65 ms·

A brief history of nobody wants to work anymore

465 points by soheilpro 4y ago

rvieira 4y ago
Well, it's not exactly a rigorous scientific analysis, is it? I'm willing to bet you can find the sentence "People never had it better" in print all the way back to 1894. What would that prove?
senttoschool 4y ago
Humanity could be trending towards less work than more work as technology advances. So every example in that Twitter threat could be true. On a related note, this kind of content is guaranteed be very popular on Twitter since Twitter is leans pretty far left. It justifies that it's ok to be lazy and that you don't have success because of the system rather than your intellectual ability or hard work. It justifies entitlement.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  I think Jordan Peterson helped popularize an argument that a lot of people are excluded from the labor force by virtue of not being smart enough. 15% of the general population has an IQ below 85 and either are unemployed or don't earn enough to make more than they could otherwise earn with welfare. This argument has been well-received among some on the right, as opposed to just attributing unemployment to laziness.
  - deanCommie 4y ago
    That's just because the right is flirting with concepts like Eugenics under the umbrella of "Race Realism" which fits the narrative of the suppression of free speech and "I'm not racist, I'm just asking questions". It's not really any better or more well-intentioned than attributing unemployment to laziness.
    - paulpauper 4y ago
      or you could address the actual argument
      - deanCommie 4y ago
        There is no argument worth addressing. Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist, he has no credibility, research, or study in this domain. You or I are equally credible in making up theories to explain these phenomena. He just has a very attractive manner of speaking that sounds very intellectually rigorous to people who have no intellectual rigour of their own. He seems intelligent because he's willing to consider every possibility from it's first principles, whether that possibility is IQ rates in the labour force, or whether women are being sexually promiscuous by wearing makeup to the office. The specific argument in question is ludicrous. We've always had people excluded from the labour force due to intelligence. While surely IQ 85 individuals aren't able to take advantage of a booming tech market, the specific instances of complaints and criticisms today of "nobody wanting to work anymore" are for menial labour jobs that can easily be done by someone with an IQ of 85.
        randomtwiddler 4y ago
        They are excluded by the fact that we have minimum wages. That provides a lower bar to the required value an employee creates. As we raise this lower bar, we exclude more and more people, generally in this lower intelligence bracket. I have several family members that would love to be able to maintain employment but can't because they get pushed out by managers who think they can do better for the wage. And they probably can. If my brother could keep a job for $4/hr it would give him the honor of work (which he wants/needs), and it would do society good to have more of these people around for us to interact with. > There is no argument worth addressing. Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist, he has no credibility, research, or study in this domain. Credentials don't make an argument correct. Lack of credentials doesn't make an argument wrong. It's an intellectually dishonest argument to declare something unworthy because you don't like it. If you don't want to participate, then don't, pooping in the thread isn't helpful.
  - eruleman 4y ago
    Astute observation, Jordan Peterson did bring this argument back into the limelight. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Ur71ZnNVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Ur71ZnNVk
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- eruleman 4y ago
  Twitter changed the algorithm recently such that these type of threads are pushed to more eyeballs.
tschwimmer 4y ago
People have been complaining about this since literally before Christ. “[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. ... They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.” -Aristotle
- swayvil 4y ago
  Kids are always honest ’cause they don’t think they’re ever gonna die - The Strokes
- noduerme 4y ago
  except for every generation in America other than the boomers and their kids, who all learned what Aristotle was referring to by the age of 12 or 13. Plus people in every third world country on earth, who would give their left nut to find work, make money and raise a family in America. There's definitely a crisis in America of people who've never worked not wanting to work. And it's the ultimate first world problem. If you want to tackle privilege instead of getting a relatively shitty job in your 20s... you're probably privileged as hell.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    > There's definitely a crisis in America of people who've never worked not wanting to work. Citation needed. Do you have one single shred of evidence that this is the case, to the extent of being a "crisis"?
    - noduerme 4y ago
      Yeah. I do. Come hang out in Southeast Portland for a few days and you'll gather what I'm referring to. Seriously, just talk to anyone under 25 here who's living in a van or shooting heroin on the street and they'll explain to you in collegiate level prose why there's no point getting a job.
      - nl 4y ago
t-3 4y ago
More like, "nobody wants to work for $12 an hour anymore", or "we won't accept anything less than a Bachelor's and 5 years experience, and won't pay more than $20 an hour, so nobody wants to work anymore". Every time there's these complaints about worker shortages, the only shortage is in pay rate, benefits, and willingness to train.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- senttoschool 4y ago
  >Every time there's these complaints about worker shortages, the only shortage is in pay rate, benefits, and willingness to train. No, it could mean that the market is booming and pay rates haven't caught up. IE, what happened during the Covid-era of 0% interest rates. It could also mean that handouts are making people not work as hard or not wanting to work for less in general.
  - etchalon 4y ago
    The "its the handouts!" theory was tested when different states deprecated unemployment benefits earlier than others and did not see any significant changes in their labor market. Also, those "handouts" have long since expired and the labor issues remain.
  - jonlucc 4y ago
    Isn't that just a longer way to say that it's a shortage of pay rate, benefits, and willingness to train? If the market is booming, and pay rates haven't caught up, aren't they short?
- paulpauper 4y ago
  It's like you need 4 year degree and pass a bunch of screening/background tests and interviews to maybe make $20/hour.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Nominal wages have been rising, real wages have been falling. A great victory for labor huh. To be less cryptic, there's a relentless chorus of people advocating for inflationary policies that achieve the exact opposite of their intended effect.
paulpauper 4y ago
But labor force participation rate has plunged in recent decades, especially among men, and even more so since Covid. So yeah, people not working has always been a problem or endemic to society, but an argument can be made that it has gotten worse.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > But labor force participation rate has plunged in recent decades, especially among men Yes, a demographic bulge of a generation during whose prime working years men were even more overrepresented than they are today in heavy physical labor fields that burn out bodies quickly has been reaching the end of their careers, and the denominator for the LFPR is the the population over a certain age with no cap.
  - paulpauper 4y ago
    I don't think such a sudden decline in 12 years can be explained only by demographics https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/191725/us-male-civilian-labor-force-participation-rate-since-1990.jpg https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/191725/us-male-civilian-l... I go to a coffee shop in middle of day on a weekday and tons of men in there of working age.
    - etchalon 4y ago
      A decline over twelve years is hardly "sudden" and would map fairly well to a generational change.
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        Indeed! This year is the midpoint of all Boomers retiring. There will be a labor shortage of around 300k workers this year, slowly increasing until 2034 to 900k workers. COVID was simply the catalyst of getting a large lump of folks out of the labor force because they could retire (or died of any number of causes during the pandemic).
    - 4y ago
eimrine 4y ago
I do not want to work because government eats too much taxes of low-qualified workers (me) and eats too little taxes of high-incomers. Having nothing with a goal to receive maximum possible of spare time works not bad for me.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  What country are you in? In the US, that's basically the opposite of reality.
  - eimrine 4y ago
    I hate to give a video [1] as a proof of something, but at least this one is short and well-made. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXCGbAv8YPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXCGbAv8YPw
    - ALittleLight 4y ago
      That is an interesting video but I think it is engaging in a lot of sleight of hand. Let me go over some examples of what I mean - 1. If you take the video at its word, then it is still the case that the richest are paying more taxes. In the final graph the richest decile is paying over 30% while the poorest is in the mid 20's. The curve is slightly crescent shaped, with the poor 20-30% paying less than the poorest, but beyond that the trend holds that richer pay more. The video summarizes this slope as "mostly flat". 2. The video adds 15% for payroll taxes to the poorer deciles even though the video says that 7.5% is paid by the employee and 7.5% is paid by the company. The video explains that "economists have found that in practice companies pay their part of the payroll tax by just paying workers less." The video doesn't offer any source for this claim. If you Google the claim you see it is, not surprisingly, disputed by economists. It's not a plausible claim in the first place, and if you are allowed to support a claim because some economist somewhere might have said something kind of like it then you could really claim anything. Once you adjust the 15% the video incorrectly added to every lower decile back to 7.5% then the trend of the rich paying more, which was always present, becomes even more prominent. 3. The chart shows the richest 400 Americans as a column on par with the other deciles. This is visually deceptive because it causes you to think of this category as being a similar kind of thing - but it is not, it's a much smaller and extreme group. These people made massive amounts of money from stock in huge companies, gains which are often unrealized, and so taking this small group and graphing it next to deciles distorts what is being shown. How would the graph look if we added on the 400 poorest Americans? And why would we do that except as some rhetorical trick? 4. The video is uninterested in net taxation. That is, poor Americans get significant transfers of money back from the government. For some groups this is substantially more than they pay in taxes which would make their net interaction with government profitable. I can't really agree that a group "pays" X% in taxes if they receive from government transfers more than they paid. 5. The video description says that "All of their data, which we used to produce this video, is available on their website." But it's not. At least, I hope it's not all the data they used to produce this video. There are a few unexplained Excel sheets with some unsourced and unexplained data on the "Tax for Justice" website, but nothing like what I would expect to underlie the claims made in these figures. For example, I wanted to look at how they calculated the sales tax rates, since those varied by state and I thought that the poorest people might be spending more in categories that have no sales taxes (e.g. food) - but... maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I couldn't find anything like this. Just some random tables with numbers. 6. The top decile earns about half the income for the country. They also pay the highest tax rate. So, it's pretty obvious that, in objective terms, most of the taxes are paid by the rich. Even if, pre-benefits, the poor paid tax rates that were only ~10% lower than the richest decile, the richest decile would still be paying substantially more objective dollars in taxes. 7. It's also a bit weird to me that Vox, nominally a news organization, would just uncritically repeat the work of left wing activists out of Berkeley. Is regurgitating advocacy what a news organization is supposed to do?
