Some More News - Some More News: Why Can’t Gen Z Find A Job?

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

Hi. The American job market, especially for young people, has changed drastically since the 1980s. Does that mean it’s all Reagan’s fault, or just mostly Reagan’s fault? Hosted by Cody JohnstonExecutive Producer - Katy StollDirected by Will GordhWritten by Rachel Van NesProduced by Jonathan HarrisEdited by Gregg MellerPost-Production Supervisor / Motion Graphics & VFX - John ConwayResearcher - Marco Siler-GonzalesGraphics by Clint DeNiscoHead Writer - David Christopher BellPATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/join#somemorenews #GenZ #ai Clean water is one of the best investments you can make for you and your family. For a limited time go to http://CovePure.com/SMN to get $200 off your purchase.Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at http://trueclassic.com/SMN! #trueclassicpodIf you’re 21 or older, grab 25% off your first INDACLOUD order plus free shipping with code SMN at http://indacloud.co! Pluto TV. Stream Now. Pay Never.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lightning Crash! Lightning Crash! Chains rattling! It's spooky season! Headless horse sounds! That would just be silence. You gotta watch the scary movies, right? There's that ghost dog sequel. Also the new Nightmare on Elm Street. Weapons is on streaming.

Anyone watch Weapons? It's about weapons. This episode is not about weapons. Or weapons. It's about the job market. But we can make it scale. So, all right, here we go. All weapons it. This is a true story that happened here in my country two years ago.

A lot of college grads were unemployed in really weird ways in this story. And you'll probably find it all over the news because economists and top people in this country were like so freaked out about not being able to solve it that they, you know what? This is obviously not working. That failed. Okay. So we'll just do an episode about it. Curse of the tale of the painful death of entry-level jobs! Listen, it's scary, just not in the way where somebody stabs themselves in the face with a fork in their house.

More in the way where people simply don't have houses to begin with. Speaking of financial terror, you should like this video and subscribe to our channel. Your validation sustains us! And it's free to do because, boy! Money. Yeesh. The national job situation is bad and getting worse. The number of Gen Z grads who can't find a full-time job in their first year out of college has more than doubled from the previous generations.

Probably related is the fact that the unemployment rate for these same grads is beyond double the overall rate. Everything is twice as bad, cool, radical even. And this isn't just like Trump. I mean, he's not going to make it better, but we've been playing this turd fiddle for a while now. People are dumping tens and twenties and hundreds of thousands of dollars on student loans for degrees that end up being useless. Just really expensive monuments to failure you get to hang on your walls, if you can afford walls. Upward mobility has flatlined, and the job market is flush with both experienced workers and college grads competing to do the same basic jobs.

Naturally, employers have begun prioritizing candidates with experience over a college education. And like, yeah, in theory, it's better to have experience than an expensive degree. But how do you start now? Where are the entry-level jobs if they all require experience? We've turned job hunting into this labyrinthine quest to answer a drunk wizard's riddles three.

It's broken, obviously. But the question now is whether we want to fix it or replace it with something else. Like, I'm not gonna rant about how woke colleges are a waste of time, because aside from the degree part, there's also value in growing your knowledge in a wide range of topics

and the social experience of college, expanding your worldview, et cetera. But for some jobs, yeah, is the pipeline from school to work really that precious? Because that wasn't always the case. Back in the 1950s through 70s, big companies operated within, an internal labor market, meaning that they hired entry-level workers trained them and promoted

them up the ranks. College degrees weren't mandatory to lock down these positions. It was widely accepted that people had the capacity to learn on the job whether or not they'd passed Philosophy 101. Entry-level jobs were a training ground for young employees to do basic admin while they got a lay of the land and learned to do more complicated tasks. Employers used this internal pipeline to scoot employees up the corporate ladder, keeping them around for decades. Organizations didn't do this out of some old tiny obligation to take care of their employees. They did it to keep homegrown talent from moseying over to the competition. It's always gonna be about money.

Which is fine, I guess. They're corporations. Not that you'll forget, but every decision being made is through that lens. They're robots looking to eat the largest pile of money, much like that money-eating robot I tried to build and had to destroy. It's a big mistake. Went straight for the children. Also, it cost a lot of money.

