I will also say, especially among younger people, small business owners have earned a reputation for being difficult to work for. So you're right, in a sense, but the other factor at play is that small businesses scare away good workers.

projektfu3• 3 years ago

Maybe, so it kind of sucks to be the business that reduced hours (=revenue) during COVID and used the PPP loan to keep paying full time employees while they're working part time. Being an essential business, we didn't close. Now that things are back, it's hard to find employees, even with increased wages.

javcasas2• 3 years ago

a lot more of it is because the employees are simply not doing their jobs and have to be let go

You are trying to find a cheap and good employee at the same time. Those tend to be scarce. Yet you keep scrapping the bottom of the barrel, and finding low quality.

Have you considered a change of other parameters of your search? For example, the budget or the availability required.

projektfu3• 3 years ago

Yes, the only way to hire is to ask people who have jobs to come work for you. And to raise prices to keep the lights on.

cs702• 3 years ago

Brilliant.

It should be memorialized forever somewhere easily accessible by everyone.

That way, when silly people complain that "nobody wants to work anymore," they can quickly be shown how uninformed and unoriginal they are.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Or, as The Who succinctly put it: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

quelsolaar3• 3 years ago

I want to live in a world, where no one have to work in order to live a decent life, but I dont want to live in a world that has forgotten how fulfilling work can be.

I live for my work because it is engaging, challenging, and is my way of contributing to society. I want to live a life that contributes more to the world then it consumes. The Anti-work movement has a lot of good criticism of our capitalist society, but also throws the idea of work as way of contributing to society under the buss. People who work long hours arent suckers.

TheCaptain48152• 3 years ago

This reminds me of the romanticism of the Medieval Peasant I’ve sometimes seen online. The thinking is yes they worked hard, but at least they got guaranteed housing and a wife, etc.

America really is the land of opportunity, but if you don’t end up in a higher bracket, life is really really difficult.

23B12• 3 years ago

The easiest way for leaders to mitigate the problem of 'not wanting to work' is to make work a more desirable place to be. It's not even hard to do. Some simple rules for managers and leaders:

1. Treat others as you wish to be treated. Remember all the shitty bosses you had, and be the first to break the cycle.

2. Pay people slightly above market rate. Make that your #1 hiring message: "We pay above market rate" and watch the referrals flow. Turn your employees into evangelists and you won't need a platoon's-worth of recruiters.

3. Be very loud and very public about commonsense balance of work and just 'life'. No emails after 5, prioritize social-family events like PTA meetings, or dates, or "Hey I'm gonna take my team bowling Friday afternoon, can I expense the chicken tendies?"

4. You can't build culture; it's created from within. Embrace what your employees bring culture-wise and make THAT your work culture.

etothepii• 3 years ago

I disagree on #2. I think if you want to build culture you need to find people who value culture over money, and that if you don't live up to your end they can complain about the deal. If you over pay and offer better culture when the culture inevitably falters people are stuck because you over pay.

hooverd• 3 years ago

What does "value culture over money even mean?" I'd rather get paid more and work with people who are clock punching professionals than somewhere where "we're all a family".

poorlyknit• 3 years ago

Pay is a part of culture.

darkerside• 3 years ago

Not that I totally disagree, but what happens if everybody pays above market rate?

iambateman• 3 years ago

This pairs nicely with “they don’t make them like they used to” and “kids these days don’t know how good they have it”

dinom• 3 years ago

The corollary is, of course, no one wants to pay anymore (-:

howmayiannoyyou• 3 years ago

This is not a simple issue of wage inadequacy.

There is work for survival, work for wealth and work for satisfaction.

Worker availability varies greatly in different cities and regions.

The drug epidemic today impacts the workforce to a greater extent then decades ago.

The kinds of low-skill jobs that compete favorably against welfare (eg. manufacturing) were mostly exported to Asia; though this trend may be easing if not slightly reversing.

A rush to college for liberal arts and social science degrees has produced several generations of workers whose skills are highly sensitive to economic & political; cycles, and to an impending AI replacement. The same may soon be true for several tiers of web and software engineers.

Small business in America, the largest employer, faces costs and challenges that leave little room for investment in new workers. I'm talking small business - not Verizon, Costco or Yellow Freight.

Government has grown substantially at the federal, state, county and municipal levels in many parts of America - competing with business for workers.

Boomer retirement.

Etc., etc.

