Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Thank you for joining us today. I'm Scott Schiff with the Atla Society, introducing our senior scholar, Richard Salzman, who will be discussing the dichotomy between quietly quitting places that no longer fit your values and the going gulp method. Epitomized an atla shrug. Uh, while Richard is giving us his thoughts, feel free to raise your hands with questions. We'll bring you up to the stage to ask. Once he's done, uh, we'd ask everyone to share the room. Richard, thanks so much for doing this topic. It's, uh, very timely with, uh, quiet, quitting being such a trend. Um, what's the distinction between that and going golf?
Speaker 1 00:00:43 Well, thank you for sponsor, uh, for hosting this, Scott, and thanks all for joining the, uh, concept of quiet quitting. If you Google it or if you go anywhere, it's all over the place now, and I count it as something coming up roughly in the last year or so. Now, uh, this, immediately when I heard about it and investigated it, it came to mind. Uh, any kind of quitting the job ambition, uh, however it's put, uh, would remind an objective of the strike in Atlas Shrug, and of course, aware of labor strikes over the years of the satisfied, so they strike and object and withdraw and all that kind of thing. Then what's unique about Atlas Shrug de course is that I ran flips the script, so to speak, and says, uh, what if the, uh, the real, most prominent, uh, people of intelligence and productivity quit?
Speaker 1 00:01:45 Um, the ones most reviled, of course, by Marx and others as exploiters and blood sucking white collar workers and CEOs and things like that. So, um, the, the idea of the men of the mind design ran called them, and not just business people, by the way, artists, engineers, philosophers have a philosopher in Atlas Shrug dos at one point, flipping burgers in a remote diner. Um, it's the broad concept of the men of the mind who are being exploited. She says, And what if they just quit? They didn't make any demands. They just said, We will withdraw our sanction, and, uh, if we're such exploiters, uh, apparently the world will go on better without us. And of course, it collapses Now. Um, so that's one bit of context. I don't wanna give too much away of Atlas Shrug. The those who haven't read it should read it.
Speaker 1 00:02:38 But another contextually interesting point to make in regards to quiet quitting is, um, 2009, seems like a long time ago now, but 2009, the financial crisis, the stock market crash and all that, uh, the housing crisis, Uh, a concept grew called going ga. So I forget who coined it, and you could look it up, but if you just Google going gat, it was all over the place in 2000 9, 10, 11. And there very somewhat similarly, I wouldn't say it was quite as the same as in Atlas Shrug, but the idea was, Hey, banks are getting bailed out for making reckless home loans. Uh, reckless home borrowers are getting bailed out. What the hell's going on here? I've, you know, acted responsibly. And, uh, uh, and there's a kind of shrugging that goes on, and people say, uh, Listen, I've acted responsibly. Why are others getting bailed out when I've acted virtuously and productively?
Speaker 1 00:03:40 So, it's not that there was widespread quitting of jobs at the time, but there was just, uh, among the Tea Party movement, if you remember that, and others, uh, they were literally holding up signs. Uh, who was John Gold? Uh, holding up signs at their rallies about Atlas Shrug? I was one of them, yeah. And, um, it was really started by a guy on cnbc, Rick Santelli. Now, Rick Sin was, uh, a reporter who would report every day from the commodities exchanges in Chicago, and he's the one, one morning who very effectively said, What the hell is going on here? Have you paid your mortgage? Are you getting a bailout? And, um, I think he invoked, literally invoked, Atlas shrugged. And it led to quite a, a movement anyway, vast increase in sales also of Atlas Shrug during that period. And, uh, it helped that there were a couple of, uh, biographies of Rand that were released in 2009 that had been worked on for years prior to that.
Speaker 1 00:04:40 Anyway, so context there as well. The, I the whole concept of going golf was a major social phenomenon in the US during, uh, the 2009 to 11 period. Now, it wasn't just by the way, the financial crisis, the Tea Party, uh, unlike the establishment and Republicans, the Tea Party movement was looking to constitutional government. They were looking back to the founders. And the idea that the reason the country had gone off the rails is that it had abandoned, and this is largely true. We were in a post constitutional period. The Constitu meant nothing anymore. Government could do whatever the hell it wanted, and had no constitutional restraints. So, um, the, the whole idea of the Tea Party, the idea of invoking back to like 1770s was, uh, the government had effectively had become George iii, uh, a tyrannical, uh, monarch. Uh, we know that the Tea Party didn't really survive in any substantial form.
Speaker 1 00:05:40 That's not the point. The point is Iran's ideas or the concept of, I'm mad as Helen, I'm not gonna take it anymore. That's actually from Network. 1979 movie, Uh, people who are largely responsible in their behavior, largely responsible. You know, they, they, they get a job. They don't quit school. They finish their degree. They, uh, pay the mortgage, they support the family. They're paying the taxes, and they get upset quite rightly about all the bailouts and all the subsidies and all the parasitism and, and that kind of thing. Now, current context, quiet, quitting. I have come to learn in investigating this for, uh, a couple of weeks. Now, uh, as a broad point, I would say it's fake. It's not real. It's, uh, there's something to it, and I'll explain what there is to it, but it has nothing to do, not only with Iron Rand's concept, but not even with the 2009 concept of going golf.
Speaker 1 00:06:46 Quiet. Quitting is not actually quitting your job. It's being on the job and doing the bare minimum. It's on the job, and just doing what the job description requires. It means not going above and beyond the call of duty, as they say, It's a rejection of, Here's another thing you can look up. It's a rejection of what today is called the hustle culture, anti hustle. Now, I have an excerpt from one of the essays. It's a rejection of hustle culture quote, where people believe they'll be promoted or paid better for working beyond the confines of their job description. Now, I'm gonna sound old fashioned here, but I remember when I went into the workforce in the early eighties, but even before that, when I was a teen working in lumber yards and elsewhere, the advice I got was from my father and from others. The advice I got was something like this, Whatever job you have, do the job above that do.
