We often here the stereotype of the "lazy millennial" and how millennials are lazy and don't want to work and that's the real problem. Now, we're not talking about me. I understand I might come off as the posterchild of a "lazy millennial" and I plan to address that later on, as my own case is a special one and not representative of the norm, but here, I'm going to mostly talk about the norm.
How most millennials seem to think
Here's the thing. Millennials are just like every other generation as far as work goes. They just tend to suffer from problems that previous generations have not and this makes them "lazy" in the eyes of older people.
Economically, we had a rough life. Our generation starts in 1981 and goes to around 1995, so when we were born, Reagan, Bush Sr. or sometimes Clinton were president. We graduated high school between 1998-2013, and college between 2002-2017. Given the recession started in 2008, and the economy has not been good since, over half our generation has been screwed in ways most have not in nearly a century now. Since our wages in our youth dictate much of the rest of our lives financially, many of us are screwed. We graduated into an economy that does not work, with an economy with no jobs. Many of us have had to take minimum wage jobs to get by, despite being the most educated generation ever so far. Globalization and automation are influencing a lot of economic changes too, making our lives more precarious. We only own 4% of the US's wealth, and are four times poorer than baby boomers. Baby boomers grew up into an economy where you could get a job, work for 40 years, get paid well, and retire. They could afford homes, and the necessities of life on the whole. I admit things changed over time for them too over time, but yeah, we millennials have it rough. We still live in our parent's basement because we can't afford to move. We can't afford healthcare. We can't afford to have kids. We can't afford anything. And many of us are angry.
There's a reason most of us lean left, and by left, I mean a more old school left, the Bernie Sanders/FDR left. Their ideas like free college, universal healthcare, $15 minimum wage, and jobs programs, are intended to solve the biggest problems of our time, given student debt is crippling us, college is unaffordable, healthcare is unaffordable, and we basically exist in a service economy that only pays $10 an hour minus the higher wages as of late with the "labor shortage".
Many of us work too hard, that's the problem, and honestly, we largely just want a break. We want the changes the rest of the advanced world has with social democracy. We understand that America is a right wing dystopia for an economy that doesn't work for us, and we want change.
There's a reason I call Sanders' platform the bare minimum. Oh wow, you think people who...work 40 hours a week, should have a wage they should live on? How novel. I mean, DUH! Isn't this common sense? If you put in the time, you should be rewarded for it. I mean, how is this such a controversial statement?!
That said, let's focus on me.
Am I a lazy millennial?
Long story, yes, but I feel like I have intellectually justified my views.
Here's the thing. I've always been a bit different. It isn't until more recently I started realizing I'm probably autistic, and that has a major impact on my views on work ethic and politics. I always...hated the idea of work. When I was a teenager just getting into politics, I had conservative views, but they weren't out of love for work, it was more the bitterness/resentment you often see among the GOP regarding "I work so hard, why should other people get stuff for free?". I mean, I saw society through a lens of scarcity and believed we all needed to work. That there wasn't enough to go around and you had to struggle and fight for what you had. That ideas like basic income were communism and that they would never work. Work, to me, was always this necessary evil. I accepted it because I accepted that we needed people to work, for society to function, and if we just gave everyone money that society would fall apart.
But then something happened. I grew up. I entered the crapshow of the economy mentioned above, and given my own anti-spiritual awakening in 2012 if we wanna call it that, I kind of started seeing the economy and society for the facade it was, hence Plato's Cave. It's all a facade. It's just this system we're born into, that most of us think works a certain way, and it quite frankly...doesn't.
When I left college and grad school, I couldn't even find a job. And most jobs available weren't that great. I mean, minimum wage, $8 an hour, part time, no healthcare, I mean, after student loans I had nothing. What kind of sick joke is this? And I started thinking, hey, if we all needed to work, then why are hundreds of people applying to jobs? Why are the rich getting record profits? Why are we treated like crap? Don't we have a labor surplus if anything? Kind of investigating this black pilled me.
I realized that all of this time, we had more than enough to go around. Our economy is so productive it could, theoretically, provide every single person a middle class lifestyle. Of course the logistics of that are difficult to realize, but we really don't need to have any poverty at the very least. We have so much wealth but it isn't distributed well, because we rely on trickle down economics where people are expected to get jobs and work for employers who treat you like crap.
I've known employers treated people like crap for a while. My dad was always miserable with his work, and came home going on about how much he hated his job. Much of my childhood, he was a nervous wreck over work. His work paid well, but his bosses treated him horribly. I went to college so I would never end up like him. But sadly I ended up worse off economically if anything. Part of this is the system, part of it is my fault. I was religious when I went to college and did not have a clear plan to find a dream job, so I chose my major believing "God" wanted me to do it (maybe he did after all, given my spiritual beliefs now). So I decided to go into fields that quite frankly don't pay, with no jobs available. And then I became an atheist right around the time I graduated, and boom, blackpilled.
