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When governments penalize productive people and subsidize non-productive people, what other result can we expect?
Oh, you're looking for a solution?
Simple : abolish all taxes on labor and industry, which will end tax shift inflation (customer pays ALL taxes), repatriate industries back to America (the new tax haven), and create a boom... and a labor shortage. Then there will be no excuse for not being able to find employment.
AND
Abolishing socialist entitlements will end illegal immigration as a path to freebies, jobs, and other benefits.
__ No benefit for anchor babies (and their parents)
__ No incentive to hire "under the table" to avoid taxes
__ No subsidy for foreign imports.
Maybe the withering of work ethic is simply the result of the increasing wealth of our society? A minority of the population has the executive functioning and future orientation to do work that isn't necessary now, but is necessary in the long run. The rest simply do the minimum for what is required now.
For many people, working isn't required to make ends meet now, so they don't work. If our society were poorer we wouldn't be able to afford all of these social benefits and more people would work and work harder because they had to.
Eastern Europe is instructive. In the old Eastern Bloc work ethic was dead because of bad incentives. After communism ended, there was a decade of desperation and confusion but then people got back on their feet. Now eastern Europeans have better work ethics than western Europeans. It's not a one-way street, but sometimes you have to hit bottom before making a change.
The USA is far from hitting bottom, and maybe that future-oriented minority is productive enough to prevent a decline in standard of living. In that case poor work ethic is here to stay.
American work ethic is dying because work ethic is a stupid concept.
Here is why I think "work ethic is dying" across all socioeconomic levels.
The younger generations don't care about stuff or making tons of money. All they really care about now is their connection to the internet and the devices connected to it. They also care about a small close knit group of friends and family who share their beliefs.
Older generations worked 60 hours a week so they could could buy huge mc mansions and put a boat they use 3 times a year or a motorcycle they ride less than a thousand miles a year on credit card.
All the younger generations want is a small place with a good internet connection and enough money to survive and go to dutch brothers ocassionaly. They saw how older generations were bad with money and decided that work ethic dosen't equal wealth so what is the point of working so hard.
I'm 40 now. I used to drive newer cars, have a big house and lots of toys but after losing so much money on all of it. I decided to give it all up. I found the more I worked the more depreciating crap I bought, thus necesitating me to work more to pay for said depricating crap. I broke the cycle. My wife did as well.
Now I have several ground rules.
1. 1 year expendetures in savings at all times no exceptions. (60 k cash) + emergency fund (10K)
2. Credit card with less than a 10% intrest rate and the balance must be payed off within 30 days. I only use it on rare occasions.
3. Cars will cost no more than 10k dollars and must be paid for in cash. There is never a good reason to buy a car worth more than 10k.
4. Any toys will be bought with cash. No financing.
5. 10% 401k
6. 10% to index funds and other investments.
7. Pay of debts anytime I get a tax refund or money that wasn't originally bugeted for.
When I put these simple rules in place it was tough but 4 years later I stopped working 50-60 hours a week because I had a good level of comfort. And I never missed the keeping up with the jones game. Now I am fine with working only 30 hours a week. Sometimes my work forces me to go places because there is no one else and the company would lose money if I don't go so I gladly do. But more often than not I turn down big high dollar jobs because I have money in savings and no debt other than a house so I don't feel pressured to work.
I think a lot of professionals (and non professionals as well) are turning to a more minimalistic life style that dosen't require as much work or as high of paycheck. Now so much can be done on a computer or in the comfort of your own home that you don't have to spend as much money as you used to. Also there are a lot of high wage earners who belive in the FIRE movement.
It can be summed up like this:
more stuff acquired > requires more money > which requires more work.
less/cheaper stuff acquired > requires less money> which requires less work.
Also, Work just sucks.
1. Your not garunteed your job will be there next year, there is no loyalty from the employer. Most workers have to nervously watch the stock price of their company or look for news that some vc firm is going to buy the company and install draconian workplace rules or just shut the whole thing down together.
2. Benefits get worse every year. Pensions have been gutted. Medical Insurance gets worse and costs more every year. Stock or share plans keep being revamped to benifit the company.
3. More and more regulations regarding PPE and workplace safety because companies are so afraid of lawsuits. I worked for a company that would not let you drive your own car to go to a workplace mandated appointment.
4. Companies constantly change the metric of success to get more production for the same cost with less people.
5. Most employees don't get raises that keep up with inflation. People have realized what a bad deal being salaried is. Once you work out the dollar/hour equivilent you find it's pretty low pay.
6. CEOs get huge bailouts even when the company performs poorly. Wall Street and the financial industries have ruined the american work place. 20,000 people lost jobs,but the CEO gets rewarded because he pumped the stock price before it too fell of a cliff. Dennis Muilenburg, Bill McGuire, Lee Raymond, Jack Welch, the list goes on and on. When employees are fired for a minor offense they don't even get unemployment.
