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

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

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as counter-example ... the kind of woman who would be interested in having a life-long career ... that is not the case ... men who wish they could be stay-at-home dads You seem to be saying the same thing OP is saying: there are few women who are comfortable being the primary (or sole) breadwinners.

I'm not, your ellipses abbreviate too much. I'm seeing, among a group of people who would theoretically be predisposed to not want to stay at home, people still electing to stay at home. This contradicts the OP's glib remark that less women nowadays want to stay at home.

The op's remark was that women don't want to maintain stay at home dads

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

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What does effort mean in this context? One school of thought says there are men on dating websites who copy-paste a message saying "hey how you doing?" to every woman they see; and that women are beset by hundreds of copy-pasted messages from men who haven't even read their profile. This school of thought says, in order to stand out, men should carefully compose a different clever, charming message for each woman t…

I doubt this is true. I almost always have send out personalised messages if possible (E.g. comment on something in their profile, something noteworthy in their fotos or something else). They just almost never respond(I would say Now? I just gave up. I have better things to do then spend hundreds of hours without a single conversation going anywhere. Online dating is a useless black hole.

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

#123
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These men are not being supported by their wives, they just don't go and form a new family. Women in that age range are generally more educated than their male counterparts and they earn more, so this statistic makes sense. They also have trouble finding a male partner, especially because one of their requirements is that they should earn more than them. This sounds like an impending demographics / societal disaster.…

It sounds like a disaster for running pampered middle class retirements on what is effectively a pyramid scheme, but also like the closest thing we have to a chance for sustaining humanity.

If one country doesn't grow demographically, another one will

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

#124

Part of this problem is our societal failure to build enough housing to keep up with the increasing number of people, with a resulting increase in housing costs that has significantly outpaced the median wage. If you can't afford to live on your own, and can't afford housing where the jobs are located, then you're more likely to live with your parents and be unemployed.

Adding to this, we've also abandoned the idea of building out in the middle of nowhere and linking it to a city center with a rail line. I'd gladly buy a cheap home in the boonies if I could take a train into work instead of driving.

Minneapolis has the Northstar Line[1] which essentially matches what you're describing here.

Unfortunately, there's talk of shutting it down[2] due to low ridership stemming from the pandemic.

[1] https://www.metrotransit.org/northstar

[2] https://outline.com/smYCML (startribune.com paywall)

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

#125

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…

This is talking about two different things, I think.

The "I want the total package" unrealistic-expectations person is prominent in both genders, even if "no fat chicks" t-shirts aren't as popular as they once were. The slob-with-hot-wife TV trope probably hasn't helped men's expectations here.

The "I'm gonna send a thousand dick pics and see who is down for a hookup" behavior, on the other hand, seems predominantly male-dominated. Even the women looking for hookups don't operate like that (you could debate chicken-and-egg here, around how they don't ever have to with all the dudes throwing themselves at them, but I'm not too interested in that). Those men result in a worse experience for BOTH women and men, but in a more acute fashion for the women on the receiving end of the creepiness than for the men who just have to try harder to manage to stand out above the background bullshit level.

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

#126

I've got two nephews aged 34 and 32 who still live at home and play video games all the time and rarely leave their rooms. Neither has ever had a job that lasted more than a month or so. Neither ever learned to drive even though they live in a town with little or no public transit. They haven't had any education beyond high school. They seem wholly unprepared to navigate life without their parents. It's a slow motion…

What will happen once their parents are gone?

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

#127
post #48

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…

We seem to live in an age of such abundance and freedom that it's now possible to live in all manner of ways which seems to exacerbate these extremes. In the past if you were a man and wanted to eat and have a home you had to work. We also relied far more on children to look after us in our old age than we do today. Today welfare and the affordability of essentials like food make it possible for people not to work an…

> I'm a big believer that people only care to preserve societies they have a stake in and if a large enough percentage of the population own nothing and offer no value it's very easy to see this causing a division

Wouldn't someone that is able to spend most of their time playing video games (instead of e.g. farming) want society to continue as it exists today? Without that society, wouldn't they be forced to fight/work for sustenance?

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

#128

I've got two nephews aged 34 and 32 who still live at home and play video games all the time and rarely leave their rooms. Neither has ever had a job that lasted more than a month or so. Neither ever learned to drive even though they live in a town with little or no public transit. They haven't had any education beyond high school. They seem wholly unprepared to navigate life without their parents. It's a slow motion…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET

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

#129

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…

> 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…

> sorting through an inbox of ... copy pasta pickup artist lines

So as a computer programmer with a LinkedIn profile, I can at least empathize a bit: I get an average of 3 job offers a week, even though I haven't really expressed any interest in changing jobs. A lot of these offers would be a major step down for me, and that's pretty clear from my profile. I still feel obligated to take the time to politely decline because I do have some sympathy for the recruiters who are just doing their best, but it's also clear they're just blasting out offers to anybody who meets a basic set of requirements.

That said - I'm much happier being in the position I'm in of too much interest than at the other end of the spectrum.

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

#130
post #126

I've got two nephews aged 34 and 32 who still live at home and play video games all the time and rarely leave their rooms. Neither has ever had a job that lasted more than a month or so. Neither ever learned to drive even though they live in a town with little or no public transit. They haven't had any education beyond high school. They seem wholly unprepared to navigate life without their parents. It's a slow motion…

What will happen once their parents are gone?

I suppose they'll inherit the house if it's paid off by then and continue to live as they are for a time. They seem fond of instant ramen, so I guess maybe they're partially prepared. But then again, when the property tax comes due they'll likely not be able to pay it and eventually become homeless after the house proceeds run out. The future seems pretty bleak for them.
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