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The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

nytimes.com

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Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#121

Post by ap22213 »

hyperpape wrote: post #80
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #74

The silent yet steady substitution of unemployment benefits with federal disability insurance is well covered in an episode of This American Life [1]. We, as a country, have a shoddy system for re-training low-skills workers facing technological obsolescence. We have also set up a system under which unemployment benefits are largely a state liability. Disability, on the other hand, is federally funded. The intersecti…

There is also an issue with disability benefits where they are structured with disincentives to work. The motivation to not pay disability to people who can work is understandable, but for people who can work some but whose disability hinders their ability to get a full-time job or one that's not highly paid, it's a disaster. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/07/aid... This is a point that's not f…

If we consider the difficulty in obtaining disability benefits and the difficulty in keeping them, we should also consider why someone would go through the hassle. I don't think that the benefits are all that much (I could be wrong).

What if we, as a society, could make it easier to obtain and sustain a good-paying job? Would people be still willing to go the route of disability? Maybe there are few jobs that many people can get. Or, maybe the 'costs' associated with working are too high. There's considerable social stigma for being 'disabled'' - why would someone take on that stigma?

I'm guessing that people are making a rational cost / benefit analysis.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#122

Post by golemotron »

emodendroket wrote: post #104

I occasionally see the rise of the single-breadwinner family where a woman has a job celebrated as forward progress for gender equality or something, but that's misguided. Frankly, a lot of men are just unable to work and then their families are forced to subsist on the woman's job, which still pays, on average, less. Newspapers talk a lot about high-powered female executives with stay-at-home husbands and so on, but…

A more subtle point is that the incentive structure for men to work had has evaporated. In divorce (which is largely initiated by women), men stand to lose more in alimony and child support. The economics say that if you marry (and far more people decide not to do these days), you probably shouldn't be the sole breadwinner and you certainly shouldn't earn more than your wife.

I know a number of couples where the man just doesn't work and is supported by his wife. I don't think it's a conscious choice, it's unconscious and based on incentive.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#123

Post by emodendroket »

golemotron wrote: post #122
emodendroket wrote: post #104

I occasionally see the rise of the single-breadwinner family where a woman has a job celebrated as forward progress for gender equality or something, but that's misguided. Frankly, a lot of men are just unable to work and then their families are forced to subsist on the woman's job, which still pays, on average, less. Newspapers talk a lot about high-powered female executives with stay-at-home husbands and so on, but…

A more subtle point is that the incentive structure for men to work had has evaporated. In divorce (which is largely initiated by women), men stand to lose more in alimony and child support. The economics say that if you marry (and far more people decide not to do these days), you probably shouldn't be the sole breadwinner and you certainly shouldn't earn more than your wife. I know a number of couples where the man…

Alimony isn't just magically awarded in every divorce case, you know.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#124

Post by Kurtz79 »

morgante wrote: post #112
jokoon wrote: post #92

I live in france, am 29, I worked 2 months in my life. "what they do instead" Trying to go back to school, I learned programming for 2 years in some technician school program, did not get the degree, after that I expanded my programming skills by myself, but it has been pretty bleak. I'm quite ashamed of myself. I have many ideas of projects, but they really seems to be out of my reach in terms of skill, experience,…

> I don't feel the industry really needs that many programmers. That's definitely false, at least in the US.

...which it's a relatively small part of the world.

For example in many parts of Europe, although it is relatively uncommon for a programmer to be unemployed, salaries are a far cry from the 100k+ of Silicon Valley, meaning that the (local) industry is not exacly "starving" for programmers.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#125

Post by icantthinkofone »

TheBeardKing wrote: post #118
icantthinkofone wrote: post #97

One of my neighbors is 62 and brilliant. He's worked at Pixar and Silicon Graphics. He cranked out web sites for sites you probably go to. He lost his last job when the company went under. He now applies for jobs all over town and never gets a reply. If age is the reason, these places don't know what they're missing.

Maybe with that much experience they don't think they can afford him?