Speaker 1 00:07:51 There's always a job above some job. If you are a, you know, a manual laborer, there's some, you know, skilled job in between, and then all the way up to managerial, all the way up to ceo. And the idea was be benevolently, expectant that if you do not only your job, but uh, offer to do extra, stay a little later, take on an additional tax, fill in for another worker, that, and here's the benevolent premise that a boss will notice, then a boss will see. And reward ambition. Ambition meaning the desire to improve oneself, the desire to become more productive, the desire to contribute and not have the malevolent expectation. I'm gonna be exploited by the man. I'm gonna be underpaid by the boss. You know, these kind of Marxist premises that if you have them, you not only wouldn't join these companies, you wouldn't certainly go above and beyond.
Speaker 1 00:08:49 So, um, that's what hustle culture is, if you will. And if you want a sports analogy, you know, like a basketball analogy, these players who hustle for the ball when it's going outta bounds, and why do they get a special round of applause when that happens? They don't really have to go after the ball. It's going outta bounds. But they hustle. They're ambitious, they're trying really hard. They go beyond, above and beyond. And these are million dollar players, you know, throwing themselves into the stands, reaching for the ball. So, um, and an opposition to that you can see is a kind of a low brow rejection of ambition, if you will. Uh, we can talk about why someone might do that, but, uh, uh, I'm, what I'm saying here is, uh, the whole quit quiet quitting concept, um, is a, is a very tick talk Gen Z thing.
Speaker 1 00:09:45 Uh, when you look at the data, and gallop and others have tried to measure this, by the way, I, I actually found this comical that someone's trying to measure. But, but there is a certain social science to this, and it's not new that for decades, social scientists and business schools specialists and labor market specialists and management theorists have been measuring what's called employment satisfaction for decades. So this is not new, you know, cuz you see some TikTok post of someone saying, Quiet, quitting. It's a new trend to catch on the, the concept of measuring job satisfaction. Who's satisfied, who's not? Why, what managers can do about it. By the way, notice what managers can do about it. So they hated hierarchy. They hated managers, they hated bosses. They're the ones who are supposed to come up with a solution if the lower ranks aren't happy, You know, it's not like, well, one of the lower ranks make themselves happy.
Speaker 1 00:10:48 Why don't they leave the company and go start some entrepreneurial venture? They don't have to work for the man. Um, but that premise is in there as well. These studies have been done for years. There's no mystery to what makes a job. Now, of course, economies change over time and mores change over time. And concepts of, you know, what, uh, leisure time is change over time. And the whole la uh, you know, home work balance changes over time, but it's in the self-interest. It's in the rational profit. Maximizing self-interest of companies to be aware of these things and to attract a labor force, you know, that isn't simply indifferent and going through the motions like some automaton, but that are, uh, ambitious and rational and productive and eager to rise. Um, so Gallup and others have measured what they call engagement, somewhat of an arbitrary phrase.
Speaker 1 00:11:48 How engaged are you on the job? How engaged are you with the company? Meaning things like, how committed are you to the company's mission? And the, the headline number in the last couple of weeks was something like, Gallup says half the labor force is not engaged. So <laugh>, so half the labor, 54% of people say, I'm not very engaged at work. And I don't know, 18% or so say, um, disengaged, you know, going through the motions. Uh, the first thing, whenever you hear like a, a like a photo of a point in time of a survey like that, first thing I did was look for the trend. And it didn't take me more than half an hour to find out that, that, uh, Gallup had been asking this for more than a decade. There's no change in the trend at all. There's just no change.
Speaker 1 00:12:44 The, the number of the percentage of people who say, Well, you know, my job's fine and I'm semi satisfied, engaged, it hasn't really changed much at all. So if you knew the history and if you knew the trend, you would say, Okay, no big deal. But, but there is an uptick in disengagement. Now, again, these are people on the job. They're not quitting, they're just not devoting, you know, it's a nine to five thing to them. They quit at five. They're not gonna hang around and do extra stuff, Not gonna take on new assignments. Not gonna, part of the definition was hang out with, uh, fellow employees after work. I don't know if that's really conducive to productivity. Maybe it's, but some of it is just, hey, uh, haven't we, For years, this was true in the fifties, in the sixties, these books that came out, Organization, Man, Man is a robot going into a skyscraper full of boxes and then getting on the train at Grand Central and marching home.
Speaker 1 00:13:43 And, and capitalism is terrible because it has this nine to five regimen. Okay? So we don't have that anymore. It should be great. People come and go, People stay at home and work. There's flexible hours, there's flexible this and that. You would think people would be ecstatic about the, the new labor force, which is not only just more flexible in terms of hours and benefits and, and, uh, parental leave and things like that. And the whole, the whole expansion of what's called employee benefits. Uh, you know, that didn't even exist in the fifties and sixties. Uh, you would think people would be ecstatic, very, very happy. They're not workaholics anymore as they used to call 'em, right? You're a workaholic. So no one's a workaholic anymore. Everyone should be happy. This seems to be this kind of perpetual, chronic, um, pressure no matter what the labor environment, no matter how advanced our standard of living becomes to complain about it.
Speaker 1 00:14:51 And, um, to come up with these concept. Quiet. Quitting actually is very clever because alliteration always sells. If you can get alliteration, that's great. Um, couple of other things. I'm, Okay. So first of all, I, I didn't find, here's the latest Gallup poll engaged. This is the US labor force broadly engaged at work. 32% not engaged, 50% actively disengaged <laugh>, 18%. Okay? And when you look into the reasons why these come, these are really very funny. Now because we're talking Gen Z, Gen Z by the way, let me get my numbers right. Millennials are 26 to 41 years old, but the Gen Zs are under 26, okay? So they're like five years out of college and, uh, wow. Apparently a lot of 'em are very dissatisfied with the kind of jobs they have. Uh, okay, here are the reasons I found in Gallop and elsewhere, no connection to the organization's mission. Hmm. What is the organization's mission? Hmm, I'll talk about that in a minute. Limited opportunity to advance or grow. Hmm, <laugh> number three, not feeling cared about.
