Warum dieses Lanz & Precht-Video krass empört | Reaktion & Faktencheck

This video here by Markus Lanz and Richard David Precht is going viral right now. We have become such an insanely sensitive society. Yes, such a oat milk society, such a guava milk juice group, which is really looking for the ideal work-life balance all the time. Well, I would even be a little more radical. I would say that in the generation of my parents, especially my grandparents, 90% of all people, when they worked, did not even ask the question of meaning. Now, of course, it looks like almost all young people go into life under the idea that life is a wish concert. What is the result? You start something and at the first gentle headwind you think, no, no, no, that was the wrong thing. You throw the flint back into the basket. A conversation from the ZDF reportage Mitarbeiter gesucht. Why is there no staff everywhere? By the way, even on YouTube it's going really well right now. And on Twitter, many people or all people immediately agreed, it's not possible. Or here, quote, young people are simply too spoiled, too self-conscious, or do not want to be subordinated or exploited sufficiently. Yes, really, really old white men. And shall I tell you something? Honestly, when I was sitting in the office and watched the video, when it crossed my path, I also thought at first, old Swede, WTF? What? This is mega undifferentiated, this is not possible. And where do they actually get all this information from? Shortly afterwards, however, my journalist heart jumped and I wanted to know what it really was about these statements. Is it even true what they say? Was I too prejudiced or is it not? Or where does this clip actually come from? I mean, where is the whole context? What did they say before and what did they say afterwards? And do you actually have to know and see to understand the context? Maybe they even relativized it themselves. Well, and that's why I'm sitting here now, writing the script, looking like shit, not like in the right, good video recording, and researching. And the good thing is, everything has already happened and you see the result now. And with that, welcome back and feel free to subscribe if you haven't already. So let's first explain where the video actually comes from and whether it could have been taken out of context. Spoiler alert! If you look at the unedited version, you may not be quite as impressed anymore. So, this talk was recorded on March 9, 2023 as part of the event Zukunft Handwerk, in which Lanz and Precht were invited to record a live podcast. The fact that the two already appeared at this event at the time was already critical at the time, because people asked themselves, what are they actually doing there? They're both not even active in the craft. Well, but in the end there was a one-hour talk about many topics, apart from this 50-second clip. Here, by the way, is the long excerpt in which the two actually relate to each other. And Richard David Precht also gives Markus Lanz the opposite. Actually, because he just doesn't want to leave what was said by Markus Lanz standing, which you just don't see in this short viral clip. And by the way, the excerpt is a bit longer, but I think if you want to understand the context and this topic of lack of professionals and the work ethic of young people, if you want to understand that and if we want to understand that, in the course of this video, then take a look at these two or three minutes. Because I recently talked to a top banker, he's looking for people with hands in the ring. And I said, where are they all? And he said, they all quit. And I said, why? Work-life balance. I said, okay, work-life balance. What do they do then? They become officials. They go into public service. I mean, when we were both young, that was a few days ago, the last thing you wanted to be was an official. Who wants to be the last one? Without me thinking that's disrespectful. But that was the outlook on it, so to speak. I sit around in this one room for the rest of my life. And then at some point I'm an official. And that was it. So the question is, why do we obviously not want anything more from life? That's how big I would make it. And why do we come up with this weird idea that work and working a lot obviously doesn't give a work-life balance? Why should that suddenly make no sense anymore? I don't understand that. Do you have an answer to that? The one reason is certain. We have the belief that we have a higher fear of life in youth or among younger people today than in the decades before. Due to the crisis-ridden world conditions, we are in a situation ... Come on, please. This mentality ... So young people get married earlier. They used to slip into a fixed enclosure. That's not trying everything in life. You can do that virtually. But in reality, they become more careful. And a lot of people fit into that. So to slip somewhere safely, to have something that gives you security, that certainly plays a role. As far as sense is concerned, of course, that's strange. But if you've designed something or done something, if you've laid tiles or painted something, that's the feeling of having accomplished something. It's the feeling of having done something meaningful. Much more evident than if you're writing on paper or moderating a show. Or do you see it differently? You know, it's about this point. I have the feeling that we are such a ... And I really don't want to sound like grandpa who talks about war. But we have become such an incredibly sensitive society. Yes, such a ... such a oat milk society. Such a guava fat juice troop. Which is really looking all the time for the ideal work-life balance. We work an average of 34.7 hours a day. That means even that, the 38-hour week, is on average, I always talk about average, an illusion. That means something