Easy solution. Don't have kids if you can't afford them!

Yeah there is something very cathartic about it for sure.

A lot of this is because of how unfriendly the country has become to small business. Everyone feels like they need to work for some big name. I'm a software developer and I'm very lucky to have escaped the corporate sector and found a local small business. I am very loyal to the owner, he has been nothing but great to me and my family over the past 10 years, and I totally plan to stay here until I retire.

I agree on hiring, it's gotten tough. We've had the best luck hiring young kids that are ambitious, good attitude, and can learn on the job. We don't care what you know or where you went to school.

If you think shooting videos online is easy, come check out my Onlyfans.

I did. Now I'm here.

Many companies are starting to pay for all that extra work. I hate the idea of doing free "overhead tax work". Luckily, I found an employer that pays me for all those extra tasks. I still work and get paid for my 40 billable hours, but I also do extra work in the form of recruiting, staffing, training, proposal development, and non-billable management duties. I usually work closer to 45 hours a week, but I get paid for all of them now. Not all companies do that.

Once an employer hits a certain age or size they stop innovating. They are not making any more people so you have to attract people with good pay, good coffee, & good culture. I know some people who work where they charge you for the coffee. If your company charges you 25cents for a cup of joy in the morning, they are cheap & probably not worth working for. That's my theory anyways.

I'm under 40 & my realization has been this - to work a 9to5 steady job is the most risky thing you can do! One must do whatever is best for themselves or their family because companies change & often times shit on their long term employees. No one is safe.

I'm a store manager for a heavy duty truck parts and this store sells 8.8 million per year in parts. No one is interested in learning a trade. We are paying 50k a year to start and 13 days of paid vacation and we are a associate owned company. Our ESOP stock is 746.00 per share. I struggle to find anyone interested in learning a skill. I wonder how this country is going to function with the lack of interest skilled labor jobs.

I work in one largest IT consulting firms in the nation and I am considered an old millennial. I'd sum up the current work force/ethic situation to a few things -

1. Companies stopped training people - In the IT world, this is super apparent but corporations have stopped investing in their own employees and would rather have the employees come to them already skilled up. Loyalty was already at an all time low, but once pensions(for most jobs) went away and skilling people up goes away, what's to keep them their besides pay/benefits? This is also why you see people jumping from job to job.

2. Those 55+ older folk never retired - This is due to a variety of factors but you can point to the Great Recession and the stock market eating away many of those who were gearing for retirements 401k's in a quick fashion. Since those people didn't retire, it spurned younger generations from climbing those corporate ladder rungs and since they were "stuck", they just decided to go somewhere else. Then a large chunk of the population realized, "Why be loyal to a company for 5-25 years for a 0-3.5% raise a year when I can just move from job to job every year or two for 10-40% wage increases(increase very job dependent).

3. 40 hour a week work week is ancient news - This sentiment should have died when Henry Ford did. This was needed for a different time/different place. It was also abused and taken farther then it should have gone. Just like how we all experienced Covid and the "just in time" supply mentality that Toyota created. Even Toyota who created that way of doing business, got rid of it as soon as they realized if there is any sort of bump in the supply chain(see Covid) it would cause massive problems. This however was super beneficial for companies only spending when its needed thus those mega profits.

Agreed!!

Also "if you say so" ha. If someone offered you your current salary, and said you can just stop showing up for work, you'd politely decline?

I can think of about 200 things I'd rather do on any given day than spend the little time we have here working.

I'm not into that avant-garde shit. Stop with your life story and just take it off!

Did this comment make you feel good?

No actually it wasn't good enough. Between al the extra time and effort I saw him put in over the years vs. how they "rewarded" him for all that. I would have to say absolutely not.

