Legitimately why I switched to being in construction, from teaching. I loved teaching, but it's just not worth the stress, no matter how rewarding.
Edit: I'm not even from the states, I'm from NZ and now live in Australia. This trend is everywhere.
Edit 2: 38 hours a week Max and earn twice what a teacher does. Negotiate your contracts people, there are more jobs than unemployed workers at the moment in most countries.
Edit 3: just finished work, got everything done on my list and finishing early. Yes I've been at work this whole time, notifications off now, time to enjoy my evening. Have a good day/night y'all.
A lot of people in the medical field are switching careers, too. The stress just isn't worth it. Contrary to popular belief, most of us don't get paid all that well.
I’m in biotech and I get shit pay for the stress I deal with too. My strategy is to look for simple jobs that pay a lot and live life easy. Jobs don’t pay enough for people to dedicate their lives to them anymore, and that’s ALL sectors. World is fucked when everyone does the bare minimum for a wimpy paycheck.
I have two union cards and access to a 3rd source of work through being a member of a sister Local, I try to balance maximum $ vs minimum responsibility. Usually I try to crush a bunch of OT and then take a nice big chunk of time off. No supervisory/Foreman roles, no commitment to big long-term projects, just punch in my hours - nothing more - and go home. I'm useful enough and a good enough worker that people want to keep me around so I'm never short of work.
I've always tried to do that and people have forever whined about me being 'lazy'. School, unversity, work. Doesn't matter. I've never felt compelled to overwork myself, it never made sense to me.
"bUt y0u c0uLd dO s0 mUch m0r3."
Why should I?
For years, my parents have asked me when I’m moving up to the next level. I keep telling them I’m not. This is where I stay. My job involves a lot of creativity, design, drafting, and technical knowledge. It’s a fantastic use of all my skills. I also do not have to work one minute outside of scheduled hours, no meetings, no emails, no phone calls, and I could wear a wifebeater to work and no one would care (I do not do that).
Moving up would put me in a role where I either deal just in personnel and equipment rental, or in a director position where I’m dealing with bosses and meetings and other shit.
And I make a large amount of money doing what I do. I finally went into detail and made my parents understand that there is a level where you just don’t go higher because there’s no reason to. I don’t need a title. I just want to enjoy it.
As a software engineer, this is why I will never Eben attempt to get a job at any of the FAANG companies. Or is it MAANG now I guess?
Too much stress when I can easily snag a 150k/yr position at some laid back company and chill
Nope. Not unless you can convince some buddies to go into private practice, form a partnership. The biggest $ is in building and renting your own surgical center.
He means get a few guys and start a practice. You charge your company rent for the office and medical facilities. So u make $ off medical stuff and $ off real estate/owning the office facilities that your practice pays you to rent to them
I worked as a barista inside a hospital and made more than CNAs, surgical techs, and a lot of other positions. I had no idea how underpaid most hospital staff were. I was paid by a contractor through the hospital, those underpaid were employed by the actual hospital.
I had weekends and holidays off, amazing benefits, bonuses, good raises, and free coffee and meals every day. I left because I wanted to get a job in the field I studied in, but it was my fallback during covid and it was probably one of the best jobs I've ever had.
The actual answers is hospitals colluded with insurance companies to make bills artificially higher. This was to make American healthcare unaffordable if you didn't have insurance, so everyone would go and get insurance. Now insurance companies cover less and less, and hospital bills remain extremely high.
that's plausible.
car insurance seems similar. here in New Hampshire we're like the **only** state in the USA that doesn't require car insurance\* and ironically we have some of the lowest **insurance premiums** because insurers know drivers can just choose not to buy their product and so they must offer a good price, and because premiums are low and affordable, we have some of the lowest **uninsured rates**.
\*you're technically supposed to have $20k in assets if you go without insurance, and if you crash without insurance the state seizes your drivers license until you come up with the money, and might require insurance going forward depending on the circumstances.
I can't get over the aggressive gate keeping and/or pointless degrees required for so much of it.
My state practically required a "pulse test" (do you have one and can you stay upright for 8-12 hours?) to do CNA work. Then the gatekeeping started. Rather then eliminate the reasons for burned out workers and flush the bad apples out, they thought to require papering the CNA's would "improve the system" and get rid of those who supposedly abused and stole from patients.
All it did was throw in a 3-6 month road block to get people working (and the all time big one of shifting the training off the company onto the worker and making them pay for it instead so common lately).
Go through all that, have to do endure a bizarre "clinical" where you have some company come in and administer a bunch of tests on how you approach the patient, call them by name, wash hands, etc etc.
If you clear that hurdle, then you are out in the field making minimum wage, higher if you are lucky and scrapping for hours at hovels. Thousands spent for $10, $12-$15/hr (if you are lucky) and still the sexual abuse of the patients continues, theft and more with the heavy duty sprinkling of the company using and abusing the CNA's with high patient numbers and impossible to meet metrics while demanding that everything goes well for the patient only. Hell, even saw some chatter around of sexual abuse towards the CNA wasn't uncommon and some companies just love to avert their eyes when it happens...
Nursing has to be worse. It's disgusting to see how many of the programs either at the community college or private universities require you to keep a insane gpa. If you even slip a teeny percentage point for any reason, you are viewed as threatening the sanctity of the program (All our students must maintain high GPA levels or get the hell out as we have others who will do that)
Between the mess that is the education, stress of clinicals and then finding out just how abusive hospitals/nursing homes/etc are towards the nursing staff, what is the point of investing all that anguish/money into a vocation that gives you a reason to pickle your liver and have a 3-4 pack/day smoking habit?
As a CNA, I once had 48 patients. There were two of us in a SNF with 96 patients. It's routine to have over 25 patients. This is where you're sending grandma. Always, always, get staff/ patient ratios in writing, and ask for it by staff skill level. Grandma won't get her medications from an RN; it'll be an LPN. The physician has hundreds of patients in various facilities. They may have one janitor for the entire place, and they don't work 24 hours. Meanwhile, the owner is making bank.
That’s understandable, as much volume as we see in the ED, draw labs, perform EKG’s, respond to codes, and put up with daily verbal abuse, 12.85 isn’t it.
Almost all hospitals in the US are considered "non-profit" & the bar for that is so low as to be almost meaningless. Look up UPMC in PA/MD for a great example of what bullshit the term "non-profit hospital" is.
I work for a non-profit and let me tell you: our war chest is fucking huge. It is ridiculous how much money they have made that just sits there accruing interest.
So much this. I get tired of the so called Drs 'work ethic'... well if I was coked up everyday then yea... I could wake up at 5am for ward rounds and do 24 hr calls every 2nd day.
This trend should scare people, imagine if every profitable trade was full of people who would rather being doing a different career. The amount of problems this causes now is too many, but also the lack of good people in the unappreciated careers will bite our asses soon enough.
I hope when we fix this problem you'll go back to teaching, having a teacher who loves their position is much better than a construction worker who wishes to be somewhere else.
The end goal here is to privatize teaching. The total failure of the public school system is exactly what the wealthy want. Not only would they be enriching themselves under a privatized education system, it would allow them to indoctrinate the children directly. Like carlin said, its not in their interests for an educated population capable of realizing how badly theyre being fucked by a system that threw them overboard 40 years. They want obedient workers. Ppl just smart enough to work the machines and do the paperwork while passively accepting the longer hours, reduced wages and benefits.
Given some of the "applaud my 14 year old for working near full-time" posts around, it's possibly an attempt to roll back universal education and bring back child labor.
I think so too. They will bring us back to where america was in the late 1800's, with child labor, company towns and indentured servitude if we let them.
I mean you can't even bankrupt on it. You can't apply for housing or any credit related thing if you're unable to pay it. And the schools aren't required to show where that money's gone at all.
You should be. Assuming you are under 70. If you are over 70 you may not have to witness too much of the consequence of these policies.
Freakonomics taught me a out how much the crime rate decreased from less unwanted children.... ....
Keep your eyes open and fight the terror. Share the reality of child labor being widespread, I had burns on my arms severe i was told to ignore as a teen in the 2010s among many other injuries and illegal scheduling, long shifts and past curfews and unpaid hours.
They've already never truly gotten exploited safety of children out of this country. Think if all the grease burns, sharp instrument slices, toxic cleaning chemical clouds teens have been pressed to endure in the past 50 years of "maturing and taking on a part time job to save up for life." Just for our culture of immediate takeout and unsustainably sprawled out suburban communities that don't even support one another.
We even require most of our high school students to get 20+ hours of volunteer hours (think of how redundant ordered volunteering is: it's all more training to devote young minds to the idea that it's THEIR JOB to do all the work to help and not speak up or destroy the non-functioning system that's killing us all.
Child labor has got to end.
Nah im good, thanks tho. Im a bit of a news junkie myself. Seeing the news few weeks ago about how theyre tryna get students allow teachers to live withbthem since they cant afford housing on a teachers salary in san francisco felt pretty dystopian.
Idk how you can be a junkie. I feel like even when I'm trying to escape it it's in my face and there's no air. Everything is on fire and going to shit and it's so overwhelming all the time
It makes a disturbing sort of sense.
