Business Insider had an article blaming workers slacking off for the demise of the economy the other day. First, no, you're dead wrong. But, yes, workers are slacking off. And don't call it that horrible term “quiet quitting” which is just supposed to make us feel bad for no longer buying into doing free work beyond what we get paid to do.
Covid did teach me to appreciate life more and spend more time on my hobbies and with my family, but that's not the real reason I'm not working as hard anymore.
Compounded from the start of when inflation started taking off, the dollar is worth a little over 13% less than what it was just over a year ago. And considering that the official numbers are not accurate (inflation is significantly worse and closer to 17% if measured the same way as it was in 1980….see: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts), we've all taken a massive paycut. Did you get a 5% raise this year? Congrats, you still got a huge paycut. 10%? Still got a paycut.
My wife and I and I bet a lot of us haven't gotten anything or if we have just a token cost of living increase. This has massively eaten into our discretionary spending when groceries, eating out, gas, electricity, gas, clothing, everything is massively more expensive. There's a lot less for having fun or saving.
So it goes to show, if you're paying me (at least) 13% less, you can expect (at least) 13% less work. And employers do not seem to care one bit that our quality of life have all taken a huge hit while they reap record profits. Yet, they're all happy to complain about how “no one wants to work anymore.” Well no shit no one wants to work anymore because we've all taken huge paycuts! If you want us to keep up, you have to give us raises that at least allow us to keep up our standard of living. The damage to our psychological health is devastating. How do you expect us to even remain motivated enough to continue working as hard as we were? How do you expect us to think you care when you don't bother to even maintain our status quo?
This is obviously barely talked about in the corporate media, but it's a huge issue and core to the current labor crisis in America. We're all expected to do the same work for less just by the nature of inflation and our natural reaction is to say no and do less. And it's completely logical. Rather than recognize that logical reaction, corporate media and corporations try to gaslight workers into thinking they are in the wrong.
Anyways, you get it. I'm going back to doing (at least) 13% less work than before.