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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

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4% unemployment could mean 37% jobless rate since 4% means "recently worked and wants to work again and is looking for a job but hasn't found one yet" But no reason 37% of people randomly asked, who are not currently working, would necessarily fit those criteria

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 full-time employment and people intermittently employed, which bumps that figure to 7.9%. Looking at the length of unemployment shows a jump from 20 weeks to 24.1 weeks in the span of a year, a pretty significant jump considering “how well the economy is doing”.

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

I want you to try and think about N-order repercussions of that, if true. If 2 in 5 are unemployed and 3 of 4 live at home, then doesn’t that seem alarming? Shouldn’t young people be the most employed demographic across a wider assortment of roles and industries? Shouldn’t their jobs be paying enough to at least share an apartment with someone else? 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 who is suffering under its present effects.

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

#92

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.

For any current students reading this, it's entirely doable to finish your program with real experience and connections under your belt. Not just with internships, but TA, research, and student org leadership experience absolutely count too. There are tons of overlooked low-stakes zero-experience opportunities available only to university students, and it's really useful to develop the habit of identifying and pursui…

Do not go to college if you have to spend any money on it. If you do that's everyone telling that you don't belong there and you'll have a hard life if you ignore them.

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How many of those jobs are for people with 0 experience?

What about internships? Are those people at good universities not doing internships, or do internships not count as experience? Don't companies hire interns?

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

#94

Hard work never lead to economic gains, working hard at creating value does, and that is still true today. If the adage was true, dragging rocks up a hill 18 hrs a day would make you billionaire. The knife in the side of the economy is housing costs. If that were to drop by 50% tomorrow, you would find that suddenly tons of people are happy with the pay the receive for the value they create. People forget (or are sim…

You should watch the recent pod save America podcast where the LA housing debate was discussed and the La rep was super happy about reducing the height of a new housing unit by 4 stories.

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

#95

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.

[flagged]

For those who have no experience, one can gain experience while in college:

1. contribute to a significant open source project

2. write some significant work of software

3. design and build your own computer

4. build a robot something

5. work as an intern in industry

6. do work as a research assistant

When I was at Caltech, students did (entirely on their own):

1. built a gas powered helicopter from scratch

2. built a tracked robot with an arm and a manipulator

3. built an electronic synthesizer

4. built a functioning railroad that ran through the dorm

5. many built a single board computer for their own use

6. designed and built the campus radio station

7. one fellow designed, built, and sold custom speakers in the student workshop. After graduating, he turned it into a real business and made a fortune

and so on. In other words, turn yourself into someone useful to a company.

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

#97

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…

If you're smart or lucky enough to to land that 6-figure job, then times are pretty good. There are tons of stories on subreddits, e.g. r/FIRE, r/investing, r/fatfire, etc., of people with large nest eggs and home ownership at an early age. But those are outliers. There are many opportunities to get rich if you are lucky and or smart enough to land them, like in tech or finance. But this is not much consolation for those who lack those attributes. By statistical certainty, most people cannot be exceptionally smart or talented.

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

#98

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.

The US is quickly becoming something else than the core of the global economy. The signs have been there already: advanced chips are done somewhere else, manufacturing in general is done in other places as well. What we see now is the biggest companies hiring in other countries like India and employing AI instead of workers. The US population is becoming less and less relevant.

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

#99
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.

>The only equality on paper we chase is before the law

When have the rich ever been held to the same standards as the average American?

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

#100
Thinking out loud, CEOs have one mission, one objective: increase the ROI of shareholders through stock prices and dividends. I don't know if that is a legal obligation. But I wonder if CEOs were mandated/incentivized to also take into account social and environmental progress, maybe inequality would start to dwindle. Am I dreaming?
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