phnofive 4y ago
Ngram of the linked idea using the same phrase: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=nobody+wants+to+work+anymore&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=nobody+wants+t...
balderdash 4y ago
Or people’s willingness to work has been in decline for over a century.
bayareabadboy 4y ago
For context: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
- ButtSpark69 4y ago
  +more context: pretty much every groups gone down since 2002 except elder people (55+) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/searchresults?st=Labor+Force+Participation+Rate https://fred.stlouisfed.org/searchresults?st=Labor+Force+Par...
  - medvezhenok 4y ago
    Actually the 25-54 category has been ~flat since 1990. The participation rate declining is primarily due to retirement. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/06/why-did-labor-force-participation-rate-decline-when-economy-was-good.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/06/why-did-labor...
jakelazaroff 4y ago
I mean, yeah? Who the heck wants to work? I love my job, but there are absolutely more fulfilling things I’d rather be doing with my thing than selling my labor to build someone else’s vision. It’s weird that that’s at all controversial.
- function_seven 4y ago
  The phrase is usually trotted out in comparison to the Good Ol' Days, when people did want to work. The person complaining about it has a memory of Their Day, when people were eager to show up on time, do quality work, do it efficiently, and without a Sense of Entitlement (i.e. for shit pay). I've caught myself thinking this a few times. This twitter thread is a great antidote.
  - jahewson 4y ago
    Once you adjust for inflation it was actually good pay. Pay you could buy a house with and raise a family - in your 20’s!
    - asdff 4y ago
      Buy and own outright before long too. With a job that only required a diploma and two arms.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      What are you going to do about that? Introduce a land value tax?
- granshaw 4y ago
  Even then, Good on you that you actually love your job, most aren’t that lucky
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    Thank you! I don't take it for granted. Honestly, I had no idea that the things I was into as a kid would end up paying the bills; I feel like I was just a little nerd who unintentionally stumbled into a lucrative career.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
It's interesting that virtually everyone who complains about people not wanting to work are those who are set to disproportionately benefit from the labor of someone else. So when they say "nobody wants to work anymore," what they really mean is "nobody wants to devalue their own time and labor to fill my pockets."
- imtringued 4y ago
  There is infinite demand for underpaid labor.
labrador 4y ago
Companies don't want workers anymore. They're trying to automate everyone out of a job as soon as possible and don't make a secret of it. Who wants to work at a place where there is no future for humans?
- thenoblesunfish 4y ago
  I'd like the next Twitter thread to be people saying this, starting with the invention of the windmill or the domestication of the horse. (I agree that economic stability for people is a huge problem and that things move quickly, today, but to say that automation is the root cause is oversimplified(.
  - labrador 4y ago
    I'm not saying workers are against automation. They can see the hand writing on the wall, that's all. Now they want to be coders. They see the future is to be in charge of the automation.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Ok but if nobody has to work why aren't we better off? Isn't it strange that humans fear every day that they keep getting more and more for less and less until they get everything for nothing? Isn't it strange that the opportunity cost of giving away unneeded capital financial or physical never disappears?
  - labrador 4y ago
    I didn't say no one has to work. I'm saying maybe people don't want to devote themselves to jobs that are in the process of being automated away. I'm saying people are rational actors and are choosing not to work those jobs so they can retrain themselves for a more sustainable job.
eatsyourtacos 4y ago
Yeah, people don't want to work when they make crap wages, don't get any real time off (maybe not even paid).. don't get paid if they are sick, can't enjoy having a kid because they can't even afford it.. and worry about breaking the bank for every little medical thing. worry about having to stick at a shitty job because "it has benefits" Healthcare for all that has 0 to do with employers and is near "free".. guaranteed time off, sick leave, maternity leave, and real assistance on early childcare (as in nearly free nurserys etc) would fix like 90% of the US's problems when we talk about things like "people don't want to work". But this will never happen so where we are.
- namdnay 4y ago
  If that were the case, people in France would be obsessed with wanting to work :) The improvements you list are all good things, but they’ve got zilch to do with wanting to work
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    On the one hand when I made crappier wages I was real concerned with liking what I was working on, but then I got my first real good wages and that needing to like to perform went away. But then after a while I was used to getting good wages and then I started having the need to like what I was doing again. Good wages after a bit are not going to help you if the work sucks, but it is a good initial motivator.
    - tartoran 4y ago
      Good wages can help you do what you like but in parallel and can also earn you some time. If you save some you can buy off some free time.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    There is wanting to work and then there is being able to tolerate work. Good working conditions improve the latter.
  - 4y ago
hellothere1337 4y ago
This is usually a dogwhistle for more immigration, I've seen it happen first hand in my country. Once wages started to reach a liveable standard most employers wouldnt hire anymore, especially in the blue collar sectors. Then they imported cheap temporary labour and exploited those people for pennies and then sent them back broken to their country.
- rhexs 4y ago
  You can only use the word “dogwhistle” when promoting leftist views.
  - hellothere1337 4y ago
    my bad, havent been in silicon valley for long enough to get the jargon yet. Ironically on a H1B visa too heh
splittingTimes 4y ago
I found Peter Zeihans argument convincing that the largest generation ever, the baby boomers, are starting retiring now. From a purely demographics standpoint this leads to an increasing labor shortage of some 400k per year in 2022 to almost 1m in 2032 or so. Price for labor will go up, and people can be picky not taking every bullshit job they are offered.
- charlie0 4y ago
  Not unless demand goes down because the next generations are much poorer than the precious ones.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - wombatpm 4y ago
    Someone has to inherit all of that boomer wealth. I told my father I wanted to earn money the old fashioned way and that I was very disappointed in him retiring at 70
    - charlie0 4y ago
      That's what I think should happen as well, but the reality might be disappointing. In the past, the stock market has gone up in huge part due to government intervention. It's entirely possible that real returns in the stock market and real estate market will flatten, but expenses will continue to rise at a faster rate. Notably in healthcare. There also the possibility we'll see changes in taxation. So yes, we'll get the boomer "wealth", but it won't be what people assume it will be. I hope I'm wrong.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      If he retires he is spending his money which generates old fashioned earning opportunities.
- PopAlongKid 4y ago
  >the largest generation ever, the baby boomers At present, there are more living Millenials than Boomers.[0] [0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/296974/us-population-share-by-generation/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/296974/us-population-sha...
thenoblesunfish 4y ago
Gold. I'd add that even people who have those "get paid to do what you love!" or "dream" jobs don't want to work, most of the time. Working, approximately meaning doing things on any kind of schedule, is hard and I've never met anyone, no matter how passionate or talented, who wasn't just getting through it by doing the minimum, some of the time.
- granshaw 4y ago
  Bingo! Why aren’t more people complaining about the _schedule_ part of fulltime employment!? Work would be so much more tolerable if there wasn’t damn standup at 930 every morning
  - mellavora 4y ago
    My standups are at 8:30, and we like it! You must be from $LAZY_GENERATION Think I'm going to go carve some more bits for the computer. Kids these day, get off my lawn. When I was a boy our Nintendo Was carved from an old Apple tree And we used garden hose to connect it To our steam-powered color tv. But it still beat that ancient Atari 'Cuz I almost went blind, don'tcha know, Playing Breakout and Pong on a video game Hooked up to our radio. And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse Barefoot, uphill both ways, Through blizzards in summer and winter Back in the good old days. Back when Fortran was not even Three-tran And the PC was only a toy And we did our computing by gaslight When I was a boy. When I was a boy all our networks Were for hauling in fish from the sea-- Our bawd rate was eight bits an hour (and she was worth it!), And our IP address was just 3. And you kids who complain that the World Wide Web Is too slow oughtta cut out your bitchin', 'Cuz when I was a boy every packet Was delivered by carrier pigeon And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse Barefoot, uphill both ways, Through blizzards in summer and winter Back in the good old days. Back when Fortran was not even Two-tran And the mainframe was only a toy And we did our computing by torchlight When I was a boy. When I was a boy our IS shop Built relational tables from wood, And we wrappered our data in oilcloth To preserve it the best that we could. And we carried our bits in a bucket, And our mainframe weighed 900 tons, And we programmed in ones and in zeros And sometimes we ran out of ones. And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse Barefoot, uphill both ways, Through blizzards in summer and winter Back in the good old days. Back when Fortran was not even One-tran And the abacus? Only a toy! And we did our computing in primordial darkness When I was a boy. Copyright 1997 by Frank Hayes, Firebird Arts & Music (BMI) @nostalgia filename[ WHENABOY
protein_lense 4y ago
I would love to work! I lost 2 jobs in biotech due to vaccine mandates. I'm consulting presently, but may need to completely change careers if the situation stays this way. That or find a startup where the founders care more about talent than optics. I'm improving my python skills and studying machine learning, but I world rather be doing wet lab experiments.
- galfarragem 4y ago
  > I would love to work Nope. You (we) would love to follow a passion. There’s a ton of under-staffed and under-payed restaurants and factories. Do you still want to work?
- Elinvynia 4y ago
  Your choice lead to the loss of two jobs, to be clear.
- asdff 4y ago
  At the end of the day your decision not to vaccinate is potentially putting other workers at risk so that's why its not being tolerated. If you find an employer that is willing to slack off on mandates, they are probably going to be slacking off on a lot of other employee protections that you'd like to have in your favor.
  - protein_lense 4y ago
    It is disappointing to see that so many (otherwise smart people) think that the first generation covid 'vaccines' (yes, the ones cdc had to change the definition of vaccine for) stop transmission. They don't - hence the argument that one should have to take them to 'protect' ones coworkers falls apart. Be honest and reflect for a minute on how many people you know who have gotten covid recently. Do you think they all got it from unvaccinated people? Why are the majority of the mutations in spike protein then? Could it be selective pressure applied by a vaccine that was leaky from the start? I'm sorry but mandating an experimental new drug is unethical, so yes I chose to adhere to my principles and I accept the consequences. My point was some people are out of the work force due to these unethical mandates. ETA I have taken all other vaccines courses, participated in a different experimental vaccine clinical trial (where I felt comfortable making informed consent) and sat on the safety committees of at least 4 different biotech companies for some perspective.
thenoblesunfish 4y ago
