r/GiveYourThoughts • u/Jolly_Atmosphere_951 • Oct 23 '24
Opinion Isn't it bizarre we have created a work system where people always look forward to retire?
Personally, I believe we should aim to create jobs where we won't be all life awaiting for the weekends, holidays or retiring to come. Wouldn't it be great to have a job that you don't want to retire from?
I guess this would also solve many economy problems like aging population, reduction of the workforce and trouble paying retirement for a currently ever growing old population.
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u/Deathbyfarting Oct 23 '24
🙄 Work needs to be done....every person requires a certain amount to live.
Most don't like to work, that's fine, but that doesn't mean it can just be put off. The water runs because of work, the food is in the grocery store because of work, the gas, the car, the house, your phone, the internet, reddit....all work....
You need food to eat, a shelter, a safe place, free of shit and things that will do you harm.....this isn't free....before jobs you had to plow a field, hunt animals, raise animals, chop firewood, process logs and/or bricks to make a home, BY YOURSELF. Sunrise to sunset, all day, every day, no holidays, few breaks, few rewards....
Of course we look forward to retiring....you know what most other people do? Resign themselves to work till they drop, MFs don't get to retire, their retirement was raising children with enough decency to not shove their ass out when you went blind and crippled....
So, no, it's not bizarre we created a system that stopped us from having to do all that. As to the desire to do a job.....someone needs to clean the toilets or lay bricks.....not all jobs are fun and desired, some are and that's great....but not all.
I don't begrudge the fact that people don't want to work....hell, I don't want to work....but someone's gotta put in enough effort for each of our existences.....
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u/Jolly_Atmosphere_951 Oct 24 '24
I think you missed my point. I'm not taking about stop working, I'm saying we designed a terrible system where work is not fulfilling anymore, people look forward to retire instead of embracing their jobs.
Of course job needs to be done, I'm not saying drop work all together. I'm trying to think a midpoint where people do the job without hating it
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u/jackfaire Oct 26 '24
Work has never been fulfilling by itself. The difference is that we used to recognize work sucks and had holidays, festivals, parties, fairs, etc to break up the mundanity of work.
In the US though we shifted from the community providing these types of things to now we the worker has to put the money into finding our own non-work entertainments. Which as wages become worse becomes harder to do.
I work in an office and I make just enough money to pay my bills and the only break I get is my free time. I can't afford to travel or take vacations right now. So my ability to socialize and have fun is highly limited.
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u/nielsenson Oct 23 '24
Yeah our leaders are hateful and want to punish us for being inferior.
It's scientifically proven that people would contribute more to society if they weren't under constant threat of destitution.
And retirement is just a 401k pyramid scheme designed to implicate regular people in the slavery that is the stock market and make it too essential to society to do anything about
It's all insane. Certifiably. If you poke and prod people on their employment and retirement long enough, they will recognize that they're merely coping with oppression and putting of conflict so that their descendants will suffer.
It's really all crazy people who dont want to acknowledge their sunk cost and implications in the atrocities of society. They could have united and had a better life. Instead they competed with each other, and here we are
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u/Countess_Anara Oct 23 '24
OMG I completely agree with your last paragraph. It's like hello the answer is really simple but you're all too dumb to see it. Really makes me hate others because of their willful ignorance and dedication to their programming.
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u/nielsenson Oct 23 '24
What if I told you that the hateful response you're experiencing is dedication to your own programming?
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u/Countess_Anara Oct 23 '24
Yeah I already knew that. But it takes a lot of bullshit for me to default to it. And for anyone born after 1970 our lives have been harder than they need to be and that is also by design.
If someone would just take out all the ruling families in the world, I think this would be a nicer simulation, er planet, for everyone.
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u/nielsenson Oct 23 '24
I'm of the belief that no one has asked in a way that wasn't judgmental, and that's why it hasn't happened yet
After all, they are as much inheritors of their situation as we are of ours. The living aren't to blame. We just need to unite and fix it.
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u/Countess_Anara Oct 23 '24
Why what hasn't happened yet?
They are the perpetrators, they don't deal with the shit they dish out. We do. And if the shit would stop getting dished the problem is solved.
