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Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

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Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#61

Post by rudrigu »

xapata wrote: post #54
rudrigu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a few decades from now, saner people will arrive at the realization that a woman's first career should be motherhood. A woman's best years should be for her children, not her employer.

And men should tend the land. It brings character to labor physically. These sissys who have no callouses don't know what real work is. Living in artificial, concrete cages, people have lost touch with reality! Oh wait, no. Tending the land is for women. Men should be out hunting. /parody

Laugh all you want. Your kind is being outbred.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#62

Post by xt00 »

csa wrote: post #40
xt00 wrote: post #28

One big issue with this problem is that these men are not all in the same location. Many of them are distributed through the so called rust belt areas -- I've seen maps of this previously. So simply creating a few factories here and there will only address a small part of the problem. They mentioned infrastructure improvement as a way to put some of these people to work -- I think that sounds reasonable because you c…

While I think location may be part of the problem, I think it's a relatively small problem. IMHO, the biggest part of the problem is that many of these people are not employable, and due to having an enabler, are not motivated to become employable. There are lots of places in the Rust Belt looking for people to hire, but they need people who will show up clean and sober who will also do the work. These low requiremen…

Very true. It's definitely now a situation where we are dealing with the fallout from years of not dealing with the problem. Yea I recently read a story where a factory tried to hire around 50 people and could only hire a small number due to the vast majority failing drug tests. I was actually fairly surprised to hear that. So yea now we are dealing with the problem that has been festering and getting worse for years..

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#63

Post by yowlingcat »

rudrigu wrote: post #10

"... or the wife works while the man take care of kids" Then wifey starts seeing hubby as a sexless entity --- sort of like the son she never gave birth to --- and loses attraction for him. "... it isn't a gender thing. It is a money thing" Humans spent millennia as hunter-gatherers. Men hunted, women gathered. Men protected and provided, women nurtured the children. If women provide and protection is provided by the…

We also spent millennia believing the earth is flat. I see your point that "Religious people who live according to traditional gender roles then outbreed the atheists" which is definitely a worry of mine too. I've recently begun wondering about the value of my parents' old fashioned values, that if you're a productive member of society and you don't have kids, you're a drain on society. The problem there with that argument is the same problem with the "if you don't vote don't complain" argument but there is an element of truth to it.

I also think that if women provide, nothing prevents them from having children, whether with men or otherwise. Men will still have to protect and provide in relationships, but it will be as partners in relationships do, not as men being men. A far cry from useless.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#64

Post by rudrigu »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #55
rudrigu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a few decades from now, saner people will arrive at the realization that a woman's first career should be motherhood. A woman's best years should be for her children, not her employer.

I think we should strive for something along the lines of each woman choosing for herself.

Sure, provided that the long-term consequences of her actions are carefully discussed.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#65

Post by dang »

rudrigu wrote: post #29
thrownblown wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my marriage, I bring home the bacon with a small SaaS and the wife is in graduate school. We split the raising of our child 50-50. I like it just fine. She doesn't. She's admittedly jealous of how much time I spend with my son, she resents having to continue on her career path and not being able to be a stay-t-home mom. She doesn't understand why I would rather raise my son than work a real programming job. We are…

Perhaps a few decades from now, saner people will arrive at the realization that a woman's first career should be motherhood. A woman's best years should be for her children, not her employer.

At this point you're trolling. Please stop.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#66

Post by dukeluke »

hprotagonist wrote: post #4

I don't know that gender has much to do, necessarily, with the fact that it's hard to find a partner when your life consists of not doing much and watching reruns. The guilt-shame-depression-guilt cycle is certainly reinforced in non-working men by indoctrination in a particular strain of patriarchal gender roles. Having a little voice in the back of your head constantly yelling at you for being a failure and "not re…

The evolutionary strategies are different between the genders, mostly because the biologically expensive act of growing a child for months and raising it for years means women need to be more selective towards their mates.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#67

Post by Frondo »

bobbytherobot wrote: post #60
jokoon wrote: post #2

I've started some treatment recently, and for some reason I immediately started dating and looking for mates again. I quickly realized how difficult it is. You can't find women unless you have a job, while women have made outstanding progress in education and the workforce, and for some reason they have a hard time dating people who have a less comfortable situation than themselves. I don't want to ride the whole men…

> One generation behind us, women still sort of relied on men, and now that the tables have turned, women might need to make a compromise. You mean the system was heavily stacked to make women reliant on men. I won't call that a compromise. The tables haven't turned, the game changed. We have drastically removed many of the forces meant to keep women as dependents of men. If the tables had turned, then men would be s…

Yes, this, a thousand times this.

People look at stuff like alimony or whatever and think "oh women just get all the breaks". When really, stuff like that exists because women were expected to forego career for marriage, etc., essentially shackled to a man for life.

Women being independent, expecting a guy to have his shit together? I think that's great. I say bring it on. Independent women are far more interesting to talk to, and if I have to have a good job lined up, well, that's how you play the game.

Now...if society is breaking in a way that it's tough for men to get good jobs, then let's look at that. Women aren't to blame for that, though. Let's look at what's really going on.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#68

Post by dang »

rudrigu wrote: post #10

"... or the wife works while the man take care of kids" Then wifey starts seeing hubby as a sexless entity --- sort of like the son she never gave birth to --- and loses attraction for him. "... it isn't a gender thing. It is a money thing" Humans spent millennia as hunter-gatherers. Men hunted, women gathered. Men protected and provided, women nurtured the children. If women provide and protection is provided by the…

Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents. It makes discussion less interesting because there are fewer interesting things you can say about them. Then people compensate for that by flame-throwing, and down we all go.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13796757 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#69

Post by rudrigu »

yowlingcat wrote: post #63
rudrigu wrote: post #10

"... or the wife works while the man take care of kids" Then wifey starts seeing hubby as a sexless entity --- sort of like the son she never gave birth to --- and loses attraction for him. "... it isn't a gender thing. It is a money thing" Humans spent millennia as hunter-gatherers. Men hunted, women gathered. Men protected and provided, women nurtured the children. If women provide and protection is provided by the…

We also spent millennia believing the earth is flat. I see your point that "Religious people who live according to traditional gender roles then outbreed the atheists" which is definitely a worry of mine too. I've recently begun wondering about the value of my parents' old fashioned values, that if you're a productive member of society and you don't have kids, you're a drain on society. The problem there with that ar…

"We also spent millennia believing the earth is flat"

How does that even translate into more or less births?

Yet, avoiding putting women in risky jobs (e.g., hunting) does translate into lower mortality rates for fertile women and, thus, allows more babies to be born.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#70

Post by yowlingcat »

xt00 wrote: post #50
csa wrote: post #18

I think that there is more to this story that just "low education low skill men not working". I personally think that this has more to do with the poor state of psychological health at this socio-economic status. Specifically, the people I know who fall into this category have one or more problems: 1. One (big) problem is that they often have an enabler -- that is, someone who is supporting these folks not working in…

I grew up in a small town with some people like this and I think what you are observing is actually a hindsight view of the situation. The vast majority of the people were unable to get a job for some reason and then moved back home to ya know avoid starving. Then on your second point many of these people did not start out with a bad attitude but end up feeling like they constantly are struggling due to others treati…

I keep wondering about this. It's so obvious that trade schools are a good thing. I have nothing against code academies, but where is the similar kind of shiny kind of get people employed for the sake of society and do social good" for trade schools? Combine that with an income based repayment for tuition and you're cooking with gas.
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