Workers in China are feeling jaded nowadays. After Tiananmen Square, Deng Xiaoping stopped pretending China was ‘communist’ and pulled the capitalist stops out. In 1980 home ownership was 20%. Today it’s 96%. So a success, right? But wait. 10% own over 70% of wealth (Economist – paywall).
The ‘entrepreneurial’ generation were ‘faced with open roads, you could go far even on a three-wheeled cart’. Now ‘the roads are jammed, and… the [wealthy heirs] can take helicopters’. Seeing nil prospects for success, today’s young people are ‘lying flat’ instead. ‘They think that effort is no longer rewarded… and that the keys to success are connections and being born rich.’
Welcome to our world. Capitalism is pretty dismal for workers, and utopia only for the rich.