Over time, American youths have experienced a major loss of leisure time due to a minimal increase in wages, a major increase of inflation, and the rise of “grind” culture. Younger generations are forced to work harder and see less reward for it than previous generations had.
Due to a large increase of inflation, as seen in Figure 1, and only a slight increase in the national minimum wage, seen in Figure 2, over the last 50 years has resulted in younger people getting paid much less than previous generations, yet being expected to pay the same prices. They are, over time, being paid much less than they deserve to be, and are forced to work more hours for the extra money just to get by. This results in their loss of a lot of well-deserved leisure time.
Since many American youths are forced to work longer shifts, more hours through the week, and having more and more easy access to the Internet, a new culture has come about. “Grind” culture is the group of people who believe in working as much and as hard as you can constantly, as to earn as much money as possible. This results in popularity in “hustling,” or working hard.
Easy access to the Internet for most youths in America means that “grind” culture can easily thrive. Popular ways of spreading the message of grinding and hustling is through online memes and posts, on sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. People who post things about “the grind” have access to a large array of people who feel the same and will validate them.
The ideal of working hard and diligently is, on its own, not a problem. The problem arises when it consumes and overtakes your life, making the concept of “grinding” a part of your personality. Unfortunately, due to people who act this way, and an easy access to a large audience, companies have, of course, found ways to capitalize on the trend.
Figure 3 is from a website called hardknocksofhustle.com, which is a website dedicated entirely to making merchandise based on the concepts of “grinding,” “hustling,” and anything that comes with those terms.
Big corporations can now manufacture repetitive, trite, and unoriginal products that use the common terms of the culture and make plenty of easy money. People capitalize off the terms in any way they can, with Daymond John, popular television icon and businessman, even going as far to as write a book and title it “Rise and Grind.”
John’s Rise and Grind is a strong example of just how far people have, and will go in order to capitalize on the concepts of “grind” culture. The idea of “grind” culture itself is another example of why it is a problem. The ideas of “grind” culture promote working as long as we can as hard as we can, forgetting the fact that we are being paid much less than previous generations and deserve more time for ourselves.
American youth’s loss of leisure time was a result of an increase of inflation and slight increase in the national minimum wage. The ideas of “grind” culture result in more loss of leisure time and the capitalization of the terms themselves by corporations.
Journalism 2.0 