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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

#991

Post by gnramires »

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.

Well, perhaps they find the virtual life more compelling than the real one...

The problem is sustainability.

A virtual life cannot sustain itself indefinitely, and is not very robust. If money runs out or a tragedy occurs, it will be a scramble to get a job and interact in the real world. A virtual life does not contribute to society (if we mean a purely passive virtual life), and if people start adopting it en masse we'd be in trouble.

As far as I can see, we could simply try create a virtual life (or any kind of activity) that both is sustainable, and gives an interesting, engrossing life experience.

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

#992

Post by whereistimbo »

whereistimbo wrote: post #791

Hah, I thought I'm totally a unique snowflake, guess what, there are A LOT of man that had similarities with me (worth noting that I'm a feminine gay man). I plan to keep becoming like this (living in my parent's home and not working at all) until, either I'm getting kicked out of home, my parents died, or I'm being forced to work. If all the comfort will be gone then I will do suicide (NO please don't lecture me abo…

I'm relieved I can still reply, I'm just adding that I'm not planning to suicide right now, but maybe I consider it later.

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

#993

Post by stevenhuang »

spoonjim wrote: post #238
dvt wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can write books, compose music, build software, debate opinions all in front of a computer. It’s not the sitting in front of the computer that’s the problem.

It should be clear from the thread's context we're not talking about those sorts of creative endeavors

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

#994

Post by stevenhuang »

dillondoyle wrote: post #700
ravenstine wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Often the man claiming that men don’t care about a woman’s education, goes on to say that what matters is that the woman knows, for example, how to cook. That, too, has never made sense to me. I live in a country where for the childless, eating out good healthy food is not appreciably more expensive than cooking at home, and a woman who chooses to take advantage of that and use her valuable time for other pursuits,…

this is outrageous?! and I feel totally on the outside of like 80% of these comments in a bad way for saying that. I started copying and pasting lines and responding to them but on edit it seems pointless. I would just say that good relationships work in both directions, 1+1=3 idiom, and come in vastly many forms. Intimacy doesn't fade in a good relationship it grows stronger. For sure the type of women you seem to b…

Yeah he lost me in the first sentence.

> what exactly is a man buying into with a relationship with said woman?

What a strange and confused perspective, to pose such a question.

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

#995

Post by tetranomiga »

whiskyant wrote: post #241
tetranomiga wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Big cities still need people to do the jobs that only pay minimum wage. There was a whole thing last year about how important those minimum wage workers are, but you've probably forgotten already.

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

#996

Post by tetranomiga »

vkou wrote: post #228
tetranomiga wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unemployment is actually at a ten-year average at the moment, and entry-level wages are growing.

Entry-level wages are being heavily outpaced by inflation and COL increases, so they're not actually "growing".

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

#997

Post by developer93 »

afiori wrote: post #781
developer93 wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, decades ago, men did run the world, to all intents and purposes. They're still in most positions of power (politics ceos etc), most things are designed by men, etc. This doesn't mean that it's the fault of every single man, any more than as a Brit who benefits from a legacy of empire that I'm personally responsible for whatever massacres. You can be aware of it without taking the blame.

An interesting part of this conversation is that there are strong subtexts that often have more weight than the actual words in driving how people actually answer. Scott Alexander as a nice rationaliization of this dynamic https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap...

Really useful link, thank you. It's useful to consider these things when having online discussions.

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

#998

Post by vkou »

tetranomiga wrote: post #996
vkou wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployment is actually at a ten-year average at the moment, and entry-level wages are growing.

Entry-level wages are being heavily outpaced by inflation and COL increases, so they're not actually "growing".

The COL increases are real, but are largely driven by growth in average wages. (Techies moving into your town, and outbidding you on rent.)

You are correct to observe that people at the bottom are being left behind.

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

#999

Post by whiskyant »

tetranomiga wrote: post #995
whiskyant wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Big cities still need people to do the jobs that only pay minimum wage. There was a whole thing last year about how important those minimum wage workers are, but you've probably forgotten already.

Never stated that they weren't important? Most minimum wage workers I know that work in the city live outside of it.

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

#1000

Post by [deleted] »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #513
paulddraper wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Tacoma, I lived nextdoor to a guy who "hurt his back" when he was 22. As far as I can tell, he'll sit on his couch collecting disability until 65, at which point he'll switch to retirement.

I find it so odd how society gets obsessed with boogeyman examples of people taking advantage of the system. There will always be some people who take advantage of the system. Accept that, keep it reasonable, but optimize the system for those who will improve it. The flip side is this person is hurting society significantly less than some committing crimes - even worse crimes that are sentenced to jail time (which is…

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