I feel after the 1920s, companies realized in order to make wage slaves not unionize and riot, they must give them enough money and benefits to be happy. Fast forward through several recessions of cost cutting and the greed of the 80s and you have these companies forget that lesson and see free bonus money just sitting there of they just take some of it back from the wage slaves and now you have people working 60 hours a week, unable to get out of living paycheck to paycheck, buy a house or a car, all while they tell us they did it on their own, must be our problem because we have phones, lattes and avocado toast. Not only is this existence causing mental health issues, but the stress of not making it when we are told we can if we work hard and lower our quality of life is causing us to not want to be alive anymore. The pandemic made everyone realize they cannot continue with this reality and to fight back, companies are scaring employees back into submission through layoffs and terms like quiet quitting.
Only way I see to fight back is unionize, quit toxic jobs, dont produce more consumers for these companies by not having children (another trap to motivate exponential profits for companies by creating more consumers while trapping their employees to be taken advantage of). I hope balance is restored, sadly, it won't be in our lifetimes.