I usually read "People don't want to work!" statements as a sentence fragment. It's the first half of a whole statement. The second half of the statement is a variation on: "for the shitty wages or conditions I'm offering and will rescind at a moment's notice for any made up reason I can imagine".
The idea I get from the Cato echoing types is if you have a job you should beg and scrape and genuflect for your betters to thank them for their grace in employing you.
I think this meme accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis. Companies contracted but demanded more work from their remaining employees. Feeling fortunate to be employed they increased individual output to cover for the reduced head count. Companies screwed over employees then shrugged their shoulders with the "it's the economy" refrain.
Yes this is exactly right. There's a logical endpoint to their worldview: feudalism. It's got everything they want: the jobs (100% employment!), the genuflecting, the huge profits.
I think I first heard it from Yanis Varoufakis (https://youtu.be/YpOLHSzZ8jc). Watched as many interviews of him as I could find during those long days at the beginning and middle of the pandemic. He's an exceedingly sane person.
Yeah I wasn't gonna make a whole big thing about it, but I didn't pull that out of a hat. I know Varoufakis, but I hadn't heard him talk about techno-feudalism. In fact I'd heard the phrase "neo-feudalism" from people like Jodi Dean and Joel Kotkin, who have good stuff on this (though who's to say - I'm neither an economist nor a historian). I'll try to find YV's stuff and read it, I love him and I'm sure it's well thought out.
The idea I get from the Cato echoing types is if you have a job you should beg and scrape and genuflect for your betters to thank them for their grace in employing you.
I think this meme accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis. Companies contracted but demanded more work from their remaining employees. Feeling fortunate to be employed they increased individual output to cover for the reduced head count. Companies screwed over employees then shrugged their shoulders with the "it's the economy" refrain.