What's funny to me is I knew my mom had this train of thought awhile ago and was literally waiting for this moment. My mom, as she like to put it, likes to “live in her own world”. She doesn't pay much attention to the news or the world going on around her, because of that, like a lot of people her age, she takes certain things for granted. Her whole life it's been a relatively easy thing for a teen to get a job, so if teens aren't working it's because they're lazy. Easy math in her head.
Then she gets the first hand experience of my wildly intelligent and charismatic sister being rejected dozens of times for a part time job. To my mom's credit, she's always been very good at realizing when she is wrong and owning up to it like here. Though she couldn't understand why it was like that until I sent this message when she asked how my sister was supposed to get experience for a job that was once considered entry level:
“That's the trap these days. The employment market is a mess right now because jobs like that that were generally first time gigs/teenager jobs are now being filled by grown ass adults because cost of living is so high they need multiple jobs, or that's the best they can find due to the shitty market.”
I believe a lot of the people we see out there talking about “laziness” and “bootstraps” are also likely people in “their own world” and just haven't come out of it yet.
Hopefully, like my mom, they realize the situation and as a society we can get to fixing this mess. Whatever that looks like