Article: Non-Working Men & Painkillers

[KSRBEvans]

10% of men 25-54 are unemployed and not looking for work. 45% of non-working men in that age group took a painkiller the previous day, double the rate of their peers in the work force.

The article concludes with no solution, but some sobering food for thought:


Low-skilled young men are in crisis. They are working less than their fathers did, and less than men in other developed countries; they say they are in pain, and they are taking prescription medications at alarming rates, sometimes overdosing. As a society we must get to the bottom of why this is happening.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440940/non-working-men-painkillers-problem-america

[CitizenBBN]

Why is it happening?

For the same reason a dog licks himself, bc he can.

You can stay home half stoned and get your room and board covered or you can go work and have no free money and have to show up and do sober work every day.

The only thing that stops many more from doing it is a personal sense of work ethic. As our nation loses that ethnic more and more drop out and go on the dole.

Some really need that help, most do not. Disability is making the old welfare programs look abuse free by comparison.

[KeithKSR]

I've lost track of the number of kids I have had in school over the last 25 years who are dead due to drug ODs. I believe they have all been male, something I hadn't realized until this was posted.

[Darrell KSR]

Very sad. Heartbreaking.

[CitizenBBN]

I've lost track of the number of kids I have had in school over the last 25 years who are dead due to drug ODs. I believe they have all been male, something I hadn't realized until this was posted.

It's gone from bad to worse as we got the prescription pills off the street and they filled the gap with unregulated heroin.

[dan_bgblue]

A very simplistic answer from me. Those statistics point to adults who have never really had to work hard any day in their lives. When they were asked to they could not handle it and are now walking thru the rest of their lives on crutches built of drugs because that is the only way they can handle the image of themselves in the mirror that looks like a complete failure.

[Doc]

I have instant access to all that stuff, from valium to fentenyl to codiene, and I've never considered misusing any of it. Maybe it's because of hard work, as you all have stated. Heck, I don't take the one prescribed for me because I fear an incidence where something happens and it jeopardizes my career.

[PedroDaGr8]

Why is it happening?

The only thing that stops many more from doing it is a personal sense of work ethic. As our nation loses that ethnic more and more drop out and go on the dole.


This is a common narrative of Baby Boomers and one that business science doesn't support. At worst, the science says situation is murky, at best Millenials have just as strong of a Protestant Work Ethic as the Baby Boomer Generation. That doesn't discount that there are lazy outliers, there are in EVERY generation. The Baby Boomers had the burn-outs and hippies; in this generation you have the trophy idiots of helicopter parents. These outliers tend to not make it. They tend to fall out of the white collar work pool and in the past ended up working at low, but acceptable, paying factory jobs doing menial tasks. Being a millennial myself, I see how much most of my colleagues my age and slightly younger work, while it is not as much as a business owner (very few jobs do) its certainly most of my waking hours. Without fail, at almost every job I work at, the Millenials and late Gen X are 80% of the last to leave. For example, during the week, I wake up, go to work, come home eat dinner (usually while reading something for work), spend about an hour browsing the internet (in 15-20 min breaks) meanwhile working on stuff for work. On the weekend, I usually spend a minimum of 2/3 of a day working on stuff that is work related, often more. This weekend for example, will be a working weekend. For the next two weeks, due to proposal deadlines, I will be basically working non-stop on stuff related to these proposals. I don't say this to turn this into a pissing contest of who works harder, just saying the scientific studies about work ethic don't paint the bleak picture that you claim they do. You see the outliers and it reinforces your idea that the millenial generation doesn't work, missing the many that work DAMN hard yet are still called lazy.

One other thing, one area where Boomers and Millenials DO differ is in company loyalty. Boomers tend to be more loyal to their company, feel a sense of obligation. Millenials do not, they watched their parents get screwed over by the corporations and know the reality. When I started at my first corporate job a co-boss of mine (complicated structure) laid it out very clearly to all of us in the lab. He said that many managers and execs would preach employee loyalty to the company. He said, to ignore it because they will cut you immediately if it fits their plans so the loyalty is always going to be one sided. He said instead: "Always have your resume ready and updated (make small changes every two months to bump it up on the resume sites), always listen to a recruiter or an offer no matter how long or short you have been at a company, always do what is best for you and be ready to make a move." He, and my direct boss, even backed it up by covering for us when we had interviews at another company. Sure enough, I have watched several companies preach loyalty until the books looked a little bad, then all of that loyalty talk goes right out the window. Thankfully, so far, I have always been on the too valuable to lose side of the equation but I know that will not ALWAYS be the case in the future.

