“Not only was pay volatility related to worse health in lower-paid tipped jobs or among freelancers in the gig economy but for higher-paid professionals working in finance, sales and marketing where commissions and performance bonuses are common.”
We, as a society in this country, seem to have internalized the idea that our success or failure is entirely the product of things solely within our complete control. So anyone who succeeds got there on their own merits (with no other outside influence) and anyone who fails is obviously responsible for the consequences that befell them (again, with no outside influence).
This view is completely wrong, in my opinion, but because it lets us do things like short cut having empathy--obviously that homeless person is a bum because they screwed up--and frame resource hoarding as just prudently looking out for one's self, changing this view will be extremely difficult.
I work in healthcare IT and this industry has done more to push me towards wanting a greater sense of collective good and supporting the commons than anything in my life, including going off to college. Day after day, I see patients (as in, I observe them, not that I am providing care for them) who got sick or had an accident or simply had a malformed gene pop up and say "now's my time to shine!" at the wrong time. They're walking towards a future that will take hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep them alive or bring them back to health. Few of us have the kind of insurance that will carry that entire burden and even fewer have sequestered that kind of money inside our 401k accounts.
Edit: Wow you all really like your stress huh?
It says "volatile pay is stressful in a bad way" but makes no claim about stress as a whole?
Not about "stress in a bad way" as opposed to some "good stress".
If you are permant stressing about your job, your life your mortage and you boulder for the first time, you might eperience mortal fear, from falling. Which makes the other stressors less substantial, thus "deactivating" or back-queuing them. After the fear for your life, the stress bodily reflex does not return usually in full force.
You relax. One good "short" stress ended alot of bad stress. There is no good stressor that is permanent.
PS: Thanks to the prof at college teaching us about this. Stress is pure poison, inlcuding flooding your body with cortisols and supressing disease symptoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol#Immune_response
Resulting in the ilusion, that stress keeps you healthy. Meanwhile disease eats you alive and re-appears once you are a wreck.
If you regularly experience stress episodes for months and years, you might as well be a living corpse.
Or we could mass give out calming substances like weed or alcohol, but now we get to were we actually categorize permanent stress correctly. Its a mass applied substance problem, used to extract value from people.
this is not true though. I have a close friend who comes from a very wealthy family, to the point where, if he wants to, he doesn't have to work another day in his life. it took him something like eight years to get a four-year degree. he's struggled a lot with motivation over the years, and I became increasingly empathetic toward his situation the more I talked to him about it. it's really hard to find motivation to do stuff, even stuff you tell yourself you want to do, if it takes effort, and if there's no proverbial "fire lit under your ass" to get you to actually do something ("if I don't get another job before the end of next month, I won't have enough money to pay rent", etc.).
I've done some of my best creative work while under immense stress. great things rarely, if ever, get created in zero-stress environments. this idea that stress is always objectively bad is a very first-world way of thinking.
Stress is objectively bad for your health. That's a different statement from "in certain cases I need to compromise my heath for a greater good."
I never said anything about a "greater good", but I don't disagree that stress is objectively bad for your health, to some degree. but it's a tradeoff you have to make if you want to succeed. before our modern first-world society of wealth and safety, this was obvious to everyone, but it seems as though we've forgotten it. nobody is "owed" or "has a fundamental right" (or whatever) to living a stress-free life. life is a struggle, a competition, a game where there are winners and losers, and you have to do what you can to "win." this is just the immutable nature of… well, nature itself.
> If you could do creative work while not under stress that would be better.
that would be nice, but that's just not how it works for 99.99% of people!