at some point we have to recognise that the financial anxiety young people are living through is not normal. monetising all your hobbies is not normal. hustle culture is not normal. glorifying precarious work is not normal. self-optimisation is not normal.

all these issues have a single root and guess what? it's the economic system we live under!! but we're too fucking exhausted to even see an alternative to capitalism because we're so broken and fatigued by it. it doesn't have to be this way, we can seek a different future.
As Mark Fisher argued, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of capitalism. We've been utterly brainwashed by every part of our society to think that everything we're experiencing right now is extremely normal! But clearly, capitalism is failing us.
How about instead of “manifesting” money on TikTok, we work towards building a more equal society? Just a thought.
Incredible! People in the replies to this are like “people who hustle will be relaxing when they get wealthy”. That’s IF and not when and still, that’s not a given. The fact we don’t see having a regular full-time job as enough “hustling” or whatever is so scary to me.
Do we really have to sell our own limbs and nearly kill ourselves to be seen as “worthy” of having basic human safety nets provided by our governments? Also most people who have “hustled” their way to the top have just exploited the rights of others in one way or another.
And when I say that, I’m not talking about your favourite resin maker on TikTok, but people like Jeff Bezos who own large corporations where people have to piss in bottles because they can’t catch a literal break at work.
I'm not trying to incite the whole Gen Z vs. Millennials vs. Gen X vs. boomers culture war in this thread. I'd say that most people from each of these generations are getting massively screwed over and exploited right now. Granted, some have more financial security than others.

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This is a piece I've been thinking about for a long time. One of the most dominant policy ideas in Washington is that policy should, always and everywhere, move parents into paid labor. But what if that's wrong?

My reporting here convinced me that there's no large effect in either direction on labor force participation from child allowances. Canada has a bigger one than either Romney or Biden are considering, and more labor force participation among women.

But what if that wasn't true?

Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor.

The problem is in the very language we use. If I left my job as a New York Times columnist to care for my 2-year-old son, I’d be described as leaving the labor force. But as much as I adore him, there is no doubt I’d be working harder. I wouldn't have stopped working!

I tried to render conservative objections here fairly. I appreciate that @swinshi talked with me, and I'm sorry I couldn't include everything he said. I'll say I believe I used his strongest arguments, not more speculative ones, in the piece.

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