17h ago

People call hard-work a ‘scam’ and no longer think it will lead to a better life

www.unilad.com

It may have been the case before that people thought hard work brought a better life, but now things have changed

Professor Bobby Duffy worked on the study, and said that millennials have 'become much more sceptical about prioritising work as they’ve made their way through their career'.

Antiwork @lemmy.ml

gandalf_der_12te @discuss.tchncs.de

18h ago

People call hard-work a ‘scam’ and no longer think it will lead to a better life

www.unilad.com /community/life/hard-work-better-life-scam-330925-20240901

Antiwork: Unemployment for all, not just the rich! @lemmit.online

Lemmit.Online bot @lemmit.online

BOT

18h ago

People call hard-work a ‘scam’ and no longer think it will lead to a better life

www.unilad.com /community/life/hard-work-better-life-scam-330925-20240901

30 comments

I worked hard. Busted my ass for almost 10 years. Almost made it over 100k a year and then BOOM. Mass layoffs, lottery style. I got another job but at half the pay, the best available pay for the area.
The game is rigged against anyone who isn't already rich.
- This is me...150k two and a half years ago, laid off back then, and I can't even get a sniff of an interview now. They've completely destroyed me and my will to...well, do just about anything. Milked me dry over almost 30 years before discarding my desiccated husk on the wayside.
  
  Sorry, can't find anything for you. You are too senior.
The decline of unions will do that to you. We’re in a second Gilded Age.
- Unions didn’t decline.
  They’ve been systematically busted for the last 5 and a half decades.
Hard work only brings a better life to the person who signs your paycheck.
- If hard work brought success, the donkey would own the farm
  
  Turns out it just makes you a jackass.
- Boomer parents, Boomers and some gen X were a fluke in history.
  Being a slave was never a good position, and you can't work your away out of structural bullshit.
  Got to face the parasite class in other ways since employment arrangement ensures you can never win.
The key isn't to stop working hard, it's to stop working hard for someone or something that you don't get to directly benefit from.
- That overtime pay 🤑🤑🤑
- I'm self employed. I enjoy my work. It's very rewarding, but every time i get a little extra money sometime comes along and takes it.
  I have no retirement savings. My retirement plan is to kill myself when I'm too sick to work. I've made sure my life insurance is written so that it will pay out to my wife even if I off myself.
  I come from a long line of men who don't die easy. I watched my grandfather refuse food or water after being diagnosed with stage 4 bone cancer and still live for two weeks. That was after ten years of enduring strike recovery. My dad coughed up a lung from congestive heart failure for over two years before finally wasting away, looking like a pregnant Holocaust survivor. Same for several other uncles and great-uncles. I figure I've got another 25 years before I'm a liability. I'm already physically miserable. Middle age sucks. Old age sucks even harder and I'm not even there yet.
  I'm gonna follow one of my great-uncles examples and go for a walk in the woods. I'll make sure whatever SARs volunteer that draws the short straw isn't too traumatized when they find me. Just another old man that chose his own time
  ETA: to be clear, i don't wish to die (any more than normal lol). But I am pragmatic about the reality of old age and my likely path. Will I feel the same in 25-35 years? Maybe not. We'll see what happens. Perhaps our fortunes will change for the better, perhaps we will be able to immigrate to a nation that has better social safety nets, perhaps we die in a meteor strike in 2039
  
  Also self employed. My situation is a bit better than yours (99% luck, I know how I got my contracts) and I'll probably be able to retire, maybe even a little early if I can keep up my skills until retirement.
  However, my plan when the money starts running out or the back pain makes it too hard to get out of bed every day is the same as yours. I don't plan on getting married. I'm not leaving anyone behind. I'm not going into a bang 'em and bin 'em joint. My back has been degrading since I got rear ended in my 20s. I have a couple of acres in the middle of nowhere that's entirely wooded where no one goes (I guess, I only check on the place twice a year....taxes are almost nothing because no one wants to live anywhere near it). I'm going out there and just becoming one with nature.
  
  It's very difficult to be self employed because the big boys have every market covered and can take a loss here or there to corner a new one. Meanwhile, you have to pay your bills on whatever you earn. There are benefits to being employed--at the right place.
  
  This is why I stopped working for myself (not the best business partner, long story I won't get into here).
  I hope that you find a better way and that you don't have to resort to that. Suicide will hurt your wife, I have a friend who had her husband shoot himself in the head with a shotgun a few years ago. She's 74, and while she has her kids and grandkids visit sometimes, she misses him terribly 3 years later. They were married for around 50 years.
  Please, choose a different way.
- Gotcha, subsistence farming it is
  
  Unironically this. I knew a guy who used pandemic remote work ubiquitousness to buy a huge farm, move to it, start growing all the food he and his family needed all while working as a software dev. He hated "work" but LOVED working.
  
  Not necessarily subsistence, but like growing your own garden to feed your family, plus focus on one crop you can sell locally? I'm down for that.
Plot twist: IT NEVER HAS.
- It has, but only in very limited and specific circumstances, mostly historical. Homesteading isn't exactly a profession anymore.
  
  Mm, not quite. Homesteading in the early US, for example, was an insidious seeding scheme by the ruling class to simultaneously cull both the indigenous defenders and the "pioneer" (aka wishful peasant) population shipped in by the boat load. Canaries in a gold mine, if you will.🥲
The job I do, working harder gets shit done quicker which means you get through the assigned work faster. That's obviously positive for my employer. And working harder could mean longer hours, which nets you overtime.
So probably depends on the type of work, where you work and so on if it is a scam or not.
I mean, that is objectively true now. Hard work just gets you more work.
That's because in many cases it often doesn't and can even lead to a worse life depending on your priorities.

30 comments