7. If you are in a service industry, the customers are rude and dumb and act like elitist snots if you displease them in anyway. In the service industry they keep hours low so they don't have to pay benefits. Which is in my opinion is unethical.
Work schedules are all over the place because they try to keep hours to a minimum. So you could work 8-5 monday then 12-9PM the next day then need to be in at 6AM the next. Then you could go 3 or 4 days with out working. Because of low hours and not wanting to give benefits the paycheks are low $4-500 if that, The average apartment is now 700 dollars/mo., how can you live on that. It's ridiculous how bad this country treats service industry workers.
So I think it is easy to understand why "work ethic" is dying in this country.
It's gotten to the point where if you can find a way to work less you are seen as more successful.
I disagree with most of that it's mostly finger pointing and excuse making.
That said your point about service industry jobs needs to called out. Service industry jobs are odd hours due to the nature of the work - maybe you can figure out how to run a bar with 8-5 hours. Also to a great degree SI workers are treated poorly because they are overwhelmingly not drug tested and users working in SI jobs have almost no good alternatives.
Until/Unless we are willing to face the OVERpopulation issue and it's effect of supplying
far more warm bodies than are needed at all levels (mostly toward the bottom but it's climbing)..
in order to align labor supply with labor demand so there is a market based reason to be paid better...
what's the motivation ??
Immediate Term: Get the deadwood out of the equation and the employment statistics.
Longer Term: Get the population numbers down generally.
One way to do this would be to cut welfare payments by 5% a year. In 20 years the population would probably drop by half.
Maybe the withering of work ethic is simply the result of the increasing wealth of our society? A minority of the population has the executive functioning and future orientation to do work that isn't necessary now, but is necessary in the long run. The rest simply do the minimum for what is required now.
For many people, working isn't required to make ends meet now, so they don't work. If our society were poorer we wouldn't be able to afford all of these social benefits and more people would work and work harder because they had to.
Eastern Europe is instructive. In the old Eastern Bloc work ethic was dead because of bad incentives. After communism ended, there was a decade of desperation and confusion but then people got back on their feet. Now eastern Europeans have better work ethics than western Europeans. It's not a one-way street, but sometimes you have to hit bottom before making a change.
The USA is far from hitting bottom, and maybe that future-oriented minority is productive enough to prevent a decline in standard of living. In that case poor work ethic is here to stay.
Bingo. That's an excellent post.
We are so rich we must redefine terms to imply urgency.
_____________
I'm coming around the the old Milton Friedman idea that maybe we should have a modified UBI for the bottom 10-12-15% of society. Pay those in that group a sum per month and nothing else. Overwhelmingly this group isn't capable of long term gainful employment that's of net-positive economic benefit to any firm. Keep in mind for over 100 years US military branches have quietly been closed to those with IQ from about 83 (something like 12.8% of Americans have an IQ of 83 or lower) and down via the ASVAB test and earlier tests.
FWIIW the above is nicely implied within labor force participation rates for those with less than a high school diploma.
... now it is is basically a situation where HR is just trying to bat people off from applying for jobs..
Did you read the article? Just the opposite is true. Rather than "HR trying to bat people off from applying for jobs" -- few people are applying for jobs.
I have no problem with people who want to work only 30 hours per week and who have very minimalistic requirements for their housing, transportation, clothing, and entertainment expenses... as long as they don't expect those who do work and pay taxes to support their lifestyle.
Did you read the article? Just the opposite is true. Rather than "HR trying to bat people off from applying for jobs" -- few people are applying for jobs.
It soon will be back to the old way. People aren't applying for crud jobs because they don't have to anymore.
Eastern Europe is instructive. In the old Eastern Bloc work ethic was dead because of bad incentives.
And in America forty years of hugely impressive gains in workforce productivity have resulted in essentially flat wages once you control for inflation. So what's the use of working harder when one's corporate overlords never seem to reward those good workers for what they do?
We've undervalued labor for a long time in this country because the capital markets demanded that and no one should be surprised that a lot of that labor force doesn't see value in going beyond a work to contract terms since the odds of getting an advantage from that are so low.
Office Space came out in 1999; now we finally are seeing the mass rebellion of folks who no longer want to come back into work in Saturdays.
And in America forty years of hugely impressive gains in workforce productivity have resulted in essentially flat wages once you control for inflation. So what's the use of working harder when one's corporate overlords never seem to reward those good workers for what they do?
We've undervalued labor for a long time in this country because the capital markets demanded that and no one should be surprised that a lot of that labor force doesn't see value in going beyond a work to contract terms since the odds of getting an advantage from that are so low.
Office Space came out in 1999; now we finally are seeing the mass rebellion of folks who no longer want to come back into work in Saturdays.
Everyone is free to sell their labor and skills to the highest bidder. If your current employer doesn't "appreciate" you enough, then go work somewhere that does appreciate you and pays you accordingly.
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