Nowadays, with low wages and high prices , more and more people are lying flat. I don’t want to work hard anymore . I just want to lie flat and flat .
Over the past few years , young people around the world seem to be less and less willing to work hard. In China, there is a flat-footed youth in Japan. There is a generation of enlightenment.
There is a quiet wave of resignations in the United States, while South Korea has a generation of people leaving behind. Although the difficulties encountered by young people in each country are different , the ideas are very similar. Young people choose to live a life of low desires and do not want to continue to struggle , so in Taiwan The media will also use the word "lie flat" to refer to such young people .
How did this wave of "lie flat" start? Is it really reasonable for young people to choose to lie flat? Then do you think you are a "lie flat" tribe?
I am a "lie flat tribe" I am a slightly flat person. I am also a flat person. I have been flat before and have no motivation to continue going up because I feel that I need to put in more effort , but the gains I have received have not actually met my expectations , so I feel that at the moment The state is that of lying down, which is very useless.
I don’t know what I really want to do in life , but I just give myself a period of rest. If I was alone, I would choose to lie down all the time . Is there anyone lying down next to you?
According to research in Taiwan The number of times the media uses the word "lieping" has increased rapidly in 2021. Many media will use the word "lieping" to describe young people aged 20 to 30. So how did this wave of "lieping" start?
In April 2021, China's Internet A post called "Justice is Justice" appeared on the Lu platform. The author, a kind-hearted traveler, shared his own story. After two years without a stable job, he maintained a very low living expenses by doing odd jobs .
He regards buying a house and getting married as his goal and no longer strives to make money. For him, lying flat is the only truth in the universe. When the post came out, the Chinese community was criticizing the involutionary work culture of 996, and the emergence of flat-lining doctrine became The liberation in everyone’s hearts has been retweeted by netizens like crazy , making lying flat become a hot search keyword.
Many netizens agree with the spirit of lying flat, which means that if you don’t work hard, buy a house, get married, or have children, you can just lie flat and maintain the lowest standard of living, giving up your lofty goals. After the flat spirit became popular in China, it quickly spread to Taiwan and also resonated with a large number of young people. From a psychological point of view, it may not be surprising that young people would want to become a flat clan.
Some experts would use Xi Ping. Learned helplessness is used to explain the mentality of wanting to lie down. It is actually a psychologist from the United States called Martin Seligman.
He did a somewhat cruel experiment. He asked three dogs to wear a piece of clothing. This clothes can be electrified.
The first dog took it off immediately after putting on the clothes, so this dog was not affected at all. It was the second dog in the control group. After putting on the clothes, it was electrocuted, but There is a button in front of this dog.
When pressed, the electricity will stop. Therefore, although the dog was frightened and painful at first when it was shocked , it immediately found a way to change the situation. It did not suffer from any physical or mental discomfort at all .
Third The dog was more pitiful. After it was put on and electrocuted, the button in front of it became ineffective, so no matter how many times it pressed it, hit the cage , or screamed, it was useless. Later, the experimenter discovered that it Then some melancholy began to appear, shivering in the corner , and finally the state of numbness and sluggishness seemed to give up .
It was a psychological setback that told us that there is no other way, so let’s give up. Subsequent experiments also found that if these three animals are combined, When a dog is placed in an electric shock cage, the two dogs in front of it will immediately escape , but the third dog will choose to stay in place and continue to be shocked because it does not think there is any hope of change. Scientists have discovered this phenomenon of learning helplessness.
It also happens to humans. When we realize that no matter how hard we try, it is difficult to change the predicament, we may gradually lose our fighting spirit and choose to be a peaceful person. But at the same time, some people also start to worry that this trend is not a good thing .
If young people choose to lie flat, it will drag down the development of society. In fact, when the word "lie flat" first appeared in China , it also encountered strong criticism. Lying flat learning sounds new , but it is actually based on the previous mourning culture and Buddhist youth.
What kind of justice is it to lie down when your path is thwarted ? At that time, many mainstream media outlets in China published editorials reminding young people that as long as they are diligent enough , they can realize their own achievements. Choosing to lie down before facing pressure is not only unjust but also shameful.