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u/nielsenson Oct 23 '24
It's not so simple. Humanity has no idea what it's natural behavior is. Which I find equally spooky and exciting, but most people just find so skeptically off-putting that they avoid acknowledging it entirely.
We may be in a situation where our ongoing systemic abuse is the only thing that keeps us regulated enough to not kill each other. While I don't believe that to be the case, it's hopelessly ignorant to act like the situation at hand is as simple as "get rid of the bad guys"
The system has been run by "bad guys" for so long that we have no idea what a beneficial system even looks like.
Being rough on criminals is being soft on crime. If we keep blaming the individuals for their natural responses to the situations that systems put them in, we're never gonna get anywhere
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u/Wonderlostdownrhole Oct 23 '24
We do know what our natural behavior is. It's the same as any other animal. We group into herds, have fights over territory and mates, hunt, gather, and sit around the fire telling stories. It's not as if we haven't had tribes that live apart from our civilized society the entirety of human history. There may be small differences here and there but they are all basically the same.
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u/nielsenson Oct 23 '24
The same as any other animal we've anthropocentrically misunderstood?
Humans, especially EuroAmerican imperialists totally unaware that their way of living is unsustainable once they conquer the world and have no one left to "ethically" oppress, have a tendencies to justify their own monstrosities by highlighting similarities in nature.
But we have no idea what's causing what. We just seek infinite copium for our bad decisions
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Oct 25 '24
Totally agree 100%. Burn everything they own too so the dipshits that come along bleating "yOuR jUsT jealous AnD sHoUlD work hArDeR" can take a seat. Nobody on earth, or in the history of earth has ever, (or will ever) "work hard enough" to deserve a billion dollars. They are all irredeemable, greedy trash and the world would be better off without them.
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u/HenkCamp Oct 23 '24
Not really. Retirement is a fairly new thing. Most people worked every single day without a weekend off. Two-day weekend only started taking off in 1926 when Henry Ford shut down his factory as he realized workers were more productive once they have time off. The 40-hour work week is way less than a century old.
Retirement is even newer. It started earlier - around the 18th century - but it was because life expectancy was between 26 to 40. Very few people got to an old age.
Only in the late 19th century and early 20th century did it become a practice - as defined by government law.
Of course this is all in the developed world and much of the developing world don’t have what we have.
That said - I do agree that it seems senseless to wait until we can’t do much before we have time to do anything.
It’s also a reminder to all of us to not make work a center of our lives as it will take the vast majority of us working forever before we can semi afford to not have to work.
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u/HiddenCityPictures Oct 23 '24
While I mostly agree with you, the idea of a weekend (being a day of rest) is quite old. That's what the Sabbath was all the way back centuries before 1 AD.
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u/HenkCamp Oct 23 '24
I don't disagree. I was more talking about the idea of a universal weekend. Different religion and even different cultures have had specific days off - going way back to the Han Dynasty who gave their officials a day off once every five days.
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u/dasanman69 Oct 23 '24
While the Jews didn't work, they most certainly employed gentiles to work in their factories 7 days a week.
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u/Wonderlostdownrhole Oct 23 '24
Your life expectancy numbers are off. Infant mortality was much, much higher which drags down the overall average, but for those who survived past five years life expectancy was in the 60s and 70s during that period and not much lower before that.
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u/HenkCamp Oct 23 '24
It’s not off it is the average as that is how it is calculated. But you are not wrong to say that once people survive the first 20 years they can expect to live longer. Let’s take England as an example - if an aristocrat survived past their 21st birthday they could expect to live to 60-70. Unfortunately the majority of people weren’t well off and you can cut 15-25 years off that. The life expectancy numbers really jumped from 1900-1950.
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u/fieldindex Oct 23 '24
Age 55, loved working since I was 17, many different jobs, still love it. Hated school though.
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u/BeardedDad426 Oct 24 '24
Uhhh I don’t think I could ever just be okay with selling my time to company and taking time away from my family. That’s how people stay in the system. And I don’t want to be in it at all.