I forgot to mention that. He applied at large and small companies but, the kicker is, he's all set for retirement, doesn't need the money, and only wants to bring in about $20K to $30K so he can help fund a non-profit he likes.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#126

Post by patja »

The article states that every month the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics asks all men who are not working and not receiving unemployment benefits what their situation is.

How does this process work? Having been in this population, I know for certain nobody from the government has ever asked me for this information.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#127

Post by jokoon »

morgante wrote: post #112
jokoon wrote: post #92

I live in france, am 29, I worked 2 months in my life. "what they do instead" Trying to go back to school, I learned programming for 2 years in some technician school program, did not get the degree, after that I expanded my programming skills by myself, but it has been pretty bleak. I'm quite ashamed of myself. I have many ideas of projects, but they really seems to be out of my reach in terms of skill, experience,…

> I don't feel the industry really needs that many programmers. That's definitely false, at least in the US.

I guess I don't have a lot of exposure since I did not announce any concrete project. But I'm not seeing a lot of hiring ads... Maybe it's because I'm not fluent in .net, javascript or java.

I don't answer so many stackoverflow questions, but I use bitbucket regularly, several stackexchange accounts, several programming-oriented forums...

I guess it boils down to immigration policy...

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#128

Post by ColinCera »

bluedino wrote: post #86
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #74

The silent yet steady substitution of unemployment benefits with federal disability insurance is well covered in an episode of This American Life [1]. We, as a country, have a shoddy system for re-training low-skills workers facing technological obsolescence. We have also set up a system under which unemployment benefits are largely a state liability. Disability, on the other hand, is federally funded. The intersecti…

The disability rate of 20-30 year olds really jumped in the last few years.

There's quite a lot of disability fraud going on, some of it downright shocking.

Example #1: A couple of weeks ago, my brother, an orthopedist, had a 26-year-old man come in for an ankle sprain. In the course of working up the ankle -- mildly sprained, no problem -- he found that the patient doesn't work and is on 100% disability. Why? Because of acne. Yes, acne. Apparently when he was 19 or 20 he had such severe acne that someone deemed him unable to work and he was approved for 100% disability. Even though his skin now is perfectly clear, with some minor acne scarring the only remaining blemish, this man will likely never work a day in his life -- he will be drawing a disability check from the government for the next 60 years.

Example #2: Another brother is a police officer. Or was. He recently retired, at age 52, and now will draw a $70,000/year pension for the next few decades, which is a separate but related issue. But he tells me that -- even though he didn't personally take advantage of this ploy -- it is routine for retiring police officers and firefighters to go to "friendly" doctors and have those doctors certify them as disabled so they can get disability checks in addition to their pensions. It's called "taking the disability topper" or "getting DA'd."

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#129

Post by jokoon »

the_real_bto wrote: post #95
jokoon wrote: post #92

I live in france, am 29, I worked 2 months in my life. "what they do instead" Trying to go back to school, I learned programming for 2 years in some technician school program, did not get the degree, after that I expanded my programming skills by myself, but it has been pretty bleak. I'm quite ashamed of myself. I have many ideas of projects, but they really seems to be out of my reach in terms of skill, experience,…

I'm really sorry to hear about your struggles. One wonderful thing about software development, is that credentials and pedigree are not required. If you can make software, you can get a job. Even if you can't write software, there are lots of related jobs. I've been writing software professionally for about 15 years or so. Before that I had flunked out of an electrical engineering program a couple times, and was wait…

thanks :)

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#130

Post by saalweachter »

hessenwolf wrote: post #37
aragot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it made me realize the rise of retirement-aged persons who don't retire. "Can't" retire? What a shift, in only 14 years!

I did a lot of work a while back doing longevity projections, i.e., stochastic models of the rate of change of mortality rates at different ages as time goes by. It is a bit of a trend that pension funds might choose to offset their risk by entering into longevity swaps, which work like interest rate swaps, swapping floating payments for fixed payments. Anyway, I attended a few conferences on aging, and all that fun.…

Another myth is that the designers of Social Security in the US did not expect lifespans to increase over time; we are actually a little below target right now on expected lifespans.
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