19 ms·

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 havi

• 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.
  • medvezhenok 4y ago
    True. Work motivation is usually tied to one of these things: 1) Acquiring status / proving yourself (qualifying for a better romantic partner, etc). More applicable for men. 2) Servicing existing debt (student loans, mortgage, etc) 3) Providing for a family (somewhat similar to 1 - but for future goals) 4) Securing a legacy/reputation Although the most important drive in work is seeing a path towards upwards mobility (i.e. if I work hard then my lot in life can improve - not in an absolute sense, but in a relative sense. Meaning that I will be better off than my neighbor. This ties in to status games and mate competition from (1)).
    • wsc981 4y ago
      I'd like to work as a means of self-actualization [0] (by working on private projects), but it's hard to find the time as this (currently) doesn't pay the bills. So currently I am at stage 'Providing for a family', while I do a little bit of self-actualisation whenever I can find some free time. --- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization
    • mikeodds 4y ago
      In regards to 4) I ᴍᴇᴛ a Traveller from an antique land, Who said, “ Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desart.[17] Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: “ My name is Oᴢʏᴍᴀɴᴅɪᴀs, King of Kings.” Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair! No thing beside remains. Round the decay Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.
      • vaidhy 4y ago
        A reading of Ozymandias would say he has secured the legacy.. Even though nothing remains of his kingdom, that statue still stands and boldly proclaims to the world that Ozymandis lived and conquered.
  • resist_futility 4y ago
    Ask anybody in France if they want to work in the U.S. Unless you're in tech or some other in demand field where the pay is a significant increase I doubt many would be willing to.
    • clement_b 4y ago
      30 years ago people would have said yes perhaps (American dream), but now it has become apparent the US is a very broken country for ~90% of its population. It's actually shocking how bad it is when you think about fundamentals (health, food, security, education). We have many problems in France, they look like micro problems when looking at how painful it is for most to survive in the US.
      • unixhero 4y ago
        The American dream, you have to be asleep to believe it. -- George Carlin
      • Ma8ee 4y ago
        Exactly! The US is great for the top few percent, but for the rest of the population they’d have a much better life in any Western European country.
        • a-user-you-like 4y ago
          Just raise the minimum wage to $50 an hour, problem solved.
          • justinclift 4y ago
            Seems like inflation would then jump a fair bunch to match?
            • danw1979 4y ago
              Let’s try it and find out
  • hikingsimulator 4y ago
    Not when Macron and co. tries every day to erode social benefits acquired by more than a century of political struggle. Work in France is importantly a vector for socialization. This seemed to be a foreign consideration to a lot of Americans from what I've witnessed. It's so easy to get fired in the US that considering coworkers are more than acquaintances -- trying to make friends -- is a "bad investment." Most French people would also rather say that work is "chiant" (boring) rather than bad.
    • anakaine 4y ago
      Many in the US look at socialist ideals as though they are evil and will destroy everything. Just as many seem to confuse them with communism. Importantly, socialist and communist societies are different, and there is no successful nation that is purely one or the other. Successful nations with high standards of living and overall higher than average levels of life satisfaction have socialised elements, such as healthcare.
      • hikingsimulator 4y ago
        France is not a socialist country. It just has a somewhat okay welfare state.
        • nopenopenopeno 4y ago
          And it has that thanks to socialists
          • frozencell 4y ago
            It seems that France, more and more socialist at the time since 1929(?), didn't want to attack the socialist-communists: German National Socialists + URSS in 1939/40 because of their alliance. and that would be why the need to surrender was so important despite pretty-okay infantry, chars and generals.
            • 4y ago
  • grapeskin 4y ago
    Maybe France is a good place to work because workers actively stand up for their rights.
    • bigDinosaur 4y ago
      It has an awfully elitist education and employment system with very little opportunity to break into any of it as an outsider (i.e. from any lower class or from an entire range of universities and majors). It's certainly not necessarily a better place to be than the US, although it does have the benefits such as universal healthcare that are missing in the US.
      • winReInstall 4y ago
        Well, nobody has a chance in the us either. There are just various "industries" in need of fresh meat, who create a ilusion of "chance" to churn through idealistic, young people as a cheap labour source for jobs.
        • refurb 4y ago
          You should tell my boss who was a refugee that "nobody has a chance in the US". She'd be fascinated to hear your reasoning.
          • grapeskin 4y ago
            France is full of refugees as well. Loads of countries are. Not sure what the point is.
            • refurb 4y ago
              The point is "nobody has a chance in the US" is clearly false?
            • badpun 4y ago
              How many refugees in France end up in managerial roles, working alongside the grads from elite schools?