As tempting as it may be to sloganize the issue and blame employers - the reality is nuanced and complex.

flappyeagle• 3 years ago

Basic needs seemingly get more expensive over time. Luxuries get cheaper over time. If basic needs become affordable they turn into perceived luxuries (food, clothes). At once point a good quality handbag was a piece of equipment.

fnord77• 3 years ago

I found something from 1936. heh

catlifeonmars• 3 years ago

Cherry-pick the data to prove a point? There are better ways to prove a point than this.

calibas• 3 years ago

In general, people want money, they've never wanted to work.

adr1an• 3 years ago

To be fair, employers never stopped extracting surplus.

xyst• 3 years ago

Some quotes appear to be from agriculture sector. A sector known for hiring immigrants because of the long hours, low pay, abusive environments (threats of ICE detention, …)

Some quotes appear to be from the service industry and during the pandemic. In the US, the minimum wage is STILL $7.25/hour. If you are a server the minimum wage is $2.13/hour. No shit, nobody wants to work. No way I am risking dying because a Karen does not want to mask up or get vaccinated for minimum wage, no benefits, no prospects.

All in all, when a business owner or hiring manager says “people don’t want to work anymore”. That’s really code for: we abuse our employees, pay is shit, hours are probably long.

throw9away62• 3 years ago

Guarantee you will earn more begging on a street corner in any liberal city.

ricardobeat2• 3 years ago

And here we have a thread that made the rounds on Twitter a few weeks back, being plagiarized on Mastodon for clicks.

This is the equivalent of content farming on the web, and absolutely sucks, how do we stop it?

thrillgore• 3 years ago

For me, the issue is there's work, but nobody wants to hire me because I:

* Have been off the job market for a while because nobody would interview me let alone consider me

* The last job I had was a month long, and it ended with my termination for performance in a setting where I arguably could not succeed.

And my run of bad luck has led to difficulty keeping work for the past two years. Its not fair, and I can't blame anyone for not wanting to do it anymore. The juice isn't worth the squeeze.

jrsj• 3 years ago

The problem is cultural rot as much as it is economic. If your only objective in life is to advance your career, buy things, eat takeout, and watch Netflix, then why bother? It’s just a slow suicide while you keep capitalism going.

The collapse of family formation and any sense of duty, community, or really any human relationship beyond a transactional one has made it mostly not worth succeeding.

And it probably doesn’t help that basically everyone is placed into 1 of 2 categories and told that either their merit shouldn’t count because they have an advantage due to being an “oppressor” or that they’ll never get ahead because everyone is out to get them and discriminating against them.

Working people are becoming increasingly demoralized, and letting them spend half their time pretending to work from home and giving them a raise isn’t going to change any of that.

nitwit0052• 3 years ago

Difficult to prove, but I suspect this complaint is one business owners make when they realize their business is going to fail. They know they could get more workers if they paid more, but they also know they can't afford that.

It's always easier to blame the people below you.

supertrope3• 3 years ago

It’s the fundamental attribution error in action. When other people fail they can point out some individual flaw. When they themselves fail it was external forces.

wonderwonder• 3 years ago

Nobody wants to work anymore [at terms that are only beneficial to me]. The worst jobs pay the lowest salary. Employment rate is low enough many don't have to put up with it. So we now have immigration, legal and otherwise. Jobs have to be done, so either raise pay, hire desperate immigrants or go out of business.

mercurialsolo• 3 years ago

Beyond the usual rationale of I don't want to work for pennies, I think hard work as a cultural vibe has fallen out of the times. It's also what we have designed our reward systems around.

Today's reward systems are tuned not around hard work, but around being smart. The disintermediation of media makes it feel like we are all in a celebrity lottery and we just need a lucky break. We don't need to compound our skills or put in the grind.

commonlisp94• 3 years ago

Finding historical quotes seems like a gotcha, but stating the actual conclusion that's implied makes it appear much less plausible:

The level or kind of work ethic in the population has been about the same over time.

Children have been about as well behaved over time.

Can anyone justify why these things should remain identical? That would suggest that environment is not an input into that equation.

quietthrow• 3 years ago

I think this post and some of the comments confuses work with job. Work is a means to a kind of satisfaction that cannot be achieved via leisure. And people need that and need work. Job on the other hand is everything most of the comments is talking about. Job is what you end up with when you working in a capitalistic system where profit is the sole motive (competition is what drives the need to keep costs down and labor is part of cost. We need capitalism to evolve so that practices are more sustainable call it capitalism 2.0 or whatever). So unless you are the job creator which very few of us are we are resorted to having a job. This is the case generally unless you are part of the smaller segment of people who have been lucky enough to call their job also their work.

vouaobrasil• 3 years ago

Not sure if anyone will see this but here is my advice if you really don't want to work and are smart: get a high paying job like programming or data science, work for 6 years, save up a ton of money by being frugal, then quit and go live somewhere cheap while working part time for 2-3 hours a week.