Anyway, so during the 80s, this big money machine made a huge adjustment. The U.S. economy got slapped with back-to-back recessions in 1980 and 1981. By the end of 1982, the unemployment rate rose to 10.8%, the highest since the Great Depression. Japan and Germany entered the chat as rising manufacturing powerhouses, pressuring U.S. firms to cut costs, outsource talent,

and hire outside of the company to meet the bottom line. Remember this scene from Back of the Future part three. Now, under this circuit fail, it says made in Japan. What do you mean, Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan. Unbelievable.

That is this. A guy living in the 50s talking to a rad dude from the 80s. Two different worlds. Companies were now thinking globally, and so United States workers were being pushed aside, which is all to say that employers didn't want to spend the time or money to train people, and instead started prioritizing applicants with college degrees. So, for example, by 2015, when Back to the Future Part 2 takes place, only 16% of working factory production supervisors had college degrees,

despite 67% of production supervisors job postings asking for one. This phenomenon is known as degree inflation, or the shift from jobs that had been done just fine by people without diplomas, now all of a sudden requiring them. It's just the corporate norm now. Training is for school and work is for work, and you don't get to learn while at work. Though you do have to work at school.

Curious. According to one survey, Over 50% of executives see learning and development programs as a waste of company time, while 84% of workers say they would want it. But for corporate, it's just not on their radar. I mean, look at everything out there. Mass firings and constant mergers and restructuring. It's hard to imagine a company really giving a shit about their employees,

or their employees giving a shit about them. In fact, right now, employee turnover is both quite high and preventable. One reason is that it's apparently the only way to get a promotion. The company you work for won't do it, so you have to find another job that pays more, a self-promotion. This is all probably why companies get to prioritize people with experience, right? Layoffs and quitting means this constant move from place to place, which of course brings us back to the Youngs,

the people who probably didn't even appreciate my cool back to the future references, who are now struggling to start their lives. 50% of recent college grads are under-employed. Meanwhile, CEO pay has risen 1,460% since the late 70s. Oh, geez, how do we balance this equation out? Don't know, didn't go to school, don't know math. It's broken, a broken machine that may have been designed like that. The problem is that we can't all stop to have it fixed.

People are always looking for work, and they have to survive within the rules of a a twisted system, even if they know it's messed up. For example, more and more people are applying to grad school, which is usually a sign that a financial crisis is on its way. When jobs aren't available, people weather the storm by chasing masters or PhDs, then emerge from their financial tornado shelters more hireable than ever. In theory, because even that system is broken. MBA grads from traditionally good schools like Harvard are also struggling to find work.

Will hunting was right. Harvard is bullshit. How do you like them apples? Can people still even afford apples? Or have they been tariffed? I bet they've been tariffed. So basically, we have this arms race where young people have to do this thing called upskilling, where they just keep training to become more qualified than the next person.

You might recognize this as the thing companies used to do for people. The e-learning market was worth nearly $400 billion in 2022. Some of this training is paid for by employers, but a lot of it is charged to the job candidate's credit cards. It's the same problem with college, where it favors people who can afford to do it on top of paying for college, because most of the people upskilling already have college degrees. This is all to say that people are struggling for jobs so much that we've created a second learning industry on top of the first one. You pay for school, then you gotta pay for second more special school,

special school and then eventually you might actually get paid yourself. In theory. It's like a pyramid scheme or the entertainment industry. Like I can't help but to be reminded of what it's like in my neck of the woods. Sunny Los Angeles. But if you want to make it as like a filmmaker or comedian, you have to either have a lot of money or connections already or be willing to work for free. Also, you need Maxi. Maxi is very important. Everyone, that for some reason because it's just the industry. But now it's every industry. Welcome everybody!

More and more college grads are applying for internships to just get their foot in the door. Can't stress enough that this is the point in their lives where people should be coming to them with jobs. Everything's upside down. Black is white. Dogs are cats. Warmbos are bormboes.