Some university professors even jumped out. I 'm sorry for my parents and sorry for my taxpayers. External analysis is that lying down will encourage young people to not consume and produce low production, which will have a serious negative impact on the development of the country.
The official does not want such negative thinking to spread among young people . Although Taiwan is officially The backlash is not big , but there are many people who think that the principle of "flattering" is a bowl of poisonous chicken soup. If the younger generation is unwilling to work hard, the country will lose its competitiveness and turn into a national security crisis.
Because it is true that "flattering" is a personal choice . It has no right or wrong in itself. It is also a national security crisis.
The product of the times can be harmful when put into a group or company. I have seen an experiment before. They deliberately put a fake employee into a company where everyone worked very hard.
Then this fake employee was responsible for doing nothing . For example, he just sat there. Over there, he kept looking at the ceiling or taking the elevator up and down .
Then people next to him asked him what he was doing, and he said no, just looking at the weather. Then he found that such a small employee was very impressive, and then he If the employees next to you start to feel dissatisfied or start to wonder why I am working so hard, etc. , it will be contagious.
So if you look at it from the perspective of an organization, a company, or even a country and society , I believe these leaders will be a little worried . Most netizens don’t care about such worries. Instead, many people call on everyone on social platforms to face work with the most negative attitude.
Why do young people in Taiwan want to lie down so much? Let’s take a look at a few of them first. Recruiting advertising assistant: 30,000 per month, beautician: 40,000; starting freight driver: 40,000 to 70,000.
It sounds like an ordinary job with an ordinary salary, right? But the interesting thing is that this is actually a newspaper content from 20 years ago. Taiwan has always been criticized for its poor wages.
There has been no increase. Spreading out the salary data over the past few decades, the average amount of salary we receive each month has actually increased slightly. However, while wages are rising, prices are also rising.
For example, McDonald's McChicken Meal was only 79 10 years ago. Yuan now costs 110 Yuan, an increase of almost 40%. Therefore, the real salary is calculated after eliminating the price change factors when calculating salary.
can reflect the real purchasing power of the people. From the chart, we can find that Taiwan’s real recurring wages rose very fast 30 to 40 years ago , but began to stagnate around 2000. Although there has been a slight increase in recent years , Compared with the past 20 years, there has been almost no significant increase.
This means that the things that current salaries can buy are actually similar to those 20 years ago. Experts believe that there are many factors that determine whether Taiwan’s salaries are going up, and the main reason is It is probably the result of the relocation of industries and the rise of the service industry. In the 1990s, Taiwan's job market was obviously very different from the past.
At that time, some medium and large-scale manufacturing companies began to move overseas. It happened at this time because of Taiwan's Economic development brings an increase in income , so Taiwan's domestic service industry is what we call the so-called end consumption. It has begun to rise.
With the rise of these industries , it can absorb the labor released from the manufacturing industry. But the reason why these service industries can They are attracted because they are labor-intensive. More importantly, their threshold is low.
Low threshold means that the added value rate of this industry is relatively low, so the salary they can pay to employees is relatively low. Taiwan's service industry is because Low threshold, small scale, lack of long-term planning , little refinement, and no demand for high-level manpower, resulting in generally low wages in the industry. The reason for the low wages of Taiwanese youth is also because too many young people choose to work in the service industry.
According to the Ministry of Labor The proportion of young people engaged in the service industry is as high as 70% , which seems to confirm this inference. In addition, the expansion of higher education in Taiwan is also related to the problem of low wages for young people. In the 1990s, Taiwan began to expand the policy of establishing universities , and the number of graduates above the university has increased from the original The number of 100,000 people per year has doubled to nearly 300,000 per year, which is about twice as many .
Although the Guangdong University policy has allowed some young people who had no way to go to college in the past to obtain better diplomas and have the opportunity to get higher salaries , for In terms of the entire job market , it still has the side effect of devaluing academic qualifications. According to the Executive Yuan report, a large number of college students are entering the workplace at the same time , which makes many companies unable to use academic qualifications to identify the abilities of job seekers. Therefore, they tend to hire graduates at the minimum wage, resulting in the entire fresh People's starting salaries cannot be raised , and experts also believe that Taiwan's talent cultivation has gone bad in the past 20 years.