There are plenty of places where you can get a cheap house or a cheap apartment and work on passion projects to pay the bills.

nilslindemann• 3 years ago

I wonder what this dude does for a living. It is definitely not running around ten hours a day – not self-determined, but externally determined – and in the evening the feet literally bleed. And that for 8.50 net an hour. That is what I did and since then, I admit, I do not want to work anymore.

glimshe• 3 years ago

Working in most jobs sucks. Some people are lucky to have jobs they love, but that's the minority. I know that to be the prevalent sentiment even in top notch, AAA, "I can't believe they pay me to do this" companies such as Google, Apple etc.

If people had, for the sake of a thought experiment, a guaranteed 20K/month income and free healthcare no matter what they do with their life, it's very unlikely they will choose to work on regular jobs. They will instead generally pursue arts/crafts (including the craft of building computer programs in areas they are interested in), learning, exercise etc.

laurels-marts• 3 years ago

They will instead generally pursue arts/crafts (including the craft of building computer programs in areas they are interested in), learning, exercise etc.

I always hear this argument about UBI and it almost sounds too good to be true. Like utopian. And I wonder what segment of population will actually become artists and craftsmen with renewed sense of purpose and fulfillment vs. the folks that will accelerate even further into melancholy and feelings of deep meaninglessness.

lanecwagner• 3 years ago

Some might. Most would watch TV, hang out with friends/family, scroll TikTok, workout, and play videogames

nktrnk• 3 years ago

They will instead generally pursue arts/crafts

Didn’t we have this experiment during Covid where many people found themselves being paid, sometimes for 2 years, to just wait till their job comes back? I don’t think many became artists (surely, some did). But there were also a lot of stories of increased depression, addiction, and despair.

I’m not saying it’s better to do a bullshit job that getting paid to do nothing. I’m just saying it doesn’t seem to be as simple.

coldtea4• 3 years ago

One problem with such disprovings is that they don't get into the actual case of what's happening, just stay on what people say.

People could say the same thing for 200 years, but they might not say it at the same numbers or with the same intensity over those 200 years - and of course even if those were stable, the thing might or might not be actually happening during some of those years.

As an example (not making a X-to-Nazi comparison, so Godwin has no power here): People have been complaining about fascism from 1920 all the way to 2023. But there are still periods with hugely more actual fascism, say 1993-1945.

ddmichael• 3 years ago

I really think we are modern slaves in a pseudo-liberal capitalistic wrapper. It's going to become clearer to future generations looking back, similar to how we are now able to detect and understand mistakes of the past. Male toxicity and patriarchy for example only recently began to surface as a mistake.

While we still jobs and offer our services to society there are a number of things that need to fix and delete from our collective consciousness. All these stem from the same root of evil: the office. Similar to plants, we, the workers are gathering there, under some occult organizational umbrella which sometimes resembles a "family". We need to be there on a specific time, do specific things, we are being monitored and controlled. We need to behave in a certain way and leave our true self at home. We need to blindly obey a person called "the boss" or "the manager" and act under some military discipline executing commands. We need to climb some ladder of promises, most of which fail to deliver. This is a dark place full of lack of trust, insecurity and control.

Diversity, flexible working, remote working, shared vision and mission are some of the things that we have realized and applied. I am glad that we did but there is still a lot of work to be done. Working needs to be more like the freelancer/consultant type where possible: get the job done and you're paid attitude, rather than a weird let's have you around stand-by just in case. Similar to how an electrician comes to your place fixes the damage and immediately leaves, where possible workers need to do the same. Can you imagine your electrician spending her day at your place, 9-5? Sitting there just in case? And you will get to threaten, trash talk, be the boss and give orders.

We are still in the Palaeolithic era when it comes to how we work, with some improvements indeed but with also the heaviest pressure from the most powerful people globally.

mihaic2• 3 years ago

Why would anybody want to work as a default? Work is a trade of your time for some financial security. It's a sacrifice that doesn't need to be glorified.

I do understand that a functioning society needs to good work ethic where this transactional aspect is not in the mind of the worker while he's actually doing the work, since it's a hinderance. When we're discussing work as a topic though it needs to be considered as a core truth.

