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Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

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Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#251

Post by B4CKlash »

I don't mean to be cynical - I ultimately want to contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way. The original article and the surrounding comments remind me of the Tyler Durden quote from Fight club:

"I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables - slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war... Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

What proportion of 'this' sentiment is echoed by that quote? "Tyler" seems to indicate that this is a marketing problem - expectations not aligning with reality. It's a mixture of hard work, consumption and advertising. The question I propose, what proportion of this sentiment can be attributed to falsely attributing financial success (aka 'things') to a better life? That's not to say money isn't important, it's just stripping out the consumption element. Never in our life has it been so apparent how little we have compared to others (thanks Instagram) - is it possible the crux here is that our 'internal expectations' have risen exponentially while reality moves linearly?

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#252

Post by BingoAhoy »

hughrr wrote: post #11
randomcarbloke wrote: post #5

Hard work doesn't imply productivity or progress.

This is the important distinction. Achieving things efficiently is the only winning play.

Yes in a meritocracy. The real world and capitalism are far from a meritocracy though. Specifically a corporation might be under meritocracal pressures in competition with other corporations some times but individual workers within a corporation definitely don't necessarily get meritoracially rewarded in proportion to their efficient efforts.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#254

Post by boomboomsubban »

datapls wrote: post #128
52-6F-62 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re not counting, and what most people miss, is that not only are you at a disadvantage due to lack of resources, but there are many people in positions of authority, power, or just plain tenure who believe that accumulated wealth is a reflection of the wealth of soul. If you are below them in birth, and didn’t chance yourself to some higher strata by the time they grace your presence, they tend to believe yo…

Show me the data that supports this claim. Big claim, zero citations. As an American I've never met anyone who thinks wealth reflects "wealth of the soul." In my experience people here are Christian, in which case there's that verse about heaven and wealth and the eye of the needle (Google it) or they're atheist and don't believe in souls.

The concept of a "wealth of the soul" is not related to the metaphysical concept of a "soul." It refers to the idea that you're born deserving the position you are given.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#255

Post by dougmwne »

corry wrote: post #165

As trite as it sounds, "Success = Hard Work + Opportunity" is still the default equation that makes the most sense to me. And while people from all strata of life work very hard, opportunities are obviously and incredibly unequally distributed (and perhaps becoming more so?). If you were born middle-class in US/Canada 20 - 40 years ago, your access to opportunities to improve your station were/are immense. Layer on y…

I propose Success = Hard Work * Opportunity^2. That is to say that hard work without opportunity equals nothing and opportunity without work equals nothing. But work and opportunity do not have a linear relationship, a bit more opportunity can greatly leverage a bit of extra work. Big opportunities practically become self-fulfilling. Just look at all the poor students who became president. Their lack of work in school couldn't hold them back from their massive opportunities.

I guarantee you are not working harder at tech than many, many minimum wage workers.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#256

Post by bluetomcat »

simiones wrote: post #152
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much social mobility we talking? Statistically nobody goes from trailer park to billionare by working hard. You have very, very, good odds of doing better than your parents if you manage to get to age 25 without incurring a felony record, addiction to something that will likely kill you or too many child support payments. edit: I'm only talking about the US

> You have very, very, good odds of doing better than your parents if you manage to get to age 25 without incurring a felony record, addiction to something that will likely kill you or too many child support payments. That is a laughably low bar, and it is unlikely for the trend you are describing to continue past the move from poor to lower middle class. In a fair society, with equality of opportunity, it should be…

> In a fair society, with equality of opportunity, it should be equally likely for a child born in a trailer park to become high income earner as it is for Bill Gate's child.

