I read or heard somewhere (maybe some Schwarzenegger speech?), that only 25% of the people are happy with their jobs. If the rest of the people drags themselves through the workday ... I guess you get used to the frustration at some point and have to completely separate/compartmentalize that from private life, otherwise you get into a life crisis or something. As a society we definitely owe it to ourselves to find better jobs for people and create less frustrating work environments. As to how to achieve that though, I do not have the answer.
You don’t have to aim for a high paying job. It’s not a goal in itself. Plenty of people are happy doing jobs which don’t pay that well but interest them.
My whole career I had the attitude that the job was more important than the money. I have budgeted and planned so I could retire well even though I have not made a lot of money. The problem is that I did not foresee that a divorce would end up halving my retirement. I think we would all do well to destroy the idea that enjoying work is more important than making money. We have a limited amount of time and effort that we can invest so we need to maximize our earnings.
I think that’s not an issue with jobs not paying enough but an issue where society doesn’t have a suitable safety net for when life does it’s unpredictable thing. A divorce sucks, but it shouldn’t destroy your ability to retire well. There should be government programs to ensure the elders of the community are set.
I think that there is not enough wealth around to support all elders communities at reasonable levels. The demography is a bitch all around and there is too many people young and old that believe that they deserve american middle class level of life. Where they will find all required modern slaves to make it happen?
We have plenty of wealth. The argument we don’t is something I don’t actually believe and would like to request evidence for. Everyone does in fact deserve a decent quality of life, with basic things like healthcare and housing made available to them and we don’t need slavery to do this.
If everybody would somehow limit their greed - then yes, You are right, there is plenty of wealth - for example from the pure math point of view the hunger problem should not exist (we have too much food at this moment).
But this is not math problem to solve - this is people problem.
We collectively do not care enough to solve it. Most of us are lazy and there is too many greedy people between those who can provide and those in need.
When I look around my family and friends I do not see anyone who knows how to limit their greed - I believe that almost all of them, if given a chance, would use money and power to bring their status up, increase their consumption, and only then would share like 10% of it with the ones in real need. And when I look around those who know how to restrict themselves (some church community participants) I only see people that know how to talk and are mostly impotent - they do not know how to build systems that could bring wealth to those who need it.
sure, you wouldnt blame yourself getting married to a partner that takes half of your earnings but yeah destroy the idea of doing an interesting job for half money - you could have stayed single with a happy ending or two once a month ;)
I was a research scientist in my other life. And while overall the job was challenging and very interesting 90% of it was still boring and mentally repetitive things. Granted being board behind one's desk and board while working 9 to 5 on a conveyor are two completely different scales of boring. I was once cutting trees and shrubs using nothing but axe for 3 month as my summer job.