Conflating salary work and personal activities (cooking, cleaning, fixing something around the house) is part of the definition of work as well.

overgard2• 3 years ago

One thing that's funny to think about is in the distant past, one of the big selling points of automation and industrialization was that we could have the same things but work much less. That didn't quite work out. Now we work more, for more things. The tragedy though is there isn't a great option for trading luxuries for time. You're either 40+ hours a week invested in a career, or you're barely scraping by on a bunch of part time gigs with no health insurance or retirement plan.

kfk• 3 years ago

We will see what statistics say and what the trend will be in a few years, but if labor goes up for the same output then mathematically productivity has to go down, which has a variety of consequences, but I can think of 1) less capital market yields; 2) less tax income from governments. Both 1 and 2 have nasty impacts on pensions. I am not saying one way of thinking is better, I am just pointing out the obvious fact that there is no free lunch. Workers might get a better deal now, to be handed a bad one when they retire. Unless technology comes to the rescue and helps us keep increasing productivity, but it’s not realistic to rely only on tech.

amadeuspagel• 3 years ago

There is such a thing as a longterm trend.

wslh• 3 years ago

If we only take the title without a context and that and this HN thread we can go far from the employer and employee relationships. There are political and cultural systems where lazyness exist even at a high pay.

kelnos2• 3 years ago

I do enjoy things like this, but from a statistical standpoint, I don't think this really tells us all that much? I'm sure if you search hard enough through news archives, you can find at least one person saying something every year that validates your position.

But it does matter if only one person is saying that thing in a particular year, or thousands of people.

As an aside, I also find the idea that work is somehow virtuous to be pretty gross. That's something humanity has invented, not some natural truth. Sure, basic survival does require some amount of work, but beyond that, it's all unnecessary. Some people may want to continue to work more and more, in order to make it possible (in today's capitalist system) to do more than just survive, but we shouldn't look down on people because they've found a particular lifestyle or quality of living that works for them (as long as doing so isn't negatively impacting others).

Beyond that, I think choices like working toward financial independence early are fantastic, and I wish more people could have the opportunity to achieve that. The idea of working for even the old-school expectation of around 45 years (starting work after high school or college, and then retiring in the mid-60s) sounds awful to me... and these days people Not only are there plenty of ambitious people who want to work and build new things (to compensate for those who don't want to), but there are so many bullshit jobs that just don't need to be done, but exist mainly just to feed the self-imposed fiction that work is a virtue.

xyzelement• 3 years ago

I often think about the stark difference in outcomes between American[0] and immigrant kids that I went to high school with, 20+ years post graduation.

A big differentiating factor is that the immigrant kids - I am sure with a lot of influence from their parents - were willing to take on just a bit more work than their American peers. Try for the harder classes, try for the more selective college, try for the more rigorous major, etc. Nothing seemingly extraordinary but just a series of choices, at each step being willing to put in a bit more work than one could superficially get away with.

Consequently, the immigrant kids "fell into" careers in law, medicine, engineering, etc. at much higher rates than our American friends and their lives resemble the classic American dream: good job, nice house, bunch of kids. To be fair, a bunch of the Americans I grew up with achieved the same thing - still impressive although they started with a ton of advantage over us immigrants. But the rate of immigrant kids' success dwarfed this.

In retrospect, the immigrant belief in the connection between input and output - and perhaps this being less clear to our American friends - made a tremendous amount of difference. Our American pals had the same opportunities and could even go after them much easier, but they just didn't have the same motivation to kick their own ass to launch themselves a few rungs higher.

The culture of cultivating talent and being willing to put in work was a "secret" weapon of these immigrant families, and itself was a cultural attribute of the countries we had come from. And of course it's also very much the historic American ethos although in 2023 it seems gauche to speak to the virtue of working harder - I am sure this post is going to be controversial, for example.

The inability of the culture to sing the virtues of work openly has got to be a net negative, at least for those who take it seriously. The more traditional families are still teaching these values to their kids behind closed doors. And I am pretty sure that while there has always been a large group of folks not interested in working and certainly not in excellence through work, I suspect this group has a greater share of the public "voice" than ever before.

There's a classic Futurama quote: "no one drove in NY, too much traffic" and I think of it often when someone says that you can't get ahead or afford a life nowadays. While that message is popular, it kinda misses the question of: who do you think is bidding up these houses? Why do you think there's a waiting list for the pre-schools? etc. Who do you think is buying these family sedans and minivans? People don't often talk about "actually, I worked hard and it paid off" but it's kinda all around us if you look.

To be fair, there's no guarantee of success in life. You can work your ass off and get nowhere, especially if you work on the wrong thing. But there's definitely a guarantee of failure if you don't work, and it's sad to see people locking themselves into that.

[0] when I say American, I mean kids of Italian, Irish, and black ancestry who were born in the US. The immigrant kids were Russians and Asians primarily.

Pent• 3 years ago

as the current economic situation accelerates, the resource owners do not need consumers, that is why the workers are increasingly devalued

8bitsrule• 3 years ago

"I wanna be rich, rich, rich. WHY won't anyone give me half of their waking life to help?"

Found this quotation on Wiki earlier today, attributed to Jonathan Sudholt:

"In the Jacksonian era of antebellum America, class inequality was a major concern as fiscal downturns and the economy's transition from guild-based artisanship to private business sharpened socioeconomic disparity."

The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

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