So how did I react? Well, I radicalized. But I've always been the type to march to the beat of my own drummer. Being autistic, I don't follow the crowd, I hate crowds. I don't follow social conventions that make no sense. I make my own social conventions even if they make me unpopular, and I never got the whole cult of work. If work is such a miserable thing, we all want to do, why do we continue to do it? I would look at Obama get up there in his second term and go on about creating jobs, and I'm just like, who really wants to do these jobs? Why are we doing this? Isn't this just...republicanism? More trickle down nonsense? A market recovery. In a market that's broken. The solution to not having enough work is to...make more work. What kind of sick society is this?
I felt like I lived in the USSR in the 1980s. You know, we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us. We all put up with this system that treats us like crap, and we're so alienated from it, to use a Marx term, but we have no choice but to play along.
After discovering basic income, I just never could go back to living in the "cave" that was my former reality. I've gone full on absurdist. Our society is this grandiose version of the myth of sisyphus in action. Just pushing a rock up a hill for all eternity. And if you don't have a rock, we'll try to make you one so you too can achieve the american dream of futile labor in exchange for currency!
I mean, I just got so existentially mindscrewed by this whole experience that I just...can't any more. I can't pretend to want to go back to normal. To have a normal capitalist system that "works". Even if I like markets, I don't like capitalism. I don't like the idea of work. I always hated it. And knowing that my former conservative beliefs were an illusion, I'd instead rather seek full unemployment than employment.
So yes, I guess I am lazy, I am entitled, but you know what? Screw this system, and if you shame me for my views screw you too. I can't see how anyone should want to continue as things are. Same with COVID. COVID just showed me all along I was right. We shut down 1/3 of our economy overnight and we weren't greatly materially worse off for it. If anything, I like the lockdown lifestyle. I don't desire much more in life materially speaking. I don't wanna go back to normal, although I understand why others do. And it just showed me, we could do things differently after all, if only we organized our society differently.
If I feel any purpose in this world at all, it's sharing this anti work message. I don't have a dream job or a dream calling. My only calling seems to be wanting to shift us to a world without work.
Not everyone is like me, though
Here's something I notice. Everything about my views are very...autistic. I don't desire social interaction, or things extraverts like very much. Work is often a very...social experience. Having money and engaging in relative luxuries are social events. And me, not being social, can do without that stuff. My aversion to work is also very autistic. Most people get bored if they don't work, as studies often show. Many people get hay fever being locked up in their houses. Many people want to go back to "normal", pre pandemic. And that's the key to why my ideas would work. Sure, if everyone was like me, society wouldn't function and you would need to force people to work. But, for most people, basic income would only be a springboard. Most people wouldnt be satisfied to sit in their apartment all day eating ramen and watching netflix. They want to experience things. And work is a way for them to acquire more money to live more fulfilling lifestyles. So yeah, just because I'm a lazy person, doesn't mean most people are. I'm literally the exception, not the norm. I literally am a walking stereotype in ways most people aren't. I just want to make that clear. I'm literally a person of extremes. I'm not "normal", I'm not "average".
But what about the labor shortage?
We've talked about this a lot on here, but people keep pushing the idea people are lazy because of the so called "labor shortage".
Yeah, things are complicated. Again, despite economic theory telling you otherwise, including some stuff I wrote, there isn't much evidence that unemployment benefits are causing people to not work. The problem is more complicated than that.
First of all, we have supply issues at the moment due to the economy opening back up too fast.
Second of all, many people can't go back to work if they're forced to stay home and take care of kids.
Third of all, many of these jobs are paying like garbage and treat people like garbage. After existing in a decade in the dystopian labor market, I love the fact that people are showing dignity and demanding not to be abused while being underpaid. The problem here is rich people shedding crocodile tears wanting cheap wage slaves to run their businesses.
Fourth, there may be a skill mismatch between the people on unemployment and the jobs there are shortages in, ie, the people who are unemployed aren't in the market to do fast food wage slave work.
So, let's be honest. These are extreme circumstances that are directly related to the consequences of being shut down for a year and then trying to open everything up all at once. If you dont do it gradually, you might run into shocks as the supply doesn't meet the demand and the demand doesn't meet the supply. It happens. Which is why we shouldn't be serious about being fully back to "normal" until around August/September.
Conclusion
That said, myself not withstanding, and being an extremely unique case, no, most millennials are not lazy. They just want a fair shake. I am, admittedly, lazy, but I'm been blackpilled down this absurdist approach to the modern economy causing me to see the futility of it all and wanting systemic change more radical than most. Also, I'm likely autistic and likely find neurotypical capitalist social conventions all the more intolerable as a result. I don't speak for most people. Heck, I speak for almost no one. Even if I am an ally to millennial causes, as I've expressed on this blog over the past few months since the election, I do things my way, for better or for worse, and I'm willing to break ranks with this upcoming democratic socialist mentality if I don't feel it advanced my agenda. I go along with it because it does advance at least parts of it and wants to make the world a better place, but as you can tell, I have some fundamental disagreements with it.
Honestly, I have disagreements with all of the old ideologies, because as bob black said, they all believe in work. Capitalism believes in work. Democratic socialism believes in work. Neoliberalism believes in work. Communism believes in work. They just all have different ways to approach work, and I just dislike the concept. Maybe I am a lazy millennial, but at least I'm honest.
No comments:
Post a Comment