As an American in (Germanic) Europe, I was struck by how positively people think of the word "competent". In America that sounds like "not doing your best" or "having no passion". Here it sounds like "doing your job properly". People expect the plumber (or more to the point, the waiter) to do their job, but they don't expect passion or excellence.
- hef19898 4y ago
  I'll take competent over passionatly aiming for excellence every time. Especially since competence gets the job on hand when it has to be done, even if the job is quite the opposite of glorious or fancy.
  - fendy3002 4y ago
    Well nowadays companies are looking for passionate and competent employees, which meaning is very different with dictionary. Oh, and they require for the candidates to learn the companies business end to end before or during interview process, otherwise you're less passionate with our company.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Even better: buy in 143% into the company vision, because we all know culture beats strategy, and all culture flows from vision. Or some such...
- itronitron 4y ago
  After several decades of working in the US the main problem from my perspective is that delusional employees, favored and enabled by management, destroy a lot of trust among their coworkers and that adds a lot of workplace stress for many people.
  - adaml_623 4y ago
    Your comment is super unclear as to who and what you're talking about. Delusional? Enabled? You've said, "the main problem". Are you talking about something that affects most of the working population?
beloch 4y ago
Who wants to... "...do what they love doing" "...build their dream" "...help people in a way that is truly needed" "...create shareholder value in a mind-numbing hellhole for minimum wage with a boss who constantly complains about your lack of motivation." Anyone who says, "nobody wants to work anymore" is outing themselves as a lizard-person who lacks awareness, people skills, and even the most basic level of empathy for their employees. Never work for somebody who says this.
GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
Just pay more, you'll find all the workers you want
futhey 4y ago
I think we lack a "societal mission", if that's even a term. We've got no vision of a future we can come together to achieve through hard work. As much as it pains me to say this, at least in the 2000s-2010s we told ourselves we were going to reinvent the world by building software startups and make every mundane thing in our lives smarter, with software. Maybe half of that was BS, but it sure felt like we were aligning as a society to do something. Now, it feels like we're just putting out fires and fixing stuff as it's breaking.
- asdff 4y ago
  Now is the time for meaningful work. We really need to restart the WPA (1). It wasn't just a civic infrastructure program, it also supported musicians, playrights, artists, because "Hell, they’ve got to eat, too" (2). It's amazing how many tested solutions from the progressive era of this country would be turnkey today if we could only muster the political will. The country is so much more fractured than it was in this era as well, labor in the U.S. will never be a unified political force like it is in other countries or even like it was in this country during this era. Media has kept it fractured and headless for decades. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Project_Number_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Project_Number_One
- arvinsim 4y ago
  Hope that the collective mission doesn't end up being surviving yet another war.
xcambar 4y ago
It reminds me how, from Socrates till now, adults and elderly people systematically and constantly criticize young people for being arrogant and lazy. It seems to just be how the world works... See https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63219-the-children-now-love-luxury-they-have-bad-manners-contempt https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63219-the-children-now-love... for Socrates.
- imtringued 4y ago
  What if we made them lazy? The idea that the generation we brought up is to blame is ridiculous.
  - xcambar 4y ago
    Ridiculous but very consistent throughout history.
jsiaajdsdaa 4y ago
Totally agree. I want to take it one step further. Pay me as a contractor to deliver results on a project. I don't need your salary and management structure blocking me. Give me money in exchange for working software.
jaimex2 4y ago
A decade of forgetting to append - 'for me' Would be a super accurate title :)
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Plenty of people want to work in the US. It's just that the US keeps deporting people that so desperately want to work there. Some of these people literally risk their own and their family's life to get to the US. With unemployment levels historically low, there are simply not a lot of locals looking for work for every job position to be filled. And certainly not when the wages are too low, the work is hard, and employers are exploiting them and generally treating them like trash. The rational thing to do, which goes against the xenophobic tendencies of the general public (they are taking our jobs), is to do what every growing economy has to do: grow the labor market by providing access to willing labor from outside that market. Whether it's slaves, illegal immigrants, or simply making it easier for migrants to enter legally really does not matter as long as people are able to get to the jobs that need doing. There's work to be done and there are people willing to do the work. Bring them together and the work gets done. Cut off the labor supply and you get issues with businesses struggling to get things done. Unless of course they can afford to pay market rates. And with inflation being a thing, those market rates are going up, not down. The US has imported lots of cheap labor from abroad pretty much throughout it's history and especially during its boom periods. Sometimes as slaves, sometimes as refugees, and sometimes just by providing visas to those who wanted them. It wasn't always pretty of course but there are now large communities of people in the US with roots pretty much all over the world. There's no shortage of people looking to get visas to work in the US. Just an artificial shortage of visas. How many million people do you need? They are there. At any skill level. All you need to do is let them in.
- dimgl 4y ago
  - bloppe 4y ago
    I'm American in this is one of the most sensible comments I've read so far.
    - mynameishere 4y ago
      The comment you are responding to is dead for some reason, so I will quote it here: This comment is non-sensical. If you're not from the U.S., why opine on U.S. immigration policies? I will answer the question: If you are not from a particular country, it makes perfectly good sense to advise it to engage in disastrous policies, disastrous to its citizens, if those same policies could potentially benefit you in some way. That's why jillesvangurp is recommending insane immigration levels to a nation not his or her own.
XorNot 4y ago
The other side of this is that the low-pay employers complaining about this are also just flat out lying. Apply to the jobs they post, and it'll turn out it's not full-time at minimum wage - it's "10 hours a week, scheduled whenever I want" at minimum wage. Nobody wants to work that job, because that job doesn't pay enough to live off, and having your hours randomly moved around (i.e. the well known phenomenon of employer retaliation by not giving someone any hours in a week but not firing them) screws with your ability to pick up any other work, or look after children or anything else. This is before we even get to the disparity between rent, cost of living and minimum wage in most (possibly by now all?) areas in the US.
- 8note 4y ago
  10 hours a week at unknown hours determined 20min before start time is the new standard. Agile/JIT labour, the kinda stuff techies have been arguing for for decades
whacked_new 4y ago
Is it just me or are most responses here made without reading the linked tweet thread? I'm wondering how much signal there is in the years in his excerpts. For example, he shows an excerpt from 1981, then jumps to 1999. Is this simply because he just found a few examples across the years and used those, or were there actually less reports during those 18 years?
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  I think you're putting too much faith in the authors of the excerpts. It's not like the authors have actually identified a statistical pattern that can be shown in data. It's not like this article gets written when some pattern emerges. It's just a dumb and lazy trope to throw out whenever an author wants to moan about kids these days. It's based on stupidity, nothing more. The first except is written today, in the UK, whilst the unemployment rate is at the lowest level in recorded history. There's literally a quote in there from 1916, The middle of World War 1, are you honestly going to say there was a major crisis of Brits being lazy and unwilling to work hard in World War 1?
becquerel 4y ago
I don't want to work. Not for good money, not in a fulfilling job, not for the betterment of mankind. I don't want to work, period.
x0054 4y ago
It’s unhealthy to WANT to work in most jobs in US. If you truly WANT to work you are either doing something you truly love (uncommon) or you have a Protestant induced work disorder. Want people to work, PAY them for it. Not enough applying, PAY more in money or benefits and work life balance. All these “no one wants to work” sayings sound a lot like “my slaves are revolting”.
xrd 4y ago
Those quotes are great. It kinda seems like they are lamenting that THEY THEMSELVES "do not want to work anymore" on some kind of work, try to hire someone to do the work THEY THEMSELVES don't want to do, and then they go around slandering other people that never wanted to work on it in the first place. It isn't that others don't want to work ANYMORE it is that others never wanted to work on it AT ALL. That's a different problem. Maybe people saying this just need to be honest about it? Try saying "I DON'T WANT TO WORK ANYMORE on this shitty work, but how about you give it a try?" See what happens?
8note 4y ago
What's the need to work so much? Productivity is supposedly off the charts, but isn't making people wealthier
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
why should someone be motivated to work 50 hours in a soul crushing job just to pay their rent and bills? without any hope of social mobility in their lifetime. this sounds like a you problem (managers,govt), not a me problem.
- asdff 4y ago
  My grandparents generation was motivated to work, but only because they were actually getting paid enough to buy homes and cars and college educations for multiple children outright.
Lutger 4y ago
This is awesome. And there is also a valid anti work movement. The boomers who mistake that for 'nobody wants to work anymore' just can't see it, but that reveals more about their shitty priorities than the generation(s) they are critizing. As always, stereotypes of a generation are more telling of the flaws of the previous generations than anything else.
peignoir 4y ago
hahaha good one :) reminds me that in french/latin languages the word for work (travail) is thought to comes from the latin tripalium an instrument of torture / or trabaculum ( could mean like a worker yoked to his job) At the end of the days there are people willing to match their skills with a job and some who are not it s just a market equilibrium thing / demand never match the offer perfectly and innovations tend to displace work towards higher productivity… source: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-etymology-for-work-in-some-Romance-languages-so-negative-Pt-trabalho-Sp-trabajo-Fr-travail-from-Latin-tripalium-a-torture-instrument-What-can-that-tell-us-about-the-culture-and-social-life-of-Late-Latin?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-etymology-for-work-in-some-...
NiceWayToDoIT 4y ago
In 14/15th century after Black Plague, so many people died that it was impossible to find working force. At the time "wages" were not following inflation, so people were usually slaving for food. As many relatives died, people inherited homes and land of their cousins. Suddenly, no one wanted to be a servant anymore and work for the lords. Only way to attract working force was to triple or quadruple usual rates. I live in UK, and current inflation of ~10-15% will quickly eat all your savings, house/flat prices almost doubled. Just in 2 years what was 200K now is 350K, what was 400K is 700K. Meaning all you worked for years will be diminished in just couple. Wages are not following inflation since 1970, while profits of shareholders have skyrocketed. So, when I read "No one wants to work", I read it as: - "No, one wants to work, for the money I would like to pay them", > What is the level of skills and amount of money you are willing to pay? - Highest level of skill, and if possible I would like to pay nothing.
matheweis 4y ago
Am I the only one noticing that his entire timeline very nearly mirrors a list of US recessions? Was that intentional? Implicit? Coincidence?
marcyb5st 4y ago