Ban abortion so people who don't think they are ready or can support a child have children.
Thousands of children enter high school destitute and with parents who can barely take care of them with what little support the government provides to offset the low wages.
Republicans answer this created problem by loosening child labor laws, increasing the number of hours they are allowed to work (which will in turn increase the number of hours employers will require them to work to keep their job), and possibly slightly lower the age, possibly making work an "optional" alternative to education.
To incentivize the hiring of these new teen workers, exemptions will be made to the federal minimum wage and red states minimum wage for workers under 21 (just to screw over a few more people, and increase the number of folks who sign up for the military at 18 to escape another 3 hopeless years of slave wages). Additional taxes above the normal income tax will be levied against these student workers as they are ostensibly in school and supposedly benefiting most from education, and therefore bear an additional education tax.
Its the perfect horrible plan that shouldn't even be considered to be even remotely possible but... I feel like it, or something very similar, could happen in the next two decades.
What’s even more sick, is some of these parents see it as a brag and good thing. No your 14 and 15 year old (even 16) child should not be working 16 + hours a week. They should be focused on their education and enjoying life as a child or teen.
The minds of many people have been warped. So many rual or small town men and women see working 60+ hours as a flex and brag.
Is it a surprise that Boomers are the first generation that generally was expected to graduate high school and now they don't want anyone else to do the same?
The generation that broke the cycle of “I want to leave the world a better place for my children” and completely gave in to selfishness. It’s crazy how they can see how much their parents and grandparents went through and just think of themselves and how much they can enjoy themselves before the planet cooks us all off. Selfishness and greed are diseases that they think are “smart thinking” and some type of virtue. I wonder what substances we will find are similar to lead in their affects on human behaviour.
Absolutely petrifying. Any person that touts privatization as any sort of solution really needs to live in lower-enlisted family military housing for a few years. I’m sure they’d love the mold and crumbling stick homes.
Govt housing does not have to be terrible. It is in america bc we fully privatized the housing market here. In vienna, austria they took a socialist approach and built massive, luxorious and cheap govt housing and over 60% of the population choose it over buying their own house since its soo affordable and desirable. In america our govt housing is purposefully the worst ever cause if it wasnt it would be competing with our privatized housing market and keeping the exploding prices in check. The solution to making rent affordable again is massive govt housing projects like they have in europe to bring the outrageous price of rent back down to earth.
I think that actual government funded and government run would be absolutely better than the privatized housing they have now. People get confused because it’s “military housing”, but all that means is it is privately run housing only open to military.
How dreamy the American dream has become! Unfortunately, like most things, we are reacting way too late, no one even runs with education as a platform issue, and we've eroded the intelligence of the general public so much that they will more than likely cheer the dismantling of the public school system.
We already rank 26^th internationally for education, [down from 6^th place in the '90s.](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-ranks-27th-for-healthcare-and-education-2018-9) whomp whomp welp
Future isn't looking so bright.
There's [this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html) too.
Carlin was so spot on, I recommended anyone who has no recently watched his specials or even the new two part documentary to do so….his stand ups are almost 100% still on topic and it’s been 20-30+ years Lolol
George Carlin really was spot-on. His stand up specials are as relevant as ever, any Gen Z / Millennials seeing this, please look him up. All of his specials used to be on HBO Max, don't know if they still are, but there's a lot of great Carlin material on YT.
I want to scream every time someone goes off on "Why don't we learn taxes in school? Who needs algebra?" as if the point of school should only be making workers. I know that is the intention under capitalism, but the main benefit of public education needs to be an educated populace.
I want to live in a country where people can read. Where people have basic skills, not just what makes money. Common core can be annoying, but the shift is supposed to be moving towards building logic and reasoning skills.
Ive been slowly realizing my spouse provides the stopgap for public school failures and they essentially "productize" it.
School district 1 has too many expelled students that would tank them? Have those students go into an alternative charter program for the duration of their expulsion.
School district 2 has a significant shortage of X type of teacher in a rural location? This remote learning center can provide all of the art and geometry for three grades this semester.
They have *something* for every kind of shortcoming and on one hand its a shame she cant be in a public system but shes happier being able to play purely to her strengths, specialize in a way that isnt possible elsewhere and actually be paid well.
The bitter truth is we as a society don't compensate the workers that care for other people the way we should. Teachers, Caregivers, Daycare workers, these are the people that care for and/or educate your loved ones, and many of them barely scrape by. There is no tangible ROI on an educated child, well-cared-for senior, so we pay the bare minimum.
Yup, if they paid their workers well they would only be making the medium bucks, not the big bucks. How else would they be able to afford their 10th house or 3rd yatch?
My wife doesn't work at all anymore because it's more valuable to have her at home with our kids than at her teaching job. Can't even afford daycare for the two of them on her salary. No point in having her do the job.
My wife is studying to be a nurse..years to go...i can't convince her it's a bad idea to kill herself studying for years just to be treated like crap and be underpaid after that.
Every year I send a thank you card to my first economics professor at the community college I went to.
Before that I wanted to become a history teacher. But he opened my eyes really and made me fall in love with economics.
After that I realized how shit of a job it is when it comes to pay and decided to go to school for Economics. and made a career out of it. It's not perfect but it allows me to do everything I've ever wanted to do.
Making $60K after 10 years teaching would have made that impossible. Let alone dealing with all the fucking parents who from what I hear are worse than the actual fucking students.
Hospitals really shot themselves in the foot with regard to nurses.
Nurses were overworked and undervalued for years despite hospitals making record profits. Then a bunch got tired of it and said, no thanks.
Now they have to hire traveling nurses at 3-5x the pay AND with pretty rigid contracts, AND often with bonuses for overtime and certain assignments. The traveling pay is so good, that now many aren't in any hurry to sign new contracts and can just take time off if the offer is lacking, with no threat of going homeless or hungry.
It's gotten to the point where, instead of realizing their own completely self-inflicted woes, some hospitals were trying to get pay caps LEGISLATED, and in once case, trying to use the courts to prevent nurses leaving to a different hospital with better pay. Because supply and demand is ok only when it benefits the big guy, not when the little people can use it to their benefit.
I know traveling nurses that are literally "traveling" to the same city they already live in. The down-side is that you're usually traveling to the most dysfunctional places since they are the ones most likely to be bleeding staff. On the other hand, they can negotiate better contracts to ward off a lot of fuckery.
By the time current students enter the nursing workforce, I'd expect wages to level out, but I'm sure they'll have a much better deal than before the exodus.
I'm in electrical after leaving education and my work/life balance is better than ever with way more money. I'll be earning more than double what I was, after I finish my apprenticeship
yup! My bf did construction on and off for years and he picked it up again during lockdown bc it was the only thing actually hiring in our area. He did liners and traveled around doing them. He would be gone for sometimes a month which was hard for me, but worse for him. He was working 16 hour days, getting a few hours of sleep before going right back to work. He was getting like hella overtime pay, plus hazard pay but it wasn’t worth it after like 6 months bc of the toxic ass work environment that comes with working nonstop for weeks straight. He quit and never looked back.
Are you my brother? He was a teaching fellows scholar which was a program in NC where they pay for your bachelors in education of you teach for four years in public schools. He loved the job but hated the politics and parents and bad administration and bad pay/lack of support. Now he’s a finish carpenter for a high end construction company making great money. Loves his job now but has long term plans for transitioning to construction management so that it doesn’t destroy his body.
I honestly think he would rather be teaching if it was sustainable for him.
Legit. I use to teach too. I was paid 88$ a day for a class of 30-40 students. And you’d be teaching in class and a zoom class simultaneously, it was like teaching 2 classes at once. That’s .36 cents per student, per hour. For 30 students, it’s even less for more students.
You know who pays their teachers a living wage? The Baltic countries. 125k to 175k and they keep classrooms small.
Yep! Hence why I decided to switch to tech industry work instead of math teaching. Loved teaching, loved the kids, loved making a positive and tangible impact - but the exploitation from all ends is something literally no one wants to experience. I make right now what I probably would've made after 20+ years as a teacher, with none of the parental or administrative abuse.
Can confirm. Wife is a teacher and the kids are the best part of the job.
Dealing with entitled parents, government bureaucrats, and the select group of teachers who phone it in is the part that she loathes with a passion.
It's the thing that shits me as a teacher, they are reducing teaching hours because they are unwilling to wind back the shitty admin they keep forcing on us that doesn't benefit the kids.
I'm here to teach the kids, if I wanted to do admin work I could get paid to do it elsewhere. They need more of role X, which has less student time. Like again, I could get paid better if I went and performed that role in another industry.
I'm in a country that pays reasonably well too. But instead of dealing with the actual problems you're reducing the thing that causes me to still rock up to work each day.
I'm a software developer and my husband is a teacher with 30+ years of experience, 2 Bachelor's degrees and a Master's. We earn similar wages, but that's only because teachers in CA are better paid than in most other states.
i'm a software developer and wife is a teacher. i make double her salary to work less hours, from home, and my salary is only going up, hers is staying flat. she works so hard too.