And today, nearly one-third of entry-level jobs require two years or more. years or more of experience. Hey, that's not what entry level means. Oh, and on top of all of what I said, there's apparently a labor shortage, so young people can't find a job, but also, we don't have enough people working jobs. Are we all losing our minds? I know I keep asking this, but did we all die and are living out some kind of Jacob's Ladder situation? Spoilers for Jacob's Ladder. Also, I'm making this sound more confusing than it is, because we're going to go to an ad break. And I really wanted to grab you consensually.

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there's actually a labor shortage, even though Gen Z is struggling to find jobs. What sorcery is that? What dark figure could possibly be blamed for creating the worst possible conditions for a country where people and industries are jobless. It's Reagan. Obviously, you can trace this back to Ronald Reagan. The actor? It wasn't all his fault. But during the 80s, when companies were focusing on a global market, the Reagan administration

was also pushing higher education while actively defunding it. In 1983, they published a nation at risk, a report that claimed there was a rising tide of mediocrity among educated Americans. driving guidance counselors, parents, and policy makers to prioritize standardized testing and college prep curricula over trades. At that same time, trade education ended up with less money overall, which mainly affected low-income students and students with disabilities. And so over time, the administration's focus on academic excellence reinforced the stigma that trade education was the non-college track for people who couldn't hack it academically, a perception that just so happened to disproportionately affect minority and working class students. This is all to say that a lot of middle class predominantly white millennials grew up with teachers

saying stuff like, go to college or else you'll have to become a plumber, as if that was a bad thing to be. And this is why. And this tradition carried on, even as those types of entry-level jobs dried up. Then a second thing happened, or was happening. The boomers started to retire, which brought down the labor numbers. And then there was that guy, the one who hates Mexican people, not that one, the other one. Well, also that one too. See, since 2019, immigrants have been responsible

for 88% of America's labor force growth. Well, guess what? It turns out that the places we don't have enough trained employees, trade jobs, the service industry, health care, well, those are all jobs that are traditionally filled by immigrant populations. If you start rounding them up and sending them to camps, guess what? Also, just don't do that generally, it's evil. Basically, starting with

Reagan, Americans were told that there was a class of jobs that they need not focus on. Not necessarily because they were low-paying jobs, but trade jobs that didn't require college educations. Those industries were filled with people who are now retiring or people we've now decided to hate. And now, we need more people to take those jobs, except everyone available, Gen Z all went into the wrong fields. They have bills to pay. Rent is cosmically and comically high. They can't pick up a fast food gig.

They can't retrain to be a construction worker. Porn is HD now, so there's a higher bar to pass there. They can't get a freaking job. Or, or, I guess, they're just spoiled brats. Every generation comes and wants to do better than their parents dead. Every generation, but I'm sorry. If you only want to work four hours, it's going to be harder for you to get a house.

Oh, they don't want to work. They're spoiled brats. They've grown up in a world where everyone gets a trophy generation. And like the idea of showing up and going through traffic and being at the office at 845 and work until six, they look at you like, you got 10 heads to it. We still doing this? Really? Dude who created barstool sports is going to lecture people on work ethic?

Fucking Theodore Rex wants to talk down to kids about work hours. They aren't lazy, ya dildos. They spent their entire lives training to be something before learning that we don't need that thing and are now expected to start over. They're depressed and they're broke. No, whoopi, the reason they can't get a house isn't because they only want to work a few hours a day.

It's because they can't find a fucking job and home prices have doubled in the last 20 years. Unions, pensions, affordable housing, all gone. Killed by a greatest generation fake cowboy and his boomer Gen X followers who now complain that young people don't want to work. You assholes. They're twisting in the wind.

The adults in their life made a deal with them. They said, go to school or you'll be flipping burgers. And now the only jobs available are flipping burgers, which absolutely doesn't pay rent, let alone their student loans. And that stuff compounds. It's hard to push yourself to find a job when you're depressed, right?

Deaths of despair are up right now. Real hot with the kids. kids. It's higher for people who graduate into a recession. And of course, it's very high among white men without a bachelor's degree. Between 2013 and 2019, the alcohol-related mortality rate for that group increased by 41%. The suicide rate went up by 17% and drug-related deaths rose by 73%. There's probably a lot of different reasons for this. I blame wokeness, but one of them has to be the pressure we put on men specifically when a comes to getting a job.

