Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home • Hacker News Board

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#61

Post by treespace88 » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

marcellus23 wrote: post #21

kogepathic wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> another friend of mine basically refuses to date anymore because he thinks the sort of culture of Tinder dating is a waste of time that favors women disproportionately. My female friends (I'm male) with online dating profiles have shown me their matches and conversations, and it's bleak. They all mostly have an average profile and still receive thousands of likes/hearts/swipes and messages, but the mean amount of e…

It's certainly believable that women don't enjoy dating apps, but I think it's difficult to make the case that it's equally hard for them (in terms of successfully getting a date) when they have thousands of matches and many men I know have none.

Women are paying a high price in the online dating world. It’s preying on their weakness the same way porn does for men.

Most women don’t want to sleep around and have a large number of partners. But tinder leads them to believe that they can find an unrealistic partner. And they get hurt by the small percentage of men that play the online dating game well.

Women need a lot more data and time to evaluate a potential partner before initiating contact.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#62

Post by runawaybottle » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

AlwaysRock wrote: post #42

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #7

I see this on the fringes of those within my circle of friends. I know one man in this age cohort who doesn't seem to have a job, just plays video games all the time, and I don't get it. But one thing I think about is what he has been exposed to: this is what he knows. I don't think this individual I'm speaking of was raised with anything differently. In this same light, as I believe the two concepts are directly rel…

I've got a buddy in a similar situation. We all came from somewhat similar backgrounds and all majored in the same, useless, thing. We lived together and while we all played a lot of video games one of the three never really moved on from that. He's still working at a low wage job behind a counter and playing video games a lot. I think it's less that he doesnt know different but more that he never got a break in the…

It’s also a form of perfectionism. I deal with exactly what you are describing with a family member of mine. A part of his problem is that, I shit you not, I sincerely believe he thinks he is too good for a labor/service job, or community college, or coursera, or the gym, dating someone not perfect, etc. It didn’t go his way for so long, but the ego is still there. And what is the ego exactly if not an intense defense mechanism. They have lost all ability to slowly chip away at a problem.

No, you probably won’t get an office job in the next 5 years. Maybe in the next 10. No, you won’t have enough money to move out the next 5 years, but maybe in 10. Nope, you aren’t get laid anytime soon. Few people can accept the timeline and the sheer effort it will take, and the sheer time. That’s the crux of the problem, that they are truly behind and cannot deal with the time investment required.

Enough with the lies, and start from zero. The effort it takes to be just mediocre in this world is understated.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#63

Post by BitwiseFool » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

listless wrote: post #57

BitwiseFool wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just now middle aged and even when I was a twenty-something I never felt as ambitious or as risk embracing as I was supposed to be. My father and grandfather got into way more trouble than I ever did, with just about every facet of their life. My stories are absolutely tame in comparison. It turns out the steady dopamine faucet is a stronger motivator than going out and trying to flirt, date, make friends, networ…

This is a troubling trend that I see in my sons and that I battle in myself. Why go out and compete for money, success and sex when those things are at your fingertips. I really think it’s as simple as “turn off the TV”. The problem is that the world is a hard place, and games/porn offer a “good enough” alternative that offsets the trouble of putting yourself out there. Sorry for making this thread weird by bringing…

No, it's absolutely part of the equation. The internet has been an absolute game changer for how the human libido is satisfied. Pornography went from something rarely seen and socially awkward to acquire to something that is now ubiquitous, instant access, and even individualized. In fact, you have to go out of your way to avoid seeing sexual content on the internet.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#64

Post by tootie » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

zitterbewegung wrote: post #19

What is strange is this has been going on since the 1950s and it is even invariant in relation to economic cycles. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 I am also an exception to this rule (I am employed but I live at home). Currently I'm saving for a down payment to a Condo / House.

I'd suspect this has a lot of to with women being in the workforce meaning men are less required to work relentlessly. More recently, it's the aging population. The chart for just prime age males is less dramatic:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25MAUSM156S

Also, a topic that has been surprisingly quiet is that employment-population rate absolutely cratered to a near 50-year low during the pandemic. We had a positive report in the UNRATE last week, but participation is still digging out of an historic hole.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#65

Post by bena » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #49

kogepathic wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> another friend of mine basically refuses to date anymore because he thinks the sort of culture of Tinder dating is a waste of time that favors women disproportionately. My female friends (I'm male) with online dating profiles have shown me their matches and conversations, and it's bleak. They all mostly have an average profile and still receive thousands of likes/hearts/swipes and messages, but the mean amount of e…

I have an idea I've been toying with for a dating tool (I refuse to call it an app) based on the premise that all dating "apps" and "sites" are horrible because their incentives are aligned toward wanting people to actually use them. You pretty much have ad-driven and subscription models and both have perverse incentives. Further, the whole "wink", "like" and "swipe" nonsense increases the "meat market" commoditizati…

And I will make X profiles from X emails, filling out the questionnaire in several ways to maximize the number of hits I get. The profile will be some good ol PT Barnum style pablum that appeals to just about all of us. I will also add pictures that are either extremely flattering of me, or of someone else. It doesn't really matter.

