I think this discussion needs some numbers if we're going to talk about this "laziness problem" meaningfully. Do we have quantative data which shows that this problem exists in the form discussed in this thread?

blah

Just one point. I generally agree with you, but your post is still kind of enforcing a similar false dichotomy. You choose the false dichotomy that people believe only the extremes exist, but the false dichotomy that I find more troublesome is that people equate being liberal with being socially and fiscally liberal and being conservative with being socially and fiscal conservative. It flattens a 2D landscape to one dimension with the false dichotomy of liberals vs conservatives.

There was a cool "This American Life" on a couple weeks before the election about how people don't pay attention to people with disagreeing viewpoints (even if they don't actually disagree, they are just perceived to disagree). I think this whole liberal vs. conservative thing is a big part of compounding that problem. It totally silences meaningful discussion when we associate all conservativism/liberalism with any conservativism/liberalism.

Two frequent recent examples are whenever I would tell people I wasn't voting for Obama (I didn't vote for either Obama or Romney) they would retort that I was anti-homosexual, racist, or that I hate poor people. To my knowledge I do not exhibit any of those traits. I generally don't like talking about politics because I have to spend so much time telling people the points they have mistakenly attributed to me are not even remotely close to anything I believe in and it is, quite frankly, exhausting.

Similarly, I don't suppot marriage as a government institution for people of any romantic identification, and I had to spend near an hour explaining to one of my friends that I wasn't anti-gay marriage I was anti-federal marriage.

Now I'm rambling, but I hope the point came across; having the false dichotomy between liberalism and conservativism can be just as damaging as having the false dicohotomy between extreme liberalism and extreme conservativism.

I think this discussion needs some numbers if we're going to talk about this "laziness problem" meaningfully. Do we have quantative data which shows that this problem exists in the form discussed in this thread?

I don't know if this link will work, but if you look for the "Labor Force Participation Rate" on the labor statistics site you'll find it:
http://data.bls.gov/...eyOutputServlet (editathon: now with demographics)

We've been generally rising from WWII until ~2000, but recently we are seeing pretty dramatic drops in people's willingness to be part of the labor force.

More than the current labor force I'm really worried about the standard we're setting for our children/future workforce. Our education system has not been adapting to meet the standards of a rising global economy. It has been relatively stagnant. We have a very short school year, and poor results across the board; the most troublesome problem is we aren't acknowledging the latter with the significance it deserves. It's creating an environment of, "We're still better than everyone, even though we suck" which is going to be toxic over the next 20 years--This is what scares me most of all tbh.

edit: sorry for double post

double edit: Interesting read:
Are American Workers Getting Lazy

Part of this is no doubt due to the overall economic picture; job creation hasn't been high enough to keep pace with population growth for years. America is also aging, but this isn't just older people stepping out. The numbers are particularly painful in the 16- to 24-year-old male demographic, with workforce participation falling from nearly 80% in the late 1970s to around 58% now.[/quote]

For youth unemployment I think its less laziness than a lot of trades are impossible to break into if businesses are unwilling to train new people.

Either way, I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand?

Fair points made. It's just one of my pet peeves when people associate conservativism/liberalism as I pointed out. Just figured I'd chime in on it while I had the chance as I think it's a very relevant problem in today's politics.

That said, the two do tend to broadly correlate. Most fiscal conservatives are also socially conservative, and vice versa with "liberals". Even if you look at lists of candidates on the political compass, they generally tend to fall on a diagonal line from bottom left to top right. Not all of them, obviously, but the majority.[/quote]
I think this is kind of what I mean. Enforcing the diagonal across the compass as the single dimension of valid political stances kind of forces people into falling onto that line rather than freely roaming around the compass. Kind of a positive reinforcement loop of poor political policy

For youth unemployment I think its less laziness than a lot of trades are impossible to break into if businesses are unwilling to train new people.

That's not really what labor force participation rate measures.

The labor force participation rate is the percentage of working-age persons in an economy who:
Are employed
Are unemployed but looking for a job[/quote]

[quote name='Kaze' timestamp='1354051844' post='5004682']
For youth unemployment I think its less laziness than a lot of trades are impossible to break into if businesses are unwilling to train new people.

That's not really what labor force participation rate measures.
[/quote]

This was mostly in response to the second article you posted.

Either way I'm very sceptical about claims of moral decline when more tangible factors exist.

The big one is that as much as business claim their is a skill shortage very few are desperate enough yet to create their own skills.

Ex: Machine operators with 10 or more years of experience are going to dwindle in numbers if your never going to hire anyone with less experience.