I've worked at the same job for the last 31 years. I've been working seven days a week for the past six years straight just to make ends meet. The "kids" coming into the company now are worthless and show no interest in doing anything other then sitting down on there butts and looking at there phone all day. Granted the management is to blame for that but with so few people to choose from coming off the streets we take anybody we can get. It makes me shake my head in disgust everyday and I think "wow, this is what the next generation of where I work is going to be". Can't wait to get out of the place mainly because of the people, the job is so second nature now there's nothing to it after this many years. But these kids show no desire to step up and take over as the older generation leaves little by little. The company relies on a small hand full of old timers to do all the work and run circles around the young kids, it's pathetic. It's very sad to see the department and the company spiraling downward a little more each day. I'm just hoping it doesn't' fold up before I can get another 10-12 years in, time will tell.

John

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Seems like an oversimplification of the problem. I mean technically I don't know anyone who can actually afford kids. but ok.

But that's also why I only had one.

I'm not saying it's realistic, I'm addressing your reply to me. My original point was given the choice between working and not working, why would anyone choose to work? People work because they need money and usually benefits, not because they enjoy and get a euphoria from being an accounts payable manager at an ikea distribution center. People have "work ethic" because they need to keep their job, not because they want to.

You're thinking too small. "Stuck" is a relative term. It's depressing for young people to see how much harder they have to work to afford the same things their parents had.

The game of Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the problems with capitalism. People ~20 years old are now playing against players who've been playing for generations. The longer capitalism is allowed to run un-checked, the more out of balance it becomes for new players.

Here's a question for ya...where are they going to get 87000 people to be IRS agents?

Never gonna happen

Fun related twitter thread titled:

A Brief History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

https://mobile.twitter.com/paulisci/status/1549527748950892544

Citations in image

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I wondered that too, but I don't know if the government has problems getting employees. They certainly have trouble getting quality politicians.

Because it's like anything else the government does and they will be overpaid for what little they do and that's how they will find more "agents".

John

That is the most depressing thing I've read all day. Yikes. And you think it's a BAD thing young people don't want to follow in your footsteps?

Amen to that. Didn't they say they were going get 100000 teachers too at some point? Now no one wants to be a teacher.

If that’s the expected work and pay I wouldn’t put in any effort either. That’s way beyond unreasonable for a job.

I did not say that to make me feel better. The point I was trying to make is that he obviously was able to provide you and your family a good life. Kind of hard to do that without a job.

Hahah too true....

Hey... want to play Monopoly with us?
Sure
ok... we've been playing this game for like 3 hours already but here jump in.
wait... but Bill already has all the money and owns almost half the board.
Too bad.... pull yourself up by the bootstraps! No more starbucks!!

To both of you. Who actually cares about SS? Anyone who is relying on SS (much into the future) at this point is a fool. I realized when I was a child in 1988 that SS is going to vanish like a fart in the wind. I've been preparing since that day to just pretend like it's not even there and never was there. I realize others are relying on it and, I do hope it is still a thing for them in the future but quite honestly, nothing is guaranteed in life. Not insurance, not SS, not even life for another day.

Planning for yourself should be taught in school, not "what can my government do for me?". You can rely on your parents, government, a good paying corporate job, tik tok, insurance, SS, the stock market, even winning the lottery... But, if you don't have a plan for the future where there could be war, a pandemic, or even the collapse of our own government, you are choosing to live recklessly. If you suffer, it's only your own fault for planning poorly.

Planning realisticly is hard for some. Sure, it may be unlikely that there is a planetary disaster or another war on American soil. But, planning for your own future is not trending. People now seem to just be accepting these risks, treading water and just living paycheck to paycheck or even worse, solely relying on our government to support them. I don't really care about what happens to them and I also don't care about my own government supporting these things because quite frankly, I've planned for that as well. I EXPECT to be screwed by the the healthcare industry. I EXPECT to be screwed by my own government, and I EXPECT to be ran over by society. But that's my entire point. Expecting those things allows you to plan accordingly. Hopefully horrible things never happen in my world but if they do, I've planned to the best of my ability.

Obviously it’s more complex than simple math, but for about $1000 in wages you could offer another week of vacation. It blows my mind how cheap it is to offer more vacation to make employees happy, but in America we just don’t do it.