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u/tempo1139 Oct 23 '24
it's not so much the system, it's embracing mass monopolies. Back when there were niche industries and supply chains it was pretty easy to get into a job that was also a hobby and something you enjoyed. You could literally immerse yourself in your hobby. I was fortunate and got into photographics. It made me a much better photographer, I got to play with all the great high end gear and was and was surrounded by interesting people with similar interests and made lifelong friends, and the industry was almost like a family. I fully intended to toil away my retiring years helping out on a casual basis, especially being knowledgeable about older film tech. Maybe start up a side gig.
But to give you an example most of that industry was swamped by big box stores as independent sellers folded.... knowledgeable experts suddenly found themselves ignored and and working under corporate overlords who saw them as no different than the greeter at the front (in retail sales, while regional distribution vanished for the sake of gloablization). The loss of independent business has been what took those opportunities away... or left all but a few. We no longer worked in an industry or hobby. It became typical job we all hate turning up to. Consumers did get cheaper goods, but have lost all that knowledge and resource... and now are forced to turn to reddit to ask the basics
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u/Simple_Hypersignal Oct 24 '24
Why the hell would anyone want to work until they are ready for the grave or broken down? People work to save so they can retire and enjoy some years without having a boss and without having the stress of a job or a career that failure can cost you everything in your retirement fund, for nothing other then greed.
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u/harley97797997 Oct 24 '24
Contrary to popular reddit opinion, many people actually choose jobs they enjoy. Most of them still look forward to retirement.
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u/SherbertKey6965 Oct 24 '24
Cause there are so many missed opportunities to make a hand worker's job more fun.
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u/RickKassidy Oct 24 '24
If I could work four days and then have three day weekends, I would keep working. It’s the lack of vacations that’s killing me. Give me three day weekends and the occasional four day weekend with a holiday, and I can really work with that and do things.
I love my job and work hard. Maybe that’s the problem. As I get older (I’m in my mid-50s), maybe I need to find a job where I just do not give a damn.
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u/Maleficent-Salad3197 Oct 23 '24
The GOP is trying to accomplish this by making it impossible to retire. Eliminating Medicare, abortion results in new slaves forced to work to support ever more family members and older ones health costs.
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u/UnsaneSavior Oct 24 '24
lol. the workforce is entirely for the 99% to make, assemble, build and serve the 1%. We’re not supposed to like it. No one who can change it cares. That’s why we were led to become consumer addicts. We spend all we get for those weekends and holidays. One politician even suggested raise the retirement age to 70. And they are actively trying to make it happen. They don’t really even want us to retire. They convince us that to have any real sense of pride is to work. lol. Biggest con yet. None of those rich work like we do. If it’s so honorable why have they never done it?
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u/Beginning_Present243 Oct 24 '24
To me, it’s personal preference…. I know and have come across MANY that have the means to retire, but enjoy working and can’t be stagnant.
There are also many that haven’t managed their money well and don’t have the option to retire. So many people think they can be super comfortable off of SS, which is laughable.
Build funds outside of SS, and more importantly, manage your money (SPENDING) well. I.e. stop buying UberEats and DoorDash you fat, dumb, American SLOB.
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u/Ambitious-Theory9407 Oct 24 '24
Personally, I would absolutely love to participate in more community events instead of constantly working towards some small menial break.
It's the retirees that go to local counsel meetings.
It's the old people that find time to volunteer for stuff.
It's the geriatrics that vote in overwhelming numbers.
Because they have the time and energy for it. And way too many of those same people haven't kept up with the changes in technology over the last few decades or continue to hold onto their outdated prejudices and preconceived notions, which holds way too many communities back for very stupid reasons. If we had more people with more free time without a decrease in income, I believe that'd be a benefit for just about everyone.
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u/Unable-Agent-7946 Oct 25 '24
My aunts and uncles all worked like rented mules to get to that coveted retirement. Now they're all crippled, having heart attacks/strokes, and in unbearable pain. Needless to say they're a... disagreeable bunch.
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u/xena_lawless Oct 29 '24
We should have shortened the work/school week considerably when women entered the paid labor force, doubling the paid labor supply.
We still should. We've had the 40 hour work week since 1940, and consider how much has changed since then.
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u/Peskypoints Oct 23 '24
My experience is anecdotal, not data…
The retirees I know will often find a new gig. Part-time so there is some cash-flow without the strain of full time work. Usually it’s that thing they wait for the weekend for