Live data from Hacker News

Millions of Men Are Missing from the Job Market

nytimes.com

201–210 of 279 posts

Re: Millions of Men Are Missing from the Job Market

#201
post #20
post #2

Comparing those numbers with Europe, whose safety net doesn't usually require people to pretend being disabled, would have been enlightening. A missed opportunity.

I would wager most of those people are disabled, but for psychological reasons. As you point out, the level of stress caused by financial insecurity during any period of disability is extremely high. A lot of white collar workers in the US end up in a particular catch-22: their jobs are making them sick, but because they are sick, they can't leave their jobs. They become psychologically disabled because of the pressu…

> the stressor of battling the insurance companies

This (and the related and similarly-inevitable-if-you-have-anything-worse-than-an-ingrown-nail battling hospitals and various other health care providers) is truly one of the worst parts of the US healthcare system, and one that doesn't get enough attention IMO.

For any significant interaction with that system you can expect 3 different things that are or appear to be bills for 20 different services, from 10 distinct organizations each with their own payment cycles and billing policies. Then another couple of documents from your insurance for each of those. Even with the money in the bank and the best of intentions it's easy to end up in collections for one or more of them just because it gets lost in the shuffle. And you have to watch like a hawk to make sure the providers aren't over or double billing you, and that insurance is paying what it should. Chances are high that one or the other, or both of those, will happen. Then they'll try to send it to collections while you're disputing it, so you have to watch for them pulling crap like that. It's insane.

Re: Millions of Men Are Missing from the Job Market

#202

After watching the documentary "13th" on Netflix recently, I wondered about how the US prison population affected this. Something like 1 out of 100 people in the US are in prison, which must be close to 2 out of 100 men. And another chunk of people who's function in society is to monitor those in jail. Plus the difficulties of getting a job as a felon. Seemed like all put together must have a serious impact on produc…

> Something like 1 out of 100 people in the US are in prison, which must be close to 2 out of 100 men. Wait, doesn't that mean that mean that twice as many men are in prison as people are in prison?

I'm not sure if you're just confused because I switched from people to men, but it prompted me to look up the actual figures which are:

1352 per 100,000 men 126 per 100,000 women

http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/genderinc.html

Re: Millions of Men Are Missing from the Job Market

#203
post #174
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've tried various diets, including Keto, LCHF, etc. I try to stick with LCHF just to slow down my weight gain, but it doesn't impact my pain or neurological symptoms. For anybody else reading this I'm a similar situation, please do follow cableshaft's advice and try new diets. I also recommend physical therapy. The cause(s) of MS and many similar diseases are not well understood. At all. F…

When I went to physical therapy it consisted of them just teaching me stretches, all of which I could just find online. Is this the normal experience?

Good question. I can only share my personal experience; I've seen 5, but only 2 seemed to understand my pain and gave me exercises tailored to my needs (using elastic bands, aqua exercises, stretching, etc.). The standard for back pain seems to be core strengthening. I found aquatic exercises most helpful (and least painful) for that.

The best ones I've seen were both athletes who succumbed to back injuries. But there must be good PTs who learned by the book too... I hope.

Re: Millions of Men Are Missing from the Job Market

#204
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People respond to incentives. You ( specifically you) get paid to be disabled. If the government started paying people to have an urge to eat artificially shit-flavored desserts (which is obviously a mental issue, since it's disgusting) then as soon as word got out, we would have a new epidemic of people with an inexplicable obsession to eat artificially shit-flavored desserts, making them unsuitable to integrate and…

If companies need me so much, they would be contacting me. If they don't, they can do without. Those are incentives too. And no, I don't get paid for my disability, I just get welfare like other unemployed people.

Hi Jokoon - as mentioned I don't believe the thoughts I quoted, they are written by people worse than Nazis so don't take this too seriously. If we did take them seriously for a minute (even though they're obviously wrong) then perhaps they might respond like this to your points :

- If companies need me so much, they would be contacting me. If they don't, they can do without. Those are incentives too.

Firstly, this is written in absolutely perfect English, including the idiom "do without". You're a highly skilled intellectual worker, far above the average employed French person in terms of employability. You're talented even before we introduce the fact that you can code. While people might train to become a junior pastry chef in a few weeks (to use another recent thread), while learning on the job, it takes far more than a week or two to be able to program in a single language, let alone three of them, with one being the industrial language C++. You have a naturally very high wage, discounting the friction of being placed at a job, which is high.