During the large-scale establishment of colleges and universities, we have discovered a phenomenon , which is that the cheapest department to establish is the people's livelihood department. If I today To establish a department of an engineering college, I need to buy machinery and equipment , buy instruments, and do experiments , so I need to invest a lot of capital investment . But if it is a people's livelihood subject , such as Chinese catering, and I open a catering department , I only need a central kitchen to buy it.
Just some ingredients are enough. So under this situation, we have seen a phenomenon in the expansion of higher education. The most expanded is the people's livelihood education .
However, Taiwan's catering industry , including our baking industry, cannot fully absorb these people. Its added value is not very high. If the unit price of its products is not very high, the salary it can pay to its employees is very low.
Therefore, under this situation, the expansion of higher education will bring about a sudden increase in graduates from the people's livelihood field, which will cause these students to find jobs after graduation. Generally speaking, Taiwan has experienced 20 years of wage stagnation due to factors such as changes in the labor environment , too slow industrial upgrading, and the direction of talent cultivation. It is easy for young people to choose to grow up in such an environment.
A road with uncertain employment prospects, step by step, falling into the quagmire of low wages. In addition to the dilemma of low wages, many people will complain that prices in Taiwan continue to rise. In fact , Taiwan’s general situation can be seen based on the annual growth rate of the consumer price index commonly used internationally.
The degree of expansion is not particularly exaggerated , but the actual pain of young people seems to be much more serious than what is shown on the books. In the past 10 years or so, we can see that the average salaried class can feel the price of renting a house and eating out. Fees and prices.
These two prices have basically increased a lot. Maybe they have both increased. The annual growth rate is probably more than 20% or 30% .
However, although these two prices are also within the calculation range of the Consumer Price Index , they account for The weight is not that high , so in this case it means that the prices of these two items have increased by about 10%, 20% or even 30%. When our consumer price index annual growth rate may still remain at more than 2% , so the change This achievement makes the general public , especially young people, feel that the Consumer Price Index is completely out of touch with their lives and expenses. Under the dual pressure of low wages and high prices, many young people are unable to save and have lost their savings.
Only those who are motivated want to lie down. They are only willing to enjoy themselves in the moment and do not want to make long-term plans for the future. At this point, we have to pause for a moment.
You may think that Taiwan’s economic situation sounds very bad , but strangely, in the past two years, when you turn on the TV, you seem to see To the complete opposite statement, Ladies and Gentlemen, Taiwan’s GDP this year really has a chance to beat South Korea. Not only has it surpassed Japan and South Korea , but it has also dominated East Asia. Do you know where the richest place in Asia is?
The answer is our Taiwan. Taiwan’s GDP has surpassed South Korea and is leading. Asia has also been selected as one of the richest countries.
I feel that the economy is very good. Why is it so different from the Taiwan just described ? Here we have to discuss a key issue.
Is there a relationship between GDP growth and salary growth? GDP represents the citizens of a country. Or the added value generated by enterprises through economic activities.
The more commonly used nominal GDP and real GDP after taking into account price changes. The growth of GDP represents the increase in added value. The overall economy should be moving in a good direction and may also drive wages.
We grew up together , but there is a strange phenomenon in Taiwan. Before the 1990s, the growth trends of real GDP and real wages were very similar. However, after the 1990s , the two data gradually began to decouple.
Real GDP continued to grow , but real wages stagnated. Many people felt that this It's because the boss made money but didn't distribute it to the employees. But in fact, this situation may be the result of many reasons.
One of the factors may be related to the triangular trade that started in the 1990s. At that time, many medium and large Taiwanese businessmen moved their production lines overseas. The foreign head office has been forced to stay in Taiwan , and this situation makes the calculation of GDP a bit complicated.
As long as your company is in Taiwan , and you calculate the profits created by production overseas through the consolidated declaration of financial statements, the profits created by overseas production will be counted in Taiwan. If the parent company comes , then this part will also be counted in Taiwan's GDP. In this case, it means that Taiwan's GDP is good.
