it’s mentioned and linked a few paragraphs in so probably related

You know that this is bullshit right? We can all, regardless of our age, differentiate between meaningful and meaningless work. The fact that we need money to fulfil our obligations to our family, the bank or whatever it might be is completely separate from that. We can do meaningless jobs if we have to at any age. This does not make them meaningful. If a person, at any age, can choose between a meaningless and meaningful job - which do you think they would take?

If they have to choose between a meaningless job and starvation?

Cool. Now grow up and do some meaningful with your time. And so should I.

What you're describing is making work useful, not meaningful. More people nowadays are rejecting work that has no meaning, connection to identity and makes no use of their intellect, even if that work is a means of some income.

Attitudes like this are why the wealth gap keeps growing.

Maybe it’s an age gap thing, but I’ve come to realize this attitude is one many boomers have because they’re all doing ok. The rest of us need to course correct the mess they’ve left. The america they were born into might as well be a foreign country at this point.

This really downplays why people fight against "meaningless" work, it's not because of any philosophical grounds.

The real problem with meaningless work is it tends to be incredibly stressful. Because the underlying work creates no value, even locally (existentially of course it's all nil, but again, this isn't about that level of abstraction). The trouble with "no value" is that you also have no way know how to or even if you are doing your job "well".

Your description sounds pleasant, but my real experience with meaningless work is that it results in long hours worked, very aggressive office politics, and consistent insecurity around the future of your job and income.

The essence of "meaningless work" is captured very well in Kafka's The Trial. While their are brief moments where one can laugh at the absurdity of the situation, most of the time it sits in exact confrontation to the idyllic view of work you are proposing.

Which is funny because the only meaningful work is the work that puts a roof over someone's head, food on someone's table or provides entertainment for so people can enjoy their friends and family to have quality time together.