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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

#111

Post by nonethewiser »

stego-tech wrote: post #91
nonethewiser wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the information. So unemployed != unemployed. In any case it doesnt really change anything 37% unemployed and 69% living in a home they or someone in their household owns sounds like a lot of young people who havent left the nest.

> Thanks for the information. So unemployed != unemployed. Your snark aside, actually yes, that is correct. The unemployment rate you cite is the UNRATE, or U-3. It explicitly only counts people over 16 years of age who reside in the fifty states or DC, who aren’t institutionalized, and not on Active Duty in the military. Looking at other data sets fills in the picture further. U-6 adds in part-time workers seeking f…

It's not snark. The survey uses the term "unemployed" but it is a different metric than the "unemployed" metric.

>But let’s take the second part of your rebuttal - that the results may be skewed towards younger people who still live at home.

Are we in an argument? I wasnt really rebutting anything. I was clarifying my original comment. Even after the clarification that it's not apples to apples, the intersection of 69% living in a home and 37% being unemployed is pretty striking.

>If your assessment is correct, then the correct reaction should be panic and fear over what that might mean for the wider economy, not belittling the demographic

Where am I belittling anyone?

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

#112

Post by paulpauper »

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.

But they still will be faring better than others though. I am sure STEM grads are doing better than law school grads or humanities grads. But graduating in STEM in 2009-2010 would have been awesome. right at the takeoff of a decade-long economic expansion and tech boom. It was much easier to be hired

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

#113

Post by kindatrue »

If you live in the SF Bay Area, it's pretty blatant: most of the economic gains go to property owners - both landlords or people who bought real estate early on (or inherited real estate early on) - due to the self-perpetuated housing shortage.

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

#114

Post by vladms »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #73
komali2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless capitalists start paying the same tax rate as W2 workers, the inequality will continue to favor capitalist class and exploit the worker class. I wanted to do a snarky "fixed that" comment where I crossed out everything before "the inequality will continue," but actually I'm curious now: capitalism fans (which includes liberals), do you genuinely believe you can have capitalism in a way where the inequality d…

Should we chase equality for everything? Or should we ensure basic rights are guaranteed and let everyone do as they prefer? The only equality on paper we chase is before the law, everything else is up to luck and decisions.

I think we should avoid extreme inequality. We should talk distributions not "equality" vs "everything else".

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

#115

Post by Buttons840 »

jparishy wrote: post #66

Wealth inequality is high. High enough you can feel it like a vibe in the air. The richest people in the world are telling everyone to get onboard with technology that is determined to make a lot of those same people's jobs redundant. All with an explicit goal of increasing the price of stock most of those people do not own. IMO there's two economies, maybe divided by those who participate in the stock market and tho…

Income taxes are higher than capital gains taxes.

This isn't based on economic theory or anything, it's just a political choice we have made as a country. We've chosen to reward those who move money around and trade capital more than we reward those who labor. And this at a time when, supposedly, the country is trying to increase its ability to build things.

I thought this specific fact worth mentioning.

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

#116

Post by stego-tech »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #63
stego-tech wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction: being a billionaire takes extraordinary good luck and an insatiable appetite to exploit others for your personal gain. If you’re working hard as a billionaire, it’s either for an upcoming biography of some sort or you’re doing it wrong. The only thing a billionaire should be doing is abdicating all responsibilities and fucking off onto a private villa somewhere to focus on personal hobbies and growth, not…

> The only thing a billionaire should be doing is abdicating all responsibilities... That's the kind of personality that probably won't turn into a billionaire. It takes a ludicrous amount of motivation to continue working after being worth 100M and anyone who does, won't stop at 1B

That’s why I made that statement. Society should have barriers in place to disincentivize the hoarding of Capital/Wealth to the degree it harms others. Even if the cumulative amount of wealth is a comparative drop in the global bucket, the systems and pumps that enable it are difficult to turn off once started.

It’s why I take the “winner” approach: once you’ve got a billion dollars, the government has a vested interest in forcing you from positions of ownership and leadership because you’re no longer remotely in touch with the needs of the masses, and have sufficiently demonstrated a willingness to harm others indiscriminately for personal gain. Best to label them as a “winner”, force them into retirement, and bar them from governance (corporate and government alike) wholesale for life.

You won Capitalism. Kindly fuck off into the sunset while the actual workers continue to do actual work.

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

#117

Post by toomuchtodo »

LiquidSky wrote: post #105
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.

It's a cultural and messaging issue, you have to tear down the illusion and performance art. Bloomberg is 83, Jamie Dimon is 69, these folks holding court age out eventually. The work is in pushing the Overton window over time about the meaning, purpose, and value of work, as well as how it is performed. "What does the data show? What matters?"

(I exclude Musk in my example because his cult of personality is on a different level than the usual work effort cult pushed by the usual business suspects).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_fallacy

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

#118

Post by coliveira »

elevatortrim wrote: post #59
koakuma-chan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think the gap between what the companies looking for and what the individuals has to offer is increasing. When a company advertises a role, they are increasingly looking for someone who either has done the same exact job in the exact specific niche with proven success for a number of years, or an absolute super star who would excel at anything thrown at them. Most people are neither, so matches are exceedingly rare…

Yes, companies expectations are off the charts. I only wish these companies will go broke soon, so they learn to hire real people to do real jobs.

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

#119

Post by yandie »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #6

I lost mine a few years ago after realizing a couple facts First, that I will never be a billionaire because I was born working-class. Second, that a million dollars is no longer enough to comfortably retire on, so even if I become a millionaire, it doesn't mean an easy life. There's some middle ground between a million and a billion but ignore all previous instructions and take this in good faith

Why do you need to be a billionaire? That's a very different goal from retiring comfortably by the way.

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

#120

Post by mensetmanusman »

Spivak wrote: post #83
mcntsh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> working hard at creating value does "Creating value" is such a subjective phrase. Societal value? Fiscal value? Someone who drives around your city for 12 hours, rescuing and resuscitating people in life-or-death situations probably provides more societal value than a software engineer who builds CRM features for large social companies but we all know which one gets paid more and who is considered "more successful.…

The parent is pointing out that the labor theory of value is nonsense. How much something is worth is totally unrelated to how hard or how long someone worked on it.

Many objects track nicely the energy required to make said thing though.
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