Back to the topic at hand, people don't choose hard drugs because they have a great life ahead of them and they want to throw it away. They choose hard drugs because they are feel like nothing will get better. They see no direction, they have no one as a role model showing them the way out, as a result their situation is hopeless. They see no chance for them to make a decent life, a respectable life. When a person reaches adulthood and they see no way they can make a better life, they are lost from society, possibly for good. If you have something to live for, it is rare that you throw it away by doing something like opiates. Also, I say hard drugs because marijuana doesn't count. It is no worse than alcohol in my opinion, other than the fact it is illegal still (and wrongly so in my opinion). I don't smoke, never been a fan, but at my previous company I would say 60-70% of my colleagues partook at least a few times a year and that includes upper level execs.

[badrose]

I think work needs to start at a young age with tasks that are reasonable but at least somewhat challenging and rewarded and/or commended when done. The reward can be as simple as the result of the work (not every labor in life pays money, but yet necessary) but some minimal pay creates a sense of independence and serves as a model. Establishing a sense of accomplishment at a young age is essential. Nothing like looking back at a job well done and saying to yourself, "I did that." I learned that if had to do something I didn't enjoy I worked at it harder in order to get it done sooner without compromising quality.

Just getting out of the house and cutting the grass, etc. can brighten your day and motivate more productivity. That's the best drug.

[bigsky]

So it's education's role in the work place. There are not as many railroad (my story) or factory or industry or blue collar jobs paying a middle income wage. You have to get at least a one year bookkeeping certificate or a line cook certificate or a two year router cert or a two year rad tech or similar, and preferably a four year in something that pays, not necessarily Science, Math, Engineering or Technology but it's close.

And some people aren't wired that way and if they've made it to 26 without getting any post secondary, it's a limited world.

[dan_bgblue]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161011135603.htm

[CitizenBBN]

I wasn't really talking about it as an age thing. I know lots of people across all ages who are taking advantage of things like disability fraud and the like. My point is that the work ethic is falling generally, not that the next generation is lazier.

And it's not b/c one group is more lazy and the other group had that ethic so much as the fact that now people can get by more and more without having to work. If we'd offered this kind of stuff in the 1930s and 40s or the 1800s you'd have seen the same thing happen.

After all it was the baby Boomers who came up with union jobs at the car companies that pay people to sit around all day just to meet quotas. So no I don't believe the hype, but I do believe fewer and fewer people in this country have a sense of individualism and accomplishment.

The drugs aren't the disease, they're the symptom. Hard drugs like this have been available for a very long time, so it's not the availability of something like Herion, it's why so many think it's a good idea to take it.

I know every era thinks their era is the worst, the most lazy, etc. and I'm sure that's not the case, but I do think the long term trend to discouraging work and individual responsibility and even the creation of the concept of "teenager" where you're not even supposed to try to take responsibility until you're 20 something years old (not for all but for many) is eroding the nation and one of the symptoms is the number of Americans signing up to do as little work as possible while taking as many drugs as possible.

[badrose]

I think it all boils down to how kids are raised. Work ethics are learned. Additionally, kids should hear the word, No, once in a while whether it's reasonable or not because that too is part of life. Develops coping skills.

[KSRBEvans]

Again, I can't recommend "Hillbilly Elegy" by J.D. Vance strongly enough. One of the points he makes is that so much of what ails the Appalachian culture (including the transplants that have gone into the industrial Midwest and elsewhere) isn't economic but how people are raised and how the cycle perpetuates itself. And a lot of it is what we're discussing here.

[Doc]

I think it all boils down to how kids are raised. Work ethics are learned. Additionally, kids should hear the word, No, once in a while whether it's reasonable or not because that too is part of life. Develops coping skills.

This. Kids today don't know what its like to EARN anything. They all want something GIVEN to them. I blame that on their parents.