"or getting by on the paychecks of wives" This is pretty rampant sexism for 2011. Don't want it to go unnoticed.
In what way? Not that I disagree, but please expand on your statement?
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One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?
41–50 of 107 posts
Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
In what way? Not that I disagree, but please expand on your statement?
Sure. It's been more than a generation since women started making more money than men in some households due to increases in equality between the sexes. The phrasing and positioning used implies that a stay-at-home dad is something that we should be reacting to as an economic problem. In other words, it required the assumption that men are the proper breadwinners in heterosexual households.
You're reading something into the article that isn't there. Perhaps that is what the author was getting at, but he certainly didn't make it clear. Rather it could simply be referring to an increase in the number of single-income households.
And salaries for women still tend to be lower than those for men. Is it sexist to point this out?
Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?
#43I have experienced this first hand. I have applied for a LOT of jobs in the last 2 years and one of two things happens: They don't talk to me, or they do, and I sail past the preliminary interviews only to get rejected after the background check. I am not a felon, a terrorist, or a scourge of society. I have bad credit.(Funny/sad aside, I once went to Best Buy to see if I could get a card to finance something with th…
Your experience stands in stark contrast to what the general belief of the tech media, including HN, is. Specifically, that the job market for engineers is extremely tight and that even junior developers can name their price, that recruiters are spamming everyone who has ever written a line of ruby, and that even the dumbest ideas are attaining ludicrous levels of funding.
I find it interesting that this 'tale of two cities' situation is becoming more pronounced.
Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, to put it another way, companies just don't need as many unskilled workers as they did a decade ago.
All companies need unskilled people: you train them so your business can expand. That's where global supply chain managers and database programmers came from originally--and in many cases still do--they don't fall from the clouds. The issue is that a lot of these companies are only expanding overseas, so they're not really ready to hire and train people. Much of their profits come from cutting back on their junior st…
As an employer, I'd be willing to take a chance on a new employee without experience if he/she could demonstrate some aptitude and some effort to learn independently. I got my first software job with no formal training this way. I spent several months studying Java on my own and did well enough on an interview test to persuade the company to give me a shot at a low salary.
However, I don't think I'd be interesting in bringing somebody up from absolutely nothing. It's just too big a risk and an investment. I think the fundamental problem is that the American public education system just isn't training people in the skills they need to succeed in a modern economy.
Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?
#45I'd wager close to another 1 in 5 works for the government directly or indirectly. And I assume we're not including retirees in any of this. The ratio of retirees to workers continues to get worse. In the 1940s, there were 42 workers per retiree. Today there are 3.3 workers per retiree. So you have a shrinking group of people who are actually producing (total workforce minus unemployed, minus goverment workers, minus…
I am curious as to why you state that government employees are not producing?
Because hamstringing and stifling business activity that does not comply with the interests or arbitrary whims of politically connected powers is not an economically productive activity?
Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the alternative to being in prison and what are their prospects? I suspect that employers of the sorts of jobs that the incarcerated could find are probably not that eager to hire people with a history of drug use[-1] regardless of its legality, but I do not have any data. [-1]I also suspect that this is the main source of the incarcerations. But I'm not a US resident, I don't have any data here, either.
Violent crime is the main source of incarcerations. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/corrtyp.cfm
That's an interesting chart, although it's for state prisons, drug offenses are the main source of incarcerations for federal prisons: http://www.bop.gov/news/quick.jsp#2
Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
All companies need unskilled people: you train them so your business can expand. That's where global supply chain managers and database programmers came from originally--and in many cases still do--they don't fall from the clouds. The issue is that a lot of these companies are only expanding overseas, so they're not really ready to hire and train people. Much of their profits come from cutting back on their junior st…
As an employer, I'd be willing to take a chance on a new employee without experience if he/she could demonstrate some aptitude and some effort to learn independently. I got my first software job with no formal training this way. I spent several months studying Java on my own and did well enough on an interview test to persuade the company to give me a shot at a low salary. However, I don't think I'd be interesting in…
Yes! It's the U.S. educational system that refuses to move into the 21st century that is not providing the needed skills to new workers.
Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?
#48Okay, it sucks. What do you want me to do about it? There are not many obvious sustainable solutions that don't involve the government suddenly deciding to reallocate pork funding to major public works or otherwise taking unlikely actions which would dramatically alter the current climate. Meanwhile, it's a good time to start a business. It probably won't create many jobs and it might not take off, but at a minimum i…
Hmm, just had a thought - wouldnt it make sense, based on what you are saying, for people to just lie and say that they started a business which failed during the time they were unemployed?
Most likely, that will just end up wasting everyone's time when it turns out that you do not, in fact, have any experience whatsoever with business development or product design.
Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. It's been more than a generation since women started making more money than men in some households due to increases in equality between the sexes. The phrasing and positioning used implies that a stay-at-home dad is something that we should be reacting to as an economic problem. In other words, it required the assumption that men are the proper breadwinners in heterosexual households.
You're reading something into the article that isn't there. Perhaps that is what the author was getting at, but he certainly didn't make it clear. Rather it could simply be referring to an increase in the number of single-income households. And salaries for women still tend to be lower than those for men. Is it sexist to point this out?
The article is sexist from the title... it is gender specific from the beginning for no apparent economic or societal reason other than to be outright sexist.
Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?
#50Uh, the outrage is over on reddit. Let's leave it to them, please. There are plenty of things to be outraged about to the point we could innondate the site with them.
Down the path of "outrage!" lies discussions about abortion, gay rights, appropriate levels of taxation, health care systems and any number of other topics that people feel VERY STRONGLY about.