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.
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.