Speaker 1 00:16:11 Ah, they don't feel cared about, don't know what's expected of them. Hmm, that sounds it could be a managerial problem. Uh, all the, again, not to, not to sound too much like the old man, get off my lawn and, you know, the young wi snappers today have no work ethic, but there is undeniably, if you look it up, a certain kind of attitude toward life that the Gen Zs have. And it isn't all that ambitions regarding work. Uh, it's a long term trend to say the man, the boss, the big corporation has been hated. But it's probably more so in the last, um, 12 years or so. So even the idea of going into a job, you know, with that bigotry and that bias at the front door is not going to make someone, is not gonna make a young under 26 employee, all that predisposed to working hard. You know, if, if the, if the Bernie Sanders of the world and other like-minded professors that business, schools and elsewhere have told them that this is a system that exploits them, you know, what are they gonna do? And underpays them and overworks them, and blah, blah, blah, uh, you know, you could see why they might go in saying, Good, then I'll under work what they used to say in the Soviet Union. They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.
Speaker 1 00:17:36 Uh, so that's one of the trends that's going on here. So, my, my, so my a a little more, a few more stats here and there, but then I'll stop. But, but my summary judgment so far is that this is a clever kind of tick talkie, Gen Z meme going around. And of course, the journalists love writing about this cuz they love anything that suggests we're not working for the man, take that bad bosses. Now, I wanna broaden the, the scope a little bit because there are some troubling things that are related to this, to the idea of, of what kind of work ethic is put forth and how entrepreneurial a culture is, and how the men of the mind are, are treated. There is a pronounced, I I don't wanna overwhelm you with numbers, so I'll just assert and make a look 'em up later if you want.
Speaker 1 00:18:36 And by the way, I'm gonna share, this'll take me a moment here. I'm gonna share something I wrote called, um, the deliberate labor shortage, The costly, but deliberate labor shortage. And I'm not sure how I cha share that. Okay, there it is. I think I can share it. So see if you can find that, Scott, there's a link. Okay, I'll, yeah, I'll post it. Yeah. And it deals with some of these concepts I'm talking about, but I, I wanted to mention a broader trend, which is very troubling. It is the trend of males, especially young males in America. And by the way, it's not just in America, it's in Europe and elsewhere, but it's in America now, again, a little technical here, but young males meaning, um, 16 to 25 year old, The 16 to 26 year old, the Bureau of Labor Statistics separates these out by gender age, things like that.
Speaker 1 00:19:37 And they'll measure the workplace, the workforce, and they'll measure the labor force and they'll measure people who aren't working, you know, So they have all this data, they have the broader population, they have it by age, they have it by gender, and then they'll, you know, and then they'll take surveys of who's working, who's not working, who's looking for work, the unemployment rate, all that stuff. The trend in the last few decades has been that males per especially young males, participate less and less in the economy. Now, by participate less, I mean, don't work. I mean, they're able bodied and they don't work, They don't have a job, or they don't claim to have a job. And this isn't just ju this isn't just an issue of say, missing them at the employment cuz they do an employment survey as well as a household survey.
Speaker 1 00:20:26 So, you know, maybe they're working at home in their mother's basement or something like that on some kind of business. But now for the most part, these surveys learn that they're not doing anything. They're, they're home and they're gamers, or they're just partying or they're just, but they're definitely are not working. And obviously that means someone's supporting them. Who's supporting them? Mommy and daddy or the girlfriend or the wife. Um, the numbers for women. Now, this is the good news. No reason to worry about this. It is true that over the last 40 years or so, women have participated more and more in the workforce that that's okay, that's a good thing if they choose to do so and they find a career. I mean, that was one of the wonderful things about the feminine mystique that Betty Forden and others wrote about in the early sixties. You don't have to be a stay at home mom raising kids, You know, you too can decide to be in the workplace. That's great, that's great. But this, it do, of course does not, is not mutually exclusive with men, uh, participating in the workforce, but particularly young men. And in my essay and in other studies, uh, it's been shown that for various reasons, and I think that, I think this truly is a debilitating trend. Young men are literally not motivated and or not equipped to work.
Speaker 1 00:21:49 And thankfully, I mean, thankfully we have people like, um, uh, Elon Musk and others, uh, Zuckerberg, forget the politics. I mean, just anyone who out of his Harvard door room would start a company from scratch. Thankfully, we still have the men of the mind, and we have entrepreneurs willing to start great companies. But there is a very troubling trend. And I, and I think it's, it's partly cultural and partly public policy based, which is bigoted and biased against men and against boys. I mean, years ago, you may know very presently, I think it was in 2000, that, uh, Christina Hoff Summers wrote a book called The War on Boys, 2000. She had previously written a book called, uh, where Feminism, Oh, Stole Feminism. But if you look at that boy, Christina Hoff Summers really was very prescient in looking at how in school and elsewhere the assault on boys, on masculinity, on the whole concept.
Speaker 1 00:22:56 And as I, I think it's been intensified lately, has had a long term effect, The deleterious effect here, more recently, if you wanna look at something very interesting, Helen Smith, 2014 book called Men on Strike, Men on Strike subtitle, Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream. One of the more interest things about that book is she cites going gat. She not only cites going gat, she recommends that men go ga gold. She says, I'm quoting here. Men aren't dropping out because they're stuck in arrested development. They are instead acting rationally in response to the lack of incentives. Society offers them to be responsible fathers, husbands, and providers. In addition, men are going on strike either consciously or unconsciously, cuz they don't want to be injured or insulted by the myriad of law's, attitudes, and hostility against them for the crime of happening to be male in the 21st century. A highly recommended book again, Helen Smith, Men on Strike 2014.
Speaker 1 00:24:14 You probably heard the concept of toxic masculinity. I mean, if you heard the phrase toxic femininity, people would go crazy. But toxic masculinity, the men are toxic, they're bad, they're terrible, mansplaining, all the other things. That third, fourth is it now fifth wave feminism has thrown at males. Now, from a public policy standpoint, by the way, if you just Google political paternalism, political paternalism I think is very relevant here. Paternalism itself, of course, is the idea of putter. The father in charge, paternalism the father in charge of the family. But political paternalism is the state as parent, the state as father, meaning the citizen as infant. And that will contribute also, I think, to a displacement, if you will. You wanna call this displacement theory, call it displacement theory. <laugh> a displacement of the state for the man, the state for the father, state for the parent.
