nObOdY WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe!! - 200 Years Of The Same Excuse

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https://books.google.com/books?id=XpCgCNZwpvoC

https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/R/HTML/R47596.web.html

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Smith-Hughes-Act

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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6040835/

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https://www.newsweek.com/nobody-wants-work-these-days-meme-thread-old-1726774

https://www.nber.org/papers/w29575

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In 1894, a reader of the Rooks County Record in Stockton, Kansas wrote into the paper with a complaint that might sound familiar… "With all of the mines of the country shut down by strikers, what will the poor editor do for coal next winter? It is becoming apparent that nobody wants to work these hard times."

Now, this was during the Panic of 1893… the worst economic depression the country had seen since the Civil War. Banks were collapsing, factories were closing, and 180,000 coal miners had just walked off the job across five states in one of the largest strikes in American history.

But the letter writer's takeaway from all of this wasn't that workers were fighting for survival wages during a financial collapse… it was that coal miners, from the 1800s … had gotten lazy.

In 1905 the Edgefield Advertiser complained that "Labor is scarce, high and very unreliable. None want to work for wages". 1916, and a Binghamton Press in New York article bemoans that "nobody wants to work as hard as they used to."…

1922… a reader of the Mulberry News in Kansas writes in to ask, "What is the cause of unemployment and hard times?" The answer from business owners was the same as it was in 1894… nobody wants to work

1937… in the aftermath of the Great Depression… unemployment still above 14 percent… and peach farmers in Pennsylvania can't find anybody willing to pick fruit for poverty wages. Nobody wants to work.

1952, 1969, 1979… nobody wants to work.

1999… two brothers closing their shoe repair shop after 53 years tell a reporter, "Nobody wants to work anymore. They all want to work in front of a computer and make lots of money." 2006, 2014… nobody wants to work.And then in 2022, a Forbes survey finds that one in five executives says "no one wants to work anymore"… in the tightest labour market in decades, with unemployment sitting near historic lows.So yeah, if unemployment is too high it’s because nobody wants to work… if unemployment is too low… it’s because nobody wants to work… And if the headlines are to be believed, nobody has wanted to work for 130 straight years now.
And you know what?... they might have a point… not many people DO actually want to work, most people do not dream of labour… they work because they NEED to… so at some point we have to ask whether you are just as lazy as your great great grandfather… or if there is some other reason why people are forgoing this essential component of a basic life….
Posted by GG in Default Category on July 01 2026 at 11:16 AM  ·  Public

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