During the pandemic these companies sent all the employees home to work ....big mistake... they got twice as lazy as they already were, and once the company wanted them to return, they just said " Nah I'm Good, my husband or wife makes enough for us to live, now I can lay out all day by the pool and take the dog out whenever they want

Currently making what amounts to $18 an hour in a small town away from my family. I have a specialized skill, but only a few years experience under my belt. Rent is $1200 for a dark basement, and groceries are expensive here. Have a mortgage and strata fees back home that total $3400/month (plus we owe my in-laws $100k). Childcare costs $2000 a month. The only reason We can make things work is because my wife makes a good wage and her parents live nearby and prepare most meals.

Most people my age (33) aren’t so fortunate. They work boring jobs that don’t pay and are lucky if they own anything. Why should they feel any passion for a job that only pays the bills and nothing more (often less)?

People love to say ‘nobody wants to work’, while they pay $15 an hour and are surrounded by one bedrooms that are $2200 to rent or $400k to buy.

Who the hell can afford to retire at 55 anymore? I'll be working until I can no longer make it into the front door.

you could have just said that. No need for the snark.

my point, he put in a lot of extra time and effort for just a job. And I'm not doing that.

I don't understand why people always bring the cost of having children into the discussion.

Did your employer tell you to have kids? No

But for some reason employer's catch he'll for it like it's their fault you can't afford them.

I worked my whole life starting at age 15 with no college degree, and did some pretty interesting gigs along the way. I was based in Connecticut, then in semi retirement moved to Vermont buying my house cash. Because I was self employed I was always laughed out of the bank and told not to let the door hit me in the ass on the way out. Current gig is keeping pins operating for a local retail venture. My pay is 1/10 of what I made in my former profession. But, I still approach my current job with the same passion and interest. It's laughable when the applicants for a job come strolling in. I'm used to professional hard core serious team mates to simply get the job done well. Today things seem lackadaisical in the employment world.

If a couple can live on one income, what’s wrong with that? The distain in this thread for being happy not spending their lives working is as incredible as it is predictable.

I retired at 55. My wife and I live within our means for the 24 yrs we have been married. She is retired to.

We worked hard. We saved our money.
And life is good.

And you can understand why there's no loyalty when you have the attitude of "be thankful you get a paycheck" vs "thank you for your hard work"

KIDS THESE DAYS CAN'T EVEN READ AN ANALOG CLOCK ALSO LITTLE JIMMY WHERE IS THE CAPS LOCK BUTTON ON MY PHONE PLEASE HELP

It’s because working for companies is crap. Soulless endeavor. Helping others produce and sell products in a never ending carousel. People have realized it all has no meaning and are thus disillusioned and don’t have a good reason to engage or work hard. It’s a deep seated cultural problem and simply spells the beginning of the end for our culture. Next is a long slow decline. Finally defeat or conquest. And after that who the hell knows or cares.

Not talking about a couple living on one income, was talking about how the work force, after being sent home to work, never wanted to come back, thus making it difficult to find workers ....

I guess its all in your work ethic and what you want out of life. I'm proud to look back at what I have to show for it, where as these kids that want everything handed to them will never have anything more to show for what they've done in there life then what they have right now. Yeah I don't want to work seven days a week, I mean who does right? I don't have to work that much and could put 40 hours in (or even less by the company standards...) and its not expected of me but I just do it since the OT money is to hard to pass up. BUT, it's the only way to get ahead in life and I'm not about to go someplace else and start all over again. To each his own right? So glad my parents brought me up right!!

John

Many worked from home and were more productive than ever. They were told they had to come back to the office, and realized they’d rather pass than have to deal with the cost and hassle of getting to an office that is often not conducive to productivity.

Because most people realized they could do the same amount of work more efficiently and be happier without commuting and dealing with office bs. Bosses don't like that. Why do you need all these useless middle management positions if people are doing what they need to do?

Why would anyone *want* to go back? If people found they can live happily without that job, it’s up to the job to give them a reason. It’s simple economics, if you want my services, you need to incentivize me enough to get them. Companies aren’t entitled to have employees, regardless of the fact that employers seem to think they are.