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Gen Z does not dream of labor

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Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#161

Post by ushakov »

xmprt wrote: post #63
civilized wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great trick to make an old pattern sound like news is to present an age-related phenomenon as a generation-related phenomenon. "Teenagers are acting like teenagers" can't be spun as news, but "Gen Z is acting like teenagers" can be.

That's mostly true however there's a lot of data that shows worrying trends. For example, millennials don't have anywhere near as much share of wealth as Gen X had at the same age. Wealth is being pretty heavily concentrated at the top of the age brackets.

> Wealth is being pretty heavily concentrated at the top of the age brackets

maybe it has to do with the fact that most people inherit when they're old?

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#162

Post by rtlfe »

pydry wrote: post #131
madaxe_again wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the thing. I know this sounds glib, but the barrier to entry is so low ($20 5th hand laptop will do just fine to do first-steps development), I can’t understand why the market isn’t flooded with coders. So many people say “oh I could never do what you do”, and I’m like “I’m a shaved ape who wanted to play computer games and accidentally ended up learning stuff, you absolutely can”. Then they just go on saying…

I know plenty of people who learned to code and never cracked that entry level job.

Yeah for the average adult without much experience debugging and hacking other things, "learned to code" probably means something more like "can write fizzbuzz in 30 minutes with significant effort" than "can debug complex systems under pressure" or "can turn business requirements into production code efficiently." The former will obviously open far fewer doors than the latter two.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#163

Post by zdragnar »

droobles wrote: post #86
bufferoverflow wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this narrative is that the job of the father isn't specified. He could've been a plumber/electrician/welder who would do really well in the current market. These jobs pay well above the minimum wage. The world has changed - simple labor that requires a few days of training doesn't pay much. Most jobs, with few exceptions, that require a decade of training, do pay well. That's why there's such a huge…

All the more reason to adopt the bohemian philosophy and pursue other pleasures if one finds working these modern jobs unfulfilling, only so much time on this earth.

No post body was provided.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#164

Post by ceeplusplus »

rtlfe wrote: post #103
bufferoverflow wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this narrative is that the job of the father isn't specified. He could've been a plumber/electrician/welder who would do really well in the current market. These jobs pay well above the minimum wage. The world has changed - simple labor that requires a few days of training doesn't pay much. Most jobs, with few exceptions, that require a decade of training, do pay well. That's why there's such a huge…

> you have to choose your specialization wisely The problem is that most people don't get to choose. There are few of these high paying jobs, so by definition most people are excluded. Either because they're not "smart" enough to get into elite training programs (e.g. medical school) or because they don't have enough money to spend years in training with zero or negative income.

There are other jobs than doctor. You can become a registered nurse with only a bachelor's ($100k+ salary). Engineering pays well. The trades pay well.

What doesn't pay well is zero-effort required jobs like Starbucks barista or social media influencer (is this even a job?). If anyone can do it with no pain required to pass some sort of schooling then it's not going to pay well. Nursing pays well because people are too lazy to make it through 4 years of schooling.

If you're going to come in and claim life circumstances prevent people from getting a 4 year degree, a public school costs at most $120k including living expenses for 4 years. Even if you get _no_ financial aid - which doesn't happen as FAFSA exists - $120k is an entirely manageable sum to pay off over the course of 20 years. And that calculation assumes you don't work at all during summers or during the school year.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#165

Post by HWR_14 »

poutine wrote: post #71
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average house sold in 1946 cost $5.25K. The median salary at the time was $3K. The average house sold today costs $374K. The median salary is $51K. You can argue that those houses that were sold back then were smaller, but they were also made of vastly better materials than modern home construction, and it's not like people even have the opportunity of buying those smaller homes unless they want to live in a slum…

While housing has indeed gotten more expensive you can't compare absolute prices. First you're getting a vastly different product today than in 1946. Consumer demands are far higher too. Also to compare affordability the metric for most people would be the median percentage case of mortgage payments vs the persons take home pay. When measured this way it's been hovering around 30% for the past 40 years in the UK. htt…

> First you're getting a vastly different product today than in 1946.