I think a good explanation of the phenomenon is detailed here: https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A (it's a 50 min talk and targets the UK, but it's applicable to the Western world IMHO). The summary is: - People are working more and reaping less and less from their labor - Social security is getting both worse and less accessible for people in the working age - Working people in general have a much harder time entering the house market and when they do the bang for the buck is way worse than in the past - Retirement plans are getting worse and worse - Millennials and younger people will likely have to drastically reduce their carbon footprint by as much as a factor of 8 compared to the previous generations if we want to hit climate goals for the century Apart for the carbon one, the others are things I am also witnessing both in Switzerland and Italy. And with these premises I don't find surprising that people consider "working hard" or even working not worth it.
- automatic6131 4y ago
  Almost all of these are very short term trends at odds with this twitter thread.
  - coremoff 4y ago
    The twitter thread is the observation that "nobody wants to work anymore" isn't a recent phenomenon; it's entirely likely that the reasons change with the years. I imagine that a large part of the issue is that productivity increases seem to benefit the top and not the bottom. I haven't thoroughly reviewed all the snippets, but my casual view is that people are complaining that younger people aren't willing to do the work that the complainer used to do without complaining, ignoring the fact that the nature of work has changed significantly over the decades, with significant mechanisation/automation. IIRC one of the examples is that youngsters don't want to break rocks any more (I exagerate perhaps a little there).
- badpun 4y ago
  > Apart for the carbon one, the others are things I am also witnessing both in Switzerland and Italy. And with these premises I don't find surprising that people consider "working hard" or even working not worth it. It's interesting that in places like China, where conditions and pay are basically unimaginably worse, people still don't have as much problem getting motivated for entering the workforce.
denismi 4y ago
The posting snippets of text as images, which then get zoomed and cropped despite taking up enough screen real estate to be legible in full, is a wonderful advancement of the shiternet. In 1979 someone apparently wrote: > nts to work > - disgusted Thanks tweet thread!!
Out_of_Characte 4y ago
Why are there so many twitter threads on HN? Especially this one doesn't provide any context or sources. It reminds me of the time newspapers warned of global cooling with records of coldest days ever measured. Now the hottest days are used for the exact same effect even though its the same statistical lie. Articles about how no one wants to work anymore can also be replaced with any arbitrary metric that's usefull for politicians and newspapers. Again, I would agree that days are getting hotter and wages are very depressed. But I dont like twitter threads or hearsay
tpoacher 4y ago
Every single one of those snippets would have become much more accurate and sensical if the phrase was changed to "Nobody wants to work for free anymore". Which is true for any age, to the lament of cheap employers in any age.
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agluszak 4y ago
https://nitter.net/paulisci/status/1549527748950892544 https://nitter.net/paulisci/status/1549527748950892544
- kzrdude 4y ago
  Nitter mirror of the same twitter thread that this HN story links to.
  - agluszak 4y ago
    Yes, that's posting that is a common practice I think. I always look for nitter mirror and post one myself if there's none. Probably it would be easier for me if I used a browser extension to do an automatic redirect, but maybe this way more people will be able to see the tweet without having to register a Twitter account
fefe23 4y ago
Have you considered that maybe we don't need everybody to work full time? We have not had enough jobs for everybody to do meaningful work for a while, and (maybe to stave off social unrest) we kept creating bullshit jobs (google the essay from David Graeber!) to keep those people occupied. I have always been fascinated by stories about explorers making first contact with a previously unknown tribe in the Amazon rainforest and discovering that they work maybe 2 hours a day and take the rest off for sleeping and social things. In my experience most "full time" work is performative at best anyway. You pretend to work while wasting time in meetings or on Facebook, and then, maybe one or two hours a day, if you are lucky, you get to do actual work that is actually needed by someone else. It's not just about the salary. Our lifetime is our only truly irreplaceable resource. We shouldn't be wasting it like this.
- imtringued 4y ago
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EKd6WURBqOY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EKd6WURBqOY
- Buttons840 4y ago
  I've been down voted repeatedly for this suggestion, but still think it's a good idea. Instead of raising minimum wage, require all jobs to offer like 3 or 4 months paid vacation a year. It will benefit everyone, and those who need more money can work a second job while on vacation from the first (so they won't actually be working more hours and will have 2 incomes). The poor having 2 jobs will also give them leverage to get out of manipulative work situations and it will increase market mobility. There will also be widespread family and community benefits.
- rhino369 4y ago
  While there are definitely inefficiencies all over the place, companies generally don't hire people to do make-work. If it was simple to just pick out the people doing 10 hours of work a week, they'd find and fire those people. It's just not very easy. Your lifestyle is supported by people working pretty damn hard. The people picking your amazon order and making your food at a meat plant are not playing grab ass on facebook for 80% of their shift. 8 billion people can't enjoy a hunter/forager lifestyle on this planet.
cheradenine_uk 4y ago
"I keep trying to hire using <old model of the world> and keep coming up short in <new model of the world". E.g: I can't hire developers! Nobody wants to work! (Actuality: Nobody wants to spend £7k/pa to commute into your central London office for no good reason)
oifjsidjf 4y ago
Recently talked to a restaurant owner who complained that "no one wants to work anymore". Well yes, you fired all the foreign temporary workers during covid, you offer shit wage and then you complain as if it's their fault for not wanting to wageslave for you lmao.
- fundad 4y ago
  I wonder what they’d tell a server who says nobody wants to tip anymore. My guess would be “find a different line of work”
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Has anyone wanted to work ever? Isn’t that why they have to pay you to work, generally?
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
We're now entering a phase where governments and employers are trying to re-instill labour discipline after two years of that "getting out of control" due to COVID, etc. There is a target unemployment rate that is considered "healthy"; we're currently below that. Attempts will be made through various levers to get it back up there. Likewise, flexibilities and "perks" around home work, etc. that emerged during COVID will be pushed back: not because they impede productivity but because a disciplined and vulnerable work force is a cheaper work force. All the talk about "nobody wants to work anymore" is the blunt ideological end of the hammer that will be used to restore workforce discipline. The sharper edge will come in the form of modifications to labour laws, reduction of benefits and welfare programs, and the return of the austerity politics of the 90s. We've been through it before... A large part of the battle against "inflation" will be done in board rooms of major companies.
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bambax 4y ago
Nobody ever "wanted" to work, and that's been true since at least the agricultural revolution. People work because they have to, and stop the minute they don't. Today still, in some parts of the world, lower echelons of society are called "the working class", because needing to work is very effective at discriminating between haves and have nots. If work was somehow desirable in and of itself, it would be the other way around: the working class would describe those lucky enough to have a job. People complaining that "nobody wants to work anymore" are usually people not working themselves, who fail to understand that in order to find someone willing to do your own laundry, you have to pay them a fair wage.
- swayvil 4y ago
  The colonial landowners had a similar problem. Pay the locals a fair wage and they'd quit after only a few hours, having made cash sufficient for their needs. The landowners weren't getting enough work out of them. The solution : pay the locals less. Thus they need to work more. Is that how it goes in USA?
  - TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
    >Is that how it goes in USA? C'mon....We are more sophisticated now. We constrain housing supply and ensure high inflation.
  - gruez 4y ago
    > The colonial landowners had a similar problem. >Pay the locals a fair wage and they'd quit after only a few hours, having made cash sufficient for their needs. The landowners weren't getting enough work out of them. >The solution : pay the locals less. Thus they need to work more. It's a nice allegory, but it doesn't make any sense. You're basically claiming that the colonial landowners were so dumb that they were paying the natives well in excess of the market clearing wage? Seems unlikely to me. It's almost as unbelievable as saying that jeff bezos used to pay people $50k/day to clean his house, but the cleaners would stop coming in after the second day, so he paid the workers $100/day instead.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
togs 4y ago
My perspective is that "nobody wants to work anymore" is another way of saying "I want workers but I do not want to pay the market wage." Unfortunately for the workers, they tend to get blamed for the issues related to worker shortages, such as baggage delays/mixups at airports and flight delays.
morelandjs 4y ago
Happiness is the distance between reality and expectations. In a healthy society, you raise your expectations over time. In the US, blue collar workers are not seeing gains and in many cases are losing ground. That’s why people don’t want to work.
schnevets 4y ago
It is staggering how quickly the discourse in tech circles went from "What are we going to do with all of these humans when automation renders their jobs obsolete!??" to "Oh gee wiz! There is a shortage of lifeguards!"
phkahler 4y ago
People with money don't want to work either. It's all about rent and returns. ROI, RoC, MRR, etc... Nobody wants to do actual work, they want to "invest" in something that will thereafter pay them money for doing nothing. It's not just the people at the bottom ;-)
tolstoshev 4y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wCXr_6wgns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wCXr_6wgns
sheepybloke 4y ago
One thing I don't think we appreciate enough is the decline in taking pride in your work. Personally, I think that's the biggest change that happened recently. Part of it is cost, since it's more expensive to pay for craftsmen versus laborers. And then that cascades down from there. But I also don't think our culture rewards pride anymore. It's not cool to take pride in your work. If you do, your coworkers will scoff and tell you you're not paid enough to care. We've cultivated this apathetic society through wages and culture and it's resulted lots of people doing the absolute minimum at all times.
jeffrallen 4y ago
I certainly don't want to work, but I don't mind playing when someone will pay me to do it. :)
kkfx 4y ago
Please do not force people to run a modern WebVM just to see a bunch of pictures... Anyway, this is a bit different BUT NOT offtopic: https://i.ibb.co/gdTBXT0/Corp-Whining-Hist.jpg https://i.ibb.co/gdTBXT0/Corp-Whining-Hist.jpg
isitmadeofglass 4y ago
In the “capitalism is when no iPhone” catáfora we seem to also have: high employment and labor shortage is when “nobody wants to work” It’s never because compensation is to low, it’s always because these damn workers want to be paid too much!
Natfan 4y ago
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1549527748950892544 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1549527748950892544
cloudsec9 4y ago
And, to fully refute the BS of nobody wants to work anymore: "More workers now hold two full-time jobs, defined as more than 35 hours a week per job, than at any point since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting this data in 1994" https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1549859727978516481 https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1549859727978516481 (link to Washington Post story)
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465 points by soheilpro 4y ago

