I mean, does anyone really want to work?
If I had financial freedom my life would definitely be quite different.
I know it's been a very popular past time to complain that younger generations are lazy, a past time that's existed ever since there was more than one generation, but how excited should younger generations be about going into the workforce? House prices are completely unobtainable, interest and inflation are super high, career progression is extremely hard, education costs are rising, everything seems absolutely intent on bleeding everyone completely dry and I'm sure it's hard to feel optimistic about the future with climate change making everything so uncertain.
One of my mates dropped out of school in Year 10, started as a tradie and had bought his first house before I'd even finished Uni. I was much later to the game but I still managed to get a foothold in. Those same opportunities just don't exist anymore.
If the Army isn't getting the people that it needs, it's just going to have to increase its incentives until it does. Simple supply and demand.
Good point, there's better things to do than work, but getting out of high school and doing those things isn't really going to happen, and so work is required...there's no free rides. The freedom of financial freedom doesn't generally come for free. Maybe no one should work, ever, I wonder what the world would look and be like. No power, gas, medical assistance, no law, no nothing. Some may thrive...but not those who don't want to apply some effort.
Let's see though, less and less are working, the youth don't want to and still seem to do ok...until they do not. They'll reap what they sow.
Yeah, I have no idea. The US unemployment rate is currently at 3.9% which is super, super low, and Australia seems to be at 3.6% so the data suggests that everyone is working - but I don't know if your experience is very different to that.
It's a generalisation of course as clearly people do work however companies and businesses still find it difficult to secure staff, the right staff. We won't have to worry about it when machines and AI take over though.
Although you seem like a rogueish likeable chap, I don't know you that well... but if it's okay with you, I would like to challenge that perception.
If you're trying to sell a product, and no one is buying... what do you do?
You either make the product cheaper, or you make the product better.
Simple economics, if there is more supply than demand, you have to create that demand somehow.
It's the exact same with finding workers.
Lower wage opportunities aren't just competing with their direct competitors, they're competing with the entire job market. So, if companies are finding it difficult to secure staff in near record unemployment markets, they need to outcompete everyone. Either with higher wages or with better working conditions.
Complaining that no one wants to work doesn't solve anything, they need to be aggressive, or innovative so that workers are leaving other jobs to work for them. That's the only way to grow your business during record unemployment.
Let's see how the process goes, I'm young enough to be able to observe the next twenty years or so, unless I die sooner, and time will tell how the situation plays out. Will wages and conditions increase? Will product and service quality decline? Will there be as many jobs? It'll be interesting to see how it goes for people, I don't have the answers, time does.
Yeah, I think about all this a lot. If there aren't as many jobs then people won't have money to purchase the things that all the robots build... so no doubt the next 20 years will be very interesting. Hopefully the ol Hive blockchain will still be around.
Quality of products and services are on the decline through cost-cutting measures and other things I guess, generally speaking of course, and inflation, the cost of living, is forcing the price of everything upwards and with consumerism on an individual level on the rise, the need for more and more things, again for many reasons, people have less disposable income generally speaking.
A small corner café goes out of business through financial pressures and the spin off affects not just the individual owner. A machine takes over the role of a person, say a candle wrapper, and that candle wrapper loses income and may not be able to spend as broadly or get another job and there's a flow on to others, including businesses and the cycle continues; pretty standard and basic thoughts really, but magnify it and there's bigger problems.
A good example would be the 5,500 people who used to work at the GM plant in my city. Or the 4,000 people who also used to work in the Mitsubishi plant in my city. None of those jobs exist now. Literally zero of them, because those places are closed - cost cutting by corporations. That didn't just affect 9,500 people though, it affected many thousands more. In the Volkswagen plants overseas there are almost zero human workers where not long ago many thousands were required...they can't all go and work in IT...so maybe they're out of work.
Anyway, it is what it is. I live a very comfortable life, have some stuff, financial security such as it is these days, and I'll also likely be dead in the next twenty years so the present is my focus, the future is for others to worry about I guess. (And they should be worried, generally speaking of course.)