Are you? You're getting a place to live and property you own.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#166

Post by notacoward »

notreallyserio wrote: post #121
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” This anecdote is presented as the norm, but it’s actually far from it. “Minimum wage” is the tip off that the journalist went out searching f…

> For all the talk about minimum wage jobs, only around 1% of jobs actually pay federal minimum wage. I see this stat a lot and it leaves me wondering how many people are within, say, 50 cents or 5%[0] of minimum wage. The percent of workers earning minimum wage doesn't seem that useful (and I guess neither would the figures returned for my request). In any case I'd find hours required to live alone within ~30 minute…

It's not just the wage that matters but the consistency of the wage, and the benefits that go with it (or more often don't at that level), and the expenses that go with it. Consider two examples.

* Person A is making minimum wage, but with good benefits, consistent hours, and a reasonable cost to live within walking distance of the job.

* Person B is making minimum wage plus a buck per hour, but is technically not a full-time employee so no benefits at all. Shifts are often changed with little notice, sometimes to hours that are not very transit-friendly, and living within walking distance is utterly off the table for anyone short of a rich techie.

Who's really better off? It's easy for full-time internet commentators to look at simplistic stats and draw simplistic (self serving) conclusions, but your metric is much better and closer to the ones used by people who actually study issues such as poverty.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#167

Post by danielsokil »

I've been thinking a bit about this problem lately, And one thought is we could have a different structure for organizations, where everyone participating (employed) automatically becomes part of the company as a shareholder. However, it's not clear yet how many shares should a person hold? Can we relate the value a person brings to the amount of shares? This structure could motivate people to be part of a company, as the company grows, the value of your shares increases.

Let's say that model does work, I'm going to guess it won't be that beneficial to most. The majority will probably sell at any opportunity they get, and a small percentage will continue to hold as the company becomes more valuable.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#168

Post by rtlfe »

ushakov wrote: post #145
madaxe_again wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the thing. I know this sounds glib, but the barrier to entry is so low ($20 5th hand laptop will do just fine to do first-steps development), I can’t understand why the market isn’t flooded with coders. So many people say “oh I could never do what you do”, and I’m like “I’m a shaved ape who wanted to play computer games and accidentally ended up learning stuff, you absolutely can”. Then they just go on saying…

> I can’t understand why the market isn’t flooded with coders let me guess: because not anybody wants to be a programmer? different people have different ambitions, not anybody needs to be a coder and life would be pretty mundane if all people were doing is writing code

> because not anybody wants to be a programmer?

Almost anybody who works in retail, manual labor, etc would jump on a job offer for 5x more money, better hours, and better working conditions. The reason they don't is they can't get the offers because the skills are hard to learn.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#169

Post by notacoward »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #79
burlesona wrote: post #14

> “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still strugg…

> > “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” This anecdote is presented as the norm, but it’s actually far from it. “Minimum wage” is the tip off that the journalist went out searching f…

> Minimum wage jobs are literally the lowest paying jobs a person could possibly find.

That is incorrect. There are whole categories of jobs that are exempt from minimum wage, and that doesn't even count gig work.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#170

Post by Bourget »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #25

> “I don’t have goals. I don’t have ambition. I only want to be attractive.” This apathetic declaration is the start of a TikTok rant that went viral for its blatant message: to reject hard work and indulge in leisure. It’s weird to see these opinions presented as a new phenomenon. Wanting to avoid work and indulge in leisure is a tale as old as time. It’s even a common theme among characters in ancient writings. Wha…

Great response. I think this is really the most important underlying cause.

It's common nowadays to blame it on say increase house prices, and while these are indeed very valid complaints, one shouldn't forget that these increased prices are offset by decreases in other areas. A century back, housing may have been cheap, but it was entirely normal for most of your income to be spent on food, spending whatever you could save on other necessities such as clothing. That did not stop people from working hard.

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