Well, it's not exactly a rigorous scientific analysis, is it? I'm willing to bet you can find the sentence "People never had it better" in print all the way back to 1894. What would that prove?

senttoschool 4y ago

Humanity could be trending towards less work than more work as technology advances. So every example in that Twitter threat could be true. On a related note, this kind of content is guaranteed be very popular on Twitter since Twitter is leans pretty far left. It justifies that it's ok to be lazy and that you don't have success because of the system rather than your intellectual ability or hard work. It justifies entitlement.

paulpauper 4y ago
I think Jordan Peterson helped popularize an argument that a lot of people are excluded from the labor force by virtue of not being smart enough. 15% of the general population has an IQ below 85 and either are unemployed or don't earn enough to make more than they could otherwise earn with welfare. This argument has been well-received among some on the right, as opposed to just attributing unemployment to laziness.
- deanCommie 4y ago
  That's just because the right is flirting with concepts like Eugenics under the umbrella of "Race Realism" which fits the narrative of the suppression of free speech and "I'm not racist, I'm just asking questions". It's not really any better or more well-intentioned than attributing unemployment to laziness.
  - paulpauper 4y ago
    or you could address the actual argument
    - deanCommie 4y ago
      There is no argument worth addressing. Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist, he has no credibility, research, or study in this domain. You or I are equally credible in making up theories to explain these phenomena. He just has a very attractive manner of speaking that sounds very intellectually rigorous to people who have no intellectual rigour of their own. He seems intelligent because he's willing to consider every possibility from it's first principles, whether that possibility is IQ rates in the labour force, or whether women are being sexually promiscuous by wearing makeup to the office. The specific argument in question is ludicrous. We've always had people excluded from the labour force due to intelligence. While surely IQ 85 individuals aren't able to take advantage of a booming tech market, the specific instances of complaints and criticisms today of "nobody wanting to work anymore" are for menial labour jobs that can easily be done by someone with an IQ of 85.
      - randomtwiddler 4y ago
        They are excluded by the fact that we have minimum wages. That provides a lower bar to the required value an employee creates. As we raise this lower bar, we exclude more and more people, generally in this lower intelligence bracket. I have several family members that would love to be able to maintain employment but can't because they get pushed out by managers who think they can do better for the wage. And they probably can. If my brother could keep a job for $4/hr it would give him the honor of work (which he wants/needs), and it would do society good to have more of these people around for us to interact with. > There is no argument worth addressing. Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist, he has no credibility, research, or study in this domain. Credentials don't make an argument correct. Lack of credentials doesn't make an argument wrong. It's an intellectually dishonest argument to declare something unworthy because you don't like it. If you don't want to participate, then don't, pooping in the thread isn't helpful.
- eruleman 4y ago
  Astute observation, Jordan Peterson did bring this argument back into the limelight. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Ur71ZnNVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Ur71ZnNVk
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
eruleman 4y ago
Twitter changed the algorithm recently such that these type of threads are pushed to more eyeballs.

tschwimmer 4y ago

People have been complaining about this since literally before Christ. “[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. ... They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.” -Aristotle

swayvil 4y ago
Kids are always honest ’cause they don’t think they’re ever gonna die - The Strokes
noduerme 4y ago
except for every generation in America other than the boomers and their kids, who all learned what Aristotle was referring to by the age of 12 or 13. Plus people in every third world country on earth, who would give their left nut to find work, make money and raise a family in America. There's definitely a crisis in America of people who've never worked not wanting to work. And it's the ultimate first world problem. If you want to tackle privilege instead of getting a relatively shitty job in your 20s... you're probably privileged as hell.
- XorNot 4y ago
  > There's definitely a crisis in America of people who've never worked not wanting to work. Citation needed. Do you have one single shred of evidence that this is the case, to the extent of being a "crisis"?
  - noduerme 4y ago
    Yeah. I do. Come hang out in Southeast Portland for a few days and you'll gather what I'm referring to. Seriously, just talk to anyone under 25 here who's living in a van or shooting heroin on the street and they'll explain to you in collegiate level prose why there's no point getting a job.
    - nl 4y ago

t-3 4y ago

More like, "nobody wants to work for $12 an hour anymore", or "we won't accept anything less than a Bachelor's and 5 years experience, and won't pay more than $20 an hour, so nobody wants to work anymore". Every time there's these complaints about worker shortages, the only shortage is in pay rate, benefits, and willingness to train.

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senttoschool 4y ago
>Every time there's these complaints about worker shortages, the only shortage is in pay rate, benefits, and willingness to train. No, it could mean that the market is booming and pay rates haven't caught up. IE, what happened during the Covid-era of 0% interest rates. It could also mean that handouts are making people not work as hard or not wanting to work for less in general.
- etchalon 4y ago
  The "its the handouts!" theory was tested when different states deprecated unemployment benefits earlier than others and did not see any significant changes in their labor market. Also, those "handouts" have long since expired and the labor issues remain.
- jonlucc 4y ago
  Isn't that just a longer way to say that it's a shortage of pay rate, benefits, and willingness to train? If the market is booming, and pay rates haven't caught up, aren't they short?
paulpauper 4y ago
It's like you need 4 year degree and pass a bunch of screening/background tests and interviews to maybe make $20/hour.
adam_arthur 4y ago
Nominal wages have been rising, real wages have been falling. A great victory for labor huh. To be less cryptic, there's a relentless chorus of people advocating for inflationary policies that achieve the exact opposite of their intended effect.

paulpauper 4y ago

But labor force participation rate has plunged in recent decades, especially among men, and even more so since Covid. So yeah, people not working has always been a problem or endemic to society, but an argument can be made that it has gotten worse.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> But labor force participation rate has plunged in recent decades, especially among men Yes, a demographic bulge of a generation during whose prime working years men were even more overrepresented than they are today in heavy physical labor fields that burn out bodies quickly has been reaching the end of their careers, and the denominator for the LFPR is the the population over a certain age with no cap.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  I don't think such a sudden decline in 12 years can be explained only by demographics https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/191725/us-male-civilian-labor-force-participation-rate-since-1990.jpg https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/191725/us-male-civilian-l... I go to a coffee shop in middle of day on a weekday and tons of men in there of working age.
  - etchalon 4y ago
    A decline over twelve years is hardly "sudden" and would map fairly well to a generational change.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Indeed! This year is the midpoint of all Boomers retiring. There will be a labor shortage of around 300k workers this year, slowly increasing until 2034 to 900k workers. COVID was simply the catalyst of getting a large lump of folks out of the labor force because they could retire (or died of any number of causes during the pandemic).
  - 4y ago

eimrine 4y ago

I do not want to work because government eats too much taxes of low-qualified workers (me) and eats too little taxes of high-incomers. Having nothing with a goal to receive maximum possible of spare time works not bad for me.

ALittleLight 4y ago
What country are you in? In the US, that's basically the opposite of reality.
- eimrine 4y ago
  I hate to give a video [1] as a proof of something, but at least this one is short and well-made. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXCGbAv8YPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXCGbAv8YPw
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    That is an interesting video but I think it is engaging in a lot of sleight of hand. Let me go over some examples of what I mean - 1. If you take the video at its word, then it is still the case that the richest are paying more taxes. In the final graph the richest decile is paying over 30% while the poorest is in the mid 20's. The curve is slightly crescent shaped, with the poor 20-30% paying less than the poorest, but beyond that the trend holds that richer pay more. The video summarizes this slope as "mostly flat". 2. The video adds 15% for payroll taxes to the poorer deciles even though the video says that 7.5% is paid by the employee and 7.5% is paid by the company. The video explains that "economists have found that in practice companies pay their part of the payroll tax by just paying workers less." The video doesn't offer any source for this claim. If you Google the claim you see it is, not surprisingly, disputed by economists. It's not a plausible claim in the first place, and if you are allowed to support a claim because some economist somewhere might have said something kind of like it then you could really claim anything. Once you adjust the 15% the video incorrectly added to every lower decile back to 7.5% then the trend of the rich paying more, which was always present, becomes even more prominent. 3. The chart shows the richest 400 Americans as a column on par with the other deciles. This is visually deceptive because it causes you to think of this category as being a similar kind of thing - but it is not, it's a much smaller and extreme group. These people made massive amounts of money from stock in huge companies, gains which are often unrealized, and so taking this small group and graphing it next to deciles distorts what is being shown. How would the graph look if we added on the 400 poorest Americans? And why would we do that except as some rhetorical trick? 4. The video is uninterested in net taxation. That is, poor Americans get significant transfers of money back from the government. For some groups this is substantially more than they pay in taxes which would make their net interaction with government profitable. I can't really agree that a group "pays" X% in taxes if they receive from government transfers more than they paid. 5. The video description says that "All of their data, which we used to produce this video, is available on their website." But it's not. At least, I hope it's not all the data they used to produce this video. There are a few unexplained Excel sheets with some unsourced and unexplained data on the "Tax for Justice" website, but nothing like what I would expect to underlie the claims made in these figures. For example, I wanted to look at how they calculated the sales tax rates, since those varied by state and I thought that the poorest people might be spending more in categories that have no sales taxes (e.g. food) - but... maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I couldn't find anything like this. Just some random tables with numbers. 6. The top decile earns about half the income for the country. They also pay the highest tax rate. So, it's pretty obvious that, in objective terms, most of the taxes are paid by the rich. Even if, pre-benefits, the poor paid tax rates that were only ~10% lower than the richest decile, the richest decile would still be paying substantially more objective dollars in taxes. 7. It's also a bit weird to me that Vox, nominally a news organization, would just uncritically repeat the work of left wing activists out of Berkeley. Is regurgitating advocacy what a news organization is supposed to do?

phnofive 4y ago

Ngram of the linked idea using the same phrase: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=nobody+wants+to+work+anymore&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=nobody+wants+t...

balderdash 4y ago

Or people’s willingness to work has been in decline for over a century.

bayareabadboy 4y ago

For context: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...