The point is, no, Gen Z isn't lazy. They inherited a fucking nightmare. They were born into 9-11 war mongering, went to high school during a recession, and then graduated into a global pandemic. I'm surprised they aren't more depressed. And in fact, the ones who are telling employers to fuck off are probably the most well-adjusted.

We millennials, we tried to play their stupid little game. We worked for cheap or free. We stayed late and we're still broke. Gen Z, on the other hand, doesn't give a shit about company culture and just wants to get paid. Good for them. Someone has to break the cycle of abuse and it wasn't my generation.

Gen Z is more salary motivated while simultaneously putting more value on personal life than work life. The majority of them don't think wealth is a primary sign of success. Fully expect to jump around jobs and a lot of them don't see their career as their identity.

They'd rather work only sometimes remotely and other times in the office. They're not lazy, they're the opposite. They've simply watched the generations before them screw up royally and want to course correct. They're pushing unions again, which we so sorely need. Take Starbucks Workers United, which was founded in 2021 and has grown to more than 600 coffee shops.

Workers at Amazon, Trader Joe's, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Ben and Jerry's, Chipotle, Arii, and Volkswagen have successfully formed unions, and at Disney, UPS, and Kaiser Permanente, unions won record wage increases. Listen to and follow Gen Z. Not about everything, of course, but the world is different from even when Gen X was young.

And they know it and see the problems. And the thing is, it's not done being different. Right now, as we speak, the entire working world is changing. For the better? No. Yes. Maybe. Let's talk about AI. I don't want to, but it is a factor in this entire nightmare, and Gen Z is right there on the front lines, fighting the robots. They will, more than any of us, no doubt, find a way to coexist with AI. Not in a fun end of the Matrix Revolutions kind of way, but for example, one of the things they have to contend with is that employers are using AI software to screen applications and resumes. And wouldn't you know it, The software sucks. AI is very literal,

which is why you can't give every damn job to a computer. And so if your resume doesn't have the exact keywords being scanned for, it gets tossed. You might have skills that are transferable to the job you're applying for, but the robot can't tell that. Probably should just be a human instead, you know, because AI recruiters are also somehow still racist and sexist, possibly because they were programmed by people who were.

also racist and sexist. According to UW researchers, AI will not select a black-associated name over a white-associated name, ever. These language learning models favored white-associated names 85% of the time and filtered out women-associated names 89% of the time. This is bad, considering 99% of Fortune 500 companies have already implemented some form of this automation into their hiring process. So corporate America is about to get a lot more white and a lot more male than it already was. Like the only upside to an AI recruiter

is that one would assume they'd look at people based on merit and without bias. And they still manage to make them scumbags. Great work. But of course, Gen Z is also using AI to write their resumes and cover letters now. Because why not? So now the entire hiring process is just two robots talking to each other, I guess.

Coincidentally, according to one business consulting firm, 93% of hiring managers report that the hiring process takes longer and is more expensive than just two years ago. Gee, I wonder if we should just do it with humans like we did for most of human history. But this is going to be the next decade or so, right? Gen Z will now have to compete with AI systems for entry-level jobs, only for companies to eventually realize that they can't replace those jobs with computers. It's already happening. There is an entirely new industry of people being hired to fix the mistakes of AI. Guys, you've made more steps.

How are you making more steps? Just use people to hire people. It's so exhausting to watch these corporations spend big. to learn something we already know. And it's going to be hard. These companies have gone all in on this technology with absolutely no idea how to actually use it. And it's not making them money.

A recent MIT report found that 95% of businesses, Generative AI pilots, are getting zero return on investment. Basically, we're watching a bubble. It's taking jobs, sucking up all the money, and then we're going to, when it bursts, it's going to cost even more jobs when everyone downsizes. But that isn't to say that AI will go away completely. And there are a lot of jobs that they absolutely can replace. Aside from automation, another reason certain jobs are going away is because companies have been flattening their corporate structure. Basically, middle management has been slowly

dissolved and a single person works multiple jobs now. Even large companies are doing this, despite large companies needing more management and communication and not less. But one assumes that AI will fill in those blanks and enable less people to do more work. This applies to everything. Art. A graphic designer, for example, can use AI to alter pictures faster, just like how Photoshop itself changed the industry. Companies can hire fewer people to do their art because each artist works faster and so on. In a lot of ways, AI is not unlike every tech advancement before it. And I guess that brings us to our new segment. Is this like even bad or whatever?