  • sofixa 4y ago
    It's actually the same thing just on a smaller scale (apart from the fact that people in France are rarely "obsessed" about work at all) - the jobs people don't want to work are the, relatively speaking, shitty ones. Nobody wants to work weird hours at the airport with a long commute, or police emotional/drunk people at a stadium, or run around serving food for hours at a time for comparatively little pay. Those jobs are much better than the equivalents in the US, healthcare/time off/etc.-wise, but they're still shitty jobs compared to the rest of the job pool.
  • nivenkos 4y ago
    Salaries are terrible in France - a senior dev earns maybe 60k euros (~60k USD).
    • Scarblac 4y ago
      What's so terrible about that?
      • vladvasiliu 4y ago
        It's the fact that prices are similar to the US. The only exceptions could be housing in the coastal US cities. Even so, with a 60k salary you won't be able to afford to buy anything bigger than a shoebox in Paris, if that. And if you live further out, and need to commute by car, gas is more expensive than in California. Also, the 60k are probably before income tax, which as far as I understand, is higher than in the US.
        • SettembreNero 4y ago
          60k gives you ~3200€/month, which allows you to rent kinda easily a 30m² apartment in Paris or banlieue prochaine (suburbs) - even better if you go further out. In addition very few people commute with a car in Paris, most people use public transportation (usually up to 1.5 hours if you leave really far from the city), which costs 75€/month and by law if you have a CDI (Contract of indeterminate employment) it's half payed by the employer (IDK if it applies to other forms of employment, but it's a fair assumption). Of course if you live somewhere else than Paris it's even better, and in every case you also count in universal healthcare.
          • junofan 4y ago
            Freshman interns make like double that.
          • vladvasiliu 4y ago
            > 60k gives you ~3200€/month, which allows you to rent kinda easily a 30m² apartment in Paris or banlieue prochaine (suburbs) Easily does a lot of heavy lifting. I'd doubt you'd find a 30m2 in a nice neighborhood. Source: I looked last year. I was also specifically talking about buying. > Of course if you live somewhere else than Paris it's even better You'll probably be making less than 60k in that case, if you can even find a job… > and in every case you also count in universal healthcare. It depends. If you break your leg or something else critical, sure. If you need any other kind of care (hospital stay, glasses, or even some dental work) you better have a "mutuelle", which seems similar to the US model of employer provided health insurance, in that not everyone has it. Also, this comes out of your 60K, and part of it is included in the tax base, so it isn't completely "free".
  • diob 4y ago
    I had no idea they didn't work in France.
  • naikrovek 4y ago
    people want to work, I assure you. they just want a job that pays enough to make ends meet as well as start saving. any 40-hour/week job should provide that and there are a very large number that do not. people want to work, they just don't want to be crapped on while they do it. I guarantee that any employer who pays fairly is not seeing any shortage of applicants.
• deleted 4y ago
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• bumper_crop 4y ago
  This is lazy explanation that's easy to agree with if you don't think very hard about it. Two reasons: 1. A shitty job at $15 an hour is equally unappealing at $16 an hour. Someone who doesn't want the crap hours, crap boss, and crap customer interactions isn't going to change their mind over an extra buck an hour. The money isn't the problem, it's that companies make it _not rewarding_ to work. 2. Raising pay ratchets up inflation, and isn't a response. Cause and effect are reversed. Unlike food, gas, houses, movie tickets, and restaurants, the amount of money transacted in wages/salary cannot go down. McDonald's can't tell their employees that due to supply and demand, they are only going to make $14.83 an hour this week. Imagine if your company lowered wages due to the "expected recession". You would start looking for a new role. This means pay increases can never go down again after a temporary bump. I won't say it's the cause, but it artificially limits deflation from ever pulling things back. Like an elevator that can only go up.
  • noduerme 4y ago
    I did crap jobs for $8/hr because I needed to pay rent.
    • bumper_crop 4y ago
      Same here. Ironically it's rising rent and gas prices that will force people back to work, rather than pay bumps because bills still need to be paid.
    • vaidhy 4y ago
      I have read your other comments on the thread too and I am really confused about something - are you saying that life/US treated you unfairly and hence everyone should suffer as you went through (suck it up, buttercup is the phrase I believe)? or are you saying that these crap jobs for $8 are fair? I did not grow up poor neither did I grow up rich.. but I would love for people in my neighborhood, my state, my country and rest of the world (somewhat in that order) to have a better life with less uncertainties than what the previous generation had. The attitude of "I struggled, so everyone should also struggle" makes very little sense to me.