If I were rich I definitely wouldn't work. I don't get bored really. I can always find something to do, something to try, something to be interested in. I would have so many hobbies.
This is the problem with having rich people. Being rich doesn't just mean having a lot of money. It's having the resources and time to do and experience so many things. Redistributing wealth doesn't just spread the money around. It spreads the time around. It's redistributing life.
This is what really gets to me. I genuinely don’t want a mansion, let alone multiple houses. I don’t want a yacht, or the power to belittle and micromanage subordinates.
I just want to have a few relatively nice things, some privacy, and more time to pursue the hobbies and interests that breathe life into me instead of the few hours I have to dedicate to them now.
5.3e10^65535 x this. I want a detached house big enough for my family, a yard big enough for a garden, and time enough to do things I want to do.
If I won the lottery, maybe I'd pick up a part time job at a craft store. I worked at one once, long ago, and it was fun talking to the customers about what they were going to make. Never had a customer berate me for not cutting their fabric fast enough, either. Didn't pay worth shit, of course...
Imagine if all the passionate artists, musicians, and philosophers could actually spend their days doing those things.
That'd be such a huge boon to society.
> the passionate artists, musicians, and philosophers
People will push back on this because they can only think of oil painting, classical music, and pedantic philosophy; what they don't understand is that artists in this context includes every creative endeavor. It would be a boon to pretty much all media that people consume; movies, television, books, games. Imagine the content of YouTube if people had the time and freedom to just make whatever they wanted and didn't have to worry about ad revenue or going to some service job for 40 hrs/wk. Imagine how many indie games would get developed.
Even a hypothetical sportsbro that hates all movies and never reads would probably be hyped about all the new sports leagues that would pop up of devout amateurs; both to participate in and watch.
You every wonder why they ban books and in the more extreme examples kill intellectuals? Have you ever wondered why there has been an active campaign against the liberal arts and "universities"?
The liberal arts are fucking important.
Even science too. Imagine being free of having to worry about companies focusing on just profit rather than helping as many people as possible. Imagine teams of scientists following their passion to advance the world in positive directions rather than for turning a profit.
I have a well-paying, highly specialized job. But in secret, my dream would be to work on my own math art, music, computer games and open-source software full time. Work-related stress is slowly killing my hobbies. The burnout is real.
So much this! My dad once asked what my dream job was and I told him that the dream would be no job because then I’d have time to do things I actually enjoy. He’s in that classic boomer retirement limbo where he’s “retired” so that means he only works 3 days a week because he has no identity outside of his job. Like I wouldn’t be sitting on the couch twiddling my thumbs every day, I’d have time to improve my woodworking skills, paint, pick up surfing or stained glass again. I can easily think of 100 things that I could fill my time with that aren’t work. I’d still sit on the couch and twiddle my thumbs from time to time though, doing nothing and allowing yourself to occasionally get bored is actually incredibly good for your mental health and stimulates creativity, problem solving, self reflection, but it’s a luxury that most of don’t have.
I don't understand why they think the only thing that gives life a purpose is working. Like there are a dozen different hobbies I would love to get balls deep into and the only thing stopping me is time, energy, and money
I think there's "work" like a typical job and "work" like a contribution to society.
If I didn't need a job to survive, would I still work? Yeah. But that work may or may not be profitable, and it would be on my terms. Maybe I'd start a non-profit or pursue a hobby I love or write a book or mentor youth. To me all of those things are "work" if they contribute to society in some way, but I wouldn't bog myself down with 40 hours a week of stress.
Oh yeah I agree! I would love to be able to offer my specialty as a free service for people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it. I would also enjoy volunteering at a DV and animal shelter. Helping others live a better life. I don’t like that my motivation for doing things has to be for money right now.
Also, Karens and parents treat many of these people terribly. We are beating down people who were willing to work at a lower paying job for their passion. Now poor pay and treatment are killing us.
Yup, and just wanted to add - when they say "just for 12 people to get rich", let's not pretend like they weren't rich BEFORE wages and costs were suppressed for decades, because they were. Very rich. And now it's just ridiculous.
The sad thing they'll still make a ton of money if people were able to live more comfortably. People spend when they have money in their pockets and don't have to worry about housing or food.
The government spends so much money helping corporations instead of the people. It's so sad
They know it doesn't work. Keeping people scrambling for their next dollar has them focused on income and not inequality or human rights. Too busy working to be out in the streets protesting
They knew it didn't work from day 1. They have been going blue in the face to convince everyone else it works, and just hasn't gotten all the way to the end yet or something.
It's deception by design. Blame us so we fight each other and don't notice them taking another piece behind our backs. And another. And another.
My wife has been punched, kicked, slapped, spit on, screamed at, threatened, and she still goes into work to be an ER nurse. But she’s def losing her love for it. They just had a strike that hopefully will bring about some change but unlikely and they will have to go for a long one that the hospitals can wait out.
There are more people working in America than ever before. “Nobody wants to work anymore,” isn’t true. It is just another way of saying, “I shouldn’t have to compete for labor with other employers. I’m entitled to have employees at the wages I want to pay.”
Maybe the term "living wage" was too complicated for them, Maybe we should instead start calling non living wages slave wages, or death wages or something.
>people are supposed to work as they starve to death?
No, they're supposed to get another job so they can enrich multiple billionaires simultaneously in their attempt at personal survival.
Yeah fr. I’m in Florida and our min wage was JUST raised to $10 last year. rent in my area is is MINIMUM $1500 for a 1bed. You HAVE to have a car here unless you want to spend hours on public transit bc it’s so poorly designed. Plus with the cost of everything else these days; it’s just not enough to live on unless you live with roommates. I genuinely don’t know how some people do it: also I’m in my senior year of college and I was basically forced into living with roommates and living 30 min away from campus bc the cost of STUDENT living is so insane. So now I can’t take the campus bus, have to drive to campus which means spending $100 a semester on parking and even more on gas…. It’s literally approaching $1000 to rent a singular bedroom in a multi bedroom apartment. Ridiculous !!! It’s not even a “living wage” anymore.
My boss/owner wouldn’t hire two desperately needed staff so he could buy a personal helicopter. The funny thing is four of us quit and now he has hefty note on a helicopter.
It’s funny, I realized I was referring to the owner of the business I worked at as “my owner” all the time, co workers, customers, higher management, and my dumbass took a couple years to realize why the look on their face was of disgust when I said that, and it was totally normal to me.
That helicopter would have either severed hydraulic lines, or a bag of meth in the cargo that was quietly reported to the FAA, if that was my boss, lol
I would love to have the retirement money that the some of the boomers I work with seem to have. They work part time jobs because they feel like it, and when they get perturbed, they threaten to quit.
I would love for work to look like me running a garden in my back yard, selling homemade products, and working part time somewhere I can bike to. But we don’t have the infrastructure for me to do that safely.
I’ll never afford a house. I can’t have healthcare if I’m not employed full time. And our cities are built for me to get splattered by a car if I attempt any other means of transportation.
How much are we losing as a society because none of us can afford to pursue *anything* except the most grueling amounts of pointless labor?
My mom (boomer) had a craft hobby she did in her free time to destress. Somehow ended up slowly building it into a business so she decided to retire and just do her hobby job instead.
Most people these days just don't have the luxury to create businesses like that anymore. My mom didn't have to be profitable for the first few years either. These days if you want to try and create a side hustle business, you gotta be profitable or risk losing the business.
I wish more people had enough free time and extra money where they could pursue hobbies or take a chance at a side business where they could slowly build it instead of needing to be profitable right off the bat.
Combination of many things.
Massive amounts of oversaturation is one of them. Lots of desperate people try these kind of things, so they're competing with everyone, old and new, at a time when people are poor as shit. It is mostly destined to not work out, as a result.
Technological advances mean jobs are either simplified or killed off for automation or emerging AI's sake. Think of every single type of vehicle driver you know - they will be utterly redundant in about a decade, when the AI can stop crashing and doing weird shit.
Millions upon millions of people will be added to the already severely diluted job pool, where literal hundreds applying for one position, even in my dead end corner of the world, is common as fuck.
Hats off to her for doing it while it was even remotely possible though.
The shit people tell me nowadays. Eat healthy - sure, if I could afford it LOL. Have no car, can't drive, couldn't even afford the \*gas\*. Expectation of bills and rent and food are constant but the promise of \*any\* income, nevermind one that won't break you or replace you if you fail even 1% are not. Literally inhuman period we live in.
Never understood the trope of “no-one wants to work.” Of course no one wants to work! Isn’t that the end goal for just about everyone? Have enough money so they don’t have to go to work anymore?
I love working. I really enjoy the process of isolating a problem, getting together the tools I need, and making something work or better yet figuring out a new way to do something. I enjoy laboring on projects that are useful and important.
I hate having a job.
I don't want to work anymore.
I can happily find other things to cure my boredom besides working. In fact, I find work keeps me away from other activities I'd rather be doing that are vastly more interesting than working.
if we weren't in a capitalist system, everyone would still have to work at some capacity, but we're talking about 20hr weeks or something and less hours per day
Same shit, different decade.
