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Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

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Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#181

Post by Aurornis »

spartanatreyu wrote: post #178
jandrewrogers wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering This is not what actually happens in practice. There is no sudden outbreak of productive activity because people have more free time. If this was going to occur there would be mountains of empirical evidence for it by now because this situation isn't rare. I know many people with a lot of free time. In the vast majority of cases, people spend their f…

> There is no sudden outbreak of productive activity because people have more free time. I can't recall which studies they were, but I was under the impression that with a sudden expansion of free time, the earliest productivity gains don't occur until months later at the earliest. I think the effect came up in long-term UBI trial participants, and those that acquired sudden wealth from inheritance / lottery / stocks…

> I think the effect came up in long-term UBI trial participants,

The failure of UBI trials to show these effects has been one of the noteworthy developments in the UBI topic in recent years.

There were several studies that tried really hard to demonstrate that UBI would increase the rate of business creation and similar metrics. The last one I remember reading was trying to show that the long-term cash recipients reported a marginally higher rate of thinking about maybe starting a business, but they weren't actually doing it.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#182

Post by monocasa »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #151
hallole wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Traditional marriage was primarily an economic contract." I don't buy this. You can, for the purposes of your argument, reduce marriage to being something like an economic contract, that's fine; but, in reality, that's not what marriage is/has been primarily about. Also, solving the burden of work for one sex isn't a solution. Granted, it's better than nothing.

> that's not what marriage is/has been primarily about Ancient societies' marriages we have records about were principally about economics and politics. Maybe the poor were having love marriages. We don't know because most of our sources couldn't be bothered with them. But to the degree we have evidence, it's in even poor landowners preferring to marry children off to the owners of adjoining plots. Like, maybe that's…

I mean, your kids also just didn't travel much farther than your neighbor's plots for the vast majority of their life.

If anything, political marriages are defined by a marriage outside your economic sphere of influence (which for ancient agricultural workers would generally be about a three day journey due to the ox problem), and to someone you don't know. These couples probably grew up together and went to social events like church together from birth.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#183

Post by scottyah »

mannanj wrote: post #145
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

For most, work in America seems inherently undignified.

It's definitely polarizing, I think a lot of people feel that work is your life's purpose.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#184

Post by aidenn0 »

whatever120 wrote: post #79
tensor wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hit the nail squarely on the head. In days past when people retired they'd still help raise kids or look after households. When we moved past requiring that sort of thing, we left the elderly without engagement. I'm not sure what the solution is, but perhaps as a society we could be more intentional about creating roles where the elderly can still help and feel useful, but also have flexibility and a more relaxed…

They shouldn’t just feel useful, they need roles that actually are useful. They’re not dumb.

Either:

1. They are "dumb" and the original statement stands

2. They are not "dumb" and a role that is actually useful is a necessary condition for them feeling useful and the original statement stands.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#185

Post by incompatible »

devilsdata wrote: post #158
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

The reason people go from work to nothing on retirement is because work fills up the nearly all of the productive hours of a person's life. If it were to take, let's say 4 days, or six hours a day, people would be so bored, they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering. And then on retirement, people would still have their hobbies and passion projects they had been working on their entire life. Th…

It's hard for me to even contemplate having "nothing to do." I haven't had paid work for many, many years, yet I don't feel like I have any spare time at all.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#186

Post by bluefirebrand »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #153
bluefirebrand wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like a problem with a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus for their entire lives

> a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus Modern American society really doesn't force anyone to do this. Targeting work-life balance requires making trade-offs. But in a country where the median wage is around $45k, some significant fraction of half of Americans can dial down their work if they reduce lifestyle and consumption.

Not when basics like rent, food, and healthcare eat up the majority of that 45k

There's only so much you can reduce your lifestyle before you're literally just living to work anyways

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#187

Post by wing-_-nuts »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #132
ElevenLathe wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've built a society where our only consistent interaction with community (for many people) is via the labor market. Severing all social connections will make a person deteriorate at any age. This is why solitary confinement is a cruel punishment.

> We've built a society where our only consistent interaction with community (for many people) is via the labor market Modern society arguably has more opportunity for play–and evidence of adults playing–than ancient socities. We also have a larger fraction of labor that one can genuinely like doing, versus being forced to do.

I think you should really look up the amount of work the average european peasant was doing in the middle ages, and the amount of free time they had off.

Or how much time hunter gatherers spend actually hunting or gathering.

Or how meaningful any of that was, compared to what we do today...

Our conditions are better today than in the early industrial revolution, but that's not saying much.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#188

Post by harrall »

I was under the impression that you delay cognitive decline (and keep brain plasticity) by learning new things.

So you need to be learning new skills, trying new sports, entering new circumstances continuously. If you’re good at something already, it’s not enough.

Employment is one of many ways of keeping things fresh because it’s easy but I see no reason why you can’t keep yourself busy too.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#189

Post by wing-_-nuts »

stouset wrote: post #105
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

I used to follow FIRE-related communities. There were a depressing number of people who would post something along the lines of “I just pulled the trigger! Now what am I supposed to do to fill the time?” Your take is spot on, and it’s incredibly sad the number of people we’ve created whose only source of meaning or joy in their life is their desk job. As someone who pulled the trigger about a year ago, I feel like th…

The largest FIRE sub on reddit is aptly named 'financial independence' because FI is much, much more important than RE.

The first post they link to on the sidebar is 'Build the life you want and save for it'

https://old.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/58j8...

I honestly don't know how someone gets to the position of being able to retire without having thought long and hard about it. Even if you get an unexpected windfall, it's probably best to keep working until you know you're mentally prepared to retire.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#190

Post by andai »

devilsdata wrote: post #158
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

The reason people go from work to nothing on retirement is because work fills up the nearly all of the productive hours of a person's life. If it were to take, let's say 4 days, or six hours a day, people would be so bored, they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering. And then on retirement, people would still have their hobbies and passion projects they had been working on their entire life. Th…

Also ADHD here, I have the same problem.

The only way I can get anything meaningful done outside of work is to do it before work.

Those first few hours of the day are precious, as far as energy goes. Or attention, or will.

On a related note, I put Q2 of Eisenhower Matrix (important but not urgent, i.e. the stuff you want to get done "someday" but keep putting off indefinitely... i.e. your hopes and dreams) at the front of the day, because Q1 (urgent and important) basically forces you to do it and requires no special attention.

To put it bluntly, the long term stuff needs to be scheduled and consistently acted upon, or the default outcome will be very depressing.

I schedule it first thing, every morning.

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