ButtSpark69 4y ago
+more context: pretty much every groups gone down since 2002 except elder people (55+) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/searchresults?st=Labor+Force+Participation+Rate https://fred.stlouisfed.org/searchresults?st=Labor+Force+Par...
- medvezhenok 4y ago
  Actually the 25-54 category has been ~flat since 1990. The participation rate declining is primarily due to retirement. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/06/why-did-labor-force-participation-rate-decline-when-economy-was-good.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/06/why-did-labor...

jakelazaroff 4y ago

I mean, yeah? Who the heck wants to work? I love my job, but there are absolutely more fulfilling things I’d rather be doing with my thing than selling my labor to build someone else’s vision. It’s weird that that’s at all controversial.

function_seven 4y ago
The phrase is usually trotted out in comparison to the Good Ol' Days, when people did want to work. The person complaining about it has a memory of Their Day, when people were eager to show up on time, do quality work, do it efficiently, and without a Sense of Entitlement (i.e. for shit pay). I've caught myself thinking this a few times. This twitter thread is a great antidote.
- jahewson 4y ago
  Once you adjust for inflation it was actually good pay. Pay you could buy a house with and raise a family - in your 20’s!
  - asdff 4y ago
    Buy and own outright before long too. With a job that only required a diploma and two arms.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    What are you going to do about that? Introduce a land value tax?
granshaw 4y ago
Even then, Good on you that you actually love your job, most aren’t that lucky
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  Thank you! I don't take it for granted. Honestly, I had no idea that the things I was into as a kid would end up paying the bills; I feel like I was just a little nerd who unintentionally stumbled into a lucrative career.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago

It's interesting that virtually everyone who complains about people not wanting to work are those who are set to disproportionately benefit from the labor of someone else. So when they say "nobody wants to work anymore," what they really mean is "nobody wants to devalue their own time and labor to fill my pockets."

imtringued 4y ago
There is infinite demand for underpaid labor.

labrador 4y ago

Companies don't want workers anymore. They're trying to automate everyone out of a job as soon as possible and don't make a secret of it. Who wants to work at a place where there is no future for humans?

thenoblesunfish 4y ago
I'd like the next Twitter thread to be people saying this, starting with the invention of the windmill or the domestication of the horse. (I agree that economic stability for people is a huge problem and that things move quickly, today, but to say that automation is the root cause is oversimplified(.
- labrador 4y ago
  I'm not saying workers are against automation. They can see the hand writing on the wall, that's all. Now they want to be coders. They see the future is to be in charge of the automation.
imtringued 4y ago
Ok but if nobody has to work why aren't we better off? Isn't it strange that humans fear every day that they keep getting more and more for less and less until they get everything for nothing? Isn't it strange that the opportunity cost of giving away unneeded capital financial or physical never disappears?
- labrador 4y ago
  I didn't say no one has to work. I'm saying maybe people don't want to devote themselves to jobs that are in the process of being automated away. I'm saying people are rational actors and are choosing not to work those jobs so they can retrain themselves for a more sustainable job.

eatsyourtacos 4y ago

Yeah, people don't want to work when they make crap wages, don't get any real time off (maybe not even paid).. don't get paid if they are sick, can't enjoy having a kid because they can't even afford it.. and worry about breaking the bank for every little medical thing. worry about having to stick at a shitty job because "it has benefits" Healthcare for all that has 0 to do with employers and is near "free".. guaranteed time off, sick leave, maternity leave, and real assistance on early childcare (as in nearly free nurserys etc) would fix like 90% of the US's problems when we talk about things like "people don't want to work". But this will never happen so where we are.

namdnay 4y ago
If that were the case, people in France would be obsessed with wanting to work :) The improvements you list are all good things, but they’ve got zilch to do with wanting to work
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  On the one hand when I made crappier wages I was real concerned with liking what I was working on, but then I got my first real good wages and that needing to like to perform went away. But then after a while I was used to getting good wages and then I started having the need to like what I was doing again. Good wages after a bit are not going to help you if the work sucks, but it is a good initial motivator.
  - tartoran 4y ago
    Good wages can help you do what you like but in parallel and can also earn you some time. If you save some you can buy off some free time.
- adrianN 4y ago
  There is wanting to work and then there is being able to tolerate work. Good working conditions improve the latter.
- 4y ago

hellothere1337 4y ago

This is usually a dogwhistle for more immigration, I've seen it happen first hand in my country. Once wages started to reach a liveable standard most employers wouldnt hire anymore, especially in the blue collar sectors. Then they imported cheap temporary labour and exploited those people for pennies and then sent them back broken to their country.

rhexs 4y ago
You can only use the word “dogwhistle” when promoting leftist views.
- hellothere1337 4y ago
  my bad, havent been in silicon valley for long enough to get the jargon yet. Ironically on a H1B visa too heh

splittingTimes 4y ago

I found Peter Zeihans argument convincing that the largest generation ever, the baby boomers, are starting retiring now. From a purely demographics standpoint this leads to an increasing labor shortage of some 400k per year in 2022 to almost 1m in 2032 or so. Price for labor will go up, and people can be picky not taking every bullshit job they are offered.

charlie0 4y ago
Not unless demand goes down because the next generations are much poorer than the precious ones.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wombatpm 4y ago
  Someone has to inherit all of that boomer wealth. I told my father I wanted to earn money the old fashioned way and that I was very disappointed in him retiring at 70
  - charlie0 4y ago
    That's what I think should happen as well, but the reality might be disappointing. In the past, the stock market has gone up in huge part due to government intervention. It's entirely possible that real returns in the stock market and real estate market will flatten, but expenses will continue to rise at a faster rate. Notably in healthcare. There also the possibility we'll see changes in taxation. So yes, we'll get the boomer "wealth", but it won't be what people assume it will be. I hope I'm wrong.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    If he retires he is spending his money which generates old fashioned earning opportunities.
PopAlongKid 4y ago
>the largest generation ever, the baby boomers At present, there are more living Millenials than Boomers.[0] [0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/296974/us-population-share-by-generation/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/296974/us-population-sha...

thenoblesunfish 4y ago

Gold. I'd add that even people who have those "get paid to do what you love!" or "dream" jobs don't want to work, most of the time. Working, approximately meaning doing things on any kind of schedule, is hard and I've never met anyone, no matter how passionate or talented, who wasn't just getting through it by doing the minimum, some of the time.

granshaw 4y ago
Bingo! Why aren’t more people complaining about the _schedule_ part of fulltime employment!? Work would be so much more tolerable if there wasn’t damn standup at 930 every morning
- mellavora 4y ago
  My standups are at 8:30, and we like it! You must be from $LAZY_GENERATION Think I'm going to go carve some more bits for the computer. Kids these day, get off my lawn. When I was a boy our Nintendo Was carved from an old Apple tree And we used garden hose to connect it To our steam-powered color tv. But it still beat that ancient Atari 'Cuz I almost went blind, don'tcha know, Playing Breakout and Pong on a video game Hooked up to our radio. And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse Barefoot, uphill both ways, Through blizzards in summer and winter Back in the good old days. Back when Fortran was not even Three-tran And the PC was only a toy And we did our computing by gaslight When I was a boy. When I was a boy all our networks Were for hauling in fish from the sea-- Our bawd rate was eight bits an hour (and she was worth it!), And our IP address was just 3. And you kids who complain that the World Wide Web Is too slow oughtta cut out your bitchin', 'Cuz when I was a boy every packet Was delivered by carrier pigeon And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse Barefoot, uphill both ways, Through blizzards in summer and winter Back in the good old days. Back when Fortran was not even Two-tran And the mainframe was only a toy And we did our computing by torchlight When I was a boy. When I was a boy our IS shop Built relational tables from wood, And we wrappered our data in oilcloth To preserve it the best that we could. And we carried our bits in a bucket, And our mainframe weighed 900 tons, And we programmed in ones and in zeros And sometimes we ran out of ones. And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse Barefoot, uphill both ways, Through blizzards in summer and winter Back in the good old days. Back when Fortran was not even One-tran And the abacus? Only a toy! And we did our computing in primordial darkness When I was a boy. Copyright 1997 by Frank Hayes, Firebird Arts & Music (BMI) @nostalgia filename[ WHENABOY

protein_lense 4y ago

I would love to work! I lost 2 jobs in biotech due to vaccine mandates. I'm consulting presently, but may need to completely change careers if the situation stays this way. That or find a startup where the founders care more about talent than optics. I'm improving my python skills and studying machine learning, but I world rather be doing wet lab experiments.

galfarragem 4y ago
> I would love to work Nope. You (we) would love to follow a passion. There’s a ton of under-staffed and under-payed restaurants and factories. Do you still want to work?
Elinvynia 4y ago
Your choice lead to the loss of two jobs, to be clear.
asdff 4y ago
At the end of the day your decision not to vaccinate is potentially putting other workers at risk so that's why its not being tolerated. If you find an employer that is willing to slack off on mandates, they are probably going to be slacking off on a lot of other employee protections that you'd like to have in your favor.
- protein_lense 4y ago
  It is disappointing to see that so many (otherwise smart people) think that the first generation covid 'vaccines' (yes, the ones cdc had to change the definition of vaccine for) stop transmission. They don't - hence the argument that one should have to take them to 'protect' ones coworkers falls apart. Be honest and reflect for a minute on how many people you know who have gotten covid recently. Do you think they all got it from unvaccinated people? Why are the majority of the mutations in spike protein then? Could it be selective pressure applied by a vaccine that was leaky from the start? I'm sorry but mandating an experimental new drug is unethical, so yes I chose to adhere to my principles and I accept the consequences. My point was some people are out of the work force due to these unethical mandates. ETA I have taken all other vaccines courses, participated in a different experimental vaccine clinical trial (where I felt comfortable making informed consent) and sat on the safety committees of at least 4 different biotech companies for some perspective.

thenoblesunfish 4y ago

As an American in (Germanic) Europe, I was struck by how positively people think of the word "competent". In America that sounds like "not doing your best" or "having no passion". Here it sounds like "doing your job properly". People expect the plumber (or more to the point, the waiter) to do their job, but they don't expect passion or excellence.

hef19898 4y ago
I'll take competent over passionatly aiming for excellence every time. Especially since competence gets the job on hand when it has to be done, even if the job is quite the opposite of glorious or fancy.
- fendy3002 4y ago
  Well nowadays companies are looking for passionate and competent employees, which meaning is very different with dictionary. Oh, and they require for the candidates to learn the companies business end to end before or during interview process, otherwise you're less passionate with our company.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Even better: buy in 143% into the company vision, because we all know culture beats strategy, and all culture flows from vision. Or some such...
itronitron 4y ago
After several decades of working in the US the main problem from my perspective is that delusional employees, favored and enabled by management, destroy a lot of trust among their coworkers and that adds a lot of workplace stress for many people.
- adaml_623 4y ago
  Your comment is super unclear as to who and what you're talking about. Delusional? Enabled? You've said, "the main problem". Are you talking about something that affects most of the working population?

beloch 4y ago

Who wants to... "...do what they love doing" "...build their dream" "...help people in a way that is truly needed" "...create shareholder value in a mind-numbing hellhole for minimum wage with a boss who constantly complains about your lack of motivation." Anyone who says, "nobody wants to work anymore" is outing themselves as a lizard-person who lacks awareness, people skills, and even the most basic level of empathy for their employees. Never work for somebody who says this.

GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago

Just pay more, you'll find all the workers you want

futhey 4y ago

I think we lack a "societal mission", if that's even a term. We've got no vision of a future we can come together to achieve through hard work. As much as it pains me to say this, at least in the 2000s-2010s we told ourselves we were going to reinvent the world by building software startups and make every mundane thing in our lives smarter, with software. Maybe half of that was BS, but it sure felt like we were aligning as a society to do something. Now, it feels like we're just putting out fires and fixing stuff as it's breaking.

asdff 4y ago
Now is the time for meaningful work. We really need to restart the WPA (1). It wasn't just a civic infrastructure program, it also supported musicians, playrights, artists, because "Hell, they’ve got to eat, too" (2). It's amazing how many tested solutions from the progressive era of this country would be turnkey today if we could only muster the political will. The country is so much more fractured than it was in this era as well, labor in the U.S. will never be a unified political force like it is in other countries or even like it was in this country during this era. Media has kept it fractured and headless for decades. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Project_Number_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Project_Number_One
arvinsim 4y ago
Hope that the collective mission doesn't end up being surviving yet another war.

xcambar 4y ago

It reminds me how, from Socrates till now, adults and elderly people systematically and constantly criticize young people for being arrogant and lazy. It seems to just be how the world works... See https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63219-the-children-now-love-luxury-they-have-bad-manners-contempt https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63219-the-children-now-love... for Socrates.

imtringued 4y ago
What if we made them lazy? The idea that the generation we brought up is to blame is ridiculous.
- xcambar 4y ago
  Ridiculous but very consistent throughout history.

jsiaajdsdaa 4y ago

Totally agree. I want to take it one step further. Pay me as a contractor to deliver results on a project. I don't need your salary and management structure blocking me. Give me money in exchange for working software.

jaimex2 4y ago

A decade of forgetting to append - 'for me' Would be a super accurate title :)

jillesvangurp 4y ago

Plenty of people want to work in the US. It's just that the US keeps deporting people that so desperately want to work there. Some of these people literally risk their own and their family's life to get to the US. With unemployment levels historically low, there are simply not a lot of locals looking for work for every job position to be filled. And certainly not when the wages are too low, the work is hard, and employers are exploiting them and generally treating them like trash. The rational thing to do, which goes against the xenophobic tendencies of the general public (they are taking our jobs), is to do what every growing economy has to do: grow the labor market by providing access to willing labor from outside that market. Whether it's slaves, illegal immigrants, or simply making it easier for migrants to enter legally really does not matter as long as people are able to get to the jobs that need doing. There's work to be done and there are people willing to do the work. Bring them together and the work gets done. Cut off the labor supply and you get issues with businesses struggling to get things done. Unless of course they can afford to pay market rates. And with inflation being a thing, those market rates are going up, not down. The US has imported lots of cheap labor from abroad pretty much throughout it's history and especially during its boom periods. Sometimes as slaves, sometimes as refugees, and sometimes just by providing visas to those who wanted them. It wasn't always pretty of course but there are now large communities of people in the US with roots pretty much all over the world. There's no shortage of people looking to get visas to work in the US. Just an artificial shortage of visas. How many million people do you need? They are there. At any skill level. All you need to do is let them in.

dimgl 4y ago
- bloppe 4y ago
  I'm American in this is one of the most sensible comments I've read so far.
  - mynameishere 4y ago
    The comment you are responding to is dead for some reason, so I will quote it here: This comment is non-sensical. If you're not from the U.S., why opine on U.S. immigration policies? I will answer the question: If you are not from a particular country, it makes perfectly good sense to advise it to engage in disastrous policies, disastrous to its citizens, if those same policies could potentially benefit you in some way. That's why jillesvangurp is recommending insane immigration levels to a nation not his or her own.

XorNot 4y ago

The other side of this is that the low-pay employers complaining about this are also just flat out lying. Apply to the jobs they post, and it'll turn out it's not full-time at minimum wage - it's "10 hours a week, scheduled whenever I want" at minimum wage. Nobody wants to work that job, because that job doesn't pay enough to live off, and having your hours randomly moved around (i.e. the well known phenomenon of employer retaliation by not giving someone any hours in a week but not firing them) screws with your ability to pick up any other work, or look after children or anything else. This is before we even get to the disparity between rent, cost of living and minimum wage in most (possibly by now all?) areas in the US.

8note 4y ago
10 hours a week at unknown hours determined 20min before start time is the new standard. Agile/JIT labour, the kinda stuff techies have been arguing for for decades

whacked_new 4y ago

Is it just me or are most responses here made without reading the linked tweet thread? I'm wondering how much signal there is in the years in his excerpts. For example, he shows an excerpt from 1981, then jumps to 1999. Is this simply because he just found a few examples across the years and used those, or were there actually less reports during those 18 years?

SilverBirch 4y ago
I think you're putting too much faith in the authors of the excerpts. It's not like the authors have actually identified a statistical pattern that can be shown in data. It's not like this article gets written when some pattern emerges. It's just a dumb and lazy trope to throw out whenever an author wants to moan about kids these days. It's based on stupidity, nothing more. The first except is written today, in the UK, whilst the unemployment rate is at the lowest level in recorded history. There's literally a quote in there from 1916, The middle of World War 1, are you honestly going to say there was a major crisis of Brits being lazy and unwilling to work hard in World War 1?

becquerel 4y ago

I don't want to work. Not for good money, not in a fulfilling job, not for the betterment of mankind. I don't want to work, period.

x0054 4y ago

It’s unhealthy to WANT to work in most jobs in US. If you truly WANT to work you are either doing something you truly love (uncommon) or you have a Protestant induced work disorder. Want people to work, PAY them for it. Not enough applying, PAY more in money or benefits and work life balance. All these “no one wants to work” sayings sound a lot like “my slaves are revolting”.

xrd 4y ago

Those quotes are great. It kinda seems like they are lamenting that THEY THEMSELVES "do not want to work anymore" on some kind of work, try to hire someone to do the work THEY THEMSELVES don't want to do, and then they go around slandering other people that never wanted to work on it in the first place. It isn't that others don't want to work ANYMORE it is that others never wanted to work on it AT ALL. That's a different problem. Maybe people saying this just need to be honest about it? Try saying "I DON'T WANT TO WORK ANYMORE on this shitty work, but how about you give it a try?" See what happens?

8note 4y ago

What's the need to work so much? Productivity is supposedly off the charts, but isn't making people wealthier

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

why should someone be motivated to work 50 hours in a soul crushing job just to pay their rent and bills? without any hope of social mobility in their lifetime. this sounds like a you problem (managers,govt), not a me problem.

asdff 4y ago
My grandparents generation was motivated to work, but only because they were actually getting paid enough to buy homes and cars and college educations for multiple children outright.

Lutger 4y ago

This is awesome. And there is also a valid anti work movement. The boomers who mistake that for 'nobody wants to work anymore' just can't see it, but that reveals more about their shitty priorities than the generation(s) they are critizing. As always, stereotypes of a generation are more telling of the flaws of the previous generations than anything else.

peignoir 4y ago

hahaha good one :) reminds me that in french/latin languages the word for work (travail) is thought to comes from the latin tripalium an instrument of torture / or trabaculum ( could mean like a worker yoked to his job) At the end of the days there are people willing to match their skills with a job and some who are not it s just a market equilibrium thing / demand never match the offer perfectly and innovations tend to displace work towards higher productivity… source: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-etymology-for-work-in-some-Romance-languages-so-negative-Pt-trabalho-Sp-trabajo-Fr-travail-from-Latin-tripalium-a-torture-instrument-What-can-that-tell-us-about-the-culture-and-social-life-of-Late-Latin?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-etymology-for-work-in-some-...

