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Gen Z does not dream of labor

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Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#381

Post by nunez »

jolux wrote: post #313
rtlfe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I quite like being a programmer. This job is truly an anomaly. There are very few careers where you can earn top 1% income with no degree, no physical exertion, under 8 hours a day "on the clock", the freedom to quit any time and have multiple new offers within days, etc, etc.

Yeah but frequently when I tell people they could program if they wanted to they just respond by saying they’re not looking for a grind or whatever. I think some of this is just young people being young people and that attempts to recast it as some huge shift are misguided. Wasn’t it gen X that was supposed to be the slacker generation? This is all low-grade pop sociology.

hard agree. the number of times people have asked me about getting into tech and failed to follow up on "connect with me on linkedin" or "email me so i can give you links" is way too damn high.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#382

Post by nunez »

madaxe_again wrote: post #108
rtlfe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I quite like being a programmer. This job is truly an anomaly. There are very few careers where you can earn top 1% income with no degree, no physical exertion, under 8 hours a day "on the clock", the freedom to quit any time and have multiple new offers within days, etc, etc.

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…

not everyone finds programming interesting. and not everyone is interested in learning. got to have both to really make it in this field.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#383

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

Frankly, I also dreamt of a life of not working 40 years ago when I started up ... just there was no tiktok to express my desires). I suspect most people would not work given the possibility. And it doesn't come from work per se, but from hierarchy, compulsion and humiliation that comes with most jobs.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#384

Post by nunez »

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…

I remember seeing Hair (the musical) in 2009 or so. The musical was written in the late 60s. The ending had an anti-work vibe. Antiwork is definitely not new.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#385

Post by omnimus »

teakettle42 wrote: post #355
heavyset_go wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They expect you to go move somewhere cheaper where your career prospects are stocking shelves at Walmart or serving food. Maybe if you're lucky, you could get a job for $36k from the one company in a 200 mile radius that's still hiring in your industry, but is on life support and won't be around in a decade. Also, please ignore the fact that its competitors have all gone out of business or left for better prospects i…

Do you believe people deserve an easy office job, high pay, and the ability to buy a home in the cultural epicenter of their choosing? How, exactly, are we going to supply all of that to the firehose of people graduating with mostly-useless degrees and job skills?

Yes of course people deserve that. There is incredible wealth everywhere. Society increased productivity and efficiency so much that workweek should be 3 days.

All the fruits are going to small number of people in the top. You say mostly useless degrees… what about all the mostly useless things - the lamborghinis? the never ending houses? the gimmicks, gadgets, iphones every 6 months…

Why do we supply that and dont supply basic living conditions to everyone?

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#386

Post by einpoklum »

endisneigh wrote: post #154
einpoklum wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wages in the US have been stagnant in real terms for decades: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ but the prices of houses have shot up massively. So, not sure why you are so certain that wages rising would lead to significant inflation in housing prices.

Your chart shows that pay has been up a lot. Why wouldn’t extra pay lead to inflation? If you hypothetically doubled everyone’s pay you think that wouldn’t lead to significant inflation in housing prices? In any case real household income is up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

> Your chart shows that pay has been up a lot.

No it doesn't, continue reading.

Your own first data series suggests there's over ~15,000 Billion USD of personal disposable monthly income. Per capita, that would be something like 45,300 USD disposable monthly income.

I suppose this takes into the account all of the millionaires' and billionaires' capital gains, illustrating how little of the overall income is garnered by the US working class. And even in the stats I quoted, you can see the unequal distribution: The high-wage-earners' wages didn't stagnate, they increased; but low-wage earners earn less.

Anyway, the reason extra pay does not immediately translate to inflation is that price levels are the result of a combination of factors, including power relations of different social forces, and the distribution of income in society. If all wages were to double tomorrow, I suppose there would be some inflation in various sectors of the economy, but not uniformly, nor by anywhere near a factor of two.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#387

Post by endisneigh »

einpoklum wrote: post #386
endisneigh wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your chart shows that pay has been up a lot. Why wouldn’t extra pay lead to inflation? If you hypothetically doubled everyone’s pay you think that wouldn’t lead to significant inflation in housing prices? In any case real household income is up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

> Your chart shows that pay has been up a lot. No it doesn't, continue reading. Your own first data series suggests there's over ~15,000 Billion USD of personal disposable monthly income. Per capita, that would be something like 45,300 USD disposable monthly income. I suppose this takes into the account all of the millionaires' and billionaires' capital gains, illustrating how little of the overall income is garnered…

Literally most of the charts show wages going up drastically for the upper echelons - the same folks buying the houses. Not to mention it’s old and real wages have gone up far more than then as shown by the FED as I’ve linked.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#388

Post by Amezarak »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #360
Amezarak wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me like there’s a big difference between “since the 1960s” and “always.” Is there no good data going at least 100 years further back?

I found this data going back to the late 1800s. It looks like 25% was the rate at the turn of the 20th century climbing to present levels after ww2 https://dqydj.com/historical-homeownership-rate-united-state...

That largely conforms to my gut that the urbanization concomitant with the Industrial Revolution would have led to a nadir in home ownership. I wish it went back earlier!

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#389

Post by jason0597 »

moonchrome wrote: post #150
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…

If my kid had this mindset I would consider myself a failure as a parent. I grew up edge of starvation poor, my wife is also from low income family. Both of us are multiples of median income now and can provide a stable home for our son in mid 30s. It took 10 years of doing stupid shit and wasting time because I didn't have support or direction in life. Realistically, if I had better role models for success, I could…

"I suffered so my kids have to learn to suffer too" is not a good line of thinking if we want to improve the world and the economy for the next generation

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#390

Post by yucky »

HWR_14 wrote: post #344
yucky wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People are willing to save and/or hustle for 5-10 years to get material rewards, but beyond that it feels pointless. Let's test that theory. So assuming that person in their 20's doesn't want to move to the Bay Area/Seattle/Austin/NYC they can find a nice house in a metro area within a 20-30 minute drive of plenty of medium-high paying jobs, for around $200k. So assuming they're smart enough to put 20% down on that…

> So assuming that person in their 20's doesn't want to move to the Bay Area/Seattle/Austin/NYC they can find a nice house in a metro area within a 20-30 minute drive of plenty of medium-high paying jobs, for around $200k. Maybe in 2000. I don't think that's true in any major metropolitan area (say over 1 million). Which is also coincidentally where most people live.

You would be wrong. I just pulled up Metro Detroit (4.5 million people) on Zillow and set my filter to $200k or less and there are hundreds of homes available within the metro area. Hmmm...maybe that's cheating let's check again with - Cincy, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St Louis, KC, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Albuquerque etc. Working my way down the list of metro areas exceeding a million and there are tons of homes under $200k in every single one of those.
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