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

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

#71

Post by dang » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 5:26 PM UTC

readme wrote: post #19

Do you have a job? It sounds in your post like you don't. You should really reflect on your attitude, because invoking ideas like "class struggle" when you're dating a single mom who's parents are helping her is not a healthy way to think. If you are dating this woman and love her the only thing you should be brainstorming is how YOU could be making more money. Not some crazy armchair economist explanation for why he…

> American men are declining in quality.

Please don't make inflammatory grandiose claims on HN. It's a form of trolling, even if you don't mean it that way.

There's a way of using the energy behind a comment like for worthwhile discussion, and that is to post from relevant personal experience. As long as you can do that without going on tilt, it makes the discussion more interesting. When we hide behind inflated generality or (worse) ideology, real conversation gets lost.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13796678 and marked it off-topic.

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

#72

Post by rustynails » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 5:29 PM UTC

rudrigu wrote: post #44

marchenko wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gathered/trapped (female contributed) foods provided approximately 50% of average caloric intake in most forager societies outside of the Arctic. And there are a lot of interesting social rules about the sharing of hunted meat (highly desirable but less reliable). Men do have to be willing to put skin in the game and contribute in some significant (sometimes risky) way to be considered an acceptable mate, though.

Men cannot give birth, so they are more expendable and are given risky tasks, like hunting and protecting the tribe from other tribes. The average 20 year old woman is much more valuable than the average 20 year old man.

For goodness sakes, stop with the sexism.

Neither gender is more important or less important than another. To try to compare 20 yo m/f value is very naive.

Modern society also is currently not feudal.

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

#73

Post by dukeluke » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 5:29 PM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #57

dukeluke wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You act like lower-class "uneducated" men _should_ be unable to get a job. That's a bit messed up in my opinion. At a time of unparalleled wealth, all classes should be prospering. Also, I say "education" in quotes because today in an age where anyone can learn anything on the internet, a lack of degree does not mean a lack of education. A degree just shows you're willing to be compliant and follow an arbitrary educa…

It sounds like to me randomdata is suggesting that personality or psychology is the 3rd missing variable, and that this psychological or personality trait leads to both joblessness and poor education.

Suggesting that an entire block of the population doing poorly is simply because they are lazy is definitely a stretch. Everyone wants to feel like they are valued and are accomplishing something. Maybe they behave this way because the opportunities for the uneducated have been eradicated due to globalization and illegal immigration lowering the value of their work.

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

#74

Post by readme » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

owebmaster wrote: post #30

readme wrote: post #19

Do you have a job? It sounds in your post like you don't. You should really reflect on your attitude, because invoking ideas like "class struggle" when you're dating a single mom who's parents are helping her is not a healthy way to think. If you are dating this woman and love her the only thing you should be brainstorming is how YOU could be making more money. Not some crazy armchair economist explanation for why he…

> This is one of the reasons that those two fellows did not discuss for the current problem we face: American men are declining in quality. Or the quality bar is raising f fast and lost connection with reality. Internet bubble effect? Fake news?

It's a matter of opinion, but if you want to make excuses for these guys be my guest. America affords men with plenty of opportunities. If you choose to squander them, it's your own damn fault. There are still men who leave their families to come here illegally and work for pennies on the dollar. There's no shortage of opportunities. Yeah, you might not want to pick the oranges, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't even find a job to pick up trash or paint houses for min. wage. Maybe it's not your dream job, but it's a lot more respectable than not working.

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

#75

Post by woodruffw » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

rudrigu wrote: post #52

woodruffw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument amounts to an appeal to nature, and appeals to nature are suspect for two (immediate) reasons: * Humans are capable of rational activity, and have no need to appeal to our development for moral justification. * What happened in our development (that which was ) has absolutely no bearing on what we ought to do based on what currently is . We have strong archaeological and anthropological evidence that ea…

Appeals to nature are suspect, appeals to the irrelevancy of nature are outright dishonest.

Nature is irrelevant in moral discussions, as are all variables that exist beyond the agent's control. Blame and approbation come from choice made by the agent, not for the agent.

Nature is useful for understanding why something amoral is the case (like sexual dimorphism), but does not and should not inform our understanding of what ought to be the case.

