I suspect almost all of those 47% are the old people who grew up when it was still the case for most people that they could actually improve their lot in life if the worked hard. That has worsened over time for decades and is not at all the case for the younger generations.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago

yeah i feel like the 1960s were the last time that people could actually be born and expect a lifetime of good employment options. for everyone after that, we're either getting the scraps, there's a declining labor market, we get to do the jobs today that didn't get done in the decades earlier, because nobody bothered to do them before, because they're less rewarding, anyways there's a ~~stagnating~~ declining labor market because there's just not so many more things to do. if you're born in 1800, people are spreading all over america, there's lots of stuff to do. if you're born in 1900, the electrical power grid just got invented, now there's time to build an industry. but now? (most of) all the technology is invented/developed. my honest prediction is that spaceflight is gonna be the last option to grow the economy, because space is (in principle) infinite, if we dare to use it. but apart from that, i don't think that people will have actual jobs (that are actually meaningful, no bullshit jobs, that pay actual wages, that actually improve society by a significant bit).

on the other side, it might be the start of a good time for all the people who don't actually want to work, because that's becoming a possibility, if we can push through the tax reforms to actually give wealth to the people, all of them.