The Pandemic Was a Truth Serum
Work can be demoralizing, higher education a waste of money, and few people under 25 will ever make enough money to afford their parent’s American Dream - let's change that...
I don’t want to work
I want to bang on the drum all day”
Todd Rundgren
We dream of summer vacations. We dream of theme parks and fairytale romances and sleeping late.
We dream of ice cream cones and cotton candy…..cool breezes, holding hands, and ice-cold beer.
We dream of meeting someone who gives us butterflies.
We also dream of living in a mansion and being chauffeured around town in a limousine.
We dream of private planes, stardom, wealth, and comfort.
We used to believe the pathway to making all these glorious dreams come true was higher education, back-breaking work, starting at the bottom and working our way up, and waiting patiently as our elders retired making way for our ascent into the boardrooms.
Up until the pandemic, the bargain in our lives went something like this, I’m going to work for someone else, performing a job that pushes some of my moral and ethical boundaries, to squeeze a few extra pennies out of clients or customers so I get paid enough to pay my bills and enjoy pleasurable evenings and weekends with my family…..was the Faustian deal — which was simple, predictable, and reliable.
Before the pandemic the idea of closing the entire country down was unthinkable. But it happened and something invisible inside us shifted, emotionally, socially, and psychologically.
The adrenaline from the sudden collective fear that many of us could die…the sense of the unknown…the boredom….the mask debate…the isolation….the endless closings and still present duct tape markings six feet apart in places of collective commerce.
Our priorities changed.
5 days a week, 8 hours a day in a cramped, stuffy office. Said who? And, much more importantly….to what end?
Many realized our country was beginning to look like a perverted Ponzi scheme where the middle class and poor got stuck in a never-ending state of exploitation with prices too high, job productivity impossible to achieve, and the realization that - contrary to popular belief - hard work can actually kill you.
Maybe forcing kids to spend most of their young lives sitting at tiny desks, using the same outdated textbooks and curriculum, and then spend their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, taking on even more debt in hopes they might live long enough to afford a late-life cruise or see the great pyramids of Egypt…or, simply put their feet up, isn’t the smartest investment or gamble.
Maybe the whole, ‘you got to start at the bottom and work your way to the top’ philosophy is not only flawed, but indescribably unfair and unjust.
For the American Dream to perpetuate there must be robust opportunities for young people to obtain jobs and careers that pay enough for them to afford homes, cars, and families if we expect them to build and raise families the way prior generations have.
Today’s generation is telling their Emperors they ‘have no clothes,” when it comes to clinging to an earlier stage of our capitalistic experiment.
They’re exposing the well-intended lie that a bachelor’s or master’s degree is the ticket to guaranteed prosperity as long as “these lazy kids get off their phones and fricken go to work!”
The fact that many starter homes now cost half a million dollars - combined with monopolies, private equity, and Wall Street transforming what used to be guaranteed, life-long, union careers bursting with benefits into choppy, unpredictable, unprotected, gig-dependent, day jobs - make it impossible for most young people in the “paying their dues” stage of their working careers to afford them until much later in life….if ever.
We need the kids who are currently flipping our burgers, making our coffee, sweeping our floors, taking out our garbage, and parking our cars, to have the same wide-eyed belief and willingness to invest in our country because it will lead to personal success and comfort, as prior generations experienced.
Maybe we’re in the bread and circus stage of capitalism where, like Rome, there simply isn’t enough wealth to be spread around and it’s become too consolidated in the hands of too few.
We’d be better off banging our heads against concrete than to expect this and future generations to deliver our food, clean our homes, mow our lawns, or even provide more professional services like healthcare without being assured they won’t be canceled and fired for a Tweet or Instagram or TikTok post and lose everything….for life.
If we accept unions are dead…what balances the rights between employers and employees?
As we’ve become a right-to-work country, how does the right to fire someone on the spot lead to a motivated employee?
How does a young family pay their 30-year mortgage if they only have income half the year?
How does a young family provide health care to their family if they have no health insurance?
We need to start offering pathways to prosperity that young people can count on.
Maybe corporations can be incentivized to promote more young people to higher managerial positions.
Workers must have more tangible, enforceable, protections.
Maybe - like the Peace Corps or military service - if a young person agrees to work in a nursing home or prison for so many years, they can be guaranteed an affordable home and lifestyle.
Maybe prices will drop and wages will rise and the American Dream will re-emerge, incentivizing younger generations to work their hardest every day because the payoff is so worth it.
Something powerful must be on the horizon for this generation.
We must open more doors for them - which might mean closing some doors of our own, earlier than we originally planned.
Then we can insist on them putting their smartphones, video games, and social media aside each day and focus on their jobs and careers.
Then we can fairly judge those who drop out of society and refuse to do their fair share of work because they’d have so many viable pathways to success to choose from.
Otherwise - if I were an 18-year-old today - I’d be tempted to live on my parent’s sofa and “bang on the drum all day,” too.