So we here on this show to you have been pretty hard on AI in the past, and just to get it out of the way, we still believe everything we've said. AI art sucks and fascists love it. The hype around AI sucks. The energy it sucks, sucks. Most of AI sucks. Not necessarily because AI inherently sucks, but because the people pushing AI are trying to inject it into every precious cranny of our lives. But let's assume for a moment that we figure out how to make AI environmentally responsible. It's not, to be clear, but a lot of things aren't. And if it wasn't eating our planet, well, there's a world in which we could potentially like having AI around. I know this because a lot of sci-fi writers have invented those worlds. Everyone loves data, except for lore, his evil twin brother, God, TV is so silly.

But even if we don't get fuckable robots and their bizarro siblings, we're going to get some degree of AI, maybe not literally an intelligence, but a tool. A tool that will save us time the way previous tools have. Star Trek, which I guess I'm talking about, also had a computer that could instantly access information and a holodeck that would generate images on request. That's probably closer to the AI will be. get used to. And unfortunately, that will allow sinister uses by sinister actors. And yes, it's

going to replace jobs. But of course, advancements in technology are always going to do this to some degree. According to the CEO of Indeed, which I guess makes him a job expert, two-thirds of jobs are vulnerable to some sort of AI automation. But it's unclear if he means those jobs will be fully replaced or reduced or augmented. And what usually happens in these situations is that we evolve and create new and different jobs as the old ones become obsolete. Back in the 1870s, roughly half of people in the U.S. worked on a farm. Now, less than 2% of people are farmers, which makes sense.

It would be weird if that wasn't true. According to researchers at MIT, 60% of the jobs people had in 2018 didn't exist 80 years earlier. Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum predicted that AI will create 97,000, for the 85 million it eliminates. The question and problem, however, is what jobs we're talking about? See, once all these tech freaks

calm down and this bubble bursts, we'll likely get more muted and less intrusive AI systems that'll be injected into various industries, like the medical field, and yes, even the entertainment industry. We won't replace all the actors or writers with AI, but we'll probably use AI to aid in visual effects

and tedious tasks. There's this thing called rotoscoping where an artist would trace over an image of a movie frame by frame, either to animate a scene or remove something for a visual effect. I used to do it for very silly videos. It can be satisfying, but it's also quite tedious. That job, which used to be done by a lot of people,

is now mostly done by computers. I bring this up because a roto artist not only used to be a major job, but an entry level job. And this is an issue. across all industries with tech advancements. They usually replace the tedious tasks that used to be given to assistant or apprentice roles.

Medical students, for example, who do menial tasks, like note-taking will have those duties pushed to an AI. And so once again, we're faced with the question of how a person can break into an industry. Not to mention that in the short run, we're absolutely going to see companies go apeshit over replacing jobs with AI. For example, a year,

ago, the software company, Atlassian, came out with this reassuring video that AI won't take their jobs. It was a presentation to their staff literally titled, Why AI Won't Take Your Job. So today we'll be covering three key things. Firstly, our beliefs of where AI is headed and three reasons why we believe AI won't take your job and hopefully as well my job. Very reassuring. I bet that worked out, right? You think that worked out? Or do you think we have another clip we're about to cut to? As 150 jobs disappear in the tech industries, jobs to be replaced by artificial intelligence.

