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Comment by erklik | Hacker News Reader

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

The article brings up a useful point, but then diverges into reactionary terrible "video games are bad" take that really doesn't look at the main reason why this is happening in my opinion.

People are stopping work, sitting at home and checking out because they see "it"... it being the treadmill but not getting anything for it. The incentive to work is gone, and people realize that it's not going to result in enough improvement for a life-change. The desire to have friends/girlfriends etc is gone because social media provides a facade of social interaction, and dating is a competitive game that's analogous to the treadmill mentioned before. Why take part?

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In 1971 US started printing money for the global economy, which caused people who worked with money to get rich while for people who worked with real stuff nothing really changed. But normal economy people since then needed to compete for everything with money printing economy people who drove up the cost of everything.

It's especially visible when you look at the prices of hard stuff like gold or real estate in dollars. If your income doesn't grow on par of them you are working in the wrong part of the economy.

At this point to understand situation it would be better to express value of dollar in terms of value of gold, to see that it's not gold appreciates but dollar depreciates and along with it average men incomes and savings.

That's conflating a lot based upon the gold standard -- which most serious economists think should have been removed (including the freshwater ones). Also just look at wild swings of inflation before and after the gold standard if you think it was better then.

https://www.macrotrends.net/2497/historical-inflation-rate-b...

The true cause is that demand for labor in US has never been as high as WWII -- which created the middle class. Automation, offshoring, are both major contributors to the lack of middle class labor demand.

Further, God didn't file gold under America, so we'd no longer be in control of the value of the currency.

I'm not making any value judgements about things before and after gold standard. I'm just saying that making dollar the currency of global economy while making it printable by USA had this effect on US economy. Splitting it in half. One half stealing the value from all other countries (that's what trade deficit is) and the other half getting barely any share in the booty while being forced to compete for products and services with the beneficiaries of the first half.

Learning is painful. It doesn't trigger any of the pleasure centers in the brain -- that is until you learn enough to find things like physics or programming stimulating and fun.

TV, Social media, sports, gaming -- that's easier, and there's an immediate and pleasurable reward.

“..it being the treadmill but not getting anything for it..”

Sure. I knew a few people who worked 6 days, and COVID lockdown in 2020 gave them an unexpected “vacation”. They went back to work grudgingly, but, yo! Baby needs new shoes.

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