> Americans are increasingly worked to the bone. There seems to be no end to stories about people working 3 job, never having vacation, sometimes not even weekends.
My counter: I don't know a single person working like this
You have the people upset that their big tech employer won’t do their laundry anymore. Then you have the underclass of people who can lose everything if they get hurt or show up late for work a few times.
Or sometimes someone who is laid off in a downturn and works like that for a year while waiting for things to improve so they can return to their previous high spending lifestyle with lots of vacation to enjoy the toys they are now just able to make payments on.
Or is it because hustle culture has become so normalized that people could not conceive of the alternatives?
Or maybe it doesn't occur to you that in the middle of the country it is possible to afford a (small!) apartment on minimum wage jobs. We hear stories about how high the cost of living is in CA, but it isn't that bad here.