Americans are becoming less productive, and it's a risk to the economy | Hacker News Reader

Americans are becoming less productive, and it's a risk to the economy

npr.org

27 pointsmetadat55 comments

The reason seems obvious to me. Young people can no longer afford to buy a house. Young people have a much harder time achieving the American dream.

When I was in my late 20's, early 30's I was able to get married, buy a house and start a family. It was almost automatic. That's just what you did. I found out after buying my house that it turned me into an adult who was invested in the system. Home ownership feels like the bedrock for a stable and sane society. I worked hard to attain and keep what I achieved.

Today young people are priced out of the housing market and are hesitant to have kids because the future appears grim. Why get married under these conditions? Why work hard? There isn't much reward so it doesn't sense to waste your time that way.

I never hear my theory discussed by wealthy people and their publications because they'd rather blame it on something else, especially on young people themselves.

> Why work hard?

Whoa. Do you honestly think people younger than you don't work hard? I've got like three different jobs I've got to work just to make rent and sometimes eat.

Has no one remembered,

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millenn...

Most gen X and Z aren't working very hard. At least if you look at public schools and universities across the country, and the sentiment on r/antiwork. Many are putting in the bare minimum.

The entire point of the above comment and the article, they're not working hard because the millennials and those who have worked hard are still struggling and cannot make rent making three jobs. So there is seemingly no point. In the past, you put extra effort in university to get a well-paying job and your job to get a promotion; now there are people with Master's degrees who work in McDonald's and it seems like promotions only go to relatives.

You can run at 5k pace to finish a 5k, but you cannot run at 5k pace for an indefinite amount of time. Similarly, younger generations would push themselves harder if they believe it would make their future lives easier, but they don't.

> Most gen X and Z aren't working very hard

Did you mean to miss a complete generation?

> Similarly, younger generations would push themselves harder if they believe it would make their future lives easier, but they don't.

Where in the world are you getting this idea? I'm working as hard as I can. It just doesn't go very far. Look at the rise of housing prices and inflation. Look at interest rates. I can't even tread water, and to think it's any different is looking at a place of privilege I do not enjoy, and I'm calling you out on it.

Why would you view schools and reddit as conclusive data on how hard young people are working?

Why are they explaining my own situation to me as if they're some sort of expert?

>Most gen X and Z aren't working very hard. At least if you look at public schools and universities across the country

What am I supposed to be looking at? Is there any statistic you're referring to in particular?

>and the sentiment on r/antiwork

r/antiwork's population is self selected to be... antiwork. Extrapolating the beliefs of that population to the whole country makes zero sense.

I didn't say young people don't work hard, especially poor people who struggle to keep a roof over their head and their bellies full.

I'm saying there is less reason to work hard for many young people. I'm not talking about poor people. I'm talking about young people with jobs who are comfortable but see no reason to really buckle down and sacrifice when there is no reward and no upward mobility. If you can't afford a house and kids, then what's the point of going the extra mile (increase productivity)?

> I'm saying there is less reason to work hard for many young people.

There's just so "hard" one can work. The same amount of work is garnering less money: full stop. It's certainly not about "Well why work any harder?" It's that what you have is absolutely out of reach, no matter how hard you work.

> Young people can no longer afford to buy a house

nor afford college in USA.

After the big company bailouts (banks, cruise lines) I respect those who are choosing to opt out or vacation in place.

This doesn't look like a good argument.

Developing countries, have it way worse, and they have kids, stable families and wake up to go to work(Which is often a tough job) every single day, without asking themselves 'Whats the point of all this?'

You might want to check your other cultural/social incentive structures if they are rightly aligned and pay enough positives for people to start families.

Except in the US the political economy is effectively built on the idea that if you work hard, you'll get ahead.

> You might want to check your other cultural/social incentive structures

In fact, not working hard is seen as a moral failure, thanks to the Protestant work ethic. Is attitude is also seen in parts of Europe. So yes, please do question the cultural and social economic forces in play.

Developing countries? Generally outside the old work hard, get ahead mentality, and sometimes outside the entire developed western (post-industrial revolution) attitudes towards work, accomplishment, and happiness.

Are there any statiatics to support such claims?