Speaker 1 00:25:23 Doesn't have to just be the man, the state displacing the man, the, the unwed mother married to the state instead of to the father. Uh, another phenomenon. Now again, not, not this isn't quite related to quiet quitting, but it's a part of a broader concept of, you know, what kind of motivations are out there and what kind of incentives and what kind of attitudes or felt for people, uh, you know, is it a broad based encouragement of working and particularly of a particular group, young men working hard and trying to get ahead? Or is it the other way around? And what's the motive behind this? Uh, last thing I'll leave, let me just leave with a couple of comments about what I, what I would call ironies associated with this.
Speaker 1 00:26:20 One irony is, I thought we had woke leadership. I thought all these CEOs were woke. And what does that mean? Well, they don't care about profits anymore. You see these books about purpose instead of profit or people instead of profit. And I hear this all the time from students, you know, if I get a job in, I wanna make sure that care about social justice, they care about a green and this, and they care about this and that. Okay, well that's happened in the last five or six years, right? 10 years, you would think they, these workplaces would be wonderful. That idyllic, heavenly with all these woke ceo then apparently, no, apparently you go in there and it's purposeless as drifting and they don't care about you. Well then why would they? They don't care about you or the profit model. They care about the globe.
Speaker 1 00:27:14 They care about intergalactic, uh, ecological balance. And it, so it's, I think it's coming back to bite. These is, uh, young workers, uh, hey, hey, how I'm glad my CEO isn't focused on profits, but he is focused on everything else. And I'm just a cog in the wheel in a different kind of way, uh, than the Marxist warned me about. I'm one of, I don't know, 3000 stakeholders that my boss ca is supposed to care about. Uh, you could also invoke something from Luana, the coddling of the American mind. I think TAs has interviewed Greg, the coddling of the American mind. How good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation of failure. Well, I wouldn't call them good intentions, but 2018. So the coddling of the, what do we call them now, the snowflakes, um, who are not prepared to go into the workforce because, uh, reality hits them between the eyes and, uh, they don't know how handle it.
Speaker 1 00:28:16 They might quietly quit or not put their heart and soul into it. Um, so esg, which I'll talk about later in morals and markets later in the month, the ESG movement, the DEI movement, all the ways that are making, forcing, pressuring the boss to basically focus on things other than the bottom line, which means the satisfaction of employees and of customers. That's another thing, by the way, that's gone out the window. The customer is always right. That's a very old fashioned thing. We were told that every job I ever took, they said to me, the customer's always right. Make, once we pick the customer, make sure you treat the customer very well. Do whatever you can to satisfy the cu the customer. Well, that apparently is now part of hustle culture. We can't have that. So <laugh>. So if you're experiencing and noticing bad service at the various establishments you go to, these employees are actually have this feeling of the customer's not always right. I have my feelings too. And I have my <laugh> my interests too. So the hell with the customer.
Speaker 1 00:29:30 Um, let me see if I have anything else that might be of interest. I don't think I do. I'll stop there and welcome questions and comments. Yeah, let's, uh, let, let me let, let me stop on a positive note. If you knew going into this context, what I just told you, and then you investigated a little more, the upside of this is, and then I stipulate first that there are still rational bosses out there. What a wonderful opportunity for ambitious, rational, productive young workers. Think how you would stand out if you walked into this setting. And, and even use the words, I'm not only quietly quitting, I am loudly working my butt off to advance in this company and do what I ever I can for this company. And I trust you dear boss, to reward me accordingly. Cuz if you don't, I'll go somewhere else. Overt ambition, proud, healthy, um, engagement. You could, right, you could flip the script here and say, Wow, there is no better time for rational young students and young entrepreneurs to go into the workforce because apparently everyone else is quietly quitting. All right, I'll stop there.
Speaker 0 00:30:56 Great. Uh, lots of good information. I, I was taking down some notes. We encourage people to join us. Uh, I'm gonna start with our founder, uh, David Kelly. I don't know if you had a question for Richard or not.
Speaker 2 00:31:13 Oh my gosh, thank you Scott. Um, I've got so many questions. <laugh>, um, this, I'm a big fan of Nicholas Eversatt at the American Enterprise Institute, who's written a lot about the decline in male, um,
Speaker 1 00:31:28 Yep.
Speaker 2 00:31:29 Uh, workforce participation, which is not reflected in the usual, you know, unemployment or employment numbers. Uh, you have to dig for it, but he does. And, um, he's been sounding this alarm for a while. Yep. You know, the fun, you've mentioned so many factors, and I think that's appropriate because this is a trend that has cultural, political, and, um, economic aspects to it. Um, in, in some ways it seems like a reflection of what Charles Murray wrote about the welfare state years ago, that it's marginalized men and, um, removed, uh, one of the reasons for men and women to get married and take a responsibility for the kids, because the state will do that and you know that. Yeah, but I, here's the thing, Umno, another factor, and I wanna ask you about this cuz you know, it's an economic issue. Some of, some of the people in Gen Z, the older ones anyway, lived through the, you know, oh 8, 0 9, um, meltdown and, um, came up working age, uh, in the early Obama era. And there was, that was a pretty discouraging time to try enter the liberal market. You know, I, I have a, some sympathy for, for the kids, you know, who had a worse, much worse, uh, future prospects than, than you and I had when we came out of school.
Speaker 2 00:33:18 So, um, let, let me close that as a question. Do you think that's true? And, uh, is that a relevant factor?
Speaker 1 00:33:26 I think it is, David, I, I, um, every year that students full run into do, um, I think of when were they born and what have they seen and what do they know? And, uh, the 2008, 2009 period, the, the students I get now remembered as their parents suffering the house, the house price, they lost the house or they, or they lost the portfolio, the investment portfolio. But as time goes by, um, you know, that was 13 years ago. Uh, student today, 17 years old would've been four when that happened. But, um, i, I don't know if that's a big part of it. Uh, that, you know, there's always been ups and downs in the business cycle and therefore optimism and pessimism about work prospects. And, uh, by, by the way, it's very true. This may sound counterintuitive, but the labor department, um, Bureau of Labor statistics keeps track of when people take jobs, quit jobs, so they have quit rates.