You are correct when you say that employers have an 'incentive' to hire you, this is a good point and I want to reply to it, but here you are using the term 'incentive' a bit differently from the part I originally quoted, and it's a problem for thinking clearly about the argument that I originally quoted. So, in the part I quoted that says "people respond to incentives" it is very narrow, such as a bonus. What it means is that if a restaurant enacts a rule, "The waiter who upsells the most bottles of champagne, being at least 25 bottles, to parties of at least 5 in a given month will receive a $500 cash for (ANY explanation/justification)" this is an incentive. It doesn't matter what justification is put. What "people respond to incentives", in the very narrow sense, means, is that regardless of what the explanation/justification is, as a direct result of that policy, waiters will be selling more bottles of champagne. So, by enacting that policy, the bottles of champagne being sold to parties of 5 or more will increase. (It might have other effects: for example, perhaps Yelp reviews will start talking about waiters/waitresses becoming "very pushy" -- perhaps near the end of the month when one has sold nearly 25 bottles and needs to make it to 25. But it could also have an effect where near the end of the month a waiter will themselves personally invite a party to a bottle of champagne, paying out of pocket but not noting this, to win versus some other waiter. Both of these behavior changes are "people responding to incentives." The very existence of the rule that the waiter who upsells the most bottles of champagne, being at least 25, in a given month, will receive a $500 cash bonus will affect people's behavior. Even though it is literally part of every waiter's job every single day to upsell expensive beverages -- plus, since waiters in America are usually paid as a percentage tip, they already have even a financial incentive to upsell by themselves.)

So if we take this very narrow case of "incentive" -- perhaps let's call it "financial transaction rule" to make it very explicit -- for example "There is a financial transaction rule that in each month the server who has sold the most bottles of champagne to parties of at least 5, being at least 25 bottles in that month, will receive a financial transaction from the house of $500." It's just a rule. There's no "morality" there's no "what it's for."

If the government enacted the "financial transaction rule" that any person who ate foul-smelling food received a welfare payment, then as a direct result, some people would begin to eat foul-smelling foods. Even if it's not really worth it to them. Even if they don't like to do it. And even if it costs them more to do so in direct money. They are simply responding to the "financial transaction rule."

So, in this sense, the very existence of the "financial transaction rule" resulting in people such as yourself receiving disability payments while having to check a checkbox "I looked for a job this month" (even if it's not true and you sent zero resumes/CV's), will result in some employable people receiving those payments and not working. It's a simple direct consequence of the universal fact that people respond to "financial transaction rules".

I switched from using "incentive" to using "financial transaction rule" so I could address your broader point, that companies, too, have an incentive (let's call it 'motivating factor') to contact you.

We can make quite a simple analogy. So, I'm single at the moment, but take care of my body, have free time, some people find me humorous and I'm generally fun. I'm pretty picky about my girlfriends and often went years between one, and was in long-term relationships. I don't often have one-night stands or the sort. Now, I know for a fact that there are a lot of women who would find me interesting - I know this because when I take the inordinate amount of effort it takes to be in a position to interact with them, whether on dating sites, in some social circles, while going out, and so forth, I get positive feedback and after all connected with my previous long-term significant others this way. But the existence of this "motivating factor" on both sides (mine and theirs) is not enough to magically 'clear' the market. How could they contact me, if I'm not available anywhere?

Likewise, how could I contact them, if they had other things they were focusing on? If I would most of all like to be connected with women who place other things far above partying and going out and socializing, that makes it somewhat difficult to find them.

So the existence of a "motivating factor" is insufficient to make things happen on its own. Companies can't find you if you are not out there on the job market - as you said, you are not.

Finally, I wanted to address:

- And no, I don't get paid for my disability, I just get welfare like other unemployed people.

So I think I've discussed that it is a "financial transaction rule", and in this sense you do get paid. Now I want to just say that there's no moral aspect here. For example, if someone were a well-trained programmer but homeless (they could be very highly trained and really expert), the friction with placing them in a new job might be too high, even if they were sending in applications. Perhaps they don't have access to the Internet, cannot dress and smell cleanly for a single interview, perhaps cannot afford transportation across town to make an interview, may not have a charged cell phone, and many other problems.

So while the existence of a 'financial transaction rule' will change people's behaviors, still, society is making a correct choice by having some of these in place in certain cases. It's really not easy.

Perhaps if, rather than make you check a checkbox (lying) saying you've sent out applications, you were forced to send a screenshot of sent email applications, then in your case this may be enough for you to have started working. I can't say.

