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One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

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Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#91

Post by ars »

jlangenauer wrote: post #90
ars wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or they would buy fewer things that they actually needed, and that would probably last longer. Unfortunately that's a recipe for economic disaster. > Not an idle consideration on a planet with finite resources and an ecosystem being pushed beyond its limits. Not really. The resources are effectively infinite because they are never destroyed, they only get changed into various different forms. We can keep making thi…

The ecosystem is not anywhere near its limits? You're kidding right? Scientific consensus for CO2 atmospheric levels to limit warming to 2 degrees C in the next century: 350ppm. Current levels: 390ppm Massive over-fishing of ocean fish-stocks? Yep, happening right now. And that's just two examples I can think of now. Claiming that we're nowhere near the ecosystem's limits is naive, delusional and dangerous. The laws…

We could easily fix the CO2 issues by switching to nuclear power, and I expect we will eventually.

And over-fishing is a problem, I agree. I did say there were areas with trouble. But there is a solution: farmed fish. Meaning we are not at the limit, we just need to be smarter about what we do, which was my point.

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#92

Post by ars »

potatolicious wrote: post #87
ars wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or they would buy fewer things that they actually needed, and that would probably last longer. Unfortunately that's a recipe for economic disaster. > Not an idle consideration on a planet with finite resources and an ecosystem being pushed beyond its limits. Not really. The resources are effectively infinite because they are never destroyed, they only get changed into various different forms. We can keep making thi…

> "We can keep making things, then remaking them into different things basically forever." Woah, since when? For one thing, making things (and remaking them) takes a tremendous amount of energy, which uses fuel, of which as of yet we are still running on finite reserves (disregarding the environmental angle completely, even). Secondly, when you chop down a tree and make it into paper, that paper may be recyclable, bu…

We have plenty of fuel in the form of nuclear power. Just because we aren't using it today doesn't mean we can't.

I never mentioned the word recycle. I don't expect anyone to recycle paper. Instead you compost or burn the paper, and grow a new tree. The elements that make up paper are infinity reusable.

The same for the precious elements in electronics. True, we do a poor job of recovering them today, but we could change that easily, and keep making and destroying electronics forever without running out.

We don't even need to recover them, we have plenty in mines. We could store the electronics in a big hole in the ground (for example in an old mine) and only use them much later when we need to. The only reason we do try to recover them is for money, not because we are going to run out.

By far the majority of the stuff we build is made of just a few elements: silicon (in concrete), carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen (those four make up plastics, wood, and lots more) and iron. We are not going to ever run out of those - the planet is made of them.

We could keep making and destroying things forever without running out. All we need is energy. (There is no need to transmute elements.)

The rest of the elements could be easily recovered with technology like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_arc_waste_disposal - run that on a big landfill and you get every element you need after some refining.

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#93

Post by billswift »

ericd wrote: post #39
sliverstorm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the article writer was making the assumption you imply, but there's potentially more to it than that. Members of households all need to contribute, and while I am neither female nor married, I have heard from many married females that unemployed men do not generally tend to assume the duties of housekeeping. That is to say, the wife winds up both breadwinning and housekeeping, and the man does not contribute.…

Hear hear. Also, besides that, there is still a fairly widespread (if minor) stigma to making less than one's wife. It's not necessarily the writer making that judgement.

The stigma isn't that minor, among other things it is a significant cause of divorce.

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#94

Post by doctoboggan »

danenania wrote: post #56
doctoboggan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious as to why you state that government employees are not producing?

Some of them produce useful goods and services, but at a drastically lower efficiency than the private sector due to lack of competition and economic incentives (spending other people´s money). Still it´s good that someone is planning out the roads and running fire departments, even if they´re bad at it. On the other hand, the government also produces a lot of counterproductive ´services´ like war, financial meltdown…

I can't speak for all government agencies, but in the area of the government that I work, we have created no software patents at all. In fact nearly all the software we create is open source, and we are encouraged to use and contribute to other open source products. It's the very fact that we do not have a profit motive that allows us to do this.

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#95

Post by webwright »

doctoboggan wrote: post #32
webwright wrote: post #22

I'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?

