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‘I cannot afford to live’: Gen Z is full of financial angst despite inheriting a golden job market (www.cnn.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
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[–] 93 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Tldr:

  1. Author doesn't understand "the economy" is just about corporate profits

  2. Wages are (slightly) up, but not enough to afford food and housing.

  3. Author looks at mean instead of median retirement savings and say everything is great.

If you're wondering why she has such bad takes, she's a self described "crypto reporter" who was trying to convince us inflation was a good thing a while ago.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/01/economy/inflation-good-bad-winners-losers/index.html

She's completely detached from reality

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    • [–] 38 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Read Hunter Thompson's book "Hell's Angels." There's a section where he breaks down the economics of being a biker/hippie/artist circa 1970. An Angel could get a job as a Union stevedore and earn enough in six months to live on the road for two years. A part time waitress could support herself and her boyfriend.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The Good Doctor is the only person who died before the shitshow we find ourselves in today both politically and economically whose opinions on it I really want to hear. In football terms he and his writings always had incredible down the field vision in part because he had such a firm grasp on the cultural flows of the present and the national temperature of the US people.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Now I have to dig out "...On The Campaign Trail" and reread the part where he writes about talking football with Nixon.

    A lot of people told me that I should watch the series "The Deuce" with Maggie Gyllenhaal. I stopped watching ten minutes into the first episode because they had a pimp recite some of Thompson's wisdom as if the writers had come up with it on their own.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Hunter’s influence is everywhere but it is infuriating when someone tries to claim some sort of brilliance he wrote down 50 years ago. I need to read hells angels again it’s been a decade at this point but it will have to wait until I both start and finish the illuminatist tirlogy. I read his 9/11 article regularly just to get a fix for his particular voice and perspective

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    • [–] 37 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Golden job market? Tha fuck?

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  • [–] 44 points 2 years ago

    My dude, there are hundreds of jobs available that have no benefits, no security, no retirement investment, no advancement, no personal satisfaction, and don't pay enough to live on. Gen Z should be thrilled at such a golden (shower) of opportunity!

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Well they inherited a market that was golden for the Boomers and GenX

    Sadly, those two groups, instead of continuing to fight for workers rights like generations before them, grandfathered their rights into contracts in exchange for sacrificing our rights.

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    • [–] 30 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Having a job doesn't mean you can afford to live. Ask anyone who has been on minimum wage for the past 50+ years.

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  • [+] -17 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    If you've been on minimum wage for 50 years, you're doing something wrong.

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    • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    The problem is not finding a job, it's finding a job that pays well while not destroying your mental health, and ideally also feeling somewhat rewarding or otherwise meaningful.

    You can earn money doing "something IT" no problem, but say you don't wanna do webdev, your options are easily cut in half. Don't wanna do ML/data science either? Half that again. And then you apply what I mentioned above und suddenly you look at a tiny market.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    Based on all of the people I know who work in IT, mental health seems to be a sacrifice that often has to be made in favor of meeting deadlines.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Based on my own experience (albeit in Germany) that's all too often a problem we create ourselves. Devs don't like to be late or seem bad, so they'll take deadlines seriously, even though deadlines are almost always made up and irrelevant.

    This is of course not helped by the fact that most of us actually like what we do. Last week I closed my work laptop where I wrote a deployment pipeline, and opened my own laptop - to write a deployment pipeline.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    It's different in the U.S. Germany doesn't have America's "Protestant Work Ethic" bullshit where you're expected to work your ass off and go well above what is required of you if you want to get ahead.

    I never went along with that nonsense myself, which is why I've probably never succeeded in the corporate world.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Well, first of all, that term has been coined by Max Weber, who wrote that at least in part about Germany as well.

    Anyway, the behavior you described is also kind of self inflicted pain. Developers simply don't have much room to grow, unless you want to get into management, and there are countless cushy, well paying, but somewhat boring jobs where you can just coast along doing 40h. And that's perfectly fine. But for some reason, Americans seem to be unable to get out of their total competition mindset and absolutely need to grind all the time and especially need to talk about how they are grinding.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's been drilled into us for many years that hard work means you'll get ahead. That's something Republicans like to say a lot when things like structural racism. The myth that all it takes to stop being poor is working hard enough. Never mind that some people work two full time low-wage jobs just to keep their kids fed.

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