I can say for sure and with certainty that in your case you are qualified for a job, and I can say for sure and with certainty based on your post that you are meeting the requirements of a financial transaction rule, including checking the checkbox that you're looking for a job.

If I were the government, I would look at the interaction of both "motivating factors" (including reading, drawing, bettering yourself on your own time) and the "financial transaction rules". I don't think everyone should work 60-hour weeks as a corporate drone.

I don't think there's anything wrong with your lifestyle. I do think that working could be part of it, and that as you reported there is a financial transaction rule that you are meeting the requirements of.

I hope this explains everything in the thinking that I quoted earlier. It seems you are ready to make serious responses, I will read them carefully and think about and address anyhting you have to say about those matters.

Note: if you want to discuss the details of your disability I'm not really open to it and would just say that I agree with you and point out that Nazi's exterminated people with disabilities and that the thinking I quoted is from a neo-Nazi website and obviously wrong, so in that case this discussion is over.

Re: Millions of Men Are Missing from the Job Market

#205
post #83
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this differently. I see a world heading towards basic income. Adam Curtis - HyperNormalisation was released last night ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis-hy... ). Haven't watched it yet but I do think there seems to be a certain type of crazy happening in the world and I can't put my finger on it. We have whole generations of young people that have been disenfranchised and are having to…

At scale, all basic income will get you is a cot in an urban dorm somewhere (possibly not of your choosing). You'd be able to take walks, sit by the river and write in a journal, or do whatever idle activity appeals to you, but it won't be fancy.

Which is exactly why there is no risk of a shortage of people willing to exert themselves in order to get more than that. Lucky for them, they won't have to compete against those who don't.

Re: Millions of Men Are Missing from the Job Market

#206
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millennials have to carry that financial burden, but most other generations had to make much bigger sacrifices. I'd take the financial struggles of the millennial generation over having to fight in WW2 and rebuilding the nation in the aftermath, which is what the Greatest Generation got tasked with. Every generation faces difficult challenges, and the financial issues of the millennial generation are just a matter of…

Rebuilding what nation? The U.S. was unscathed and came out roaring. Everybody could get jobs, college was cheap, home ownership was a given. And don't forget, millennials have been shouldering this global war on terror crap for the last 15 years. While WW2 was horrific, at least they were fighting for something they believed in, and at least it was over after 4 years. Oh and then add in the second worst financial cr…

> college was cheap

To be fair, that's largely because engagement was so low[1]. Under 10% of the population were college graduates. If we returned to those levels, costs would drop dramatically.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/1xUOimy.jpg

> home ownership was a given

But so was living in small town/rural areas, something that is completely unfathomable to most people these days. Like college attainment, urbanization is an upward trend. The difficulty of trying to fit more and more people into a relatively fixed area is what is largely responsible for the increased difficulty of affording a home.

The real problem here is that we think we can do what they did, with our own unique twist on it. If we actually lived like they did, those would still be true today. But we expect more, and that comes with a cost.

Re: Millions of Men Are Missing from the Job Market

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human desires are unlimited. So this problem isn't going anywhere anytime soon. That said, I think a lot of overconsumption originates from traumatic childhoods (people trying to fill a hole in their hearts) and the welfare state (people don't know what things truly cost).

> Human desires are unlimited. Actually they are quite limited on their own. And they're not usually about things either -- aside from food and shelter, people want sex, love, security, etc. That's why it takes a whole lot of convincing, advertising, conditioning etc. to get people to consume at the level modern societies do (and it took a whole lot of convincing, installment buying, easy credit etc. and nagging to j…

In order for the economy to work, human desires have to scale to the resources that the individual humans control.

For instance, Elon Musk has developed a desire to colonize Mars. Bill Gates has developed a desire to combat malaria. That is exactly the sort of thing that has to happen in everyone who acquires great wealth. After seeing to the needs of your immediate family, and possibly also your grandchildren, you have an economic duty to spend money, and not just invest it such that it comes right back to you.

Ordinary folks never have quite enough socked away that the economy has to worry about their non-circulating currency. But the rich, as a class, seem to lack the vision to "throw away" their money on grand-scale consumption. The middle classes have picked up some of that slack by buying phones and game consoles and affordable vacation packages, but that has largely served to make the wealthy wealthier, still with no corresponding increase in vision.