I'm not saying they don't work hard. I'm just saying that there is a growing list of people whose livelihood depends on the government writing them a check and the government gets its money from taxing citizens and businesses.

If 1.5 out of 5 people are retired, 1 out of 5 people aren't working, and 1 out of 5 people work directly or indirectly for government, that's about 70% of the population surviving because the government writes them a check (probably a bit less-- some retirees actually saved money for retirement).

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#96

Post by elptacek »

patio11 wrote: post #77
mahyarm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing your in the bay area? Goto the bank of america close to the stanford mall (which is next door to stanford), open an ebanking checking account and credit card. There is a canadian credit program that BoA has that should give you a ~$2000 credit limit card. Most BoA people are fairly clueless (Stanford mall BoA employees are pretty good!), but they do have it. If you can't go there, ask the BoA retail bank…

Thank you for a very helpful and specific answer here. For folks who do not have exactly this situation, the easiest way to boostrap up a US credit card history is to go to the bank you have direct deposit with (they have the most reason to like you) and ask to open a secured card. They will open a special savings account and require you to fund it, generally to the tune of $500. That account is then frozen: it conti…

Or pay to fuel your vehicle with it and then set aside an equivalent amount of cash and pay the balance off when the bill comes. Of course, if you don't own a car, you can pick some other thing that you'd ordinarily only buy with cash.

Years ago, when I graduated from HS, I had my credit ruined for me by a thief. What I know now that I didn't understand then was that if I had pressed charges, things would have gone differently. But somehow I've managed to slither through life with almost no credit. It's sad to see that times have changed.

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#97

Post by dschobel »

astrec wrote: post #89
dschobel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about hiring but I just checked my employment agreement (I'm in Oz) and my employer can definitely fire me if I declare bankruptcy: *the Company may terminate your employment without notice (no payment in lieu of notice will be paid) in any of the following circumstances: ×If you become unable to pay your debts as they become due ×If you are declared bankrupt;

Are you on a 457 visa by any chance?

yep

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#98

Post by ck2 »

achompas wrote: post #40
webwright wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what happens if we tax the hell out of cheap overseas goods? Everything gets more expensive. Cost of living skyrockets and wages would have to go up commensurately if people were going to survive/thrive. Businesses who raised wages would have to curtail hiring because more of their revenues were going to wages. Any they'd keep shipping jobs overseas because of the healthy margins selling in overseas markets.…

Right, and you're not even discussing the subsequent tariff war. Other countries would tax the hell out of American goods, global demand for our goods will fall, we'd produce less, companies would make less money, and people would lose their jobs.

We barely sell anything overseas as it is - what exactly are they going to "tax the hell out of" ?

Have you seen the mountain of shipping containers in our ports from inbounds with no outbounds? They are stacked a dozen high over HUNDREDS of acres of land. No exaggeration.

We are the only potential consumers of our own products - because every other job has been shipped overseas that can easily shipped. Most of what is left is services and assembling components made elsewhere (auto industry).

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#99

Post by sixtofour »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #46
sixtofour wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"federal prison inmates only account for six percent of the total incarcerated population"

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...

I couldn't find a better breakdown of fed vs state prisoner population numbers.

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#100

Post by sixtofour »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #54
potatolicious wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why an employer would demand good credit. Even if the person is a spendthrift, what does it matter so long as they perform their job? My employee could be living in a shack having had every single item of worth repossessed... but if they can do their job well, why wouldn't I hire them? In any case, I know what you mean - I'm from Canada, and arrived in the US after the financial meltdown and subs…

At a guess, it probably indicates that the employee is a higher than an average risk of engaging in fraud (to pay off debts), and it probably does, again on average, speak to their discipline, maturity, life skills, etc. The trouble with that thinking is of course the multitude of reasons that someone can get into debt through no fault of their own - especially in the US with health care - the fact that people often…

Agreed. Also the less you're paid, and the less responsibility you have, the more you're scrutinized. Maybe because they can, maybe because at that level there are things you can physically steal, or break. Also maybe (please, I'm speculating) at that level there are likely to be more irresponsible people, and the time and expense of credit, drug and security checks becomes worthwhile.
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