I can completely relate since I heard a similar litany spoken in 2000 when I was a younger person in the Eighties. Then the 2008 counterattack was “You didn’t listen to me and got a degree in something completely useless you dumbass!” Gen X (me), Mills (many friends) and Gen Z (my nephews and niece) can count on the Boomers to continue complaining while they forget how much easier they had it, how much the cost of essentials have gone up exponentially (through their leaders destroying the economy in 2007) and when they got out of high school or college, they weren’t competing with slaves from Mexico, China or India for the jerbs they had, which also paid enough for them to own a summer home.
One thing I’m pretty confident about, the Pandemic has accelerated the plans of the Plantations of Low Wages (aka Fast Food, low-end Retail and menial gigs) to start deploying robots. I’ve already seen one cooking french fries for White Castle by Miso Robotics. Nicknamed Flippy, its entry-level price is $30K seems steep at first but when it comes to restaurants, labor is the biggest expense and when you normalize Flippy, the ‘bot pays for itself in a year by my estimates. Technically minimum wage remains an insulting $7.25/hour. I’ll be generous and say $10/hour with two part-time people since only salaried people work full time (and then some). Now comes my quick n’ dirty math…the part-time pair would be roughly $21K/year if the two were 40 hours/week together. However…until there’s a Westworld/Futurama-level revolt, robots aren’t restricted to eight-hour days with at least one full day off. Plus they don’t bitch (yet), have OSHA on speed dial nor get poached by a slightly better paying gig.
So quit yer bellyaching and boring us with your halcyon days Boomers! Your demands for cheap food, cheap goods, etc. are going to bring Skynet online sooner!
