“Kids these days are lazy.”
You’ve heard it. You’ve felt it.
The eye roll. The sigh. The lecture about your work ethic. The talk of participation trophies and safe spaces.
Here’s your receipt.
Since 1979, worker productivity has risen 73-percent. Since 1979, the income of the top onepercent has risen 169-percent. Since 1979, middle class compensation has only risen 23-percent.
You’re not lazy.
You are being robbed.
Here,You are the protagonist of this story.
You have no name in this article because your name doesn’t matter to the spreadsheet. You are a statistic with a heartbeat. You are the decimal point in the profit column.
You, right now, are more productive than any generation before you. You do the work of three people. You answer emails at midnight. You manage projects, you learn new software, you adapt, you optimize, you deliver. You are the 73-percent. You are the engine.
But, your paycheck has gone almost nowhere. That 23-percent gain? It’s a cruel joke. It’s been swallowed whole by the cost of your life. Your rent, your student loan payment, your health insurance premium. Your share of the wealth that you create, shrinks every single year.
You work more hours than your parents did. You have side hustles, not for fun, but for oxygen. You delay families. You postpone dreams. You are better educated, more efficient, and more connected than any worker in history.
And for this, you’re called lazy.
The insult is the spark.
This data is the gasoline.
This wasn’t an accident. It was a policy choice.
For decades after World War II, there was a deal. A contract: You work harder, you get paid more. The line tracking productivity and the line tracking pay moved up together.
Then, in the 1970s, the deal changed. Greed changed it. The idea took hold that a company’s only purpose was to maximize shareholder value. Your labor was not a partner in that project. It was a cost to be minimized.
Unions were busted.
Regulations were stripped.
Globalization was not an inevitability. It was a weapon. A threat. “Take less pay, or the work will go somewhere that will.”
The lines on the graph that once moved together, began to split. Your productivity kept climbing. Your pay flatlined. The gap between them, that chasm of value you created but never received, didn’t vanish. It went somewhere else.
It went to the top.
The 169-percent.
The game was rigged. You were lied to. You were told to keep playing.
But, let’s be clear about what lazy means now.
It means you will not donate your free time to a company that would replace you before your obituary was even published.
It means you refuse to simp for a CEO on LinkedIn who calls your demand for a living wage “entitlement”.
It means you job hop. Loyalty is punished, and the only raise you’ll ever get is the one you take from another company.
It means you have “quietly quit” doing the unpaid, unrecognized extra labor that was never part of your job description.
Lazy is the word they use when you finally, exhaustedly, match your effort to your compensation.
It’s not a description.
It’s a defense.
If you are the problem, then they are not thieves.
So, what do we do?
First, we reject the lie. You’re not lazy; You’re exploited. Say it. The math is on your side.
Second, we rebuild the power they broke. We pass laws that make it easier to unionize, not harder. We repeal right to work statutes that exist only to weaken worker voice. We demand such debate at the tables where the profits are divided.
Third, we change the rules of the game. We tax the obscene gains at the top. We use that money to make life livable for the people doing the living. Healthcare. Childcare. Education. Housing.
WE.
This isn’t a request for charity. It never has been…
This is a demand for justice.
You generated 73-percent more value.
You deserve 73-percent more of the reward.
Not a pizza party.
Not a thank you email.
You deserve your money.
They’ll keep calling you lazy… Let ‘em. It’s the last gasp of a system that knows it’s time is up. It’s the sound of a thief accusing the burglarized house of being too easy to break into.
You built this economy.
You are the 73-percent.
You are the value.
You are the engine.
You are the collective voice that will change it entirely.
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“Since 1979, worker productivity has risen 73-percent. Since 1979, the income of the top onepercent has risen 169-percent. Since 1979, middle class compensation has only risen 23-percent.”
The first millennials weren’t even born before 1981. So they certainly weren’t contributing to worker productivity for at least another 20 years beyond that.
But regardless of generation, how much of that increase is due to factors other than “working harder”?