Speaker 1 00:34:35 And what would you expect The quit rates happen when times are good, when the unemployment rates low and people think they have options, whereas they don't quit when they're worried, Oh my gosh, I'm gonna get fired. Let me hang on to this job by this, You know, the, so I i, if we go into a recession in the next couple years, this whole idea of quiet quitting will disappear <laugh> people. I'm not, I'm not only not quiet quitting, I'm not quitting at all. I'm glad to have this job kind of thing. So that does happen. But, um, I don't know, David, I I think here you and I would have to get down to, is this a cyclical or what we call long term secular trend. And, uh, you know, I myself am not inclined cuz I've seen the graphs. I I am myself am not inclined to get all that upset when I see the labor participation rate of men declining relative to women because maybe these are just voluntary decisions within the household of dividing the labor.
Speaker 1 00:35:35 Right? I'm gonna be a stay at home dad instead of a stay at why? Cuz mom has better opportunities and we'd, you know, one of us would be better raising the kid. I mean, if that's what it is, fine. But when you dig down deep and find that you're not talking about married men who are staying home, but, uh, unmarried single men who have no job and are living off of their parents, You know, like the current candidate for senate in Pennsylvania, Federman, you know, has that profile and, and it doesn't seem to, and it doesn't seem to bother people. The guy, the guys like neck and neck and the polls with, uh, with Dr. Oz. Um, but I know David, you've studied the welfare state over the years and there's definitely, you would remember this i this concept of marrying the state instead of marrying the husband or the boyfriend and, um, right, right.
Speaker 1 00:36:30 If it's just a matter of options and people, well, that's capitalism, right? That the wealth is so great and the leisure time is so wide that people have more options and, you know, okay, I'm gonna take a couple of years off and I'm not gonna work that part of it. I like, I I, you can't, we don't wanna be questioning right. People's decisions to take more leisure, get a better balance between work and, and, and home or, or leisure time, You know, not be stressed out as much that that's all good, right? The, uh, the decline in average work week over the past century from something like 80 hours a week to 40, um, that, that was a good trend, you know, not a bad trend. Cause the standard of living went up so well, but ever said, I I, when
Speaker 2 00:37:15 You track from the business cycle, um, yeah. Yes. Uh, the, the, the secular trends, um, long term trends have more to do with the welfare state, um, the control of business, the control of jobs, occupational licensing system and everything that makes it somewhat harder for I think, or young people to get started. And, um, minimum everything from minimum wage loss. Yeah. And, you know, up to, and including the whole culture of that you were discussing before about, you know, I don't want the man.
Speaker 1 00:37:51 Yeah. Um,
Speaker 2 00:37:52 So anyway, uh, thanks Richard, that your presentation was great. I'll, I'll, I'll leave my, my, uh, comments there.
Speaker 1 00:38:01 Thank you David. And, and, uh, Nick Eversatt, I sent a link, uh, to Scott, uh, if you wanna post it eventually, but yeah, Everstat is probably one of the better labor economists in the country and easy to follow too, and nice graphs and stuff like that. Yeah. So anyone who cares about this kind of stuff, and he has focused on this issue of the, what's called the prime age male lack of participation, he's worried about, he's definitely worth following. Um, I, I think the other thing I wanted to reinforce, which I guess I really didn't in my, my opening statements is apropo galt's, uh, strike and going go. Um, we should be much more concerned, I think, about whether the upper echelons of the economy are quitting rather than the lower echelons. Again, not to make this a class thing, but I think the best way to think about this is that the quiet quitting phenomenon is a Gen Z lower level, entry level, possibly highly politicized account of what's happening.
Speaker 1 00:39:12 And it, it, it has the prospect of taking our eyes off the ball of the quitting that goes on at the top of the pyramid, so to speak, the pyramid of ability Iran talked about. So people either reluctant to work hard in the C-suite or the entrepreneurial world, um, because of the burdens of regulation and taxation and vilification, that kind of thing. Um, that's always much more important. And, you know, you could say red downs to the harm of those below. So it would be interesting to see studies of whether the kind of angst and indifference, uh, being felt by entry level kids now, uh, result from the overall compression from on high of the ambitiousness, uh, of, of those at the top. Um, that's less, far less measured, of course, Right? You very rarely see studies of, you know, who's really wants to go into the CEO suite, uh, how long are they in the CEO suite and how, how satisfied are they with their jobs? Nobody gives a damn, because they'll just say, Well, those guys have power, influence, and money. So who gives a damn whether they're happy or not quitting or not, Uh, anyway, being vibrant or not.
Speaker 3 00:40:33 Thank you. Go ahead Ron. All right. Hey, everyone. Uh, I think Richard might have some information I'd love to hear if you do, Richard, in the Gen Z folks. Uh, how, what, how does, how does the data treat someone who drops out and becomes an entrepreneur, a young person who becomes an entrepreneur? Do they show up in the statistics or are they missing, but potentially very involved, very productive? Um, are, could they be a young Alon Musk?
Speaker 1 00:41:15 Well, if they, That's a good question, Ron. And, and if, of course, if they are a young Elon Musk, it isn't just a matter of them being a digit in the Bureau of Labor specific numbers, but they would be a super digit. Those are technically counted. Yes. Anyone answering a survey either in an employment office at, at an employment, uh, institution, or at home. I mean, suppose he is in, literally is in a, his basement, starting a business, he would answer, Yes, I have a job. So, no, those would show up in the employment numbers, definitely. And then there are numbers of business starts, new business starts, uh, which you can infer is somewhat entrepreneurial. And, um, you know, as you would expect when an economy is vibrant and growing, uh, those kind of, uh, start numbers rise, which is a healthy thing. They, they absolutely skyrocketed under the Reagan years, uh, from 1980 onward. They tend to plummet. They tend to go down during recessions and stuff. So there's a cyclicality there as well. But ease of doing business, ease of starting businesses, the startups and things like that are recorded and, uh, and answer to your questions. So, yes. Thank
Speaker 0 00:42:26 You, Lawrence. Thanks for joining. Are you able to unmute? We may need you to leave and come back. Uh, in the meantime, I'm gonna take this opportunity to ask, uh, you know, how much of this is related to people just, you know, having this sense of I have what I need as long as I have a smartphone. You know, some of them are willing to be homeless in LA or, and, and plus they're being encouraged to have this low carbon footprint or live this minimalist lifestyle.
