There's a huge cultural shift happening right now that isn't being discussed nearly enough.
It's the effect that our educational system is having on work ethics. I hear older people talk a lot about how gen z is lazy, entitled, soft etc. but there's never much talk about why that might be the case.
The answer I think has to do with the way kids were raised in the last few decades. It's been accelerating since sputnik shook American elites to radically invest in public education.
Schools pump out young people who are programmed to think of themselves as intellectuals. This is especially true of college and higher education, which the lower grades are geared towards setting kids up for. The average Starbucks barista or McDonald's employee has spent about 15 years of their lives learning all kinds of things that don't immediately apply to them. Imagine the investment. The long hours spent in a classroom instead of playing with friends. The hours and hours of studying, homework and frustration. Now imagine after all of that your life consists of repeating the same menial tasks every day for barely enough to afford gas. That's the world young people face today. No wonder people aren't giving a shit.
Giving everyone access to a broad education has unforeseen consequences. It endows each person with an identity that doesn't mesh with the outside world of adulthood, where most people find themselves with "unfulfilling" jobs. Kids spend the first quarter century of their lives being encouraged to dream, develop self esteem and think highly of their own abilities. Then they run into the brick wall of adult work culture and become depressed and disillusioned. Many turn to socialism or self destructive behaviors to cope with the loss of their perceived status. They feel unrecognized and abused by the system.
I don't know what the solution is here, but I've been thinking about this a lot and felt like typing this up. I'm wondering what everyone else thinks of my hypothesis.
The real problem is that Gen Z has been led to believe this is somehow different than previous generations. Nothing is less affordable than in previous generations. Previous generations were able to afford housing etc. by forming relationships. People paired up with roommates or romantic partners to be able to afford to live on their own. The biggest difference is in the past young people had to move away from their parents' home at age 18. Most people who went to college did so to fulfill a real career purpose.
That's simply not true. Housing and rent costs are much higher today than they were when I was a kid. A new vehicle these days costs as much as a nice home for a family of 3 or 4 did when I was a kid.
We need to stop blaming the people that are being abused by this system. It's not a matter of working harder, the solution to slavery is not to be a better slave. People are realizing that the amount of fiat currency they need to live keeps increasing while the amount they get for all their hard work and lifeblood barely amounts to shit. They end up stuck in a cycle of barely scraping by and living pay check to pay check, while other people scoff at their struggles and tell this exhausted and miserable person that their issue is that they just arent trying hard enough.
When you attack the people, you defend the system that preys on them. You want to talk about complicity? Accountability? Maybe it's time we all stop blaming the younger people and start taking a look at the beast we've created that chews our young people up and shits them out when it's done with them.
Even if the economy hasn't changed, the culture noticeably has. Young people aren't dating as much and it's not uncommon for people in their 20s to have literally no friends in real life. It's really every man for himself.
Much of that is the fault of parents. Expectations have become so low that kids have no reason to form relationships. The parents of Boomers had to decide whether to let kids sit in front of the TV all day or make them go outside. The parents of Gen X had to decide whether to let them be absorbed by Video Games and Cable TV or force them to go outside. The parents of Millennial kids had to contend with Cable, Video Games and Computers or go outside. Most of the parents of Gen Z seem to have just given up since the Smartphone was added to the mix.
The way previous generations parents fought this battle was if the kid was at home, they were made to do some type of work/chores. Parents got soft and the kids got softer. I've known a lot of parents who have let their kids accomplish absolutely nothing and then blame it on the times we live in rather than take responsibility.
It's also because the current wave of feminism in the West has made the majority of young women undateable to begin with so over 60% of men in their 20s are just checking out entirely. Young men are trending to be more conservative plus we have the rise of "Passport Bros" who have the money to be spending their time in other countries or outright importing foreign "tradwives" rather than bothering with women in their homeland. If I hadn't met my wife over ten years ago I'd probably be in the same boat.
Yep, most of the youngest married couples that I know are pushing 40 while most in their 30s and 20s is perpetually single.
That is not entirely true, when you start look at cost vs income then and now there is a lot of important stuff that is WAY more costly now, however the shallow distractions like junk-food, cheap alcohol, mass-market entertainment and what not is likely to be fairly comparable.
Housing, land, vehicles and other things(even certain foods like mammalian meat and fish) that give people independence, strength and real security rather that the false version of it all, now that is massively more expensive for the average-joe with average -joe income...
Ad to that brainwashing people into thinking they have to have a college/university education to feel like a success and like they amount to something and costing the shit out of that avenue also plays a part....
Right about the strength and security that comes from coupling up though, it's not for nothing that most countries will tax married couples more than the same people with the same income when single....
that said, the laziness 'revolution' is a very real thing.....
Even taking inflation into account many things are indeed way more expensive, especially vehicles with all the bloatware of luxuries that became standard or were federally mandated. I noticed this several years ago in how the same model car that I bought in 2000 cost nearly 50% more despite the only new features being back-up cam and anti-lock brakes. Those features did not account for adding several thousand to the price of the vehicle.
Also 10 years ago I could afford my mortgage and car payment and was paying off student loans on my sole income. Now we're starting to struggle even with two incomes due to the skyrocketing costs of food and utilities and such and I'm making over twice what I did back then but inflation is wiping that out.
Exactly! It's insane to claim that things haven't gotten more expensive when a weeks worth of basic groceries and supplies costs me twice as much as they did in 2018, while the amount I make has been increasingly ravaged by taxes and inflation to the point that I'm realistically making less tangible assets for my effort even though the amount of bullshit monopoly money that I earn has increased.
When I was single a decade ago I could get by on $200 or less a month in groceries. Now that's almost a weekly bill.
$273 for half a cart the other day at my local Walmart. I wanted to shit on the floor and scream, but remembered that I wasn't in California so people might get upset.