Then I just agree to every date that gets sent to my email. Ideally this could be automated so that I could run it on a raspberry pi.

But please, go on.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#66

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:27 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #24

kogepathic wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> another friend of mine basically refuses to date anymore because he thinks the sort of culture of Tinder dating is a waste of time that favors women disproportionately. My female friends (I'm male) with online dating profiles have shown me their matches and conversations, and it's bleak. They all mostly have an average profile and still receive thousands of likes/hearts/swipes and messages, but the mean amount of e…

What does effort mean in this context? I recall friends of mine, young women, who were having the hardest time finding a significant other were just demanding things of men that would have them selecting from a socioeconomic pool of the top 20% of the population, when they themselves were in the bottom 20%. It was my experience that young women in general were asking for too much when I was in my early 20s. They want…

[deleted]

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#67

Post by ameister14 » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:28 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #53

ameister14 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The idea that every able bodied person has to work is not supposed to be the way our society functions; at least not in the last 100,000 years. What? I was under the impression that particularly in agrarian societies, everyone who was able to work, worked. Are you saying that surpluses allowed for a large class of people to just not work at all?

> Are you saying that surpluses allowed for a large class of people to just not work at all? Apparently this is the case today, since it's happening. Historically, agrarian societies did require everyone to work - twice a year. During harvesting and planting, as much manpower as possible was needed. The rest of the time didn't require 40h of work 50 weeks out of the year. It left time for leisure, building, crafting,…

Most of the time that building and crafting was actually work. There is always something to do, even between planting and harvesting. Chop wood, split wood, stack wood. Fix things, knit a sweater, expand the farm, make a chair, whatever. It's all work. It's secondary to the primary and mandated work of farming, which is why a nobleman could call in the levies and go to war outside of planting or harvest season - they didn't care as much about the secondary parts - but for the average person that was also work.

Yes, we're not a traditional agrarian society, or a hunter gatherer society - that's why "the last 100,000" years was a surprise. Essentially the op was saying every able bodied person has never been required to work. That ran counter to my understanding of history.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#68

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:28 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #65

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an idea I've been toying with for a dating tool (I refuse to call it an app) based on the premise that all dating "apps" and "sites" are horrible because their incentives are aligned toward wanting people to actually use them. You pretty much have ad-driven and subscription models and both have perverse incentives. Further, the whole "wink", "like" and "swipe" nonsense increases the "meat market" commoditizati…

And I will make X profiles from X emails, filling out the questionnaire in several ways to maximize the number of hits I get. The profile will be some good ol PT Barnum style pablum that appeals to just about all of us. I will also add pictures that are either extremely flattering of me, or of someone else. It doesn't really matter. Then I just agree to every date that gets sent to my email. Ideally this could be aut…

Then you... what? Don't show up to dates? Do show up but get no contact information anyway because you aren't who you said you were? That's a lot of effort to put in for essentially nothing.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#69

Post by hahahasure » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

cashewchoo wrote: post #15

nodejs_rulez_1 wrote: post #5

We failed to bring up a generation of girls willing to be providers to a stay-at-home husband.

I know this is bait, but I want to provide my experience as counter-example. I went to a STEM college where anyone who graduates could quite reasonably expect to be able to build themselves a middle-class career, live comfortably, and perhaps even have some economic mobility (moving from middle-class to upper-middle, mainly...). There weren't a lot of women there, and you would expect that what women were there would…

I wish everyone could try stay at home parenting. It made me hate it.

I like my kid significantly more now that I see him evenings and weekends.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#70

Post by _fat_santa » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 3:30 PM UTC

beckman466 wrote: post #12

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #7

I see this on the fringes of those within my circle of friends. I know one man in this age cohort who doesn't seem to have a job, just plays video games all the time, and I don't get it. But one thing I think about is what he has been exposed to: this is what he knows. I don't think this individual I'm speaking of was raised with anything differently. In this same light, as I believe the two concepts are directly rel…

> I suspect all of this is primarily cultural first, and not related specifically to work, the economy, pricing of good or services like buying a home and starting a family, which would come second. Hmmm I think you're wrong. It sounds like you've got survivorship bias, big time. Most people want to contribute, but the economic system fucks them and makes them dependent. Examples include: the intellectual property re…

> Most people want to contribute, but the economic system fucks them and makes them dependent. Examples include: the intellectual property regime and monopolistic parasitism of the knowledge commons [1], neoliberal philanthrocapitalism [2] and the completely disgusting and neocolonial division of labour under global capitalism [3].

This line of thinking in my opinion is the problem. Before I start, I will admit I have survivorship bias.

The points you mentioned are problems, but in my opinion that's not an excuse. One of your points you mentioned that it's now harder than ever to buy a home because Blackrock is scooping all of them up. While I agree that it certainly makes getting a home harder. I think if anyone truly wants a home and is willing to do whatever they need to in order to get it, they can get it. Same goes for just about everything else, if you want something, and you're willing to do whatever it takes to get it, you can do it.

All the problems you mentioned are roadblocks, not showstoppers. I think these days it's easier to just make the excuse that there are all these things standing in our way thus making it impossible for us to do the things our parents did.