Speaker 1 00:43:08 Yes, that's a good point. I, uh, one of the, um, I don't know whether there was in the Atlantic or the New York Times, it was a, an account of this, and it said something like, Quiet, quitting. It's just the old line, you know, I'm doing my job. And there's a certain truth to that, namely, not much has changed, but it's just called this new sexy thing so people can write about it. But the, the job satisfaction numbers over the years have been, as I said, roughly stable. And, and when you think about it, of course that would be true. I mean, unless people are complete dolts, if they're not satisfied in their job, they should move. And so the thing you most want is a flexible labor market. Now, I believe also one of you apropo what you ask, one of the things that may be happening here, and one of the reasons it's front and center and headline top of mind, however you wanna call it, is because of the covid lockdowns that the covid lockdowns sent everyone home, or most everyone home or, uh, shut down businesses.
Speaker 1 00:44:12 And so remote working skyrocketed, and all the, most of the surveys show, except for the very upper echelons, that remote working depressed people made them less satisfied with the job. Well, that's a distortion of the numbers, you know, that isn't, isn't really, uh, you know, a trend that, you know, that is coming from a decade ago. And, uh, even though remote work was happening, I mean, remote work really was, uh, intensified because of covid. And, uh, if you look up the great resignation, I hate the way these economists try to label everything with capital letters and stuff, but the great resignation with people saying in the face of shutdowns and lockdowns, I'm just quitting. I mean, I've seen, I've seen cases where professors prematurely retired because they didn't wanna put up with the bullshit of masking and zoom lecturing and things like that. So they might have been like five way, five years away from retirement, and they retired anyway, which is really quite amazing. I mean, so a dissatisfaction of that level. Um, if you parse those out from the regular numbers, you know, it'll, 10 years from now, this will maybe be a blip unless there's a structural change in the labor market. But, um, yeah, I don't know. I hope that addresses some of what you were talking about, Scott.
Speaker 0 00:45:36 Well, I just think some people, um, have this sense of, you know, I have enough, or I've lost faith in the system. Yeah. And so not even just the poorest people, but, and that's why yes, with c they've, they've felt, I don't, I don't need to go back to the lifestyle I was, I'm reassessing my priorities.
Speaker 1 00:45:58 Yeah, yeah. And, and if you look at some of these accounts of quiet quitting, it'll say things like, Well, uh, people are not willing to, you know, engage in burnout and anxiety and feeling the need that when they're quote off the clock to answer the boss's call or to answer emails. So, I I, you know, on the, on the bright side, one of the wonderful things about the recent, by recent, I mean last 20 years, labor market is you have the virtual office, if you want it, flexible hours, more parental leave, bosses quite conscious of this, and not penalizing you if you ask for these special dispensations and things like that, you know, as long as you deliver the goods. And, and so in that context, you would think that journalists and others writing about the labor market would say, This is wonderful. We're, we're no longer, you know, pigeonholing people in particular job descriptions.
Speaker 1 00:47:07 Now, whether this contributes to lower productivity, I actually think it does. I think in the end, less regimentation at work and less organization and hierarchy and job descriptions and specific goals and mission, I think undermines productivity, You know, quite apart from government policies, but, Okay. But if, but Scott, you're right, right? If people are saying, Listen, this is a more enjoyable life home recreation balance, then maybe we should be applauding this instead of, you know, instead of mocking it as quiet, quitting, which, which in a way sounds like, you know, sabotage. That's really how they're trying to portray it. And these anti-corporate, anti-business, anti profit types are, you can, I can sense in the literature a kind of glee that they're ex that they're feeling like, Yeah,
Speaker 4 00:48:00 Yeah, quit, quit and take, take the pay anything. The,
Speaker 0 00:48:04 There's a sense that they're pushing us to that, whether it's getting on UBI or, or what have you. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:48:11 Yeah. Right. Well then, yeah, that's okay. Yeah. Good stuff.
Speaker 0 00:48:16 Yeah. Um, well, quickly,
Speaker 3 00:48:21 There's another aspect of quiet, quitting, uh, quiet quitting is a nice way of saying cheating your employer by not working when your employer thinks you are working. Um, and that, I, I think if someone is dissatisfied with an employer, and they don't, in all ethics, say, Look, I, here's what I'm dissatisfied with. I, I need these following changes, or I'm going to resign. If they're just bailing out, stopping working, then I think there's real dishonesty going on. Um, also, I wanna bring up a, another topic.
Speaker 0 00:49:08 I, I do wanna get Lawrence in here as well, but, uh, go ahead, Ron.
Speaker 3 00:49:15 Yeah. I wanted to bring up imposter syndrome, which has become an extremely popular topic on clubhouse. Uh, you can listen to a discussion on imposter syndrome for an hour, and nobody will ever mention the possibility that a person who's feeling like a phony and is suffering psychologically because of it, is actually really a phony. Who's lying, who's cheating, who's, uh, you know, spinning and hying and doing all this stuff. When I bring this up into a group, I get quite an animated discussion going. I say, Well, could it be that you're feeling like an imposter because you're actually telling lies and cheating? And then later in the discussion, I say, I decided never to tell a lie again the rest of my life when I was a teenager. And typically, someone chimes in to say, Oh, come on, You expect us to believe that you gotta be a liar if you're saying you never lie. And then somebody else will chime in and say, No. Now wait a minute. What, what are you advocating here? What about white lies? What about lies that are for the good of the person you're lying to? Even they've asked you to lie to them. Uh, let's get, are you an advocate, Ron, of, of brutal honesty?
Speaker 0 00:50:39 Let's give Richard a chance to answer. Hmm. Can we give Richard a chance to answer?
Speaker 3 00:50:45 Sure.
