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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

#351

Post by everdrive »

paul_f wrote: post #167
faitswulff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wall Street Journal has a great infographic here comparing how many hours of worth it would take to pay median rent today versus in 1968: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-much-does-the-federal-minim... Spoiler: it’s not pretty.

A better comparison would be the price per square foot. The median rent today buys a MUCH larger (and nicer) house than it did in 1968. The average house in the US has increased by 1,000 square feet in the last 50 years. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...

If a young millennial cannot afford a small apartment, it's a poor consolation that house sizes have grown.

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

#352

Post by cartoonworld »

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…

We should also notice that in the US, garbage collectors are routinely in the top 10 most dangerous jobs. It is extremely hazardous.

I imagine the overall health impact from this occupation is large as well, considering the weird stuff that ends up in the bin, biological factors, as well as exposure to transportation related pollutants (Carbon Monoxide, NOX, brake dust, all quite poisonous)

Consider these other factors while rating the pay.

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

#353

Post by asah »

fullstop wrote: post #91
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…

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…

s/education/financial success - parents who support and motivate their kids in arts, sports and entertainment vs parents who support their kids in fields that don't pay well or which the child has little interest or skill.

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

#354

Post by bluGill »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #330
gambiting wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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... Every time I make this argument on HN I'm met with two responses 1) I worked my…

People completely take for granted all the good luck, good fortune, opportunities, advantages, etc. (whatever you want to call the things that give them an upper hand as they go through life). We start and go through the first few years of life with zero input about where we are, where we go, what we eat, etc. As we get older, our choices don't increase all that much until we get to adulthood. Even when we do have ch…

People forget about bad luck too. Everyone gets the same amount of good luck in life. A few (ie Bill Gates) are at the right place at the right time and can go far, but nobody gets any more lucky breaks that anyone else, though a few breaks can go a lot farther than most of our breaks could.

For most people their luck is about equal to anyone else. which means you can't get a head because everyone else is moving as fast as you. However you are still moving forward.

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

#355

Post by josefx »

9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote: post #77
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

My understanding is that social mobility implies being able to climb the ladder from destitute to poor, poor to modestly wealthy, etc. and not referring to jumping to the 1% from destitution.

People like stories of extremely poor ending up rich and it doesn't help that the rich like to abuse these kinds of stories to better their optics.

What looks better on a millionaire:

* The poor guy that invested every cent he had and kept slaving away for years every day at the brink of certain failure.

* The rich kid that got several hundred thousand from his parents for his first company and knew exactly that failure just meant asking his parents for another go or having to switch to a management position that has probably been waiting for him since he was five?

Of course the first one looks better, you can also bet that any millionaire telling it is a habitual liar that paid a good sum to have some PR guy find ways to navigate around his actual rich kid background without looking too obvious about it.

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

#356

Post by zepto »

watwut wrote: post #166
tester34 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand I don't think you ever in the history had as wide opportunities as you do now You can live in some shithole where 400$/month is easily enough to live without struggle, learn hard computer stuff and then work remotely for X times more than you needed to live. How are you going to skew the odds if you aren't even trying? Internet is huge advantage, you can not only have access to good information/know…

> On the other hand I don't think you ever in the history had as wide opportunities as you do now There were periods in history with great opportunities where many people actually really richer. Economies always went up and down, where up literally means opportunities.

Brief periods, for a few. Basically no different from now.

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

#357

Post by a_c_s »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #217
paulluuk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really know the stats, but I'm curious if this is true. Yes, GDP has been going up for a long time in many countries, and so the "average wealth" of each generation is going up. However, is the same true for purchasing power? Sometimes you hear about these mythical stories of janitors who could afford to actually buy a house, despite having two children and their partners being stay-at-home moms. And yet toda…

A lot of things that are social “musts” today were “wants” 30 years ago. Smart phones, unlimited data, eating out 3-4 times a week, Uber Eats delivery. None of this is necessary in order to survive, but not indulging is seen as odd or socially awkward.

Smartphones replace a lot of things though: * camera (including film & development costs) * camcorder * long-distance phone service * answering machine * portable music player (walkman, iPod, etc.) * GPS navigation devices

Depending on their use they can save a lot of money relative to the the products/services they replace

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

#358

Post by ceilingcorner »

lm28469 wrote: post #333
ceilingcorner wrote: post #206

I have noticed an increase in negative attitudes toward work, hard work, and generally the idea that one should sacrifice time/pleasure/etc. to reach a goal. I blame it on finance, crypto, and social media. When you can see millions of people casually get rich simply by holding an asset, the narrative of “working hard pays off” gets buried.

This is oversimplification. My personal opinion is that we're still working as much as ever, productivity per hour/individual is through the roof, automation made a lot of processes much easier/productive, yet every few years the legal retirement age goes up, pensions go down, workers right are eroded, life gets expensive faster than wages are growing, &c. Keep in mind most people here live in a bubble. We make 2-10x…

I’m not a coder and I don’t make 2-10x the national wage.

Hard work does pay off. Ask any children of immigrants. And I mean recent immigrants.

While inequality certainly is rising and there are legitimate economic issues, I find that people have just become far lazier and more distracted. It’s not uncommon for the average American to spend 8-10 hours a day on your phone or watching television. If I had to guess, I’d say the rhetoric is rising because of this, not because everyone is just working so hard.

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