However, because the production activities that create this GDP are overseas , the demand for labor or the increase in wages brought about by the demand for labor may be overseas instead of at home. This caused our The real economic growth rate has begun to decouple from our annual real wage growth rate. In addition, some experts believe that the reason why the two indicators diverge is another blind spot in statistics.
When calculating GDP, we will set a benchmark point in order to remove the impact of price fluctuations. Only by adjusting prices back can we get real GDP , and the prices here are mainly the prices of produced products , that is, the prices of goods sold. If inflation causes the prices of produced products to rise, real GDP will fall .
But if the prices of produced products fall, real GDP will rise instead . As an example, suppose that this year’s product price is 60% of the benchmark. Then a 6,000 yuan mobile phone can be adjusted to 10,000 yuan when converted into real GDP.
This kind of puffiness may be an alternative evidence of Taiwan’s growth in the past two decades. There is a very wonderful phenomenon that also began to appear in the early 2000s. The prices of our products have been falling.
That is to say, we see that GDP is growing in real terms. GDP is indeed producing many, many things , but those things are getting cheaper and cheaper , so in essence We seem to see from the real GDP that a lot of things are produced, but they are all relatively cheap things. The increased amount we see cannot be exchanged for many things that can be consumed.
According to the research of Teacher Yang of Academia Sinica in 2000 At the beginning of the year, Taiwan focused its efforts on the information and communications industry. However, due to competition from China, the export prices of electronic-related products have become lower and lower. As a result, the calculated real GDP is on the high side and contains the component of obesity.
Since it is obesity , there will not be much economic dividends to share with the whole people . During the same period last year, consumer prices were still rising due to higher and higher inflation. Things for export became cheaper and things for purchase became more expensive.
As time went by , our real wages were stuck, no matter which one I just mentioned. Factors We all know that GDP and wages do not necessarily grow at the same time . GDP per capita is an indicator that is mainly used to roughly assess the economic development of a region and has no direct correlation with whether the people have money.
In fact, in recent years, with the increase of Taiwanese businessmen Factors such as the return of epidemic dividends and the decoupling of GDP from wages have been alleviated to some extent. However, the fruits of economic growth are not accessible to everyone. Many experts point out that Taiwan’s current economic interests are excessively concentrated in the electronics industry, and the development of the industry is seriously uneven and high wages.
The low-wage service industry in the technology industry has become an inevitable reality , and this situation may also indirectly lead to the increasingly serious gap between the rich and the poor in Taiwan. If we sort family income from smallest to largest, we will find that the richest 20% of families are the same as the richest. The income gap of the poor 20% households in 2022 will reach 6.
15 times compared with previous years. Although it has only increased slightly , this number is a new high since the financial tsunami. If there is no way to improve income distribution through the social welfare system or tax system It will become more and more difficult for low-income people to stand up and gradually lose hope for the future.
When discussing the spirit of lying down, the most popular topic is not buying a house but not wanting to buy a house. Is it true that young people nowadays are lazy and don’t want to work hard? Can we start first?
Looking back at the past few news items, the average household in Taiwan has to go without food and drink for 6. 65 years before they can afford a house. The national house price-to-income ratio has reached 9.
35 times, another record high. The national house price-to-income ratio is 9. 86 times , which is equivalent to not having to eat or drink.
It takes nearly 10 years to be able to afford a house. Have you noticed that the time that Taiwanese people have to go without food and drink to buy a house has been stretched out? The data of the past 20 years has been spread out because of the low interest rate policy and the government's auction of land.
The cost of housing ownership is too high. Problems such as low prices. The uncontrolled growth of housing prices in Taiwan has made it increasingly difficult for young people to buy a house.
In the 20 years from 2002 to 2022, the salaries of this group of young people aged 25 to 29 who have just emerged from society have only increased. About 6,000 yuan . 21% of the country can afford a house without food or drink.
That is, the house price-to-income ratio has increased by 5. 34 years. Taipei City has increased by 10 years.
In just 20 years, Taiwan’s house prices have increased 2 to 3 times. A house originally cost 5 million. The house may have increased to 15 million , but at the same time, the salary of young people has only increased by 20% , which cannot keep up with the increase in housing prices .