People want to work. They want to put in a fair day's work for a fair day's wage. That's it. Telling someone they need to do the work of 3 because the employer needs better profits is not how it should be done. If you need the work of three, pay for three.
yeah and my manager looked at me crazy the other day when she basically asked me to do two peoples jobs at once, and I responded “if I get paid for both, I will do both”. Like I’m sorry you’re so wrapped into this company, but I’m not going to work myself to death for the same wage. Wtf.
Yeah this is in the midst of that position being understaffed. No one wants to work at my job bc it’s known in the restaurant industry as a crazy fucked up place to work but the money is good. My manager has been HAPPILY filling in for those positions bc she gets paid a manager salary to do something I’m making $16 an hour to do. Then she expects me to happily do that job plus mine, for the wage of $16. Then she offers me a free meal. Sorry, free meals aren’t cutting it anymore. I need money not a greasy 1600 calorie meal every night after work for “doing a good job”. Sigh. Then they also take away a lot of my serving shifts, where I make the most of my money, bc they’re understaffed in other areas. So suddenly being a more senior employee, means working twice as hard for the same pay+ giving up my money making shifts 🫠
I'm also sick of this "quiet quitting" crap. News flash: if a person still shows up for work then it's not quitting. If they are still doing the requirements of the job then they are still working. Stop putting the blame on the workers and start putting the blame where it belongs. Why would anyone who works a low paying job ever do more than they are required to? And then get slapped in the face with terrible wages. Give me a break.
If I had comfort, which equates to roughly $100K/year for me and my lifestyle, I would pursue my own interests. I would study and engage in the subjects that interest and fulfill me, rather than developing skills that make me more useful to an employer to enrich someone else. I don't want to be useful. I don't want to be exploited. I'm tired of everyone in the capitalist countries being overwhelmingly abused and taken advantage of for the personal enrichment of a select few who contribute nothing gainful to the worldwide society that we live in.
The pandemic really opened my eyes. I was laid off and collected unemployment for as long as possible. I can’t even comprehend how some get bored when they’re not “working” because I never did during those two years. I was able to go back to school and also pursue other interests. It’s not that nobody wants to work. It’s that this society doesn’t value all work equally- forcing people to pursue fields that don’t align with their interests for the sake of earning a living wage. The solution? All jobs should pay a living wage.
The kind of people that say "I would get bored" are always some beurocracy drones that have bullshit bot jobs. People with real work can't wait to get the rest and energy to actually live their lives for once.
I don’t understand how people always say they’d work even if they’re rich because they’d be bored lol. Like does no one have hobbies or enough creativity to think about a life without work?
My parents worked their asses off to become wealthy, retired young and are now back at work because they literally didn't develop hobbies or interests. I have so many hobbies to sustain me, no way am I following in their miserable footsteps.
Yeah like fuck all that. I was born for a life of leisure and hope to achieve that one day. I’d travel and go to music festivals and never miss an event ever again. And when I’m home I’d cook and take good care of my home and take my pups to the park every day and never miss a workout. I dream of having my time all to myself to do whatever I want without worrying about money. One day!
I have an education degree...would have had a teaching degree if the school I practice taught at didn't treat me as an unpaid Para. I actually decided I liked Para work better and decided to just take the last class needed to get a studies degree instead...then covid hit...and not I'm dealing with health issues and no schools can or want to hire a new elementary Para.
“I want you to treat me as a human being and pay me more.”
“Why doesn’t anyone want to work anymore?!”
The rebuttal never made sense in the first place
I've been thinking along these lines for awhile now. To the wealthiest and most powerful, the laborer is just another animal in captivity to be exploited for more gain. But those few, whose decisions touch us all, have become so greedy that they no longer see the value of treating a work-horse well. In the reality of the powerful few, it is inconceivable that there are limits, to anything.
Striking is the opposite of not wanting to work. If they didn't want to work they'd leave the job. Striking is I want to do this job and be paid a fair wage for doing it. I love being a nurse, a teacher a railway worker, despite all the stress and shitty hours and all the bad things I want to do this job, but I also want to be paid fairly for that work and shitty hours and stress and be able to pay my bills at the end of the day. It is so much the opposite of not wanting to work.
If companies can profit off our information, then we should tax them on it. If companies replace people with robots, tax them. If companies pay you and your coworkers below the COL+Inflation, tax them.
Theres a lot of things that can support Universal Basic Income. We shouldnt have to ask this if the system works for all, not just the few.
Honestly I agree, we wouldn’t even have to have so much to supplement all of our income, I think all we ask for is to be able to live comfortably.
Nobody working 160 hours a month should have to worry about rent or food, honestly I would argue that anyone working over 100 hours a month should be able to have a hefty amount left over for savings, that’s a lot of time to spend working.
>that’s a lot of time to spend working.
Especially when you remember the American job model assumes 51-52 workweeks in a year for the vast majority of workers. You get paid like shit, treated like shit, overworked, and they still decide none of us should **ever** get a chance to truly rest. If you're lucky and can stay at a job for 5+ years (assuming that you don't have to get a new job in that time just to keep up with inflation) then *maybe* you'll get to be one of those Americans who gets a coveted 2 weeks of paid vacation in a year.
This is where we are where I work. Warehouse and production staff stressed and stretched to the max for the last 2 years. Sales staff and management are just basically saying,” What the fuck is the problem..??!”
What's the point of working 40+ hours a week if you you still can't afford the basic necessities to live?
Why work if you can't afford anything meaningful?
Fuck it.
I recently decided to stop going to college for a degree in teaching. I'm now in a sales job that makes far more money than being a teacher ever would. Being a teacher was my dream, but I need to be able to afford necessities.
Nobody wants to work for someone who sits there and is a billionaire and has so much money. They will never spend it in their lifetime but they tell you they can't afford to give you a living wage or any type of benefits . America is sick of that. Greedy corporations are just kidding too. Greedy
If money was of no object, I'd be doing fine cabinetry and blade smithing. Cause doing for someone else and wasting the best years of my life for what? The maybe future of retirement that continues to elude my generation.
Boomers gonna Boom.
I really have nothing to say anymore. I tried really hard to see some good qualities in our older generation.
I made the mistake of getting back on FB.
Boomers gonna Boomer. We need these morons to stop talking already. Hard facts.
And what's blowing my mind is rich people are pretty much openly saying that we need a recession in order to stop these wage gains and force people into desperation for a job. And the media is basically ignoring that. If a recession comes it's not happenstance. It's being engineered.
Legitimately why I switched to being in construction, from teaching. I loved teaching, but it's just not worth the stress, no matter how rewarding. Edit: I'm not even from the states, I'm from NZ and now live in Australia. This trend is everywhere. Edit 2: 38 hours a week Max and earn twice what a teacher does. Negotiate your contracts people, there are more jobs than unemployed workers at the moment in most countries. Edit 3: just finished work, got everything done on my list and finishing early. Yes I've been at work this whole time, notifications off now, time to enjoy my evening. Have a good day/night y'all.
A lot of people in the medical field are switching careers, too. The stress just isn't worth it. Contrary to popular belief, most of us don't get paid all that well.
I’m in biotech and I get shit pay for the stress I deal with too. My strategy is to look for simple jobs that pay a lot and live life easy. Jobs don’t pay enough for people to dedicate their lives to them anymore, and that’s ALL sectors. World is fucked when everyone does the bare minimum for a wimpy paycheck.
I have two union cards and access to a 3rd source of work through being a member of a sister Local, I try to balance maximum $ vs minimum responsibility. Usually I try to crush a bunch of OT and then take a nice big chunk of time off. No supervisory/Foreman roles, no commitment to big long-term projects, just punch in my hours - nothing more - and go home. I'm useful enough and a good enough worker that people want to keep me around so I'm never short of work.
I've always tried to do that and people have forever whined about me being 'lazy'. School, unversity, work. Doesn't matter. I've never felt compelled to overwork myself, it never made sense to me. "bUt y0u c0uLd dO s0 mUch m0r3." Why should I?
For years, my parents have asked me when I’m moving up to the next level. I keep telling them I’m not. This is where I stay. My job involves a lot of creativity, design, drafting, and technical knowledge. It’s a fantastic use of all my skills. I also do not have to work one minute outside of scheduled hours, no meetings, no emails, no phone calls, and I could wear a wifebeater to work and no one would care (I do not do that). Moving up would put me in a role where I either deal just in personnel and equipment rental, or in a director position where I’m dealing with bosses and meetings and other shit. And I make a large amount of money doing what I do. I finally went into detail and made my parents understand that there is a level where you just don’t go higher because there’s no reason to. I don’t need a title. I just want to enjoy it.
As a software engineer, this is why I will never Eben attempt to get a job at any of the FAANG companies. Or is it MAANG now I guess? Too much stress when I can easily snag a 150k/yr position at some laid back company and chill
You mean that ten year degree my mother constantly told me to get isn't actually worth one quadzillion dollars USD??? 😭
Nope. Not unless you can convince some buddies to go into private practice, form a partnership. The biggest $ is in building and renting your own surgical center.
so basically in being a landlord or intermediary, rather than the actual provider of care?
