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

insidermag.net

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

#301

Post by ceilingcorner »

hawk_ wrote: post #4

There was a short window of time (anthropological scale) in the western world where this was seemingly true. The American conservative propaganda latched onto it and tricked people into thinking it was true. The fact is whenever quick upward mobility has been possible anywhere for a large number of people, it has been built upon slavery, colonialism and/or cheap imported labour. It was someone else's hard work that w…

This isn’t remotely true. Activist academics may think it is, but an actual study of history shows that most wealth creation comes from establishing a solid middle class. Oppression doesn’t scale, fortunately.

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

#302

Post by michaelt »

seibelj wrote: post #43

I can’t think of any way to improve your lot in life without working hard. Unless you inherit money or win the lottery, no one is going to hand you a better life. We have a safety net for the disabled. If you are able-bodied and refuse to work hard yet still complain that life gave you a raw deal, I don’t have any sympathy for you. Everyone I know who is very successful (outside of FAANG employees who seemingly coast…

You can't think of any way to improve your lot in life without working hard, but you know FAANG employees who seemingly coast towards upper-middle-class riches?

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

#303

Post by AlexandrB »

bko wrote: post #93
wishigotitfree wrote: post #25

Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual's future. Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. Most will not beat the odds since if they did, those wouldn't BE the odds. A lot of us are just so deluded by survivorship bias borne of listening only to success sto…

Do you honestly believe this? What would you tell this to someone who wasn't born into wealth or opportunity? You're pretty much screwed, don't bother? What impact do you think teaching nihilism has on children? I don't believe its true, but even if it were, it's not a useful model for life.

> What would you tell this to someone who wasn't born into wealth or opportunity? You're pretty much screwed, don't bother?

I would tell them that they better advocate for a more equitable society or, yes, they are screwed. Too often self-empowerment is used as a way to tamp down any kind of organized push for equity. This is very convenient for those that benefit from the status quo.

I would argue that a truly useless model for life is pretending that the deck isn't stacked and letting those stacking it make out like bandits.

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

#304

Post by zitterbewegung »

Over my career it was never working harder that would make feel better. The things that make me had a better life was.

1. Becoming more empathetic about the team I was in (including my boss and the rest of management)

2. Experiencing failure trying to do two startups which lessens my regret

3. Always leaving a job when the work life balance doesn't match the salary

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

#305

Post by koheripbal »

TomGullen wrote: post #285
koheripbal wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing all tech employees can appreciate is that some people are far more efficient than others. In some cases, by orders of magnitude. You can sort of blend that with "opportunity" if you think it's entirely nurture/education based, but I went to school with a lot of people who had an identical home environment and education as me, and are easily 10x better at coding. There's very little research into how brains…

You could probably add in some luck element as well

Is it materially different from "opportunity"?

If it's luck that isn't associated with starting conditions, I feel that it tends to zero over the course of a lifetime. Good luck and bad luck tend to negate each other, on average.

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

#306

Post by fullstop »

umvi wrote: post #239
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…

> It has to be extremely difficult to focus on school and education when you don't know when your next meal is going to be This is true, but which is the bigger factor in America: parent(s) who are uneducated themselves and do not take an active role in their childrens' education OR food insecurity? I would argue the former. I remember a recent story about Baltimore single mom Tiffany France being shocked that her ki…

I would encourage you to look into food insecurity a little bit more. I live in a fairly nice area and there are kids in my school district who often don't eat when there are snow days and in the summer. It is significantly more prevalent than you think.

A lot of the food that lower class families have available, stuff which is non-perishable, tend to have empty calories and less fiber. Soft drinks are a problem, and they're cheap.

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

#308

Post by ajmurmann »

michaelt wrote: post #156
bko wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly believe this? What would you tell this to someone who wasn't born into wealth or opportunity? You're pretty much screwed, don't bother? What impact do you think teaching nihilism has on children? I don't believe its true, but even if it were, it's not a useful model for life.

If you've got shitty social mobility You might want your children to think social mobility is possible if they work hard enough But you don't want your politicians to think social mobility is possible through hard work. Because if they don't know you've got a social mobility problem, how are they going to fix it?

I love your point about different philosophies and views for thinking about personal things vs policy. I wish this was more common in general. Similarly I want to work hard and never friend on social welfare, yet I think society should take good care of everyone and am happy to pay for it even if I never ever want it for myself

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

#309

Post by drakythe »

Pretty sure this thread is being brigaded. Awful lot of newly created accounts responding about how people are just lazy and don't want to work. At least two people bringing up and mis-representing the subreddit r/antiwork, and just general ignorance of how the cycle of poverty works.

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

#310

Post by itronitron »

Here is the link to the source material for the insidermag article, which has a lot of additional and interesting information.

https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2020-0...

While I think that most of the discussions on this thread are worth having, I don't think they really relate directly to the referenced insidermag article and the Edelman report.

My takeaway from the article is that distrust is a consequence of the growing wealth inequality in many countries. And that while during the pandemic many governments have provided economic stimuli the net result was an increase in stock market performance and not economic security for the lower and middle classes.

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