happened. And it's this famous work-life balance. And I wonder when we started, as a society, to really understand work no longer as a foundation of meaning. That may be exaggerated now, but it hits a core. I would even be a little more radical. I would say in the generation of my parents, first of all my grandparents, 90% of all people, when they worked, didn't even ask the question of meaning. You have to be able to afford it. It didn't matter at all. You did what you did. And either you did it more or less gladly and was somehow proud of it, or you did it less gladly, but life was not a wish concert. Now, of course, it looks like almost all young people go into life under the idea that life is a wish concert. So if I let my children decide all the time at the age of three whether they prefer banana porridge or strawberry porridge, then I can't help but wonder that in the end young people come out of it, because the more you can choose, the more difficult it is to decide. And always when you have decided, you think you have made the wrong decision. There is a famous view from social psychology. If you buy a car and you have three to choose from and you choose one, then you are pretty sure that you have chosen exactly the best one. If I give you 100 cars to choose from, you will always think you have chosen the wrong one. And that is about a lot of the attitude that young people have. You basically have an infinite number. You can do this, you can do that, and so on. There are a lot of life plans available. But if you have such a choice, you always have the feeling that you are doing it wrong. What is the consequence? You start something and at the first gentle headwind you think, no, no, that was the wrong one, and you throw the flint back into the grain. There is a stupid technical term that is called resilience. But we can also put it very simply. You just don't have the balls or the constitution but you are resilient. That's what I mean. Exactly, that's the point. I recently read another interesting study. The number of driver's license exams is just as high as never before. It also has something to do with Corona. Many driving schools and driving lessons have failed. At the moment, an incredible number of driving exams are cancelled. The interesting thing is that half of them are cancelled. In other words, if they wanted to become craftsmen, how would they get there? You don't even have a driver's license. You don't even have a chance to drive. What happens then? The term, the youth, the young people, I always find it incredibly difficult because I don't see them as a generation who doesn't care about anything. They are looking for meaning. But I ask myself, why do they find the meaning of sticking to the motorways instead of being able to move something seriously by building ecologically, by becoming an engineer, by studying physics, by saying, look, where can we take the big issues, climate change for example, really seriously? You don't do that by sitting at the Berlin airport. Yes, but now I pour water into your wine because one doesn't exclude the other. You can do both. You can be very active. If you stick, you won't be stuck at university. I wouldn't say that there are only one and the other and the others stick to each other and do nothing else. And all the others are totally committed and are committed to sustainability. Basically, it's too simple for me. Yes, it makes a slightly different impression when you watch the whole video. That they still seem to question the work ethic of young people, this longer video doesn't know that. What do they actually say there? Do they have a point or do they just talk rubbish? Let's start with the first one, the work-life balance, and become all officials now, especially young people. I think we have to distinguish between the professional wishes of young people in Germany and the actually perceived and practiced professions. Let's start with the professional wishes. In 2020, the OECD published a study on the dream jobs of young people. However, here the girls wanted to become teachers, doctors, educators, psychologists, nurses, architects, police officers, office workers, designers or lawyers. The boys want to work in the field of information and communication technology, work as industrial mechanics, as car mechanics, police officers, teachers, scientists, doctors, engineers, architects or as professional athletes. So, there were a few official professions, but definitely not the majority. And on the other hand, apart from the professional wishes, there are also figures that show that more and more people work in public service. 11% of all employees in Germany work in public service. However, if you think that Germany is far ahead of the big states, you are wrong. In Norway, for example, 30% work in public service. Nevertheless, the Federal Statistical Office announced that in 2021 there was the highest increase in public service since reunification. Quote. The increase in personnel is so great in some federal states that the tax authorities are already warning more household discipline. But the truth is that there is also a lack of personnel in public service. Child care, internal security and external security, or even in the IT sector, where the private sector is paid more, where there is usually better equipment, where digital systems are not so backward. Because the baby boomers will go into retirement by 2030. I think that at this point you also have to differentiate. Of course, an official is not an official. How often is there a lack of teachers? Only to then get upset that young people want to be teachers and want to be employed, I find a bit cynical and a bit strange. So Landshut and Precht are not wrong. But it still asks whether it is really a point that is necessary, whether it is necessary in some areas where you