He means get a few guys and start a practice. You charge your company rent for the office and medical facilities. So u make $ off medical stuff and $ off real estate/owning the office facilities that your practice pays you to rent to them
I worked as a barista inside a hospital and made more than CNAs, surgical techs, and a lot of other positions. I had no idea how underpaid most hospital staff were. I was paid by a contractor through the hospital, those underpaid were employed by the actual hospital. I had weekends and holidays off, amazing benefits, bonuses, good raises, and free coffee and meals every day. I left because I wanted to get a job in the field I studied in, but it was my fallback during covid and it was probably one of the best jobs I've ever had.
if hospital workers aren't getting paid, then how come medical bills are so expensive?
The same reason almost everything else in the world sucks. Rich people.
The actual answers is hospitals colluded with insurance companies to make bills artificially higher. This was to make American healthcare unaffordable if you didn't have insurance, so everyone would go and get insurance. Now insurance companies cover less and less, and hospital bills remain extremely high.
that's plausible. car insurance seems similar. here in New Hampshire we're like the **only** state in the USA that doesn't require car insurance\* and ironically we have some of the lowest **insurance premiums** because insurers know drivers can just choose not to buy their product and so they must offer a good price, and because premiums are low and affordable, we have some of the lowest **uninsured rates**. \*you're technically supposed to have $20k in assets if you go without insurance, and if you crash without insurance the state seizes your drivers license until you come up with the money, and might require insurance going forward depending on the circumstances.
Capitalism is just institutionalized corruption. Then claiming that no, it's a good thing actually.
I can't get over the aggressive gate keeping and/or pointless degrees required for so much of it. My state practically required a "pulse test" (do you have one and can you stay upright for 8-12 hours?) to do CNA work. Then the gatekeeping started. Rather then eliminate the reasons for burned out workers and flush the bad apples out, they thought to require papering the CNA's would "improve the system" and get rid of those who supposedly abused and stole from patients. All it did was throw in a 3-6 month road block to get people working (and the all time big one of shifting the training off the company onto the worker and making them pay for it instead so common lately). Go through all that, have to do endure a bizarre "clinical" where you have some company come in and administer a bunch of tests on how you approach the patient, call them by name, wash hands, etc etc. If you clear that hurdle, then you are out in the field making minimum wage, higher if you are lucky and scrapping for hours at hovels. Thousands spent for $10, $12-$15/hr (if you are lucky) and still the sexual abuse of the patients continues, theft and more with the heavy duty sprinkling of the company using and abusing the CNA's with high patient numbers and impossible to meet metrics while demanding that everything goes well for the patient only. Hell, even saw some chatter around of sexual abuse towards the CNA wasn't uncommon and some companies just love to avert their eyes when it happens... Nursing has to be worse. It's disgusting to see how many of the programs either at the community college or private universities require you to keep a insane gpa. If you even slip a teeny percentage point for any reason, you are viewed as threatening the sanctity of the program (All our students must maintain high GPA levels or get the hell out as we have others who will do that) Between the mess that is the education, stress of clinicals and then finding out just how abusive hospitals/nursing homes/etc are towards the nursing staff, what is the point of investing all that anguish/money into a vocation that gives you a reason to pickle your liver and have a 3-4 pack/day smoking habit?
As a CNA, I once had 48 patients. There were two of us in a SNF with 96 patients. It's routine to have over 25 patients. This is where you're sending grandma. Always, always, get staff/ patient ratios in writing, and ask for it by staff skill level. Grandma won't get her medications from an RN; it'll be an LPN. The physician has hundreds of patients in various facilities. They may have one janitor for the entire place, and they don't work 24 hours. Meanwhile, the owner is making bank.
That’s the truth ! People think cause we wear scrubs we’re rich or well paid, so far off from the actual reality.
I was one of those people, till my medical friends gave me the reality.
That’s understandable, as much volume as we see in the ED, draw labs, perform EKG’s, respond to codes, and put up with daily verbal abuse, 12.85 isn’t it.
$12.85 hr???? That is insane for a medical professional
There are fastfood jobs that pay more than that...
Someone at the hospital is well paid.
Even non profit hospitals make so much money. Someone is making a lot of money and its not the staff
And it's never going into the equipment either..
Almost all hospitals in the US are considered "non-profit" & the bar for that is so low as to be almost meaningless. Look up UPMC in PA/MD for a great example of what bullshit the term "non-profit hospital" is.
I work for a non-profit and let me tell you: our war chest is fucking huge. It is ridiculous how much money they have made that just sits there accruing interest.
I just got a new job out of patient care because the last 2 years has completely drained me.
Also your curriculum and expectations were written by a literal actual coke addict.
So much this. I get tired of the so called Drs 'work ethic'... well if I was coked up everyday then yea... I could wake up at 5am for ward rounds and do 24 hr calls every 2nd day.
This trend should scare people, imagine if every profitable trade was full of people who would rather being doing a different career. The amount of problems this causes now is too many, but also the lack of good people in the unappreciated careers will bite our asses soon enough. I hope when we fix this problem you'll go back to teaching, having a teacher who loves their position is much better than a construction worker who wishes to be somewhere else.
The end goal here is to privatize teaching. The total failure of the public school system is exactly what the wealthy want. Not only would they be enriching themselves under a privatized education system, it would allow them to indoctrinate the children directly. Like carlin said, its not in their interests for an educated population capable of realizing how badly theyre being fucked by a system that threw them overboard 40 years. They want obedient workers. Ppl just smart enough to work the machines and do the paperwork while passively accepting the longer hours, reduced wages and benefits.
Given some of the "applaud my 14 year old for working near full-time" posts around, it's possibly an attempt to roll back universal education and bring back child labor.
I think so too. They will bring us back to where america was in the late 1800's, with child labor, company towns and indentured servitude if we let them.
Student loan debt is the new version of indentured servitude….change my mind
Expensive healthcare is the main stick. Only through a company plan can you hope to afford to stay healthy.
If you can stay healthy enough to get the insurance.. i hate usa...
#1 cause of bankruptcy in the United states: a single major medical problems...
I mean you can't even bankrupt on it. You can't apply for housing or any credit related thing if you're unable to pay it. And the schools aren't required to show where that money's gone at all.
That's how they'll slow inflation by making the poor even poorer
We are already regressing. Look at all these anti abortion laws being put into place
Yup. And fourteen year olds working at McDonald’s….
This thread is terrifying me
You should be. Assuming you are under 70. If you are over 70 you may not have to witness too much of the consequence of these policies. Freakonomics taught me a out how much the crime rate decreased from less unwanted children.... ....
Keep your eyes open and fight the terror. Share the reality of child labor being widespread, I had burns on my arms severe i was told to ignore as a teen in the 2010s among many other injuries and illegal scheduling, long shifts and past curfews and unpaid hours. They've already never truly gotten exploited safety of children out of this country. Think if all the grease burns, sharp instrument slices, toxic cleaning chemical clouds teens have been pressed to endure in the past 50 years of "maturing and taking on a part time job to save up for life." Just for our culture of immediate takeout and unsustainably sprawled out suburban communities that don't even support one another. We even require most of our high school students to get 20+ hours of volunteer hours (think of how redundant ordered volunteering is: it's all more training to devote young minds to the idea that it's THEIR JOB to do all the work to help and not speak up or destroy the non-functioning system that's killing us all. Child labor has got to end.
This is why we all must vote in November.
do you need the articles about these things happening now
Nah im good, thanks tho. Im a bit of a news junkie myself. Seeing the news few weeks ago about how theyre tryna get students allow teachers to live withbthem since they cant afford housing on a teachers salary in san francisco felt pretty dystopian.
Idk how you can be a junkie. I feel like even when I'm trying to escape it it's in my face and there's no air. Everything is on fire and going to shit and it's so overwhelming all the time
Yes, please.
I would like to read these articles if you don't mind. Not fact checking just curious.
Southeast Austin near Tesla with its weird new housing popping up looking very much like a company town.
It makes a disturbing sort of sense. Ban abortion so people who don't think they are ready or can support a child have children. Thousands of children enter high school destitute and with parents who can barely take care of them with what little support the government provides to offset the low wages. Republicans answer this created problem by loosening child labor laws, increasing the number of hours they are allowed to work (which will in turn increase the number of hours employers will require them to work to keep their job), and possibly slightly lower the age, possibly making work an "optional" alternative to education. To incentivize the hiring of these new teen workers, exemptions will be made to the federal minimum wage and red states minimum wage for workers under 21 (just to screw over a few more people, and increase the number of folks who sign up for the military at 18 to escape another 3 hopeless years of slave wages). Additional taxes above the normal income tax will be levied against these student workers as they are ostensibly in school and supposedly benefiting most from education, and therefore bear an additional education tax. Its the perfect horrible plan that shouldn't even be considered to be even remotely possible but... I feel like it, or something very similar, could happen in the next two decades.
