[red-iron-pine]

> The alternative to hard work is doing nothing and that certainly will get you no where at all.

This is a false dichotomy. I put in a solid 40-50 hours at work. If I have to put in double that just to stand a shot -- not get, but have a shot at -- the lifestyle that my parent's had while only putting in 40 hours a week, then the system has failed me.

And that was 40 hours a week with one person working and the other staying at home.

No one is suggesting you get to have stuff for free, but it is painfully clear that even with dual incomes the average American is failing to maintain their parents' standard of living.

It's a broken system, and the Zoomers can easily see that -- they've had smartphones since they were like 8.

[DrThunder]

No, your argument is a straw man. I'm not referring to your personal work ethic here. The general idea that you will get ahead by doing less is just bullshit. You seem to have a narrow focus on the white collar workplace as it pertains to you. I'm speaking about life in general.

"It's a broken system, and the Zoomers can easily see that -- they've had smartphones since they were like 8."

If you're referring to the poor decision making on raising kids with smartphones I'd agree with you, but that's a lack of good parenting and bad moral judgement. It has nothing to do with capitalism or modern work ethic.

The irony and cognitive dissonance in this statement. That means by every economic measure they were doing quite well at age 8. Did boomers get cell phones when they were 8? How about survivors of the Great Depression... do you think they had anything close to the equivalent of a cell phone at the time? The other issue here is that you believe constant negative influx of media as always truthful.

The issue with you is that you assume that a generation having slightly less than the previous means we need to scrap the whole system and it doesn't work. You need to put some things in perspective and maybe realize that the life you had growing up was WAY above average so a slight decline to a lifestyle that's still magnitudes better than what the average world citizen deals with isn't all that big of a problem. There are generations and generations of people that died to give you what you got, went through world wars, civil wars, great depression, pandemics. I'm sure they'd have loved to be "slaving away" in your climate controlled office environment with a smartphone.

"And that was 40 hours a week with one person working and the other staying at home."

You can blame feminism for that. It tricked the average woman into thinking they would have more meaning working in an office 40 hours a week than they would doing the most important job in the world... raising kids. It turns out that when everyone starts having a higher average family income, the market adjusts to that. And, the staying home and raising kids part is key, they weren't just sitting at home doing nothing while their partner worked.