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

#76

Post by extra88 » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

jack9 wrote: post #45

NumberSix wrote: post #15

The explanation is that the government massages unemployment figures to make the economy look better than it is. The government has been doing this for decades, under Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. Unemployment is one of the most widely watched and therefor political numbers; anyone who is in power wants it to look as good as possible. One of the tactics to make the official unemployment rates…

It's shocking, just plain shocking, how short people's memories are, in regards to their own governmental details. The manipulations to deflate the unemployment numbers, I was cognizant of in high school, have never stopped. New techniques come up every administration (seemingly every year). It's like how "the tech industry innovation value" is now added to the UDP arbitrarily. Smoke and mirrors. Google "US employed…

For that 59.2%, who counts as employed and who counts in the population? To have 40.8% not employed, they must be counting people in school, people who are retired, probably stay-at-home parents, people with serious disabilities, and the people wealthy enough not to work. How is that a useful figure?

The official figure doesn't include people who are too young or too old and doesn't include people who are not looking for work. Certainly there are some people who society would say should be looking for work and we'd like to count them amongst the unemployed but there isn't a good way differentiate them from the people who have good reasons for not looking for work. So the official number is based who says they are looking for work.

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

#77

Post by dang » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 5:35 PM UTC

tornadoboy55 wrote: post #56

The problem is that when a 45yr old man dates a 25yr old girl all the women rabble and call him a pig, but when a woman will only date a man who 'can provide' its 'only natural'. You see the same issue crop up in tons of things. They tried to ban 'lad mags' in the U.K, but there was no talk of banning so-called kitchen romances (the shitty paperback stuff middle-adged moms love to buy in the supermarket). Iceland tri…

If you want a decent dialog you need to practice decent dialog yourself. That begins with dropping weaponized generalities like "feminist outrage" and "Women of the West have succeeded in perpetually shaming men" (edit: and, of course, the same the other way around).

Every side in divisive arguments lobs such weapons at each other. We all know exactly what those leads to on the internet: more of the same, only worse. We don't want that kind of war on HN. We want thoughtful discussion, which means dropping preconceived formulations and really engaging with each other.

Also, please don't do the preemptive downvote announcement thing. It's tedious, it's embarrassing, and it breaks the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13796919 and marked it off-topic.

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

#78

Post by rudrigu » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 5:35 PM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #75

rudrigu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appeals to nature are suspect, appeals to the irrelevancy of nature are outright dishonest.

Nature is irrelevant in moral discussions, as are all variables that exist beyond the agent's control. Blame and approbation come from choice made by the agent, not for the agent. Nature is useful for understanding why something amoral is the case (like sexual dimorphism), but does not and should not inform our understanding of what ought to be the case.

What ought to be is what benefits the tribe. More people benefit the tribe, because you then have expendable males that can be used to pillage the neighboring tribes. Unless you have depleted the environment (e.g., overhunting), there is no incentive to abstain from breeding as much as possible.

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

#79

Post by mbarq » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 5:36 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #34

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…

Besides, education has never been more accessible. One can sit down at their home computer – or one freely provided by a local library – and gain skills, across a variety of professions, that can make them highly marketable. These people aren't sitting at home watching TV because they lack education. They lack education for the same reason they are sitting at home, which is a much more complex topic, and not solved b…

Not like you can sit at a public library's computer all day. You get timed about an hour a session and can only do three sessions a day and of course, if it there's a wait list, you have to wait.

Also, many libraries nowadays have been turned into "after school" centers where there's a whole load of talking on the kids section of the library.

There is a "quiet" zone, but people still whisper and really just straight out talk and you can very much hear the kids down the hall yelling and what not.

Unless you live in a huge metro area with a very large library (even then, the computer limit is still there) and instead of loud kids you get loud bums who are told every 10 minutes to be quiet by the guard...a library isn't really a great place to "sit down and gain skills across a variety of professions".

The only kinds of library where that romantic environment exists is at Universities, which many can only be accessed if you're a student there.

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

#80

Post by Frondo » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

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…

Hey, if your wife sees you as a sexless entity, that sounds like something personal. Like maybe you need to find a way to be sexy for her.

Turning that into a generalization about men being emasculated because women have careers now, man that's just not accurate. It's blaming women for something that's their fault or responsibility.