NiceWayToDoIT 4y ago

In 14/15th century after Black Plague, so many people died that it was impossible to find working force. At the time "wages" were not following inflation, so people were usually slaving for food. As many relatives died, people inherited homes and land of their cousins. Suddenly, no one wanted to be a servant anymore and work for the lords. Only way to attract working force was to triple or quadruple usual rates. I live in UK, and current inflation of ~10-15% will quickly eat all your savings, house/flat prices almost doubled. Just in 2 years what was 200K now is 350K, what was 400K is 700K. Meaning all you worked for years will be diminished in just couple. Wages are not following inflation since 1970, while profits of shareholders have skyrocketed. So, when I read "No one wants to work", I read it as: - "No, one wants to work, for the money I would like to pay them", > What is the level of skills and amount of money you are willing to pay? - Highest level of skill, and if possible I would like to pay nothing.

matheweis 4y ago

Am I the only one noticing that his entire timeline very nearly mirrors a list of US recessions? Was that intentional? Implicit? Coincidence?

marcyb5st 4y ago

I think a good explanation of the phenomenon is detailed here: https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A (it's a 50 min talk and targets the UK, but it's applicable to the Western world IMHO). The summary is: - People are working more and reaping less and less from their labor - Social security is getting both worse and less accessible for people in the working age - Working people in general have a much harder time entering the house market and when they do the bang for the buck is way worse than in the past - Retirement plans are getting worse and worse - Millennials and younger people will likely have to drastically reduce their carbon footprint by as much as a factor of 8 compared to the previous generations if we want to hit climate goals for the century Apart for the carbon one, the others are things I am also witnessing both in Switzerland and Italy. And with these premises I don't find surprising that people consider "working hard" or even working not worth it.

automatic6131 4y ago
Almost all of these are very short term trends at odds with this twitter thread.
- coremoff 4y ago
  The twitter thread is the observation that "nobody wants to work anymore" isn't a recent phenomenon; it's entirely likely that the reasons change with the years. I imagine that a large part of the issue is that productivity increases seem to benefit the top and not the bottom. I haven't thoroughly reviewed all the snippets, but my casual view is that people are complaining that younger people aren't willing to do the work that the complainer used to do without complaining, ignoring the fact that the nature of work has changed significantly over the decades, with significant mechanisation/automation. IIRC one of the examples is that youngsters don't want to break rocks any more (I exagerate perhaps a little there).
badpun 4y ago
> Apart for the carbon one, the others are things I am also witnessing both in Switzerland and Italy. And with these premises I don't find surprising that people consider "working hard" or even working not worth it. It's interesting that in places like China, where conditions and pay are basically unimaginably worse, people still don't have as much problem getting motivated for entering the workforce.

denismi 4y ago

The posting snippets of text as images, which then get zoomed and cropped despite taking up enough screen real estate to be legible in full, is a wonderful advancement of the shiternet. In 1979 someone apparently wrote: > nts to work > - disgusted Thanks tweet thread!!

Out_of_Characte 4y ago

Why are there so many twitter threads on HN? Especially this one doesn't provide any context or sources. It reminds me of the time newspapers warned of global cooling with records of coldest days ever measured. Now the hottest days are used for the exact same effect even though its the same statistical lie. Articles about how no one wants to work anymore can also be replaced with any arbitrary metric that's usefull for politicians and newspapers. Again, I would agree that days are getting hotter and wages are very depressed. But I dont like twitter threads or hearsay

tpoacher 4y ago

Every single one of those snippets would have become much more accurate and sensical if the phrase was changed to "Nobody wants to work for free anymore". Which is true for any age, to the lament of cheap employers in any age.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

agluszak 4y ago

https://nitter.net/paulisci/status/1549527748950892544 https://nitter.net/paulisci/status/1549527748950892544

kzrdude 4y ago
Nitter mirror of the same twitter thread that this HN story links to.
- agluszak 4y ago
  Yes, that's posting that is a common practice I think. I always look for nitter mirror and post one myself if there's none. Probably it would be easier for me if I used a browser extension to do an automatic redirect, but maybe this way more people will be able to see the tweet without having to register a Twitter account

fefe23 4y ago

Have you considered that maybe we don't need everybody to work full time? We have not had enough jobs for everybody to do meaningful work for a while, and (maybe to stave off social unrest) we kept creating bullshit jobs (google the essay from David Graeber!) to keep those people occupied. I have always been fascinated by stories about explorers making first contact with a previously unknown tribe in the Amazon rainforest and discovering that they work maybe 2 hours a day and take the rest off for sleeping and social things. In my experience most "full time" work is performative at best anyway. You pretend to work while wasting time in meetings or on Facebook, and then, maybe one or two hours a day, if you are lucky, you get to do actual work that is actually needed by someone else. It's not just about the salary. Our lifetime is our only truly irreplaceable resource. We shouldn't be wasting it like this.

imtringued 4y ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EKd6WURBqOY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EKd6WURBqOY
Buttons840 4y ago
I've been down voted repeatedly for this suggestion, but still think it's a good idea. Instead of raising minimum wage, require all jobs to offer like 3 or 4 months paid vacation a year. It will benefit everyone, and those who need more money can work a second job while on vacation from the first (so they won't actually be working more hours and will have 2 incomes). The poor having 2 jobs will also give them leverage to get out of manipulative work situations and it will increase market mobility. There will also be widespread family and community benefits.
rhino369 4y ago
While there are definitely inefficiencies all over the place, companies generally don't hire people to do make-work. If it was simple to just pick out the people doing 10 hours of work a week, they'd find and fire those people. It's just not very easy. Your lifestyle is supported by people working pretty damn hard. The people picking your amazon order and making your food at a meat plant are not playing grab ass on facebook for 80% of their shift. 8 billion people can't enjoy a hunter/forager lifestyle on this planet.

cheradenine_uk 4y ago

"I keep trying to hire using <old model of the world> and keep coming up short in <new model of the world". E.g: I can't hire developers! Nobody wants to work! (Actuality: Nobody wants to spend £7k/pa to commute into your central London office for no good reason)

oifjsidjf 4y ago

Recently talked to a restaurant owner who complained that "no one wants to work anymore". Well yes, you fired all the foreign temporary workers during covid, you offer shit wage and then you complain as if it's their fault for not wanting to wageslave for you lmao.

fundad 4y ago
I wonder what they’d tell a server who says nobody wants to tip anymore. My guess would be “find a different line of work”

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Has anyone wanted to work ever? Isn’t that why they have to pay you to work, generally?

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

We're now entering a phase where governments and employers are trying to re-instill labour discipline after two years of that "getting out of control" due to COVID, etc. There is a target unemployment rate that is considered "healthy"; we're currently below that. Attempts will be made through various levers to get it back up there. Likewise, flexibilities and "perks" around home work, etc. that emerged during COVID will be pushed back: not because they impede productivity but because a disciplined and vulnerable work force is a cheaper work force. All the talk about "nobody wants to work anymore" is the blunt ideological end of the hammer that will be used to restore workforce discipline. The sharper edge will come in the form of modifications to labour laws, reduction of benefits and welfare programs, and the return of the austerity politics of the 90s. We've been through it before... A large part of the battle against "inflation" will be done in board rooms of major companies.

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bambax 4y ago

Nobody ever "wanted" to work, and that's been true since at least the agricultural revolution. People work because they have to, and stop the minute they don't. Today still, in some parts of the world, lower echelons of society are called "the working class", because needing to work is very effective at discriminating between haves and have nots. If work was somehow desirable in and of itself, it would be the other way around: the working class would describe those lucky enough to have a job. People complaining that "nobody wants to work anymore" are usually people not working themselves, who fail to understand that in order to find someone willing to do your own laundry, you have to pay them a fair wage.

swayvil 4y ago
The colonial landowners had a similar problem. Pay the locals a fair wage and they'd quit after only a few hours, having made cash sufficient for their needs. The landowners weren't getting enough work out of them. The solution : pay the locals less. Thus they need to work more. Is that how it goes in USA?
- TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
  >Is that how it goes in USA? C'mon....We are more sophisticated now. We constrain housing supply and ensure high inflation.
- gruez 4y ago
  > The colonial landowners had a similar problem. >Pay the locals a fair wage and they'd quit after only a few hours, having made cash sufficient for their needs. The landowners weren't getting enough work out of them. >The solution : pay the locals less. Thus they need to work more. It's a nice allegory, but it doesn't make any sense. You're basically claiming that the colonial landowners were so dumb that they were paying the natives well in excess of the market clearing wage? Seems unlikely to me. It's almost as unbelievable as saying that jeff bezos used to pay people $50k/day to clean his house, but the cleaners would stop coming in after the second day, so he paid the workers $100/day instead.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

togs 4y ago

My perspective is that "nobody wants to work anymore" is another way of saying "I want workers but I do not want to pay the market wage." Unfortunately for the workers, they tend to get blamed for the issues related to worker shortages, such as baggage delays/mixups at airports and flight delays.

morelandjs 4y ago

Happiness is the distance between reality and expectations. In a healthy society, you raise your expectations over time. In the US, blue collar workers are not seeing gains and in many cases are losing ground. That’s why people don’t want to work.

schnevets 4y ago

It is staggering how quickly the discourse in tech circles went from "What are we going to do with all of these humans when automation renders their jobs obsolete!??" to "Oh gee wiz! There is a shortage of lifeguards!"

phkahler 4y ago

People with money don't want to work either. It's all about rent and returns. ROI, RoC, MRR, etc... Nobody wants to do actual work, they want to "invest" in something that will thereafter pay them money for doing nothing. It's not just the people at the bottom ;-)

tolstoshev 4y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wCXr_6wgns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wCXr_6wgns

sheepybloke 4y ago

One thing I don't think we appreciate enough is the decline in taking pride in your work. Personally, I think that's the biggest change that happened recently. Part of it is cost, since it's more expensive to pay for craftsmen versus laborers. And then that cascades down from there. But I also don't think our culture rewards pride anymore. It's not cool to take pride in your work. If you do, your coworkers will scoff and tell you you're not paid enough to care. We've cultivated this apathetic society through wages and culture and it's resulted lots of people doing the absolute minimum at all times.

jeffrallen 4y ago

I certainly don't want to work, but I don't mind playing when someone will pay me to do it. :)

kkfx 4y ago

Please do not force people to run a modern WebVM just to see a bunch of pictures... Anyway, this is a bit different BUT NOT offtopic: https://i.ibb.co/gdTBXT0/Corp-Whining-Hist.jpg https://i.ibb.co/gdTBXT0/Corp-Whining-Hist.jpg

isitmadeofglass 4y ago

In the “capitalism is when no iPhone” catáfora we seem to also have: high employment and labor shortage is when “nobody wants to work” It’s never because compensation is to low, it’s always because these damn workers want to be paid too much!

Natfan 4y ago

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1549527748950892544 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1549527748950892544

cloudsec9 4y ago

And, to fully refute the BS of nobody wants to work anymore: "More workers now hold two full-time jobs, defined as more than 35 hours a week per job, than at any point since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting this data in 1994" https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1549859727978516481 https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1549859727978516481 (link to Washington Post story)

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