A reasonably fair society shouldn't allow for children to be born and raised in trailer parks in the first place. State policies should be directed towards strengthening the family unit and improving the conditions for the average working class people. Once you have eliminated the precarious forms of existence in society and have established decent cultural norms for working class people by which they value education, upward social mobility will happen much more widely.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#257

Post by drakythe »

datapls wrote: post #128
52-6F-62 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re not counting, and what most people miss, is that not only are you at a disadvantage due to lack of resources, but there are many people in positions of authority, power, or just plain tenure who believe that accumulated wealth is a reflection of the wealth of soul. If you are below them in birth, and didn’t chance yourself to some higher strata by the time they grace your presence, they tend to believe yo…

Show me the data that supports this claim. Big claim, zero citations. As an American I've never met anyone who thinks wealth reflects "wealth of the soul." In my experience people here are Christian, in which case there's that verse about heaven and wealth and the eye of the needle (Google it) or they're atheist and don't believe in souls.

>In my experience people here are Christian

You need new experiences. Only ~70% of the US claims christianity (https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/) -- and that is "claims" because we all know there are people who do not practice what they preach.

If you have more than 10 friends and don't know a single non-christian, your anecdotal experience most certainly does not reflect the data.

Additionally, growing up in the bible belt, in my experience, the person you responded to is correct. "God will bless you" is a common refrain when talking about working hard, tithing, saving ones self for marriage, etc. And what is God's blessing in the arena of economics (hard work) except monetary reward? The prosperity gospel of mega churches is so popular for a reason, as disgusting as those of us on the outside may find it.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#258

Post by hallway_monitor »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #105
fullstop wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting conditions help tremendously, and I'm not doubting that in the least. One other thing which helps, significantly, is how much the parents value education. Most of the people I know who grew up very poor but now have money had parents that valued education, and pushed their kids to learn. They didn't have shelves of books at home, but they did visit the library weekly. It has to be extremely difficult to focu…

What you’re not counting, and what most people miss, is that not only are you at a disadvantage due to lack of resources, but there are many people in positions of authority, power, or just plain tenure who believe that accumulated wealth is a reflection of the wealth of soul. If you are below them in birth, and didn’t chance yourself to some higher strata by the time they grace your presence, they tend to believe yo…

Your last sentence confuses me. If someone believes in the great meritocracy then they must agree that wealthier people are better people, then it seems obvious that most people in the world feel this way, whether they admit it or not, and even whether they realize it themselves or not. The princess marrying the pauper is a nice fairy tale but how often does it actually happen in reality?

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#259

Post by throwaway0a5e »

TheTrotters wrote: post #214
simiones wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have very, very, good odds of doing better than your parents if you manage to get to age 25 without incurring a felony record, addiction to something that will likely kill you or too many child support payments. That is a laughably low bar, and it is unlikely for the trend you are describing to continue past the move from poor to lower middle class. In a fair society, with equality of opportunity, it should be…

> In a fair society, with equality of opportunity, it should be equally likely for a child born in a trailer park to become high income earner as it is for Bill Gate's child. That is the normal social mobility we should expect in a democratic society with no class structure. We are so laughably far off from this everywhere in the world... That’s only if you assume there isn’t a generic component to traits that influe…

Genetic or learned behavior?

The behaviors that help you successfully move between lower rungs may (spoiler: they do) hinder you at higher rungs.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#260

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

randompwd wrote: post #216
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #56

Every morning, I get up at 5, and go for a two-mile walk. Often, my walk coincides with the route of the garbage collection truck. Man, those dudes work hard . It makes my shoulders ache, just watching them. They are fast, energetic, efficient, and precise. Around here, they are generally Latinos, and they have quite high-paying jobs, compared to a lot of their peers. It's a dirty, dangerous job, and the benefits are…

> It makes my shoulders ache, just watching them ?? Are they not using wheelie bins with trucks that do the lifting? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUA_gB5SuPc These have been the norm in West Europe for easily a decade plus.

Nope. We aren't supposed to put out cans of more than a certain size, and there's a weight limit (I think 50 lbs a piece). Many folks also put out bags, next to the cans.

On Fridays, they do a "heavy" collection, which means they pick up all kinds of crap (like old furniture).

We also have a lot of raccoons, around here, and those little bastards love garbage night. The collectors will often go the extra step, and pick up some rubbish that has been savaged by the local trash pandas.

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