Speaker 1 00:50:47 Well, I, I don't wanna spend too much time on this. I would just say briefly, I mean, there is a concept of shirking, uh, free riding, the kind of, uh, a thing that might be done at work, which you can say this is a kind of short changing or cheating. And, uh, you know, I mean, normally that's handled by employee reviews and employee assessments, and you get penalized for it. You either get no promotion or no raise, or you get fired in, in worst case, fired. So it, the but, but quiet quitting is a, in, in many ways, David Kelly might appreciate this, that David, this is an, a bastardization of concepts. It's like, uh, no one can define what a woman is, and a recession isn't really a recession. And now quitting will be a word assigned to people who haven't quit. There's no quitting.
Speaker 1 00:51:44 I mean, they're just doing their job. The def, all the definitions I have found is that, you know, 50% of the workforce's quiet, quitting definition are doing their jobs. That's it. They're doing their job, you're doing their jobs as described. They're not doing more or less, but they're not doing less. They're just doing their job. And it's in contrast to those who are, if you want to be ambitious and get ahead and get promoted, would do more than the job demands. Right? So, uh, the whole kind, the whole concept to me is, uh, it's almost like cle too clever by half, uh, very clever, very cute, but it's not actually quitting because your premise is, and this is an old capitalist premise, you shouldn't just go through the motions, do nine to five and do your job. If you care about advancing yourself in life or in business, do more.
Speaker 1 00:52:44 And, and then they say, But, but look at these people who aren't doing more. Turns out the numbers are the same for decades. It's always 50% of the labor force just does the job. Thankfully more than 50, you know, the other portions do more than the job. And the ones who do less than the job, you know, are hopefully are weeded out, probably less so today than before. They're probably indulged and kept on the payroll longer than they should be relative to prior work ethics. But, um, it's, it's, in many ways, it's part of the, um, undermining of the meaning of words. And again, if, if, if ambition and productiveness as virtues and getting ahead and doing more than expected are all denigrated, as, you know, unworthy, uh, you're, you're doubly uh, promoting the idea in young kids not to do it. Don't be a sucker. Right. You're a sucker if you give the boss more than than your job description. Something like that. If
Speaker 2 00:53:53 I could jump in for a second, Richard. Um, yeah. You know, I, I, uh, having been CEO of the Atlas study for 20 some years, uh, I, you know, we had some quiet quote unquote quiet quitters and mm-hmm. <affirmative>, Um, I wasn't quick enough to get rid of them. Um hmm. But I, I, Jennifer, um, as our current ceo, I think has been very good at that. And I would invite her to, uh, comment if she wishes on this, because my sense of the Alice Society, even as a nonprofit, but still no quiet quitters on this staff, and they don't, we may have had a few, but they don't last. So, Jag, um, yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll let you talk.
Speaker 5 00:54:48 Yeah. I mean, I agree with you, Richard. I also kind of agree with Ron. I do think that there is something passive aggressive and, uh, dishonest, um, and certainly lacking in self esteem and self confidence to this whole practice, um, of, you know, and, and just being a little bit shortsighted as well, sort of, uh, found within the present of thinking, Well, it's this job and I'm going to do just what this job requires and know more mm-hmm. <affirmative> rather than sort of entrepreneurial, benevolent approach. Um, David is described very well of like, Well, hey, I don't really need to do that more in this situation, or I don't need to do more for this stranger, but I wanna be open to a world of possibilities. And, um, you know, this may not be my perfect job, but that perfect job could be two jobs down the row.
Speaker 5 00:55:48 Yeah. And if I'm remembered as the person who stayed longer, who worked harder, who answered emails on the weekend, who came up with ideas, who was proactive, even if I'm really not that enamored of my current employment, I've got a optimistic perspective. I'm looking forward to a better future, and I'm setting myself up now. Yeah. With the way that I conduct myself. And, you know, I also think that there is a dignity and also something to be admired and people who actually do quit, um, and say, and, and when I think of going gat, I mean, and I've, I've written about this, that it's, uh, not just about removing yourself from a, an abusive relationship with the government or an abusive relationship with, uh, you know, a company. It's, it's any kind of abusive relationship. So, you know, there's going ga happening when people leave California Yeah.
Speaker 5 00:56:52 In New York for Florida, or Colorado, or Texas or Arizona or Georgia. And they're taking a leap and they're, you know, looking forward to something new. So, um, you know, I, I think that as a manager, it is more difficult to, um, to deal with, with quiet quitters. Cause you know, you can't necessarily find cause. But, uh, but you know, they're, they're not, I think they're definitely not doing their organization any, um, service. And they're really not, at the end of the day doing themselves a service. Um, because I do think there's honesty about saying, Hey, you know, I, I, I like this job, but I'm not as motivated as I could be. Let me tell my employer what would really like fire and give them the information that they have to work creatively to, to improve the situation for everybody.
Speaker 3 00:57:52 Has lying become more widespread and accepted?
Speaker 5 00:57:57 Has what?
Speaker 3 00:57:59 Lying.
Speaker 5 00:58:02 I don't know. I, I can't say that it, uh, necessarily has been, I think maybe self delusion and confusion and, uh, lack of ability to, uh, recognize what things are, articulate, what things are. In reference to what Richard was saying about this, I think intentional destruction and undermining of language and concepts. So, you know, never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence or in this case <laugh> confusion. And I think a lot on,
Speaker 1 00:58:39 Oh, I like that. I like that. I hadn't, I hadn't heard that before. Other thing, other interesting thing about the labor market is, you know, the old one was full-time job, You know, gold watch at the end of a 40 year career, you know, to part-time little more flexibility or, or inde, what do they call today? Independent contractors where, um, you get paid just for the work and you don't, you don't have employee benefits. The, the, the gig economy. Do they call it the gig economy, virtual offices, you know, versus all joining together in the same skyscraper. Those may be contributing to the idea of, I don't really feel like I'm part of a unit here. Well, yeah, but that's what the old unit was considered oppressive and organization, man, big bad corporation and tall skyscraper boxes. So, you know, if the gig economy, yeah, a little more insecurity associated with it, and maybe a little more anxiety, maybe they'll, maybe all that's what, that's all that's happening here.