In 2013, the main buyers of houses in Taiwan were probably 30 to 35 years old. The average appraised value of the houses they bought at that time was 8. 3 million.
But by 2023, the power to buy a house has reached 40 to 45 years old. The average appraisal value is 13. 34 million.
Even if you can buy a house, you will still have to bear a heavy mortgage loan. When talking about mortgages, we will use the mortgage burden ratio , which is the monthly mortgage payment. Evaluating the burden after buying a house as a proportion of income, Taiwan’s total is 39.
7%. In fact, it is slightly higher . This family’s monthly income of 40% has to be used to pay the mortgage.
In Taipei City, it is really a bit exaggerated. The entire family is 66 % of your income has to be used to pay nearly 70% of the mortgage. The remaining money may have to be spent on all other expenses.
Even if you have children, you have to raise children. This is very scary. In fact, according to the research of Zhang Yijun and Lin Zonghong in 2021, they It was found that the year 1978 was used as a dividing line.
People born after 1978 generally had lower salaries than the previous generation when they entered the job market , and when they considered starting a family and starting a business, it happened to be around the time that housing prices hit the new high in 2002. The stage of soaring waves. So when we use generational exploitation to describe Taiwan’s housing market situation, there is actually a very clear age dividing line , which is the group of people born after 1978.
According to the research compiled by OURs, people born before 1978 When entering the job market, you can buy a house at a low price and become a homeowner . However, people born after 1978 have also encountered the impact of stagnant wages and soaring housing prices. They have gradually lost the opportunity to buy a house and have become a disadvantaged group in housing.
Reasonable housing prices and mortgage loans have led to a situation of generational exploitation in the entire housing market. Since there is no hope of buying a house, more and more young people choose to rent rather than buy. However, renting is not less painful.
Taiwan’s rental market is seriously in short supply and there are many expensive, small, and rotten items. Everyone is still rushing to live in a place with varying quality. In addition, due to the serious black market regulations in rental housing in Taiwan, there is no guarantee for tenants.
Many tenants are worried that their rent will be suddenly increased. Even being kicked out by landlords has led to a general insecurity among renters in Taiwan. Everyone does not know where they will live in 3 to 5 years.
Without a sense of security, it is difficult to make long-term life plans . It also leads to many people who don’t want to get married or save and choose to live on the flat. It’s really the inner thoughts of many people.
As mentioned before, compared with your peers who have houses in the urban area , the end of your life’s struggle is his starting point. For many people, why don’t they lie down? Considering the current level of oppression for urban youth in Taiwan , especially those who do not own real estate but live in the city, I have no way to give any advice on lying down.
I can only think that it is a helpless choice. The above are the reasons we have sorted out for the lack of support in recent years. Of course, there are many other reasons for the lack of support .
For example, the current social culture has strengthened the comparison mentality between people, which may make Everyone is tired of competition and so on , but overall, economic pressure may still be the main reason why most people want to lie down. Although it is difficult to confirm how many people actually want to lie down , it is very likely that everyone is just talking about it to tease themselves. They are just lying down and not really lying down , but the anxiety reflected behind these self-deprecations is really painful and real.
For those young people who are tired and feel powerless about the future, lying down may be their most gentle means of resistance. They feel that the core of lying flat is actually to change values rather than change behaviors. It may also make everyone rethink about career success, relationships, marriage, and children.
Are these goals worth striving for? Whether you decide to continue working hard or don’t want to work hard, it may be the opposite after thinking about it . There is nothing wrong with a lifestyle that is more suitable for you.
If you don’t lie down, just lie down. It’s very comfortable. We need these gaps in our lives because there are too many things in front of us.
This world thinks we should be like this , we should work hard , we should get married, and so on. Lie down. Life is actually not as negative as everyone thinks.
You can take a break , but you still can't give up real life. Whether you choose to lie down or not, you must choose the lifestyle that is most comfortable for you and you are satisfied with it. That's good , because life is yours, you can do whatever you want, and if you can bear the consequences and you're satisfied, then that's fine.