can be employed. In fact, it is so that young people in Germany still want to make a career. They still want to work. The Randstadt Work Monitor gives really good insights into this. This is one of the largest inquiries from employers worldwide. More than half of Gen Z in Germany still want to make a career. But they also want to have a lot of free time and to be recognized and used by others. Quote, Gen Z wants a career with meaning, no matter which employer. And that's exactly what Precht actually mentioned. But surprisingly, this is still the insight from this study. Being successful professionally, yes, with which employer, that is secondary. Only 34% of young employers still identify with their employer. Of course, this could also be seen negatively and assumed. And because we are here at a talk about craft, one could also argue that young people would of course also work in the craft if the working conditions are good. But yes, quote, at the same time Gen Z places high demands on the company and the leadership for which they work. 72% want to see a meaning in their work. Richard David Precht says that the older generation supposedly did not question this meaning back then. They would have just taken it that way. The generation of my parents, first of all my grandparents, 90% of all people, when they worked, did not even ask the question of meaning. Here is an exciting excerpt from a Spiegel article. And by the way, this is not sponsored by Spiegel. But this is exactly what it says. Quote, the now deceased economist Christian Scholz, who, as one of the first to deal with the generation Z, put it this way, quote, other generations have also said no. The advantage that the younger generation currently has is they are needed. They are urgently needed everywhere. The working world is dependent on them. And of course they can also better implement ideas, make them easier to implement. So yes, the two have a point, but that Gen Z does not want to make a career or that it all only applies to young people, so more demands for better employment, that is simply wrong. And why do we come to this weird idea that there is obviously no work-life balance between work and working a lot? Why should that suddenly no longer make sense? I don't understand that. A representative survey that asked 18 to 29-year-olds shows that the majority sees work as a means of securing existence and a means to purpose. So Lanz seems to have a point. On the other hand, as I just mentioned, young people are also looking for a meaningful element in their work. It could of course also be that the working world is not yet prepared for this situation and therefore many young people may, maybe it's just a theory, perceive work as a means of securing existence and a means to purpose because the working world has probably not adapted enough yet. So here is the question, what was first? The chicken or the egg? We work an average of 34.7 hours today. That means that the 38-hour week is an illusion on average. But let's get to a number that made me a little stunned in this talk, namely when Lanz said that the 38-hour week would be an illusion because in Germany, on average, you would only work 34.7 hours. Basically, yes, this number is true. The Federal Statistical Office has published this figure in the same way. This means that Germany is actually below the European average of 37 hours per week. With Lanz's statement, you can of course get the impression that people in Germany complain that working full-time means working an average of 34.7 hours at full wage. You could interpret it like this and leaving the number like this is just wrong and has too little context. Because in 2022, now comes the clarification, full-time employees in Germany worked 40.4 hours per week while part-time employees worked 20.8 hours per week. But to stay with Lanz, who in the translated sense meant that people in Germany want to work less and therefore would go to part-time jobs more often, to explain this, we have to look at why people in Germany work part-time, for example. The Federal Statistical Office also helps in the description. And yes, with one point, only 5.7% of people who did not find a full-time job and therefore had to go to part-time jobs in 2022. So it was not a voluntary decision. Today, about 41% even wanted to work part-time and therefore also work part-time. But the rest of those who work part-time have obligations, such as taking care of the family or they have an illness why they can only work part-time. Yes, and in Europe, Germany is also at the lower end of the so-called involuntary part-time employment. So the involuntary part-time employment, I just explained, if you do not find a full-time job and therefore have to go to part-time jobs. Here, compared to Germany, you rarely go to part-time jobs because you have not found a full-time job as, for example, in Italy or Romania. On the other hand, you can compare how the part-time and full-time quotas look like for men and women. What we see here is that significantly more men actually work full-time than, for example, women do. But for both sexes, the full-time employment rate did not drop, but remained approximately the same, while, especially for women, the full-time employment rate increased, also because more women found a job, but then mainly practiced it in part-time. So yes, Lanz has a point here, but working 34.7 hours and presenting it as full-time employment is just not right. So, with that we would have clarified a few things. It really upset me that so much is lost out of context on Twitter. I hope I was able to help you with this context. By the way, if that was the case, please like the video and maybe continue to watch or not. And we'll see each other again at the latest in the next video if you have subscribed. Thank you for watching and see you next time.