Ok here’s my take on the whole “young people are lazy” debate, I’m 30
first of all, the “boomers had it so easy” argument is a bit misleading. If you were a white guy, yeah it was easy. But I know very few women in their 60s who had lifelong high paying careers. And those who have divorced often seem to be struggling financially. Economic times were certainly good back then, but not necessarily for everybody.
young people have always been called lazy, people said it about boomers back then, then it was millennials, now I listen to millennials shit on gen z. That will never change. There have always been hard workers and lazy people in every generation.
what I think has changed is the type of work people are willing to do. When I worked in masonry, almost all of my coworkers of various ages were homeowners. There are really high paying welding and pipe fitting jobs out there. The problem is these jobs aren’t “fun” and often require you to live in the middle of nowhere. Go drive to some sleepy rural town. Who lives there? Boomers. And they didn’t move there for fun, they moved there for cheap real estate and a good job.
so why aren’t young people making this sacrifice? I think there are 2 reasons. One is that boomers all taught us that we should “follow our dreams!” And “do something fun!” You can absolutely do that, but most fun jobs people are willing to do for lower pay, so if you want to make it you have to work harder. I have a really fun job that I love, but the pay is low so I often work 60 hours a week. That’s the sacrifice you have to make. If you want to work 40 hours or less, be prepared to do some shitty, not fun work. the other reason is the 2008 financial crisis. When the first millennials were entering the job market, the jobs weren’t there, and that has kind of set the tone. It’s gotten better now cause the boomers are finally retiring, but at this point a lot of young people haven’t even considered working in the trades or manufacturing. These jobs are out there!
what’s really fucking up young people now is the cost of day to day things like housing and transportation. Cars and houses are so unaffordable. Housing would probably be cheaper if more people went into the trades, which would drive down labor costs. Cars are too expensive cause car companies like making money, that’s just capitalist greed pure and simple. Toyota makes a bare bones tundra that costs like 15k, it’s just not available in the us/Canada.
TLDR all our problems will be solved if we build a bunch of electric trains and cheap housing
