This is lowkey a bullshit characterization. Here me out for a second before y'all downvote but this is NOT the time for hyperbole or exaggeration. That shit just undercuts the message because the very simple and obvious response from anybody calling the non-working lazy is: "jobs aren't that bad."

And they're right. Because you exaggerated how bad jobs are they can say that. The reality is just about anybody can walk into an Amazon warehouse and make 17+ bucks an hour WITH health insurance. The reality, also, is that that shit isn't fucking good enough. There is no room for growth, the work is hard, the benefits, while there, mostly suck, and most importantly: you can't find housing.

The elephant in the room right now is that the gap between the "haves and have-nots" is growing frighteningly fast. The economy is LOADED with jobs at the bottom rung of the latter but not enough at the top. I'm talking PMC jobs and white-collar professional work like engineering or corporate sales. Those people always made more but it's never quite been this big of a gap and it's growing.

There are a lot of good jobs out there. Truly there are. Go on Indeed and you'll find them. But here's the rub: that job will have a hundred applicants just as qualified as you are. This is the core of the problem: the economy has FAILED to grow GOOD jobs. Competition for those good jobs is fucking enormous. I was looking at being an Aldi District Manager and you wouldn't believe how competitive it is. Then there's the trades. Have fun in the union waiting list, especially as white collar workers demand more remote work and office space construction dries up.

The economy has gotten so fucked up that you straight up cannot live on waitstaff wages or being a delivery guy or anything like that. It's driven people to pursue better jobs which our economy is completely inadequate at creating. The result is a lot of people just dropping out or continuing to compete for those jobs. It's easy to say fuck it and go to Amazon or gig-work when the alternatives pay less and only promise (read: not guarantee) to pay more after 5+ years of experience.