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Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

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Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#101

Post by sdenton4 »

TuringNYC wrote: post #7

I live in a community full of high-achieving GenZ who did 4-7 AP courses, studied their butts off for the SAT, got into good universities....only to not find any jobs when they graduate with STEM degrees. A dozen neighbors' kids have been asking me for zero-salary jobs just to get experience.

Pretty much all of the good stuff I've done in my life have resulted from going off the beaten path. AP courses and SAT scores are the core of the beaten path, so everyone is competing for the same stuff. But the world is big, actually, and there's incredible opportunities for meaningful work once you start looking around more broadly. These sorts of jobs aren't necessarily "stable" employment, but I've never once felt precarious. Rather, I find that doing meaningful work with concrete impact tends to create more opportunities dynamically - if you can demonstrate that you get shit done, people will want your help getting their shit done. And if the work you choose is meaningful, it is very easy to make the case that you've done good and important things.

Capitalism allows trading money for solutions to problems: The massive problem in this system is that people and groups with less money end up with a surplus of problems. There are schools that need help with their tech stacks. There are legal aid groups who need better ways to process massive amounts of text. There are kids all over the world who need better ways to learn math, languages, etc. Plugging in and helping people solve their concrete problems is IMHO the best way to get started.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#102

Post by mathiaspoint »

MangoToupe wrote: post #53
Consultant32452 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have flooded the STEM market with foreign workers. Sometimes we don't even give the foreign workers real jobs, we pretend they are "grad students" and pay them a pittance doing high level science at the universities. I generally like all the foreign folks I've worked with, but they are definitely suppressing the wages of natives to an insane degree.

You could just as easily argue that we simply aren't creating enough jobs to make use of the labor force, which traditionally has been a very dangerous place for an empire—especially the core—to be in.

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Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#103

Post by Jotra7 »

exabrial wrote: post #78

It used to be true, but now you are taxed out of success, and any other gains you save will simply evaporate with unchecked inflation and money printing by Congress. There needs to be a "Hard Stop" on inflation: The federal government's checks bounce if there is no money in the account. ... and somehow, there has been a successful miseducation campaign on the internet that "corporations raising prices causes inflatio…

[flagged]

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#104

Post by paulpauper »

orochimaaru wrote: post #51

Isn’t this a bit obvious? I mean I’ve known this since I started working in 1997. The first job you have generally shatters this illusion that job security and economic gains are tied to “hard work”. In the sense hard work is needed but only if you see if adding to what you consider a quality of life (which could be economic gain, generational wealth, bragging rights to a promotion, etc.). Each person has their crite…

People are paid to create value . Hard work is not enough. This seems obvious enough.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#105

Post by LiquidSky »

orochimaaru wrote: post #51

Isn’t this a bit obvious? I mean I’ve known this since I started working in 1997. The first job you have generally shatters this illusion that job security and economic gains are tied to “hard work”. In the sense hard work is needed but only if you see if adding to what you consider a quality of life (which could be economic gain, generational wealth, bragging rights to a promotion, etc.). Each person has their crite…

As you say, it's obvious to pretty much anyone who's ever worked a day in their life but, at the same time, culturally we pretend otherwise. Guys like Musk or Bloomberg talk about working 90 hour weeks and sleeping under their desks. We still want the cultural myth of hard work = success, whatever the reality is, because this allows those who've achieved economic gain to feel better about themselves.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#106

Post by alistairSH »

TuringNYC wrote: post #7

I live in a community full of high-achieving GenZ who did 4-7 AP courses, studied their butts off for the SAT, got into good universities....only to not find any jobs when they graduate with STEM degrees. A dozen neighbors' kids have been asking me for zero-salary jobs just to get experience.

Why didn't they take an internship or co-op or some other job?

FWIW, as a hiring manager, I'd almost always pick a new graduate with co-op experience over somebody without it (all else being roughly equal).

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#107

Post by victor106 »

sfpotter wrote: post #36
tekla wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems normal. My friends and I did the exact same thing w. top grades and top schools 2 decades ago, turns out life is not a easy ride.

On the flip side, back in the 70's Boeing used to do things like hire up people with no immediate experience, teach them C for three months, and then hire them into roles as programmers. I'm not sure you can decide what's "normal" based on what was happening two decades ago. Two decades ago, we were smack between two big economic crashes. And all this depends so, so much on geographic locale.

Companies found a better and cheaper way to short circuit this, just hire H1B’s and slog them till they get their green cards(which is forever).

That’s one of the biggest shortcomings of H1B program. (Even though I do support H1B’s and I do think they are good for country long term)

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#108

Post by dataflow »

meroes wrote: post #76
TuringNYC wrote: post #7

I live in a community full of high-achieving GenZ who did 4-7 AP courses, studied their butts off for the SAT, got into good universities....only to not find any jobs when they graduate with STEM degrees. A dozen neighbors' kids have been asking me for zero-salary jobs just to get experience.

More than half of STEM grads with careers don’t have a career in STEM.

Don't have, or didn't start with one?

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#110

Post by WalterBright »

vvpan wrote: post #48

I have not read the whole of "Capital in 21st Century", just the opening chapter. But the picture the chapter painted was quiet grim - income inequality growing rapidly every year as "innovation" and jobs declined. In other words Piketty's numbers have shown that one cannot work their way to a comfortable living years ago and IMO this is at the heart of almost all political processes these days - inability to earn a…

> big government

Is indeed an issue, as it corresponds with the malaise you describe.

> wage stagnation

is in part due to the government increasing the costs of hiring people. That indirectly results in correspondingly lower wages. The so-called "employers' contribution" is a misrepresentation.

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