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A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

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Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#171

Post by cmrdporcupine »

mikem170 wrote: post #168
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but it's a lot less conspirational than that. The early 70s is when the long post-war economic boom ended, and corporate profits globally began to contract for an extended period of time, long wave decline. Along with it came a longer term trend of declining take-home earning rights, a huge decline in unionization, waves of inflation followed by severe recessions, etc. The gold standard stuff is hilariously red…

I agree, at least partially. The U.S. had half the world's GDP at the end of WWII, most other advanced economies had their manufacturing base bombed to smithereens. The couple decades after the war were boom times in the U.S. And an anomaly. This was surely one of the bigger factors amid several.

Yep, green field with little competition, with massive scientific advances & unharmed industry after the war, educated populace, giant labour force, new overseas territories == huge boom.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#172

Post by irrational »

hotpotamus wrote: post #109
irrational wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the history of humanity? That reads to me like you are not very familiar with history. We are probably living in the period of the least wealth inequality in all of human history. The typical “poor” person living in the USA lives in the lap of luxury (in terms of clothing, food, shelter, etc) compared to a serf in medieval Europe, a peasant under the Assyrians, etc. I mean, how many poor people have running water,…

You know, I see this sort of inequality apologism in every one of these threads, but people sure seem pissed off at the system for some reason or other.

I’m not saying there isn’t bad wealth inequality. I’m just saying that it is very far from the worst in all of human history.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#173

Post by irrational »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #58
irrational wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? If you are married then you no longer have to report your parents income when applying for financial assistance in college. Since most college students are dirt poor, this means you almost certainly qualify for a Pell Grant. I’ve often thought that friends or roommates (of any gender) should get “married” at the beginning of school to qualify for Pell grants and then amicably divorce at the end of college. Is…

Most college students may be poor (is that true though?) but most poor people aren't college students. That this is the main way we think of poverty on this site is a reflection of who is here and our experiences. But it's not representative of how poverty is experienced broadly in the US.

If you don’t have any support from your parents and are working a minimum wage job then I’m pretty sure you are poor.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#174

Post by 29athrowaway »

ForHackernews wrote: post #170
29athrowaway wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It means that the Bretton Woods economic system was very favorable for Americans while it lasted. And the middle class could afford a house, a car, have multiple kids, send those kids to college, and have the living standard referred to as "the American dream". You could even get a job without a college degree, marry in your 20s and sustain a household on one job.

Might also have a little something to do with the fact that the USA was the only major economy that didn't have its industrial base bombed out during the war. The monocausal explanations from mises.org and friends have always seemed less than compelling to me.

Again, we are talking about the same thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Wartime_d...

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#175

Post by 29athrowaway »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #164
brvsft wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The gold standard stuff is hilariously reductionist. Not really. Ending the dollar's convertibility into gold obviously had a severe impact on how foreign economies viewed the US and the dollar. I think it's "hilariously" ignorant to pretend that this wasn't a factor. The economic reality for the US was that, before this, we just had to print money for the value of $100 worth of gold. Meanwhile, other countries had…

You just made a long circle to come back to the same fundamental point which is that the backing of the currency is tangential to the main issue: industrial capitalism in the west was heading into a new phase. Really a kind of return to the "normality" of the pre-war, 1930s, really. Because after WWII the US especially got paid a huge dividend by being able to capture and control all sorts of of the world market. But…

"It likely had little to no effect"

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

I don't see manned missions to the moon every year from NASA anymore, do you?

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#176

Post by wonderwonder »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #155
wonderwonder wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacement fertility rate is 2.1. There is also a built in commonality in Israel as everyone has something in common, they are all jews. Your point of higher than most of the western world is very valid though but I wonder if the "we are all X here" lends itself to that.

I think Israeli society is more diverse than that. Do Soviet jews have a big sense of unity with Mizrahim? Why is this different from any European country, where share of immigrants is probably lower than in Israel?

Once they are in Israel, probably. They are all members of a tiny world minority in their homeland surrounded by perceived enemies. That likely forms strong bonds plus they all serve in the military.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#177

Post by cultofmetatron »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #49
xyst wrote: post #27

I think marriage is overrated. Just a construct of society. You can have kids with a partner, but really no reason to formalize it with “marriage”. I guess there are tax reasons though that make it more logical though.

Meh, I thought this in my early 20s. But if nothing else, marriage is an agreement that you’re not just gonna nope out when there’s adversity or when something better comes along. It’s a powerful mutual gesture. If you aren’t compelled by that idea, there’s someone out there who will. Maybe you have to dump your current 6-year-long situationship to go look for them, but hey, it’s not like you’re married. ;)

> an agreement that you’re not just gonna nope out when there’s adversity or when something better comes along.

This has zero legal binding whatsoever while having exit clauses that statistically heavily favor women even in cases where they are the ones initiating. While it may make sense on a case by case basis, its a statistically terrible decision to bet on

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#178

Post by 29athrowaway »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #160
29athrowaway wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nixon Shock is the end of the Bretton Woods system (the post-war economic system) which is how "the post-war economic boom ended". So that paragraph reads like "You are wrong because [essentially the same thing you said phrased differently]".

Nonsense, the boom didn't end because of the end of the gold standard, it was in decline long before that. Sounds like cryptobros politics.

The real question here is: what causes what?

The US was living beyond its means throughout the entire time, subsidized by the other members of that system. The end of the Bretton Woods system affirmed that.

How it ended? by Nixon preventing a bank run on the system because he didn't have the equivalent gold for all the currency he issued.

The US was clever enough to use its economic advantage to invest in its military to a point in which that move could be tolerated by the rest of the countries.

Any further replies from you will be read out loud in chicken voice.

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#179

Post by ivan_gammel »

CountSessine wrote: post #165
ivan_gammel wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Israeli society is more diverse than that. Do Soviet jews have a big sense of unity with Mizrahim? Why is this different from any European country, where share of immigrants is probably lower than in Israel?

I don’t think that Jewish organizations like Birthright discriminate. They want all Jews to have children. I can’t think of anything equivalent to Birthright that operates on a national level.

How Birthright, a non-profit that organizes travel to Israel for young adults from other countries[1], is relevant to Israeli demographics? On their scale of operation, even if they had a significant repatriation rate (which I doubt), it would probably be just a 1-2% of their target group.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_Israel

Re: A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married

#180

Post by wonderwonder »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #143
doctorwho42 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because our society is interdependent. In the case of housing, there has been a growing trend over the past decades of owning more than one home. In that case, to do that you undoubtedly affect people who just want to have a family and comfortable life socializing in their community because you force the price of houses to go up and house stock to become limited, which also forces people to rent ... And to make your…

Yes. The other thing these individuals don’t realize is that my idea of success also affects them. If I don’t think buying a big house is my idea of success, and if a lot of us think the same thing, then their big house that they bought is suddenly not worth anything and suddenly they are no longer a success and they have a house that’s underwater. Yes, everything is interdependent, and the myth of the separate indiv…

That's just supply and demand. It applies to virtually every good in a capitalist society regardless of the pursuit of success or wealth. Supply and demand is intrinsic to capitalism.
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