Tale as old as time, people bitching about the generation that they raised......
Part of the why has already been covered. High school and most college kids don't have to work. That's because of their parents and not them. I sure as shit wouldn't have worked through college if my parents were footing the bill. Would anyone here have chosen flipping burgers or waiting tables over parent-sponsored partying in their early 20s?
The second part is that starting with Millennials, people are putting experiences over things. My hunting mentor died 10 years ago this month and hammered into my head that "the best things in life aren't things." I'm 36 and I calculated it last night and I will work 179 days in 2023. That's 3.4 days a week. My wife hasn't seen a patient since May when our baby was born. She will start seeing patients two days a week starting next week. We live comfortably, frugally, within our means financially, and save plenty for retirement. We camp, we hunt, we fish, we ski, and we spend a substantial amount of time together as a family. As we keep getting raises, we both plan on working less and less. I'd rather do all those things listed above than double the size of my house, buy a fancy boat, or upgrade our 20 year old vehicles. No problem with people that think the opposite of me, but don't call me or my generation lazy because we have a different set of priorities. My brother is ten years younger than me and just earned captain at his airline job in under a year. He took the raise and dropped his hours by 25%. Some would call that lazy, but I bet 99.9% of those people couldn't do the backpack camping trips that he does on his extra off time.