Speaker 1 00:59:40 But, uh, you know, for the most part, that's a more flexible, uh, labor force. I think the other thing is, it's totally forgotten, is on the macro level, big picture, if an economy is not vibrant anymore, if it's stagnating, this has happened to Japan for decades, for, and I would say for public policy reasons, it isn't quite obvious to the worker why the heck they're not advancing or why they're not being promoted, or why their wage gains aren't as great. And, and the the real answer is the, you're in an economy now that's not as vibrant anymore, and you may blame the boss and the company you're in, but it really is this broader compression of stateism upon the vibrancy of the labor market. And that's what's really compressing you. And then combined with people are coming out of schools over credentialed, they're coming out with high degrees from prestigious universities with lots of debt. And many students I've known will take jobs. They don't really love to pay their debts back. So that's just a losing proposition, right? You take a job and you're already miserable because you're only there to pay your debts back. You already made prior mistakes as to the major, the school, the debt you took on. And to blame the worker, uh, to blame the workplace later or the CEO later for your condition is really, uh, context dropping.
Speaker 5 01:01:11 I'll just say one more thing cause I know we gotta go, but my, one of my favorite employee and management motto, life motto is, if it's to be, it's up to be, it's up to me. If it's to be, it's up to me. And you know it for the quiet quitters that are like, you know, I'm not getting that much out of the job and yeah. I don't really think my employer cares about me, so I'm just gonna do Yeah. What it's in my job requirement. Well, it's up to you. If you wanna be that person that the boss looks and says, I cannot lose this particular employee, I cannot lose that person when you, when, So that usually comes about cuz somebody's doing extra or they're super smart or whatever it may be. Yeah. And then once you are the person that is irreplaceable that the boss cannot lose, then you've got all the leverage and you are in a position to make your life and your workplace a lot more, you know, fulfilling for you.
Speaker 1 01:02:08 Great point.
Speaker 0 01:02:10 Yeah. That, uh, you know, I mean, bosses want competence. That's a basic part of Atlas Shrugged where Dagney was promoting a guy in the beginning. She thought it was too soon to promote him, but she needed the talent. Um, Lawrence, thank you so much for, uh, waiting.
Speaker 6 01:02:29 Yeah. Is, is this ending now or is
Speaker 0 01:02:31 This ending? You're a little quiet.
Speaker 6 01:02:33 Can you hear me now?
Speaker 0 01:02:35 Still quiet.
Speaker 6 01:02:40 Hmm.
Speaker 2 01:02:43 Volume. Am Lawrence Boham <laugh>
Speaker 0 01:02:46 While uh, he's, um, doing that. I'm, uh, I'm curious, I don't know if you've heard, uh, Grover Cleveland to cry paternalism, uh, in one of his inaugural addresses back in the 19th century. So, uh, I mean, that's a theme that goes probably before socialism even.
Speaker 2 01:03:15 And Scott, the description is from River Cleveland.
Speaker 0 01:03:21 The description is, I'm sorry, I didn't catch that.
Speaker 2 01:03:33 You mentioned Robert Cleveland. What, how did he describe paternalism? Um, it sounds like I,
Speaker 0 01:03:39 Yeah, he was just saying that that's, that basically people were starting to call on the government to do that. And he is a democrat in the, you know, 1880s was saying, That's not right, and that's not where the government should go, that it'll lead to us wanting to do less.
Speaker 1 01:03:58 And one of the readings I provide for my students to discuss in seminars is by Conley. She is from my alma mater, uh, Boden College and, and Conley a couple years back wrote against autonomy, the case for coercive paternalism. <laugh>, just, it's just an overt, overt, unabashed case for the government, uh, you know, telling you to get in shape, to save, to do this, to do that. And it is remarkable, uh, how many students read it and say, uh, that sounds good. That sounds good to me. It's not just, it's not just Duke student. This is a broad base, uh, problem. But I, I think of that when I think of the, it's of course a long tradition of Mark's Angles and others saying in way to get rid of capitalism is in part to get rid of this institution called the family. And I know that objective doesn't focus much on the family, but it is this institution that does kind of train people to be self responsible if done well, right, if the family's done well, to be self responsible and to displace that with, uh, stateism, uh, has corrosive effects. We, we can see this has corrosive effects. So,
Speaker 2 01:05:24 But the problem is that, um, people grow up in families and some of the people never get past a mommy and a daddy attitude. Mommy provides, keeps you safe. Daddy provides authority. Yeah. And they perpetuate that and look into the state when they're adults. I,
Speaker 1 01:05:44 Yeah. So, Right, right. So,
Speaker 2 01:05:47 Makes blessing
Speaker 1 01:05:48 So bad parenting, uh, theory feeds the welfare state. I, I think that's true. David, we're out of time. Scott, I think we're out of time. Right Scott?
Speaker 0 01:06:01 Uh, I wasn't sure if we were going 60 or 90 minutes today, but
Speaker 1 01:06:05 I think it was
Speaker 0 01:06:05 Just 60. Okay. All right. Well, good. Well, this has been, uh, a great discussion. Uh, thank you so much. Uh, we have a huge week at the Atlas Society. Next week, Monday at 7:30 PM Our book club features professor Jason Hill, answering questions about his book, What Do White Americans Owe Black People? Very provocative discussion. Uh, not to be out done Tuesday at 8:00 PM Eastern Richard Salzman will be hosting his morals and market series, the ESG Virus. Uh, great timely topic. Thank you for doing that. And then Wednesday at 5:00 PM the Atla Society asks, we'll feature our CEO Jag interviewing legendary author Walter Isaacson, who wrote Steve Jobs's biography authorized, and, uh, he was also CEO and chair of, uh, CNN during nine 11. It should be a fascinating interview. Uh, kudos to the team booking these influential guests as well. Uh, Richard, again, thank you. Great topic. Thank you to everyone who joined and asked questions. Um, take care. And, uh, Lawrence and I are hosting some informal happy hours on Clubhouse Tuesdays at 4:00 PM Thanks everybody. Thanks Scott.
Speaker 1 01:07:20 J David, everyone. Thank you.
