Work Reform

That cycle will continue until we're extinct, because almost without exception, we conflate generations with age ranges... so every generation will think the one behind it is lazy because they judge that next generation when it's made up of a bunch of kids.

And no shit, kids aren't great workers :shockedpikachu:

The kids grow up, but the reputation lingers... until the next batch of kids enters the stage, and wouldn't ya know it, them kids are absolutely shit workers! :shockedpikachu:

Rinse and repeat until the oxygen concentration in our atmosphere is no longer sufficient to support human life... so... couple more decades? /shrug

That's a good point but... I honestly do not know. We used to have access to "reporting" that would tell us "facts", but now everything is commercialized to sell us whatever story seems most appealing to us (positively or negatively, whatever you will click on really: sex sells, fear even better, anger best of all) - so I'm sure you can find reports on all possible sides telling different stories, all with short-changed selections of facts and virtually no analysis to speak of. Unless a highly-trusted source chooses to take on a precise topic and you happen to have consumed it already (and remember it), you are basically SOL. Like, how do people even buy things anymore, either online or in physical stores, except by just gambling and hoping for the best from a purchase? Clothes just flat disintegrate, ... okay, I better keep focus here:-).

I tend to think that Gen-Z likely do work less hard - as a trend if not individually ofc - b/c of the reasons behind it, after all why would they work equally as hard, when they are being offered a fraction of the compensation? BTW I never said that they were lazy, and I tried to go to some trouble to explain why it is understandable how they are reacting - e.g. in the kick the dog example, it's not the dog's fault for not liking the master that kicked it so very, very often?

As one example, something that enticed previous generations to work hard was to own a home. But now, if that is off the table... (or maybe, if they think it is? I'm not certain of this aspect) then they don't need to work as hard, to own something that they can never own anyway?

Another thing that enticed previous generations to work hard for was to get a college degree. But now, with that costing >5x as much, and it being worth sth like 1/10th of what it was to previous generations (where are these magical "jobs" that offer things like "benefits" - and "stability" and "pensions" are pretty much flat gone, as too are the social security along with medicare/medicaid safety nets, etc.), plus colleges themselves are fairly predatory, many just don't bother. But there's a whole spectrum here: if they do go, they often don't work hard in them - not that colleges demand that anymore, b/c again, they are predatory, and their purpose is to pump either the kids or their parents (or loans, whoever signed them) for as much money as they can get out of them, which doesn't happen if they flunk out too awfully early...

Still another thing used to be to get married, have kids, and independent of whether owning a home or not, to raise a family. This we can directly measure: isn't Gen-Z doing much less of any of this?

Boomers worked hard b/c they saw value ahead in doing so. Gen-Z is getting their quality of life now, while the getting is good, b/c that is all that is left for them to be able to do.:-( No matter our age, we will all die sooner, and in much greater levels of pain and misery (if only second-hand by hearing stories of the exploitation going on around us) than our parents' generation - the Republicans have already seen to that and will most definitely continue to push much harder on that front still. :-(

I think some of it is down to different cultures - like I think that if we could quantify "objective" level of hard work done, and compare across different generations, I think that a boomer or gen xer may perceive them as working less hard.

On the flip side, I know a few hard working gen Z folk with a fairly casual manual who would likely perceive the boomer and gen X workers to be working less hard; a common perception I've seen among younger workers is that appearing to work hard is more about performative bullshit than actual hard work.

There isn't an objective way to measure how much hard work one does though, because it's too relative and subjective

I understand that it looks that way from the outside, but that is far too simplistic - i.e., correlation is not causation, especially where the latter is already known. What is CAUSING so much pain right now is corporate greed, and what ALLOWS that is primarily voting Democrat vs. Republican, with the heaviest voting block being evangelical Christian vs. not. A complicating factor is that baby boomers are somewhat insulated from the worst effects, plus their retirement savings are often tied up into the stock market that is what rich people want to succeed, plus they don't do themselves much credit by being remarkably unsympathetic to the plight of how the younger generations are being sold into corporate near-slavery, plus on top of it all they do trend more towards voting conservative to begin with, etc. But e.g. a young Republican does far more harm than an old Democrat, i.e. age is one of the more minor correlating effects.

An illustration may help: right now if a 10-year old girl is raped by her very own father and gets pregnant, the primary discriminator of whether she will live or is consigned to have a VERY good chance of dying (in agony) is whether she lives in an area that votes primarily Democratic or one that votes primarily Republican. This is the stuff that is literally life and death.

Beyond that, the effects of inflation, the availability of jobs, whether the government of the state that you are in is bankrupt, and/or has any/no competent/sufficient firefighters/police/teachers/medical staff/etc. all correlate with Republican vs. Democrat. Look at COVID death rates to see which area is which, especially after the vaccine existed.

In short, there are two different Americas right now, one being mostly third-world (except still has internet and TV and cars and stuff, but I still would not call it second-world when the child mortality rate is somewhere between Rwanda and Uganda, and has been about that level for decades) and the other first-world. And they are tearing at each other, one being never happy with the way things are and wanting to go still further back in time, floating such thoughts as whether women should still be allowed to vote, plus literally calling for a "national divorce" (with prejudice - i.e. a literal, murderous, bloody Civil War part 2), and the other also wanting basically not that. So similar to Brexit, we are basically ready for Amexit? Except from ourselves. Which will affect the entire fucking world b/c if Biden loses and Trump comes in again, what are the chances that this time he discovers that he can control nukes?

Anyway, yes old people helped bring this about, but mostly by inaction and while I am not saying that mistakes were not made, I am saying that much of the media rhetoric about the generations being at each others' throats is... if not entirely false, then at least mostly so. i.e., it is not old people attacking the younger ones, it is corporations attacking us all (but who would like it very much if we would simply pretend that they were not involved? thus they bought up all the media, and now good luck hearing a story that ever says that they are complicit in anything).