it's not complicated, if people don't perceive work as a pathway to better their life they have no incentive to buy in. we have had like five decades of stagnating wage growth outside of select fields while cost of living continued to grow, the covid supply chain enshittening caused a massive spike in costs of living and it just finally broke the illusion. society continuing on despite huge chunks of the population being turned into neets just damaged the illusion more. if we wanted to actually fix the problems we would just need to raise wages and massively expand access to housing, but that's not going to happen because the entire political establishment is comprised of wealthy people who benefit from the status quo and are too arrogant to have the self awareness that things need to change if they want the system to survive
United States