Have employer/employee relationships always been so squeezed, so antagonistic, that the aspirational message included "living off dividends from your stonks" and "leanFIRE" because the only thing worth aspiring to is getting out from wage slavery? It can't be a healthy economy when so much of the public discussion is how unpleasant work is, and not because the work itself is bad, but because the management/expectations/timekeeping/etc. is?
Medical staff, obviously in COVID times, basically any retail worker, basically any callcenter worker, anyone in an Enterprise company as per the film Office Space, people working anything from agriculture to factory work to Amazon warehouses, to delivery drivers timed for the amount of seconds they can step out of the van at each stop, to developers hating on unreasonable expectations of delivery time and price, to takeovers and downsizing leaving fewer people with more work, to individual craftspeople expected to compete on price with mass manufacture, to ridiculous job hopping advice (change jobs every 18 months, never don't be applying for jobs!) to decreases in loyalty and trust.
The aspirational messages have shifted from "thank God you have food for the day" to "own a home" to "get a stable job" to "a gold watch for long service and a pension" to "flip houses for money or rental income" to "desperately try to get rich quick and get out". And then what else is there but escapism with Lamborghinis and stories?
The concept of "wage slavery" was coined back in ancient Greece (i.e. the people who had to work for a living were not considered really free). The Puritanian work ethics, which consider work to be a virtue and something of innate value, are more a weird quirk of some Western countries rather than an universal stance. Basically, through all times and places, most people dreamt of being wealthy, so that their needs would be met and they wouldn't have to work. BTW now this dream is monetized in the form of various national lotteries.
Medical staff, obviously in COVID times, basically any retail worker, basically any callcenter worker, anyone in an Enterprise company as per the film Office Space, people working anything from agriculture to factory work to Amazon warehouses, to delivery drivers timed for the amount of seconds they can step out of the van at each stop, to developers hating on unreasonable expectations of delivery time and price, to takeovers and downsizing leaving fewer people with more work, to individual craftspeople expected to compete on price with mass manufacture, to ridiculous job hopping advice (change jobs every 18 months, never don't be applying for jobs!) to decreases in loyalty and trust.
The aspirational messages have shifted from "thank God you have food for the day" to "own a home" to "get a stable job" to "a gold watch for long service and a pension" to "flip houses for money or rental income" to "desperately try to get rich quick and get out". And then what else is there but escapism with Lamborghinis and stories?