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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

#701
post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Oklahoma has a 4% unemployment rate and a very low cost of living. Some other states are similar. Anyone who's willing to show up and work hard can survive there.

I'd much rather stay on welfare/parents basement and play video games all day than move to oklahoma and work min wage

Boulder, Colorado has a McDonald’s offering $18/hour. Colorado is an awesome place to live and it’s more than double the federal minimum wage.

The contractor who just renovated my house in Colorado is actively looking for a low-skill, high-effort worker for $35/hour.

The mason who did some stone work for me is looking for an apprentice and will pay $25/hour.

The electrician in my area is moving away, leaving a huge gap in the market. He earns well north of $200k/year.

The jobs are out there.

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

#702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A person who does nothing with their life when they could be doing something is really a narcissist. I spent a mere year after college living with my parents, a very long and sad year, wondering if this was going to be the rest of my life. My next real job came somewhat out of sheer luck and I'm thankful for it because I could totally see myself having given up, still back there to this day, still having no idea how…

Made a throwaway for obvious reasons. I'm in the middle of that year right now. I was doing well - transferred from community college to a top university studying engineering. Perfect grades, several prestigious summer internships. Then I had a depressive episode. Grades went down the toilet, had to leave school. Spent a year getting my life back together, but the depression never really went away. I went back to sch…

I don't know you at all so I don't know how much this can mean, but I just want to say that your situation sounds extremely tragic to me and I feel for you, and your repeated attempts to better yourself and your situation give me hope that you can pull yourself out of this

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

#703

> Improvements in video-game technology help account for young men’s detachment from the labor force, according to a 2017 paper by economists from Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the University of Rochester. It found that an increase in the playing of video games by men 21-30 accounted for somewhere between 38% and 79% of the differential in the decline in their time spent on paid work vs. the smaller decli…

Couple things to consider: The "not your Daddy's ditch weed" line is basically fake. Cannabis users take enough to get where they want to be and stop, more potent weed just means they smoke less. It's also a partial agonist, so past a point smoking extra is just wasting drugs. Second point is that cannabis use isn't increasing, if anything it's decreasing: 20-somethings reported higher rates of use in the 90s than th…

Please. If you have had a 1g pre roll of anything from the shops, you'd know the difference from the backyard stuff, and THC tolerance is very much a thing, which means the psychological effects that aren't directly euphoric remain while you use more to maintain the euphoric effect.

Decriminalization is fine, but pretending the obvious social effects of an exploding market for higher potency products aren't manifesting is just delusional. There is nothing to indicate cannabis use is decreasing at all, especially given there are two shops per block, and any survey of that demographic is going to be useless because most of them are already unreachable because they have disengaged.

A ramble indeed, perhaps you could make an HN feature request for emoji support?

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

#704

Men are not doing as well as women in school. If you look in the wrong places on the internet, media, or daily life, all you see is negativity towards masculinity. In addition, there doesn't appear to be any broad social system that is geared towards supporting men. The fact that men don't tend to be a socially adept doesn't help. This all feels like the perfect storm and there are plenty of people who act like "men…

Yes. And there were comments [1] in this thread [2] where some parents shared similar concern. There were at least two other threads on the subject in the past two years. ( Which I should have bookmarked but as usual bookmarks in general is quite useless and I cant find it )

This view isn't even mainstream yet. We are already seeing lots of parents worrying much more about their son than their daughters. It will likely take another 10 years until everything is seriously fucked up before it hit mainstream media and widespread concern, another 10 years for some ( or not ) discussions, then another 10 years before something is done. Basically a whole generation of Male.

And I will probably get downvoted for mentioning it, but I do think Jordan Peterson has a point about young male lacking motivation in modern Society.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26047795

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26047444

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

#705
post #262

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…

Did they grow up with their biological father?

What's this emphasis on biological? Are adoptive fathers sub-standard?

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

#706
post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Women did not create the society that is hurting men emotionally and economically The extreme elements of 3rd wave feminism has influcenced society in ways that unfairly and negatively impact boys. Specifically the concept of "toxic masculinity". Toxic people are toxic. Toxic behaviors are toxic. Toxic people should be shamed and toxic behaviors should be discouraged. Boys should not be shamed for being masculine,…

The problem is that some behaviors traditionally associated with masculinity (mostly violence) are toxic, hence toxic masculinity.

[deleted]

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

#707
post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More succinctly, why work when we have nothing to work for? Anecdotally, I just graduated from university and am gainfully employed. I'm really happy to be employed, yet I quickly realized that I have no idea what I want to do with all this money. I'm never going to be able to buy a house. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about having kids, and don't think I can afford children in the first place. I have no major li…

Why do you say that you're never going to be able to buy a house, but maybe will end up retiring before you're 40? Sounds like, in lieu of anything else, you should try and buy a rental property or two. Start slow, eventually FIRE, that whole thing. That said, yeah, the same sentence could then be applied but with time: "why retire when I have nothing to do with my time?" I'm 30 and still don't have a great answer fo…

I had a long conversation with my brother, who never wanted to retire ever, and his reason was basically "what would I even do with all the time I have". My inability to answer that haunts me every day. I still don't know.

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

#708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How long does it take to learn how to drive You're not wrong generally, but this one costs about $1000 where I live, which is close to average national monthly salary and approximately twice the minimum salary. Not pocket change for someone who has trouble finding work (and many jobs require driver's license).

Just to add to the story. My sister claimed for 10+ years she had the DMV book and just needed to study it before getting her permit. She said this repeatedly to my father and brother and no one questioned her. For 10+ years. Then a year ago I just called a driving school near my parents house on her behalf. I offered to pay for everything including study time and taxi rides to and from the school. Whatever it took.…

> It has had no effect on her

I doubt that.

It sounds to me like none of your family does a very good job of understanding her. The behavior you describe sounds much less like someone who is uninterested in driving and more like someone who has significant anxiety around that activity that they are surpressing.

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

#709
post #685

Men are not doing as well as women in school. If you look in the wrong places on the internet, media, or daily life, all you see is negativity towards masculinity. In addition, there doesn't appear to be any broad social system that is geared towards supporting men. The fact that men don't tend to be a socially adept doesn't help. This all feels like the perfect storm and there are plenty of people who act like "men…

Can you point to any examples of negativity towards masculinity instead of towards toxic masculinity?

[deleted]

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

#710

Men are not doing as well as women in school. If you look in the wrong places on the internet, media, or daily life, all you see is negativity towards masculinity. In addition, there doesn't appear to be any broad social system that is geared towards supporting men. The fact that men don't tend to be a socially adept doesn't help. This all feels like the perfect storm and there are plenty of people who act like "men…

Especially a problem because for almost all men a career and supporting family (maybe the hardest thing to figure out in life) is non optional, whereas half the female friends I have from college have abandoned careers to saddle up to a breadwinner ... I mean I kind of want that option but men don't really have it. Does anyone ever really discuss this social reality that makes it different for men v women in real world?
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