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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

#241

Post by whiskyant »

tetranomiga wrote: post #218
bektok2 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time for some tough love and kick them out. Not doing them any favors enabling their laziness.

He said, in a time of record unemployment and low wages that are impossible to live off of. Almost like there are other factors at play here than just men being lazy. HN loves to forget that not everybody can be a FAANG employee or has the desire to sit in front of a computer writing code their whole lives.

You can live off of minimum wage. Maybe not in some places like big cities, but certainly if you moved to cheaper cost of living locations.

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

#242

Post by tonyedgecombe »

bobthechef wrote: post #46
futureshock wrote: post #22

This seems like a kind rational economic choice. If there are not enough good jobs that can support independent living, providing for a spouse, buying a home or raising a family, then staying home with the easy accomplishment of video games makes sense. Most people never live outside their home states and can't afford to leave the support network of their family and close friends. If you grew up in a medium or high c…

"If there are not enough good jobs that can support independent living, providing for a spouse, buying a home or raising a family," This seems to be an issue across the board, at least in degrees, but that's because we live in an extractive oligarchy. This can't last forever. I just hope it doesn't lead to either revolution or socialism. We need to rethink our economic principles. Capitalism as state-sponsored usury…

The 1950's were an anomaly. Europe was in the doldrums, Asia was yet to develop. America had little competition for the resources it needed. I doubt those days are coming back any time soon. If anything its going to get worse as the rest of the world catches up and the dwindling resources people need are stretched between ever more people.

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

#243

Post by spoonjim »

grogenaut wrote: post #151

I'm trying to get my son and his girlfriend to live at home for a few years post graduation. He wants to move out into a place in seattle. She's a bit more about saving money. The math is that they'd have all loans paid off and a 200k down payment about 4 years out of college if they live with us, and they'd have loans paid off if in 4 years and Important side note: they're both major home bodies so they wouldn't tak…

Be careful. Sometimes the ease of living at home can be addictive and then they turn into wastrels. Don’t underestimate this risk.

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

#244

Post by usrusr »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #9
dijit wrote: post #2

If the goal is gender equality: what's wrong with this? 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.

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.…

> They also have trouble finding a male partner, especially because one of their requirements is that they should earn more than them.

It's not just the women's requirements: boys, at least those coming from a still somewhat traditional provider/homemaker household (and many effectively are even if she also has a well paying job) tend to be not really prepared for a role other than provider. But unless they are super conservative outliers they also don't expect to end up with a homemaker partner, at least not unless some freak accident makes them end up in trophy wife territory. They believe that women should be modern and all that, but they lack a clear idea of how they themselves would fit into the picture. Many find a way nonetheless, but others are bound for greybeard boyhood.

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

#245

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

dvt wrote: post #224
d_burfoot wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a slow motion tragedy. From an environmental perspective, this kind of minimalist lifestyle actually seems quite healthy. They don't drive, and I assume they don't fly or buy a lot of stuff, so their carbon and other resource footprint is small. They don't take up much extra space, so they reduce suburban sprawl and land required for housing. They probably won't have kids, which further reduces their environme…

> Maybe we should encourage more people to live this way. Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror. Life is meant to be lived ; the purpose of life is at least eudaimonia, not slowly rotting away in front of a computer.

Not everything would agree. Most of the life on the planet's only hope is to be around long enough to reproduce and then be consumed in one way or the other. Humanity puts a lot of pressure on itself to flourish.

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

#246

Post by commandlinefan »

marcellus23 wrote: post #79
k-mcgrady wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thousands of matches isn’t a good thing. If you ever have the opportunity ask a female friend to show you the kind of messages they get on dating apps. They’re pretty appalling. It genuinely worries me that there are so many creeps out there. The men you know may not be getting many matches but at least the ones they get are more than likely from relatively normal people. If I had to sort through the garbage women do…

But surely you can see how hopeless dating feels for many men when they swipe right on hundreds of women and get 0 matches? I'm not saying they aren't getting many — they're getting none (I know you just have my word on this, but trust me when I say they are not ugly or fat or anything, just nonwhite and without high paying jobs, but otherwise average-looking guys who have dated successfully in the past). The situati…

> nonwhite

Uh, trust me, white men can easily accumulate zero matches too.

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

#247

Post by tomdell »

leesec wrote: post #183
shimonabi wrote: post #157

I had a pretty rough time between the years 2004 and 2016. I dropped out of college for a career track I dreamt about since childhood and I didn't know what to do with my life. I had no job experience and the recession hit also. If you live in a small country, where everyone is related on average 2.5 degrees away to a random person, it's pretty hard to get a job if you don't have any family connections. After several…

There are an insane number of job openings right now.

And a similarly insane number of applicants. Anecdata, but I recently hired for an entry level position at my company and received far more applications than when hiring for the same role a year and a half prior. Lots of applicants who graduated a year ago and have yet to find work.

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

#248

Post by cjohnson318 »

We moved to a suburb built around 1992, and our street had most of the original first residents. Out of say ten houses of original residents, three houses had sons in their 30's that still lived at home. (One guy was a welder and has since moved out, so I believe he was just saving money for a downpayment somewhere.)

Snide comments about "kids these days" aside, housing is much more expensive than it used to be, compared to median household earnings.

[Edit] I'm totally guilty of snide comments about "kids these days"; I wasn't directing that at anyone.

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

#249

Post by pcbro141 »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #123
usrusr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why would that be true forever?

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

#250

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #234
JPKab wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that video game addiction contributes to this kind of thing, or is the video game addiction a coping mechanism? I think video game addiction is an incredibly underreported and highly destructive phenomenon. I encounter (and had to fire a few days ago) lots of young men who don't appear to ever sleep, and are highly unproductive, unmotivated, and constantly distracted. The kid I had to fire (I call him ki…

Looks like you're being downvoted for suggesting video game addiction, but I think it's a huge part of it. I refer to it as 'digital drugs'. They're definitely addicted. Even on rare occasions when they show up to family gatherings they've got their face glued to their portable games and rarely speak. Of course, the parents played a part in enabling this. Their mom (my sis) will often suggest I buy them video games f…

> Even on rare occasions when they show up to family gatherings they've got their face glued to their portable games and rarely speak.

That's not video games though, that's the general digital addiction going on. And honestly, as a teenager I used to avoid everyone with books and I doubt anyone would have described me as addicted to a paper drug.

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