E.g. number of median salaries to buy a median house or avg price of sqaure foot to median salary (to account for larger house size)?

>> Young people can no longer afford to buy a house. Young people have a much harder time achieving the American dream

Such fucking bullshit.

I'm old, I lived through what you apparently think was some sort of golden age, and it wasn't.

Not bullshit. It was extremely common in the 70s and 80s to get a job at some factory and buy a house. My dad did it at Ford. His brothers at companies like Colgate, Reynolds, etc. Mostly one income households.

Where in the hell can you buy a house today with a blue collar job at any of those companies?

You can buy a shoebox in the sky or something tattered in the middle of nowhere. This is by design of course. All hail the central planners

My first job in the 1980's paid me a salary of 20K. My wife and I bought our first house for 80K. I had full health insurance on my salary so we had a couple kids. Personal computers were creating new industries and the stock market was booming.

I'm sorry there were reasons things didn't work out for you.

I mean where to start? Cost of tuition, the rate of inflation compared to minimum wage, the housing shortage, a financial crisis in 2008, a pandemic in 2020? Worldwide, runaway climate change? The use of nukes is in the news in a, "could be used any day now - who knows?" kind of way?

> “In the end, [low productivity] could have a profound effect on the country's well-being, according to economists.”

Not to minimize the rippling repercussions a of slow economic growth, but this article is entirely framed from an economic perspective. A valid perspective, but also an incomplete one.

What about the impact to individual wellbeing? To community cohesion? To mental health?

If we ask economists if workforce disenfranchisement is bad, they will always say yes. Slow productivity is bad for the economy, but is it really “bad” for humanity.

As recent events has demonstrated, e.g. the pandemic response, the only acceptable perspective at the policy-making level is the neoliberal consensus, in which everything is decided, in the final analysis, on economic rules centering "free markets" and profits. Everything is transactional.

Maybe workers should benefit a bit from all the increase of productivity in the last two decades since thay haven't until maybe finally now.

Sure. Our productivity is slipping. But remember, the economy is here to funnel money into Atlassian and Amazon. Sure, you might think that you can deliver a product without an AWS-backed mobile application and an agile methodology. But you must use agile, and that means JIRA. Otherwise you're just not a real company. So sure, JIRA may drive down productivity and your boss may require you replace a notepad with a triple-redundant DynamoDB table backed by a custom python app in a container fed via a barely functional API Gateway.

But low productivity is the price we pay to participate in "the future."

(Next you're going to be telling me I shouldn't have invested our payrole in Luna.)

Is the dynamodb a single table design? Asking for Rick Houlihan.

You know what would make me more productive ? If I didn’t live in anxiety and felt a sense of security. I would then want to feel productive and contribute . However my time is instead spent haggling and spending hours talking to health insurance and every other form of insurance . I don’t know if I will have enough saved for a house and a good education for my kids . Public education is getting worse and college is becoming more expensive. No one wants to teach. I am also trying to save money and no option works because this country is like a casino with only 401k and stocks as saving options. And I am male so I don’t have to think about abortion but maybe guns. Ultimately Ronald Reagan’s policies from the 1980’s is coming home to roost . We live in a corporatocracy and no one wants to fix the community. You still want me to be productive working 60 hours a week ?

Shouldn't the economy SERVE Americans? Just absurd and evil, people are human and don't just exist to serve to financial speculators.

There is a bigger elephant in the room: what do Americans do, as a nation, to justify such a lavish lifestyle?

Ever heard of a Crab Mentality?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

Prints green bills that are worth a lot of merchandise in nearly every country in this world. If there's people alive 2000 years from now, this is one thing future humans will scratch their heads to understand about our time. "Do you mean, back then people worked their asses off and wrecked the planet to produce lots of things, just to exchange them for small slips of paper painted green elsewhere? WTF 20th-21th century people!"

I believe we are living a collective burnout.

I concur. Almost everyone in my circle are all either too burnt out, or just tired all the time to do anything else. The few lucky ones, who can afford to have quit or taken a sabbatical to pursue something else.

I don't know if this is a large scale effect of long Covid, or everyone collectively too exhausted after dealing with everything the last two years. Something's gotta give.

