Long-term unemployment leads to disengagement and apathy • Hacker News Board

Re: Long-term unemployment leads to disengagement and apathy

#31

Post by nine_zeros » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 1:35 AM UTC

tbrownaw wrote: post #6

nine_zeros wrote: post #3

The employment model needs to change. With the rise of gig work, constant firings and layoffs, large 30 year debts or school debts on people are unsustainable. So is healthcare being tied to employer and 401k tied to employer. The risk is all individual, the gains are all to corporations and lenders aka asset owners. This is unsustainable. Something has to change.

Health care, yes. A 401k is your money and goes with you if you leave, it's the older pension model that has issues with people jumping around.

> A 401k is your money and goes with you if you leave, it's the older pension model that has issues with people jumping around.

I mean, IRA limits should match 401k limits instead of keeping 23k limit only for employer-sponsored accounts.

There is zero reason an independent person should have to rely on fickle corporations for that limit.

Re: Long-term unemployment leads to disengagement and apathy

#32

Post by squigz » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 1:39 AM UTC

wakawaka28 wrote: post #26

qingcharles wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also affects a lot of people who have been locked up in jail or prison.

At least in those cases, you have a clear reason to expect to have a hard time. If you never did anything wrong to anyone and worked hard your whole life, being unemployed through no fault of your own is jarring and upsets a lot of deeply held assumptions about your relationship with society.

> At least in those cases, you have a clear reason to expect to have a hard time. If you never did anything wrong to anyone and worked hard your whole life

This sort of assumes everyone who goes to jail deserved it, but there are many people locked up for nonsense like having a gram of weed

Re: Long-term unemployment leads to disengagement and apathy

#33

Post by marcus_holmes » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 1:51 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #27

marcus_holmes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend who got lucky in his mid-30's and never worked again. He doesn't suffer from any of the symptoms described in TFA. I know its anecdata, but it seems to be borne out elsewhere. So yeah, I think what the authors are seeing is the effect of chronic poverty, not chronic unemployment.

Unemployment is a specific term in economics which refers only to workers who don't have a job and are actively looking for a job. People like your friend aren't unemployed they just don't have a job.

Exactly. So the chronic effects that the study found are not linked to the lack of a job, but the lack of income that a job brings. Because people without a job but with money don't suffer those effects.

Re: Long-term unemployment leads to disengagement and apathy

#34

Post by ilc » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 2:09 AM UTC

squigz wrote: post #25

ilc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contributing to something can be helping at the local church, or other things of value. I don't consider the urge to help others a negative one. But one shouldn't measure. It is doing the thing to do it for whatever your reasons are, that matters. If I choose to build something to help a kid walk, I am contributing to many things. And yet, I may get paid nothing, and not even care.

> I may get paid nothing, and not even care. Even if you did get paid, it doesn't take away from what you're doing.

It does and it doesn't.

Without an interchange of value, you can focus on the thing as the thing, instead of as a value exchange.

Re: Long-term unemployment leads to disengagement and apathy

#35

Post by wakawaka28 » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 2:09 AM UTC

squigz wrote: post #32

wakawaka28 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in those cases, you have a clear reason to expect to have a hard time. If you never did anything wrong to anyone and worked hard your whole life, being unemployed through no fault of your own is jarring and upsets a lot of deeply held assumptions about your relationship with society.

> At least in those cases, you have a clear reason to expect to have a hard time. If you never did anything wrong to anyone and worked hard your whole life This sort of assumes everyone who goes to jail deserved it, but there are many people locked up for nonsense like having a gram of weed

Holy tangent Batman! I never said that, and I think your nitpicking insinuates that a majority of people in jail don't belong there. I agree that not everyone in jail deserves to be there, even if they did the thing they were convicted of. But jail space is a scarce resource so I doubt many people in jail are there for such trifles as 1 gram of marijuana.

Furthermore, even if someone was in jail over some nothingburger, they would still have more reason to expect to have a hard time with a criminal record and all than someone without a criminal record. This is really my point: If you did nothing wrong yet have difficulties finding a job, it is hard to feel like you have agency in your own life.

Re: Long-term unemployment leads to disengagement and apathy

#36

Post by squigz » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 2:10 AM UTC

ilc wrote: post #34

squigz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I may get paid nothing, and not even care. Even if you did get paid, it doesn't take away from what you're doing.

It does and it doesn't. Without an interchange of value, you can focus on the thing as the thing, instead of as a value exchange.

I don't believe these are mutually exclusive, but I agree that that's a fine line to walk.

Re: Long-term unemployment leads to disengagement and apathy

#37

Post by giantg2 » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 2:14 AM UTC

I'm employed and still feel little control over my career. Here I was thinking that my disengagement and cynicism was a result of being repeatedly screwed over. I guess that's an aspect of lacking control.

Re: Long-term unemployment leads to disengagement and apathy

#38

Post by giantg2 » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 2:15 AM UTC

jldugger wrote: post #7

niobe wrote: post #2

Chicken-egg situation really. At least _some_ of the unemployed are just disengaged and apathetic, at least where I'm from. But we don't need science to tell us humans need purpose and to feel they have some social value. The problem is more fundamentally the industrial era idea of a "job" as something you "have". Just "be" and "do"

But it really is kind of a vicious cycle: you need social contact to stay mentally healthy, losing your job severs your 9-5 social network. I had to specifically seek out meetups to keep from going loopy. I'd really say it's less about chickens and eggs and more about selection bias: the 12 month unemployed have something extra wrong in their lives.

What 9-5 social network? This seems to be on the decline in my opinion.

Re: Long-term unemployment leads to disengagement and apathy

#39

Post by wakawaka28 » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 2:23 AM UTC

advael wrote: post #30

wakawaka28 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way to tell? Really?? It doesn't take a randomized controlled trial to know that there are more poor people who can't find work than rich chaps living on their savings or inheritance by choice.

Yes, in our population samples people who have income from a job report feeling like they have more money than people who have no income from being long-term unemployed. But due the cross-sectional design of our study it's impossible to determine causality

The point of my comment clearly didn't register. I'm not arguing any technical point about this study but the more obvious point that the more you work, the less poor you are. People who aren't looking for work usually aren't counted as unemployed, which would additionally contribute to the obvious outcome that working is inversely correlated with poverty. The causality (making money makes you less poor) is as obvious as rain causing wetness.

Re: Long-term unemployment leads to disengagement and apathy

#40

Post by SoftTalker » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 2:27 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #33

nradov wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployment is a specific term in economics which refers only to workers who don't have a job and are actively looking for a job. People like your friend aren't unemployed they just don't have a job.

Exactly. So the chronic effects that the study found are not linked to the lack of a job, but the lack of income that a job brings. Because people without a job but with money don't suffer those effects.

This isn't complicated. People like the feeling of doing productive work. If you are independently wealthy, you can do whatever you want. Hobbies or volunteering, among other things, fill that need.

If you are employed, you get that reward with your paycheck at least. Ideally the work itself is also rewarding, providing the satisfaction of doing something productive. This is why people can be happy doing rewarding work even if the pay isn't all that great.

If you are unemployed and looking unsuccessfully for work, you have no income reward and no work accomplishment reward. If you receive unemployment benefits or UBI of some sort in that situation, it's more of a reminder that "you suck, you can't even find a job, everyone else has to support you" than anything rewarding.