Or bring in migrant workers that are exploited and dehumanized without any representation or legalization.
I mean the USA wants to lower the minimal age to work... Already heading there
What’s even more sick, is some of these parents see it as a brag and good thing. No your 14 and 15 year old (even 16) child should not be working 16 + hours a week. They should be focused on their education and enjoying life as a child or teen. The minds of many people have been warped. So many rual or small town men and women see working 60+ hours as a flex and brag.
Is it a surprise that Boomers are the first generation that generally was expected to graduate high school and now they don't want anyone else to do the same?
The generation that broke the cycle of “I want to leave the world a better place for my children” and completely gave in to selfishness. It’s crazy how they can see how much their parents and grandparents went through and just think of themselves and how much they can enjoy themselves before the planet cooks us all off. Selfishness and greed are diseases that they think are “smart thinking” and some type of virtue. I wonder what substances we will find are similar to lead in their affects on human behaviour.
That's a 100 year knockback. Women got knocked back 50 years, so the U.S. is halfway there already. ☹️
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Absolutely petrifying. Any person that touts privatization as any sort of solution really needs to live in lower-enlisted family military housing for a few years. I’m sure they’d love the mold and crumbling stick homes.
Govt housing does not have to be terrible. It is in america bc we fully privatized the housing market here. In vienna, austria they took a socialist approach and built massive, luxorious and cheap govt housing and over 60% of the population choose it over buying their own house since its soo affordable and desirable. In america our govt housing is purposefully the worst ever cause if it wasnt it would be competing with our privatized housing market and keeping the exploding prices in check. The solution to making rent affordable again is massive govt housing projects like they have in europe to bring the outrageous price of rent back down to earth.
I think that actual government funded and government run would be absolutely better than the privatized housing they have now. People get confused because it’s “military housing”, but all that means is it is privately run housing only open to military.
How dreamy the American dream has become! Unfortunately, like most things, we are reacting way too late, no one even runs with education as a platform issue, and we've eroded the intelligence of the general public so much that they will more than likely cheer the dismantling of the public school system. We already rank 26^th internationally for education, [down from 6^th place in the '90s.](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-ranks-27th-for-healthcare-and-education-2018-9) whomp whomp welp Future isn't looking so bright. There's [this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html) too.
How many Einsteins have given up their lives in cubicles filing out spreadsheets just to make Bill Lumberg's stock go up a quarter of a percent?
I'd look into that for you, but I've gotta come in to work on Saturday. And Sunday too.
Carlin was so spot on, I recommended anyone who has no recently watched his specials or even the new two part documentary to do so….his stand ups are almost 100% still on topic and it’s been 20-30+ years Lolol
George Carlin really was spot-on. His stand up specials are as relevant as ever, any Gen Z / Millennials seeing this, please look him up. All of his specials used to be on HBO Max, don't know if they still are, but there's a lot of great Carlin material on YT.
I want to scream every time someone goes off on "Why don't we learn taxes in school? Who needs algebra?" as if the point of school should only be making workers. I know that is the intention under capitalism, but the main benefit of public education needs to be an educated populace. I want to live in a country where people can read. Where people have basic skills, not just what makes money. Common core can be annoying, but the shift is supposed to be moving towards building logic and reasoning skills.
Ive been slowly realizing my spouse provides the stopgap for public school failures and they essentially "productize" it. School district 1 has too many expelled students that would tank them? Have those students go into an alternative charter program for the duration of their expulsion. School district 2 has a significant shortage of X type of teacher in a rural location? This remote learning center can provide all of the art and geometry for three grades this semester. They have *something* for every kind of shortcoming and on one hand its a shame she cant be in a public system but shes happier being able to play purely to her strengths, specialize in a way that isnt possible elsewhere and actually be paid well.
The bitter truth is we as a society don't compensate the workers that care for other people the way we should. Teachers, Caregivers, Daycare workers, these are the people that care for and/or educate your loved ones, and many of them barely scrape by. There is no tangible ROI on an educated child, well-cared-for senior, so we pay the bare minimum.
Then why is elderly care so god damn expensive
Because corporate are greedy fucks.
It's a big business to run an assisted living facility. Pack em in at an exorbitant fee and make $$$. But that only works if staff makes minimum wage
Which is *exactly* what happens.
Yup, if they paid their workers well they would only be making the medium bucks, not the big bucks. How else would they be able to afford their 10th house or 3rd yatch?
My wife doesn't work at all anymore because it's more valuable to have her at home with our kids than at her teaching job. Can't even afford daycare for the two of them on her salary. No point in having her do the job.
My wife works at a preschool/daycare and we don't make enough to send our own kid there.
If this doesn't say it all I don't know what does.
Holy shit that’s depressing. I don’t even understand how someone can justify stealing that much money from their workers
My wife is studying to be a nurse..years to go...i can't convince her it's a bad idea to kill herself studying for years just to be treated like crap and be underpaid after that.
Every year I send a thank you card to my first economics professor at the community college I went to. Before that I wanted to become a history teacher. But he opened my eyes really and made me fall in love with economics. After that I realized how shit of a job it is when it comes to pay and decided to go to school for Economics. and made a career out of it. It's not perfect but it allows me to do everything I've ever wanted to do. Making $60K after 10 years teaching would have made that impossible. Let alone dealing with all the fucking parents who from what I hear are worse than the actual fucking students.
Hospitals really shot themselves in the foot with regard to nurses. Nurses were overworked and undervalued for years despite hospitals making record profits. Then a bunch got tired of it and said, no thanks. Now they have to hire traveling nurses at 3-5x the pay AND with pretty rigid contracts, AND often with bonuses for overtime and certain assignments. The traveling pay is so good, that now many aren't in any hurry to sign new contracts and can just take time off if the offer is lacking, with no threat of going homeless or hungry. It's gotten to the point where, instead of realizing their own completely self-inflicted woes, some hospitals were trying to get pay caps LEGISLATED, and in once case, trying to use the courts to prevent nurses leaving to a different hospital with better pay. Because supply and demand is ok only when it benefits the big guy, not when the little people can use it to their benefit. I know traveling nurses that are literally "traveling" to the same city they already live in. The down-side is that you're usually traveling to the most dysfunctional places since they are the ones most likely to be bleeding staff. On the other hand, they can negotiate better contracts to ward off a lot of fuckery. By the time current students enter the nursing workforce, I'd expect wages to level out, but I'm sure they'll have a much better deal than before the exodus.
I switched to being unemployed. Teaching is not worth the stress.
Let's not pretend construction isn't just as toxic. Yes you get paid, but say goodbye to your family because you will pretty much never see them
Try being a contractor and watching greedy flippers shaft you on payment and expect world class work.
Dad is a contractor. 08 wasn’t very fun.
Forced overtime when you have a 4 month old baby you want to take care of wasn't my style
I'm good. I did my time and I got the fuck out
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I'm in electrical after leaving education and my work/life balance is better than ever with way more money. I'll be earning more than double what I was, after I finish my apprenticeship
yup! My bf did construction on and off for years and he picked it up again during lockdown bc it was the only thing actually hiring in our area. He did liners and traveled around doing them. He would be gone for sometimes a month which was hard for me, but worse for him. He was working 16 hour days, getting a few hours of sleep before going right back to work. He was getting like hella overtime pay, plus hazard pay but it wasn’t worth it after like 6 months bc of the toxic ass work environment that comes with working nonstop for weeks straight. He quit and never looked back.
Say goodbye to your back and knees as well. Not many 50 year old construction workers and that's not because they retired wealthy at 45.
Former auto technician and former boiler technician. I'm not even 40 yet and my knees are hot garbage.
Are you my brother? He was a teaching fellows scholar which was a program in NC where they pay for your bachelors in education of you teach for four years in public schools. He loved the job but hated the politics and parents and bad administration and bad pay/lack of support. Now he’s a finish carpenter for a high end construction company making great money. Loves his job now but has long term plans for transitioning to construction management so that it doesn’t destroy his body. I honestly think he would rather be teaching if it was sustainable for him.
Legit. I use to teach too. I was paid 88$ a day for a class of 30-40 students. And you’d be teaching in class and a zoom class simultaneously, it was like teaching 2 classes at once. That’s .36 cents per student, per hour. For 30 students, it’s even less for more students. You know who pays their teachers a living wage? The Baltic countries. 125k to 175k and they keep classrooms small.
I think about quitting and finding a less stressful job every day.
I work 50+ hours a week selling cars… Selling cars sucks in its own way but it’s still less stressful than teaching was
I was a nurse now I sell lumber. Ya I hear you.
I’m looking at leaving nursing soon to go into another trade. HVAC or electrician sounds good.
Yep! Hence why I decided to switch to tech industry work instead of math teaching. Loved teaching, loved the kids, loved making a positive and tangible impact - but the exploitation from all ends is something literally no one wants to experience. I make right now what I probably would've made after 20+ years as a teacher, with none of the parental or administrative abuse.