So the economy has two options. The rich start actually spending, like Gates and Musk. Or the government breaks the misers' fingers and pries the gold bars out of their grip, to spend on enormously expensive things like wars, welfare, and mega-engineering projects. The latter choice has become somewhat problematic, as the wealthy have discovered and developed ways to recycle the government spending back into their pockets before too much of it is lost to the hoi polloi--largely thanks to the military-industrial complex and corrupted political systems.

So what can a non-wealthy person do to unlock those resources wasting away as the immobile savings of the wealthy, or the tight-looped investments that turn only a few economic gears before returning to the coffers?

Try to get them all addicted to expensive drugs, perhaps? It would be nice if the rich folks of this era actually developed some sense of noblesse oblige, and decided to spend resources on developing the general welfare rather than increasing numbers on balance sheets. Depending on the scale of the wealth, this could be a patronage fund for local artists, or supporting donations to cultural institutions like museums and libraries, or underwriting improvements in the public transit system, or even collecting expensive items like classic cars or celebrity memorabilia.

If your only desire is to be Scrooge McDuck, and swim in your vault full of money, society is far better served by inspiring your heirs to have expensive dreams, and then arranging an unfortunate accident for you. If you don't want that, then spend some of your rassafrassin' money on isht you don't need, whenever you can afford it! If that cash doesn't move, some people out there might not be able to find work.

Re: Millions of Men Are Missing from the Job Market

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I resonate with you. I think that the number one occupation we should have is to live our lives. The way we do this should be according to our values and not neccesarily to how others think we should. Now, life has a mechanistic component driven by neccesities and an artistic one driven by ideals, self expression and pleasure. The promised goal of modern technology was that a large part of the rutined work co…

I'm not sure if many realize, but in such a world very few would actually work. All the rest will play. Okay, so who decides who will work and who will play? Why should I bust my ass all day working, while you just live however you want to? Right now, the reason some people bust their ass working, is being they can get paid more and live a higher quality of life. If everybody get everything they want, why would anyon…

I don't know about others but I really enjoy my day job. My only complaint is that I don't have enough free time to "idle", but I'd hardly quit just for that purpose. Maybe slow down to a 3 day week. Neither busting ass or 100% idling.

Re: Millions of Men Are Missing from the Job Market

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in the same age range as the poster. Life is tough. Get over it. You want nicer things? It has to come from somewhere. And our parents did not have it easier. I would say if anything, they had it harder, and didn't get caught up in all the bullshit commericalism that is marketed to us today. This is anecdote, but still, my parents worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 20 years, with one single vacation, so t…

I am in the same generation as your parents (49) and can say for sure that my generation had a lot easier then your generation. We had free or low-cost college, real wages were higher, there were plenty of real (non-gig) jobs, people could afford to buy housing on a middle-class income, health insurance covered more, and the overall cost of living was lower. Anecdotally, your parents may have had it rougher then most…

People can absolutely still afford to buy houses on middle-class salaries. They just can't do it in San Francisco or Manhattan or the nicest neighborhoods in Chicago. They may also have to hold off buying a new phone every year. They may have to not sign up for all 500 cable channels along with Spotify and Netflix. But there are lots of people living just fine, with families in their own homes, on middle class families.

But, sure, some things are harder. And other things are easier. It's much easier to learn skills on Coursera/Udacity/etc without having to pay for college. It's much easier to move around the country. For people who gay, lesbian, or trans, I would say life is probably a lot easier than it was in the 80s and 90s. The gig economy provides options for making side cash.

I'm sure every generation is whiny. But within the generation, everyone is going through the same things. So, live the best you can, and stop trying to compare yourself to everyone else, let alone those in other generations.

Re: Millions of Men Are Missing from the Job Market

#210
post #32

What I'll write might sound stupid to some but well... There needs to be a re-configuration of the global economy and its system. People like me late 20's and younger might be feeling that they have no future. At least I do. I am working full-time and thats fine. That only pays my day to day expenses, coming the end of the month am always out of money waiting for the next paycheck. Me buying my own house? That sounds…

Jesus, there is so much entitlement in this post I don't even know where to start. No, you don't NEED an Apple iPhone, and a TV with Netflix, and Amazon, and a Gant sweater. There are thousands of families that are surviving just fine without any of that. We have survived for centuries without external entertainment, and suddenly, you NEED this so you don't get bored? Why not have a conversation with your wife. Sit d…

The desire to "keep up with the Jones's" is one of the strongest human motivators in my opinion and very hard to fight. Most people want to feel respected or on par with their social circle. And even if one can resist the urge, there is often pressure from others (wife is a big one)
Post reply on HN