And "satisfied" can have different meanings. I personally do like my job. I was "satisfied" with my last job. Pay was decent and I liked the people I worked with. I did not "like" that job but I need to have a job and that one was good enough.View attachment 8274
43 Incredible Job Satisfaction Statistics [2023]: Average Job Satisfaction In The US - Zippia
With millions of people looking for new jobs in the wake of a shaken economy, it may be surprising to hear that most Americans are satisfied with their work.www.zippia.com
A large majority of workers (61%) also want a *new* job, so maybe that statistic isn't terribly useful or well defined
It's ok to be angry about capitalism
- Thread starter XsjadoBlaydette
- Start date
Of course, we should be grateful to the job creators for condescending to give us jobs in the first place.
... until they can figure out how to turn them into "self employed contractor" opportunities.
Almost every Western intelligence and security agency during the Cold War.
That's probably more "happy" in terms of "content" than it is "enjoy", though.
An important context is that the majority of people have to work. Because of that, as long as the job doesn't suck, they're mostly okay. But "satisfactory", "adequate", "pays the bills" and other similar terms don't really say great things about employed life either. I'd rather see figures for terms that clearly define some sort of enthusiasm and fulfilment.
"I'm happy I survived that car crash."
"SO YOU ENJOY CAR CRASHES?!?!"
You mean the thing that unions spent generations fighting for, which is rapidly becoming an irrelevant pipe-dream for most people and, most importantly, does not solve the problem. Earning enough to keep yourself alive for the final 20 frail, decaying years of your life is not the same thing as earning enough to participate in capital investment or generate real, inter-generational wealth.
You live in a country whose three richest people collectively own more wealth than half the population. You live in the richest society that has ever existed and yet where one in every ten children lives in food poverty. But it's okay, you can live with it because you might get to eke out the last miserable years of your life without facing starvation. What about that strikes you as good or natural or Christian?
Everyone, by nature, is in charge of themselves. Taking away that control requires effort, which is why it's easy to see.
You can be happy with what you have while also desiring something different. That isn't a contradictionView attachment 8274
43 Incredible Job Satisfaction Statistics [2023]: Average Job Satisfaction In The US - Zippia
With millions of people looking for new jobs in the wake of a shaken economy, it may be surprising to hear that most Americans are satisfied with their work.
A large majority of workers (61%) also want a *new* job, so maybe that statistic isn't terribly useful or well defined
I would bet the majority of even this forum of debbie-downers genuinely enjoy their job.
What does enjoying your job mean?
Most people enjoy feeling useful. Most people would want to do something productive even if they didn't have to. Most people appreciate opportunities to demonstrate skills they have learned or expertise they have gained. Most people like being rewarded. Most people also have things about their jobs they don't like, things that are tedious or annoying, things that are stressful or (in some cases) actively traumatizing. Very few people like or hate everything about their job, most people are somewhere in the middle.
One thing that is generally true is that in the past people worked a lot less. Even medieval peasants, who we (somewhat correctly) think of as brutally oppressed, only worked about half the days of the year unless conditions were exceptionally bad. People also generally had more control over their working lives in the past. Roles were less specialized so people performed more varied labor. Work often incorporated opportunities to socialize or engage in recreation. Pre-industrial labour was often very hard physically, but it was also demonstrably freer in many ways.
Work has fundamentally changed under capitalism. We live in an economic system whose purpose is not to make us happy, but to extract maximum value from us at minimum cost, even if the result is that work is mechanistic, monotonous, excessive or highly pressured. The simple fact is, it doesn't matter if people enjoy their work or not, they don't have enough control over their lives or working conditions to do anything about it.
If the choice is between working and being unemployed, which is the reality for most people, then it's not much of a choice. If the choice is between working and living lives of incomprehensible, bacchanalian luxury while everyone else works for you, I imagine the proportion of people who "enjoy their job" would take a pretty substantial nosedive.
Last edited:
People's retirement savings are literally capital investments, and your idea of something being a pipe-dream is based on the internet's mass delusion that the world is falling to pieces.
Why is that the binary to you? Nobody is living lives of incomprehensible luxury in place of work. The people with the theoretical means to do so are still working, because as you astutely observed, people want to work, they want to be useful, and appreciate a reward for their usefulness. How can you see these things and say these things and then try and argue that people don't freely choose employment? You know that people do, but you want to equate capitalism to slavery, so you ignore your own observations of normal human behavior to try to support that idea.
They aren't investments that allow for any form of meaningful participation.
Again, you don't seem to be capable of understanding the orders of magnitude difference between what you consider wealth to be and what it actually is.
The world has never stopped falling to pieces for poor people.
If you have somehow convinced yourself that your personal ability to live a mediocre, middle class existence means the world must be fine, then that's quite revealing.
Work is not play. Work is not mashing your toys together, even if your toys are worth millions of dollars.
To call that "work" is an insult to anyone who actually works, it's an insult to the reality most of us have to live in. Buying the luxury of being able to pretend to work is not the same thing as actually having to work because you don't have a choice if you want to eat enough food or sleep under a roof.
If it's freely chosen, it's probably not employment. Employees don't generally have those kinds of choices, that's why they're employees.
I mean, capitalism literally included slavery. I don't need to equate them.
Employment isn't slavery though, to say that would also be insulting.
Last edited:
depending on where you are (sort of), the past tense is very kind.
There's a whole TV franchise about people who have lives of incomprehensible luxury in place of work: "Real Housewives Of..."
Admittedly, a few of them have proper jobs. But where most of them work, it's vanity projects to amuse themselves and fill in the time. You can argue that this is still work, but it's clearly not work on the same level as those dependent on income from labour will experience work. There are independently wealthy people who don't really work, including people who take early retirement because they made (or inherited) enough, and a lot of spouses and adult children of rich people who, being provided for, don't either. I think you vastly underestimate how many there are.
I certainly don't blame people for vanity work: that's "living the dream", isn't it? The Star Trek future, where people work because it's fulfilling not because they have to. Broadly, "work" (in terms of a constructive, structured activity, although it doesn't necessarily have to be ecomically useful) is good for people. Who wouldn't want to organise that in a manner of their own choosing, freed from any threat of destitution? Some of them will still want to be slogging away ten hours a day six days a week... most I suspect would be working much, much less.
At least I use my own experience, and the experiences of those around me, and of others that I am aware of on which to base my views. You're inventing a world full of people to pity, a world full of people with no agency in their lives that are clearly not you or anyone you know, because no reasonable person could think of someone they've met that way. Is there a single person you've personally interacted with that you'd be willing to look in the eye and say "you're not free because of capitalism, your work isn't your choice at all"?
Plenty. What answer were you expecting?