The jobs are to be cut from Atlassian, the Sydney-based global software success story that's made billionaires of its local founders. One of them, CEO Mike Cannon Brooks, broke the news to his staff today in a pre-recorded video message. So to answer the, the question of this segment, is it like even bad or whatever? The answer is, yeah. In the short term, it will be bad. But in the long term, it will be in theory with a lot of caveats,

including regulation that our current legislators are not equipped to implement. Maybe fine. Good maybe, even. Again, assuming we figure out how to mitigate the environmental impact of it all and take measures to assure that we're doing something about this migration of jobs. And that's kind of the key to all of this. The reduction of entry-level jobs, the restructuring of corporations, the AI of it all. It all speaks to this larger transitional period that we have to contend with. And that brings us back to the first question of whether we want to fix it or replace it with something else. Work is just different now.

Do we refuse that change or do we accept that? And how do we accept that? That's a good question for after the final ad break, last. break ever forever in this episode hi friends you know the entire promise of the future was never having to look into someone else's eyes in person getting everything delivered via hologram into our mind tubes and yet we still have to look at and speak with other people on occasion the doctor the parole officer the person who sells you THC and affiliated products but now you can scratch that

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Pay never. Nah, it's Cody again. Cody Johnston, or Mr. Jay, as my hench girlfriend calls me. We were talking about a generation of youngs who are now entering a world of debt and wealth inequality who cannot find a simple entry-level job in the fields they went to school for, or really any good-paying gig that doesn't involve debasing yourself for Mr. Beast. Meanwhile, the companies with the most money seem obsessed with replacing everyone with robots that do a worse job than a human and eat all of our water and energy, which seems like the opposite of why we would want robots. It's grim, but it's in some ways similar to transitional periods in our past. And so for a solution, perhaps we can examine what leaders have done in similar situations. Perhaps this is something the next candidate for the Oval Office, assuming we are allowed more electors. can run on. So, historically speaking, we have some options. For one, we could reintroduce

guaranteed jobs programs like FDR's Works Progress Administration, which employed roughly 8.5 million Americans to build schools, hospitals, roads, and other public works. More recently, the Biden administration introduced the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which was predicted to create more than 9 million jobs in climate infrastructure over the next decade. That could work. You know, assuming we didn't follow up with electing a fucking nightmare

who hates everything. So we didn't do that, right? Oh, wait, I remember. Despite running on tremendous job creation, Trump seems determined to ruin our economy. Like he's doing a prank or something. He signed executive orders freezing both of these acts

on his first day in office. This was found to be unlawful and funding resumed in April, but, you know, the word unlawful hasn't really stopped him in the past. Plus, it's pretty hard to advance quickly among government shutdowns and staff cuts. So, moving on. Another option is to introduce, continue, and expand retraining and social programs like the OGGI bill, which helped veterans go to college or vocational school after they got back from all that war we made them do. There's also trade adjustment assistance, which

gave workers who lost their jobs to overseas competition, financial support, and training. The TAA had been around for 50 years, but in 2022, under the Biden administration, Congress failed to reauthorize the program and it expired, much like our hopes and dreams for a better and brighter future. So, yeah, also not looking great. And as one assumes, support for unemployed workers via job training and financial assistance has only gotten worse. The Trump administration is aiming to consolidate all of the current 11 federal job training programs, which would effectively cut those funds by nearly 40%.

I'll just assume that that extra money is going to everybody's $5,000 doge checks any day now. On the flip side, some budgets proposed would increase funding for apprentice programs. But those increases don't come anywhere near the cuts made to education and job training. It's like setting your house on fire and then bragging about how you bought a fire extinguisher. All this is to say that government support for struggling workers isn't exactly in vogue right now. We'd have to, you know, probably get better people running the country. It's kind of hard to think about this when there are like 10 other fascist-shaped obstacles we need to overcome first. But we can dream.

And I guess when any solution is a pie in the sky hope, we may as well dream bigger in our brand new, exciting segment that we'll probably never bring back. What if? Not the Marvel one. So let's pretend we had actual leaders in charge. It's fun to pretend. Better yet, we have a magic amulet that grants all of our wishes. Do those wishes come at a terrible price? We will cross that bridge when we get to it. Or we'll just wish that bridges don't exist so we don't have to. Surely, no unforeseen consequences there. What are some ways to mitigate the problems of AI and a lack

of entry-level jobs? Or, heck, how do we turn that problem into a solution? Turn a dystopia into a utopia. Or better yet, a wee-topia. A world where robots do all of our jobs for us should be good, after all. So why don't we make it good? For example, robot taxes. This isn't my idea, and a lot of people have come up with it. But what if we tax the companies using AI to replace workers? You know how corporations love taxes? Then we would give the money generated from automation back to the people whose lives were most disrupted by it. These funds could be used to educate and train displaced workers so they can re-enter the workforce. Or we just pay people to exist. You know, universal basic income or universal basic capital programs.