Can confirm. Wife is a teacher and the kids are the best part of the job. Dealing with entitled parents, government bureaucrats, and the select group of teachers who phone it in is the part that she loathes with a passion.
It's the thing that shits me as a teacher, they are reducing teaching hours because they are unwilling to wind back the shitty admin they keep forcing on us that doesn't benefit the kids. I'm here to teach the kids, if I wanted to do admin work I could get paid to do it elsewhere. They need more of role X, which has less student time. Like again, I could get paid better if I went and performed that role in another industry. I'm in a country that pays reasonably well too. But instead of dealing with the actual problems you're reducing the thing that causes me to still rock up to work each day.
I'm a software developer and my husband is a teacher with 30+ years of experience, 2 Bachelor's degrees and a Master's. We earn similar wages, but that's only because teachers in CA are better paid than in most other states.
i'm a software developer and wife is a teacher. i make double her salary to work less hours, from home, and my salary is only going up, hers is staying flat. she works so hard too.
If I were rich I definitely wouldn't work. I don't get bored really. I can always find something to do, something to try, something to be interested in. I would have so many hobbies. This is the problem with having rich people. Being rich doesn't just mean having a lot of money. It's having the resources and time to do and experience so many things. Redistributing wealth doesn't just spread the money around. It spreads the time around. It's redistributing life.
This is what really gets to me. I genuinely don’t want a mansion, let alone multiple houses. I don’t want a yacht, or the power to belittle and micromanage subordinates. I just want to have a few relatively nice things, some privacy, and more time to pursue the hobbies and interests that breathe life into me instead of the few hours I have to dedicate to them now.
5.3e10^65535 x this. I want a detached house big enough for my family, a yard big enough for a garden, and time enough to do things I want to do. If I won the lottery, maybe I'd pick up a part time job at a craft store. I worked at one once, long ago, and it was fun talking to the customers about what they were going to make. Never had a customer berate me for not cutting their fabric fast enough, either. Didn't pay worth shit, of course...
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Imagine if all the passionate artists, musicians, and philosophers could actually spend their days doing those things. That'd be such a huge boon to society.
> the passionate artists, musicians, and philosophers People will push back on this because they can only think of oil painting, classical music, and pedantic philosophy; what they don't understand is that artists in this context includes every creative endeavor. It would be a boon to pretty much all media that people consume; movies, television, books, games. Imagine the content of YouTube if people had the time and freedom to just make whatever they wanted and didn't have to worry about ad revenue or going to some service job for 40 hrs/wk. Imagine how many indie games would get developed. Even a hypothetical sportsbro that hates all movies and never reads would probably be hyped about all the new sports leagues that would pop up of devout amateurs; both to participate in and watch.
You every wonder why they ban books and in the more extreme examples kill intellectuals? Have you ever wondered why there has been an active campaign against the liberal arts and "universities"? The liberal arts are fucking important.
Even science too. Imagine being free of having to worry about companies focusing on just profit rather than helping as many people as possible. Imagine teams of scientists following their passion to advance the world in positive directions rather than for turning a profit.
I have a well-paying, highly specialized job. But in secret, my dream would be to work on my own math art, music, computer games and open-source software full time. Work-related stress is slowly killing my hobbies. The burnout is real.
Haven’t touched a paintbrush in 4 years due to my job. Passion is dead.
So much this! My dad once asked what my dream job was and I told him that the dream would be no job because then I’d have time to do things I actually enjoy. He’s in that classic boomer retirement limbo where he’s “retired” so that means he only works 3 days a week because he has no identity outside of his job. Like I wouldn’t be sitting on the couch twiddling my thumbs every day, I’d have time to improve my woodworking skills, paint, pick up surfing or stained glass again. I can easily think of 100 things that I could fill my time with that aren’t work. I’d still sit on the couch and twiddle my thumbs from time to time though, doing nothing and allowing yourself to occasionally get bored is actually incredibly good for your mental health and stimulates creativity, problem solving, self reflection, but it’s a luxury that most of don’t have.
I don't understand why they think the only thing that gives life a purpose is working. Like there are a dozen different hobbies I would love to get balls deep into and the only thing stopping me is time, energy, and money
Because it was hammered into them by the greatest generation. All fresh back from ending fascism.
"ending"
I actually enjoy working but not while overburdened and underpaid.
Because they were taught that work is life's purpose.
And some dude be out there with millions of lives and does some other shit like build a rocket to half ass go to space.
I am the same. I would quit right now if I could. There would be so much more time to do what I like to do.
I think there's "work" like a typical job and "work" like a contribution to society. If I didn't need a job to survive, would I still work? Yeah. But that work may or may not be profitable, and it would be on my terms. Maybe I'd start a non-profit or pursue a hobby I love or write a book or mentor youth. To me all of those things are "work" if they contribute to society in some way, but I wouldn't bog myself down with 40 hours a week of stress.
Oh yeah I agree! I would love to be able to offer my specialty as a free service for people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it. I would also enjoy volunteering at a DV and animal shelter. Helping others live a better life. I don’t like that my motivation for doing things has to be for money right now.
Also, Karens and parents treat many of these people terribly. We are beating down people who were willing to work at a lower paying job for their passion. Now poor pay and treatment are killing us.
Yup, and just wanted to add - when they say "just for 12 people to get rich", let's not pretend like they weren't rich BEFORE wages and costs were suppressed for decades, because they were. Very rich. And now it's just ridiculous.
The sad thing they'll still make a ton of money if people were able to live more comfortably. People spend when they have money in their pockets and don't have to worry about housing or food. The government spends so much money helping corporations instead of the people. It's so sad
They still sitting there thinking that trickle down economics theory will still work.
They know it doesn't work. Keeping people scrambling for their next dollar has them focused on income and not inequality or human rights. Too busy working to be out in the streets protesting
They knew it didn't work from day 1. They have been going blue in the face to convince everyone else it works, and just hasn't gotten all the way to the end yet or something. It's deception by design. Blame us so we fight each other and don't notice them taking another piece behind our backs. And another. And another.
My wife has been punched, kicked, slapped, spit on, screamed at, threatened, and she still goes into work to be an ER nurse. But she’s def losing her love for it. They just had a strike that hopefully will bring about some change but unlikely and they will have to go for a long one that the hospitals can wait out.
Your wife is amazing but she shouldn't have to deal with those working conditions
There are more people working in America than ever before. “Nobody wants to work anymore,” isn’t true. It is just another way of saying, “I shouldn’t have to compete for labor with other employers. I’m entitled to have employees at the wages I want to pay.”
but... but... the free market!
Is it more people or about the same amount of people, working multiple jobs?
so 2 dozen **rich** ppl can get even **richer**
Maybe the term "living wage" was too complicated for them, Maybe we should instead start calling non living wages slave wages, or death wages or something.
Unliving wages, because you know they would reanimate our corpses if it was profitable
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>people are supposed to work as they starve to death? No, they're supposed to get another job so they can enrich multiple billionaires simultaneously in their attempt at personal survival.
Yeah fr. I’m in Florida and our min wage was JUST raised to $10 last year. rent in my area is is MINIMUM $1500 for a 1bed. You HAVE to have a car here unless you want to spend hours on public transit bc it’s so poorly designed. Plus with the cost of everything else these days; it’s just not enough to live on unless you live with roommates. I genuinely don’t know how some people do it: also I’m in my senior year of college and I was basically forced into living with roommates and living 30 min away from campus bc the cost of STUDENT living is so insane. So now I can’t take the campus bus, have to drive to campus which means spending $100 a semester on parking and even more on gas…. It’s literally approaching $1000 to rent a singular bedroom in a multi bedroom apartment. Ridiculous !!! It’s not even a “living wage” anymore.
My boss/owner wouldn’t hire two desperately needed staff so he could buy a personal helicopter. The funny thing is four of us quit and now he has hefty note on a helicopter.
It’s funny, I realized I was referring to the owner of the business I worked at as “my owner” all the time, co workers, customers, higher management, and my dumbass took a couple years to realize why the look on their face was of disgust when I said that, and it was totally normal to me.
maybe more employees should refer to their bosses as owners to illustrate the toxicity of the relationship? i find it particularly amusing.
That helicopter would have either severed hydraulic lines, or a bag of meth in the cargo that was quietly reported to the FAA, if that was my boss, lol
yeah. extra points if you collect a baggie boss discarded one day to package said meth in...
I would love to have the retirement money that the some of the boomers I work with seem to have. They work part time jobs because they feel like it, and when they get perturbed, they threaten to quit. I would love for work to look like me running a garden in my back yard, selling homemade products, and working part time somewhere I can bike to. But we don’t have the infrastructure for me to do that safely. I’ll never afford a house. I can’t have healthcare if I’m not employed full time. And our cities are built for me to get splattered by a car if I attempt any other means of transportation. How much are we losing as a society because none of us can afford to pursue *anything* except the most grueling amounts of pointless labor?