• noduerme 4y ago
  I really think the long term way for any of us in a similar position is to found our own company or build our own dream as we see it. I don't like working for anyone either. I have no sympathy for myself that I've so far failed to have a big hit among the 7 or 8 startup apps and sites I've built in my spare time while working corporate jobs. How am I supposed to have sympathy for someone who isn't even trying, just because wages are shit and they don't get a lot of vacation? Who cares? I've worked some of the shittiest jobs in America. I can bitch as much as anyone else. People like me not losing hope in my own ability to one day launch something that will make us fuck-you rich from our garage - even if most of us never will - is an essential driver of innovation and overall economic well being. And people who say it's impossible disgust me, because they're essentially just lazy
  • TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    > found our own company This doesn't scale. The comment you replied to stated facts about structural issues in society. Starting your own company isn't going to fix any of that.
  • episteme 4y ago
    Despite having failed 7 or 8 times you think the only thing stopping the average person from becoming fuck you rich is laziness? Your solution is for everyone to found their own companies and succeed? Isn't this attitude just a restating of 'pull yourself up by the bootstraps'? Most people are not capable of what you are suggesting but that doesn't mean they don't deserve reasonable pay and healthcare.
    • crooked-v 4y ago
      Also, to expand on that in a different way: Most businesses require real up-front investment and significant time to operate, so failing even once means at best losing all your seed money and at worst going broke.
  • badpun 4y ago
    People who support their faimiler through full-time jobs are lazy? I guess you've never met the benefit kings/queens and full-time alcoholics that live in my neighborhood. That would've calibrated your laziness meter.
• Aunche 4y ago
  > 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". Let's be real here. Plenty of people have all those things and are still lazy as shit, especially in tech. I work hard enough so that I'm at least somewhat of an asset to my company, but I doubt I'm anywhere near as dedicated to my work as the average Chinese factory worker. If you watch American Factory, you'd notice that the Chinese workers just seem to care more about their work than the American ones. I do think that Americans deserve things like free healthcare, but I also think it's important to maintain a realistic perspective.
  • cloudsec9 4y ago
    The lesson you took from "American Factory" was that the Chinese workers "seem to care more"? In the west, work is a job, and we work it for (usually) 40hrs a week. The Chinese workers were often hundreds or thousands of miles from their families, living in cramped company-provided housing and seeing their families a few times a year. It showed me that work is a lifestyle. My impression was that while the company wanted it's workers nominally "happy", productivity was of supreme importance. Safety, legality, and all of that was red tape to be handled in some way, but productivity was most important. My impression was that the workers were all seen as cogs by the management, and all were replaceable. I'm sure it's true that there are lazy people out there. But I think the point here is that there are people who will do the work in the right conditions for decent money.
• imtringued 4y ago
  When people get paid more they still want to work less but because there is immense stigma against retirement and voluntary unemployment everyone is trying to save for an early retirement instead of just working less. People are working hard for an illusion, the population is shrinking, your life savings aren't worth much if there is no one to work for you. Storing labor isn't possible if it isn't turned into physical capital.
• dzonga 4y ago
  the brutal truth is those brutal conditions cause people in the US to work harder than their peers in other first world countries. the american system is incentivising people to work that's all
  • eatsyourtacos 4y ago
    And what exactly is your point here?
    • dzonga 4y ago
      the US system is working as intended. which is a hard truth to fathom for most people.
• sk8terboi 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
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• ekianjo 4y ago
  > can't enjoy having a kid because they can't even afford it.. we never have had as much means to raise kids as we have now. Right after the war families had tons of kids and comparatively were working much harder and with less disposable income that we do. Please don't used that tired argument, it's ludicrous.
  • eatsyourtacos 4y ago
    >we never have had as much means to raise kids as we have now And what in the heck does that even mean? >Please don't used that tired argument, it's ludicrous. Yeah, it's really ludicrous. The average cost of child care alone is $10k / year. The median income is like 31k in the US. You do the math.
• chaoz_ 4y ago
  Many people mention "social status" element, which is for sure important, because many jobs will get you basic needs covered. Everyone is well aware of how successful/rich life looks like when you get bombarded with this content from every corner of social media / ads etc. My hypothesis is that it's not fun/interesting to work on becoming a PRO carpenter (in general), when all the hype (that's hard to disconnect from) is about "You're missing out on crypto bro, that's the future". I don't have anything against crypto, but you get the example.
• Clubber 4y ago
  >don't get any real time off I think this cause is highly underrepresented. Many countries get at least a month of paid vacation a year don't they? In the US, it's a slog, year in and year out for most people. Even white collar workers who get 3-4 weeks off are often manipulated into not taking it. I'd be a lot less burned out every year if I got to take an actual month off.