The difference between the two is that UBI would give us recurring payments, whereas UBC would make us stakeholders with equity. Basically, you either get a check in the mail or a stock certificate. I feel like the check would be better in case the president tweets that your company's too woke and that a little certificate's worthless

and the Antifa's doing woke stuff at Coca-Cola or whatever. I don't know. But the important key here is to focus on pre-distribution rather than redistribution, which we should also still do, by the way. We're eventually going to have trillionaires and dirt-poor starving people. It's disgusting. But companies find all sorts of ways to get out of paying money once they get it. You know, because they're greedy. Pre-distribution ensures they don't have a choice in the matter. This isn't even a pipe dream, by the way. People have done this already.

When oil extraction began off the coast of Norway in 1967, their government used a wealth redistribution program to tax the shit out of oil companies and funnel that capital into a sovereign wealth fund. This was the Norwegian government's Plan A, not their plan, whoops. And over in Ireland, they're working on permanent universal basic income for artists, just paying people to do art. Heck, it's not even just happening in those fancy rain and snow. countries. In fact, it's happening in the exact opposite place, New Mexico. New Mexico's taxes

on oil production just surpassed the revenue they get from income taxes. And so legislators use the $2 billion plus to cover child care subsidies to make college tuition and trade school education free and to lower personal income taxes. Turns out it's so easy to fix a lot of problems if we just go to the people hoarding incredible amounts of wealth and make them pay toward the common good. Whoa! That's the Ong emoji sound. Look, it comes down to this.

It's not working anymore. People want to be working, but the system isn't working. The system where people go to school and get jobs and can afford a house and to raise a family. It's broken. It broke a while ago. And as technology advances, it just gets more and more broken. No amount of the richest

guy in history on the planet saying, oh, everyone will simply buy two of my robots that don't exist yet, is going to change that. So now we're at a crossroads. On one end, we could just keep doing what we're doing and pretend it's still working. Let capitalism continue on, and corporations will continue to get bigger and bigger and take over fundamental government services and essential resources until we're all wearing Wayland-Utani jumpsuits. That is the direction we're currently facing, one where capitalism dies and is replaced with a form of techno or neo-futalism. That's what's happening now. Everyone is struggling to live, driving their Ubers and starting their GoFundMe's,

and corporations are deciding which scraps we get to keep. The deal has been broken. Capitalism is dying, and its primary beneficiaries are shoveling people's livelihoods into a furnace that powers the life support system keeping it going. So maybe we have to pull the plug. Kill it on our terms. With a shovel, or fireworks maybe. And I think Gen Z is sensing this.

Their waning attention to work culture is perhaps something we should admire and take note of. This country was built on a Protestant work ethic where our vocation is our spiritual salvation. But what happens when there aren't any vocations left? Do we all just starve? Or perhaps we should start thinking about a future where not everyone has to get a job in order to survive and not just because there, you know, aren't any. But isn't that like the entire goal of civilization? When you picture a utopia or heaven, do you picture people having to work in factories?

Or do you picture cool cloud orgies with hot tubs and fucked up masks? Because it's Halloween and woo-orgy. So anyway, that solves the problem with entry-level jobs. You are welcome, Gen Z. Give me your doge checks. There are no doge checks? But they said there'd be... But they said there would be those checks.

Well, that's the end of that episode. Make sure to like and subscribe. I said it at the beginning, and I'm singing. at the end and there's nothing you can do about it we've got a podcast called even more news check it out and listen to this show as a podcast if you want the podcast places on this YouTube channel it's all over the place there are too many podcasts which is true there are look look it's a skeleton ah spooky it's October get out of here yeah you must be who's taking all our Social Security

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