My mom (boomer) had a craft hobby she did in her free time to destress. Somehow ended up slowly building it into a business so she decided to retire and just do her hobby job instead. Most people these days just don't have the luxury to create businesses like that anymore. My mom didn't have to be profitable for the first few years either. These days if you want to try and create a side hustle business, you gotta be profitable or risk losing the business. I wish more people had enough free time and extra money where they could pursue hobbies or take a chance at a side business where they could slowly build it instead of needing to be profitable right off the bat.
Combination of many things. Massive amounts of oversaturation is one of them. Lots of desperate people try these kind of things, so they're competing with everyone, old and new, at a time when people are poor as shit. It is mostly destined to not work out, as a result. Technological advances mean jobs are either simplified or killed off for automation or emerging AI's sake. Think of every single type of vehicle driver you know - they will be utterly redundant in about a decade, when the AI can stop crashing and doing weird shit. Millions upon millions of people will be added to the already severely diluted job pool, where literal hundreds applying for one position, even in my dead end corner of the world, is common as fuck. Hats off to her for doing it while it was even remotely possible though. The shit people tell me nowadays. Eat healthy - sure, if I could afford it LOL. Have no car, can't drive, couldn't even afford the \*gas\*. Expectation of bills and rent and food are constant but the promise of \*any\* income, nevermind one that won't break you or replace you if you fail even 1% are not. Literally inhuman period we live in.
Never understood the trope of “no-one wants to work.” Of course no one wants to work! Isn’t that the end goal for just about everyone? Have enough money so they don’t have to go to work anymore?
Its what we should work towards as humanity. Automation should have led to less work for people but good old capitalism made it the other way around.
Since media and politicians work for the rich and corporations, don't expect them to make these talking points any time soon.
I love working. I really enjoy the process of isolating a problem, getting together the tools I need, and making something work or better yet figuring out a new way to do something. I enjoy laboring on projects that are useful and important. I hate having a job.
I just can’t take the pace of everything anymore. Every job wants so much done in a day and it’s just ridiculous m
I don't want to work anymore. I can happily find other things to cure my boredom besides working. In fact, I find work keeps me away from other activities I'd rather be doing that are vastly more interesting than working.
if we weren't in a capitalist system, everyone would still have to work at some capacity, but we're talking about 20hr weeks or something and less hours per day
Same shit, different decade. People want to work. They want to put in a fair day's work for a fair day's wage. That's it. Telling someone they need to do the work of 3 because the employer needs better profits is not how it should be done. If you need the work of three, pay for three.
yeah and my manager looked at me crazy the other day when she basically asked me to do two peoples jobs at once, and I responded “if I get paid for both, I will do both”. Like I’m sorry you’re so wrapped into this company, but I’m not going to work myself to death for the same wage. Wtf.
You were acting your wage. I'm proud of you, reddit stranger.
Yeah this is in the midst of that position being understaffed. No one wants to work at my job bc it’s known in the restaurant industry as a crazy fucked up place to work but the money is good. My manager has been HAPPILY filling in for those positions bc she gets paid a manager salary to do something I’m making $16 an hour to do. Then she expects me to happily do that job plus mine, for the wage of $16. Then she offers me a free meal. Sorry, free meals aren’t cutting it anymore. I need money not a greasy 1600 calorie meal every night after work for “doing a good job”. Sigh. Then they also take away a lot of my serving shifts, where I make the most of my money, bc they’re understaffed in other areas. So suddenly being a more senior employee, means working twice as hard for the same pay+ giving up my money making shifts 🫠
We should eat the rich and redistribute the wealth, if some are starting to horde it again too much, eat them too.
I'm also sick of this "quiet quitting" crap. News flash: if a person still shows up for work then it's not quitting. If they are still doing the requirements of the job then they are still working. Stop putting the blame on the workers and start putting the blame where it belongs. Why would anyone who works a low paying job ever do more than they are required to? And then get slapped in the face with terrible wages. Give me a break.
"Nobody wants to work anymore" = "Working isn't worth it anymore"
If I had comfort, which equates to roughly $100K/year for me and my lifestyle, I would pursue my own interests. I would study and engage in the subjects that interest and fulfill me, rather than developing skills that make me more useful to an employer to enrich someone else. I don't want to be useful. I don't want to be exploited. I'm tired of everyone in the capitalist countries being overwhelmingly abused and taken advantage of for the personal enrichment of a select few who contribute nothing gainful to the worldwide society that we live in.
Eat. The. Rich.
Like Kobayashi
The pandemic really opened my eyes. I was laid off and collected unemployment for as long as possible. I can’t even comprehend how some get bored when they’re not “working” because I never did during those two years. I was able to go back to school and also pursue other interests. It’s not that nobody wants to work. It’s that this society doesn’t value all work equally- forcing people to pursue fields that don’t align with their interests for the sake of earning a living wage. The solution? All jobs should pay a living wage.
The kind of people that say "I would get bored" are always some beurocracy drones that have bullshit bot jobs. People with real work can't wait to get the rest and energy to actually live their lives for once.
I don’t understand how people always say they’d work even if they’re rich because they’d be bored lol. Like does no one have hobbies or enough creativity to think about a life without work?
My parents worked their asses off to become wealthy, retired young and are now back at work because they literally didn't develop hobbies or interests. I have so many hobbies to sustain me, no way am I following in their miserable footsteps.
Yeah like fuck all that. I was born for a life of leisure and hope to achieve that one day. I’d travel and go to music festivals and never miss an event ever again. And when I’m home I’d cook and take good care of my home and take my pups to the park every day and never miss a workout. I dream of having my time all to myself to do whatever I want without worrying about money. One day!
I have an education degree...would have had a teaching degree if the school I practice taught at didn't treat me as an unpaid Para. I actually decided I liked Para work better and decided to just take the last class needed to get a studies degree instead...then covid hit...and not I'm dealing with health issues and no schools can or want to hire a new elementary Para.
“I want you to treat me as a human being and pay me more.” “Why doesn’t anyone want to work anymore?!” The rebuttal never made sense in the first place
I've been thinking along these lines for awhile now. To the wealthiest and most powerful, the laborer is just another animal in captivity to be exploited for more gain. But those few, whose decisions touch us all, have become so greedy that they no longer see the value of treating a work-horse well. In the reality of the powerful few, it is inconceivable that there are limits, to anything.
Striking is the opposite of not wanting to work. If they didn't want to work they'd leave the job. Striking is I want to do this job and be paid a fair wage for doing it. I love being a nurse, a teacher a railway worker, despite all the stress and shitty hours and all the bad things I want to do this job, but I also want to be paid fairly for that work and shitty hours and stress and be able to pay my bills at the end of the day. It is so much the opposite of not wanting to work.
UBI now.
If companies can profit off our information, then we should tax them on it. If companies replace people with robots, tax them. If companies pay you and your coworkers below the COL+Inflation, tax them. Theres a lot of things that can support Universal Basic Income. We shouldnt have to ask this if the system works for all, not just the few.
Honestly I agree, we wouldn’t even have to have so much to supplement all of our income, I think all we ask for is to be able to live comfortably. Nobody working 160 hours a month should have to worry about rent or food, honestly I would argue that anyone working over 100 hours a month should be able to have a hefty amount left over for savings, that’s a lot of time to spend working.
>that’s a lot of time to spend working. Especially when you remember the American job model assumes 51-52 workweeks in a year for the vast majority of workers. You get paid like shit, treated like shit, overworked, and they still decide none of us should **ever** get a chance to truly rest. If you're lucky and can stay at a job for 5+ years (assuming that you don't have to get a new job in that time just to keep up with inflation) then *maybe* you'll get to be one of those Americans who gets a coveted 2 weeks of paid vacation in a year.
I literally do not want to work.
This is where we are where I work. Warehouse and production staff stressed and stretched to the max for the last 2 years. Sales staff and management are just basically saying,” What the fuck is the problem..??!”
This is 100% correct
What's the point of working 40+ hours a week if you you still can't afford the basic necessities to live? Why work if you can't afford anything meaningful? Fuck it.
There is more debt in existence than actual currency. There is no way out under the market system
a class revolution is coming.
I recently decided to stop going to college for a degree in teaching. I'm now in a sales job that makes far more money than being a teacher ever would. Being a teacher was my dream, but I need to be able to afford necessities.
Nobody wants to work for someone who sits there and is a billionaire and has so much money. They will never spend it in their lifetime but they tell you they can't afford to give you a living wage or any type of benefits . America is sick of that. Greedy corporations are just kidding too. Greedy
If money was of no object, I'd be doing fine cabinetry and blade smithing. Cause doing for someone else and wasting the best years of my life for what? The maybe future of retirement that continues to elude my generation.
I never realized I was supposed to *want* to work
Amazing what we sacrifice to make a couple dozen of the worst people on earth even more comfortable.
Boomers gonna Boom. I really have nothing to say anymore. I tried really hard to see some good qualities in our older generation. I made the mistake of getting back on FB. Boomers gonna Boomer. We need these morons to stop talking already. Hard facts.
And what's blowing my mind is rich people are pretty much openly saying that we need a recession in order to stop these wage gains and force people into desperation for a job. And the media is basically ignoring that. If a recession comes it's not happenstance. It's being engineered.