What is the DEAL with no employees?

[Yppej]

I “retired” in my mid-30s, shortly after reading YMOYL. I have been underemployed or unemployed ever since, for < 20 years.

I do receive government aid in various forms, as do we all.

Is it terrible for me not to be “working” at my full earning potential? I mean, even now, I could probably figure out how to rake in really quite an extravagant income. Do I have some duty to society to roll up my sleeves and “produce”? Is there a difference if you are “working” for someone else at their enterprise, or working for yourself in your own enterprise?

Are we serfs?

If you retired as a millionaire and are receiving government aid designed to assist poor people, that's wrong.

If you are enjoying common goods like paved roads, that's different.

And don't get me started on student loan forgiveness programs for folks earning above the median income and jet setting around the world.

[catherine]

We were sitting around our friendly weekend neighborhood firepit Sunday night, and the topic of pandemic benefits related to short staffing came up. One of my neighbors, who owns and runs a multi-generational car dealership, took my son to task for waiting out his benefits before looking for a job. He defended himself by saying that he was the only one last summer that went back to work when restaurants started reopening, but he was furloughed again a couple of months later, and then he decided to wait it out.

Rather haughtily she said, "MY daughter works EVERY DAY! Ev-er-y DAY! And if it were me, I'd work TWO jobs if I had to. But that's just me." My son held his own. When he told her that he's used the time to work on his music, and went to Nashville to promote it, she replied, "Well, not EVERYONE can go on vacation!" He had to tell her that it wasn't a vacation--every day for a month he was out making contacts, performing, attending songwriter circles.

There was a lot of resentment floating above the fire at that point.

They parted amicably at the end of the night, and she admitted to my son, "You know, I accepted the small business grants from the government, so I'm no better." (Subtext, "Taking handouts makes both of us less of a person.")

Takeaways:
Everyone with a decent moral compass should work their a$$es off.
Businesses that have been left short staffed and high and dry are in that position because of lazy bums.
You can be engaged in fulfilling work outside of employment but that's not really work, so that doesn't count. You're still a lazy bum.
If you are a businessperson who took the government handout, that's different.

I'm with GP--it would be a full-time job to sit in judgement over the deserving and the undeserving and it would have no end. My personal spiritual beliefs lead me to try to remember that none of us "deserve" what we have, no more than the bear in the woods "deserves" the raspberries he finds, and no more than the raspberry bush "deserves" the nutrients from the bear poop.

[Jane v2.0]

I admire anyone who can find a way to support themselves--preferably legally--without working, personally.

[frugal-one]

I “retired” in my mid-30s, shortly after reading YMOYL. I have been underemployed or unemployed ever since, for < 20 years.

I do receive government aid in various forms, as do we all.

Is it terrible for me not to be “working” at my full earning potential? I mean, even now, I could probably figure out how to rake in really quite an extravagant income. Do I have some duty to society to roll up my sleeves and “produce”? Is there a difference if you are “working” for someone else at their enterprise, or working for yourself in your own enterprise?

Are we serfs?

The point I was making was they do not want to work AT ALL. They believe they should just be handed money and benefits and do nothing for it for the rest of their lives. I believe and have lived by YMOYL but no work at all? Come on.

[frugal-one]

I admire anyone who can find a way to support themselves--preferably legally--without working, personally.

Those are the optimum words.

[ToomuchStuff]

Talked to a 40 something recently that said the government should provide them $ a year to live and medical. Talk about entitled!

There are ways to do that, congressman/senator.

[iris lilies]

Catherine I can see where a business owner would speak to your son out of complete personal frustration, being unable to hire anyone! But she was wrong, it is definitely his business to act the way he wants in whatever way. When the government hands out cheese, we are pretty well trained to take the cheese anymore.

That is sad but that is where we are as a society.

I was talking to my friend about our mutual friend whose 98-year-old father had been in a nursing home for 8+ years and recently died. They told her he died of Covid. She doesn’t think he did. He actually had had Covid, diagnosed with it, several months before his death.

He. Was. 98. Years. Old. For god’s sake, very fragile.


She argued about placing "covid “ as reason for death on the death certificate. Those in charge talked her into it because of the free government cheese being handed out for funerals of covid patients. Nanny G is giving out something like $8,000 toward funeral costs.

Hell in a handbasket.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I admire anyone who can find a way to support themselves--preferably legally--without working, personally.

the easiest way to do this is to be born into money or to try to live off the parents indefinitely regardless. The second easiest way is to marry into money or at least marry a "breadwinner" who pays your bills. The 3rd easiest way is to slack a bit at one's job, now that's still working of course, just not at 100% capacity.

All other ways are far down the list in terms of popularity and probability.

[GeorgeParker]

Is it terrible for me not to be “working” at my full earning potential?

I have known people IRL who would consider you a "social parasite" and tell you so to your face because you're not contributing to the benefit/advancement of society as much as you could be.

I think those people should take their opinion and shove it.

[LDAHL]

I “retired” in my mid-30s, shortly after reading YMOYL. I have been underemployed or unemployed ever since, for < 20 years.

I do receive government aid in various forms, as do we all.

Is it terrible for me not to be “working” at my full earning potential? I mean, even now, I could probably figure out how to rake in really quite an extravagant income. Do I have some duty to society to roll up my sleeves and “produce”? Is there a difference if you are “working” for someone else at their enterprise, or working for yourself in your own enterprise?

Are we serfs?

I can honestly say I don’t care whether you work or not.

I’m not a particularly big believer in the intrinsic value of work. If you, or some ancestor, were clever or lucky in some past boom, I have no problem with that. If you won the lottery or divorced the right billionaire or scored one of Rob’s “big settlements”, I don’t much care. If you choose to work seventy-hour weeks into your seventies, that’s no concern of mine.

But I do think that insisting the rest of us are obligated to support you for no other reason than that you have a “right” to it is problematic. If the view that society owes us a living becomes too widespread, it’s hard to see how that society can survive in the long term.