The COVID theory is interesting. I'm going through it as well, and did have COVID. I however assumed it was just the generally depressing nature of everything going on.

You're in a climate crisis and going to all die or starve or go to war soon. You're a racist and transphobe because you don't care enough to keep up with everything or participate. You're a communist because you think health care should be free. Want a house? Yeah fuck off companies and landlords are buying them and you'll rent like a good citizen, and pay more for the privilege. Got a raise? Fuck you again inflation is going to take it all back and more. Got kids? Well, they probably won't get shot at school today, but thoughts and prayers just in case.

And that's just American happenings, not even getting into global conflicts.

I try not to dwell on any one thing, but man, it's all so exhausting. Where did all the optimism go?

Yeah, I see it everywhere. Where I think the loss of productivity is though is that people burnout and teams at companies are hitting and inflection point where they have too many people coming and going and that is creating inefficiencies and wasted time. I don’t think people suddenly stopped working hard. I think work hasn’t been as conducive to, well, work in many places.

The article itself mentions the impact on the economy. It also mentions productivity steadily increasing since 1948.

So... productivity has been going up for decades, with purchasing power of average wages steadily declining over the same period.

Maybe I'm just missing something, but this sounds to me like maybe the issue with the economy isn't the hypothetical, average American worker. Maybe the economic issue is actually some outliers in these data sets. Some outliers that contribute little to the productivity metric but disproportionately impact the various economic metrics.

Hrm. Wonder what group of people that might be...

As far as "productivity metric" and GDP, the military industrial complex in USA has wasted tons of debt money the past couple decades. Half the defense budget, and all of the 2008 bankster bailout, and the 2020 cruise line bailout, should have instead been given to every American. Congress spends like this because the voters elect those people to best represent the banksters, cruise line CEOs, and bomb makers. Since voting doesn't change anything (except maybe local elections) why work so hard?

Subtle here how "the economy" is used to mean "profits for employers and their investors".

Also ironic that the 22yo profiled decided to quit and get his real estate license. As if that were a job never subject to bubbles and the whims of the financial markets.

I'm really not sure how it's measured, since both corporate profits and real GDP are up.

The war machine is counted in GDP, so war is good (for GDP).

But are the up enough?

If we aren't slaving away the party will end? This doesn't sound like the best arrangement.

I was working hard because I had hope, I thought yes I'm trapped in a rat race now and housing is increasing in cost faster than my income ever could but if I keep working hard then I'll be in a prime position to catch a lucky break.... But real estate prices basically double in two years and I don't think I can get that lucky... So why kill myself, promotion doesn't matter, whether it happens this year or 10 years from now I'll be in the same place more or less. I'll try to enjoy however little and however hollow it's now. I never read fiction now I do.

Its possible all the low hanging fruit for automation has been picked.

Pretty much every industry is reliant on computers and automation now, and all the high ROI process improvements are done.

It appears we are on trend after correcting for the pandemic bubble. During the pandemic output fell but hours worked fell much more. More productive industries made up a bigger proportion of the non farm labor.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB

Look at a 5 yr view to see it clearly.

Americans are the American economy.

A bunch of people getting angry in here because they dont understand economics. Productivity isnt a value judgement. It certainly doesnt assign fault.

Saying low productivity hurts the economy is just a factual assertion. How we do or dont solve it and who wins /loses in those scenarios is a political decision

Unlike many of our problems of the last decade, yelling at economics on twitter wont cancel it and make the problem go away

This article and many like it "assign fault" to the labour by making too many assumptions about the cause of the decrease in labour productivity being a decrease in labour effort, motivation etc. In reality, this just a misrepresentation of the metric. Not sure why you don't think this would anger some people.

The fault lies in whoever took the decision of ofshoring most high productivity manufacture jobs elsewhere. The service sector is not subjected to huge productivity gains. If one works flipping burgers or serving tables, productivity of individual workers is mostly bound. There is no Moore law increasing the number of burgers flipped or tables served per worker per year.

I understand economics well enough to ask you to clarify, please, what you mean by "the economy".

People need to put those “second brains” to use it seems.

Nobody cares

The answer is super simple. Cheap money made jobs too available so people quit working as hard.

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