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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

#221

Post by jorgis »

humanrebar wrote: post #187
lstyls wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, it should be obvious no matter your politics that the way disability benefits are currently structured incentivize people to not work, and serve as a de facto welfare system. The problem is that it's going the be impossible to get an agreement on the solution. Conservatives would take this as an opportunity to slash disability benefits and walk away. Liberals would look toward new government programs.

Uh... the above-mentioned Earned Income Tax Credit solution is very popular in conservative circles. What conservative publications are you reading that advocate a slash-and-walk policy? EDIT: Here's a conservative think tank advocating the EITC as an alternative to a minimum wage hike: http://www.aei.org/publication/earned-income-tax-credit-does...

The problem I see with using EITC in this way is that it masks the cost of labor for any company paying minimum wage. A huge hole in arguments against raising the minimum wage is that few seem to address the fact that many workers are already receiving additional pay in the form of benefits. The benefits are more expensive and less flexible than an equivalent pay raise, because new bureaucratic infrastructure inevitably has to be created to manage the new benefit. Is that really more efficient than just paying higher wages?

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

#222

Post by rconti »

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,…

Pretty common in France, from my experience -- even more so than in other European countries. It would be more popular in the US, too, if school wasn't so damned expensive!

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

#223

Post by greatergoodguy »

marktangotango wrote: post #101
marktangotango wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 40+ you realize you've pretty much accomplished everything you're going to with your life. All those plans and ambitions? You've had 40 years to act, if you haven't done something yet, chances are you're not going to. Its all down hill from there. Hopefully you've got a family you can put you're energy into. At least this was how i felt 40+, ymmv.

Thanks for the down votes, guess it's wasn't obvious enough I posted my personal experience, was the ymmv (your mileage may vary) at the end not enough?

It may be because you used "you" 10 times and "I" once. Given that, it's clearly not obvious.

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

#224

Post by philbarr »

marktangotango wrote: post #101
marktangotango wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 40+ you realize you've pretty much accomplished everything you're going to with your life. All those plans and ambitions? You've had 40 years to act, if you haven't done something yet, chances are you're not going to. Its all down hill from there. Hopefully you've got a family you can put you're energy into. At least this was how i felt 40+, ymmv.

Thanks for the down votes, guess it's wasn't obvious enough I posted my personal experience, was the ymmv (your mileage may vary) at the end not enough?

I think you might be suffering from the current "downvote mania that we're not allowed to talk about or else you'll get downvoted" on HN.

EDIT: I disagreed with you, with a following comment, and didn't downvote you.

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

#226

Post by akgerber »

emodendroket wrote: post #189
zanny wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one, being Harvard educated does not necessarily mean you are really a brainiac. Above the curve certainly, but you still have deviations from the mean in both directions. And no, even if everyone were a genius, there are limited funds allocated by geniuses to pay geniuses to be geniuses. But if everyone were brilliant and have complete information and comprehensive educations about everything, either we are al…

Yes, but in my hypothetical scenario everyone is both very intelligent and very educated. The problem is, whoops, we still unglamorous work to be done and there still aren't enough cushy jobs for everyone.

Or unglamorous jobs would be paid very well, and garbagemen would be able to work a 2-hour day and spend the rest of their time as they please.

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

#227

Post by emodendroket »

akgerber wrote: post #226
emodendroket wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but in my hypothetical scenario everyone is both very intelligent and very educated. The problem is, whoops, we still unglamorous work to be done and there still aren't enough cushy jobs for everyone.

Or unglamorous jobs would be paid very well, and garbagemen would be able to work a 2-hour day and spend the rest of their time as they please.

Why would that happen? By what mechanism?

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

#228

Post by chipotle_coyote »

zaroth wrote: post #184
jameshart wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That actually sounds like you might be able to back that up - would be interesting to see the actual stats. But I think you're missing a certain qualitative difference though - the services the 100K-income household is getting for their 60k are significantly better than the services the 0-income household is being given. Obviously they're probably spending money on better food than the food stamps would cover, they'r…

There's definitely a qualitative argument. Certainly that's what you see if you turn on any ad-supported media, and you're inundated with that "quality of life" everyone is selling to the middle-class. But for example, you can pay ~$1000/mo for a family of 4 for "Silver" health insurance and earning > $63k you would have to pay the full amount. Credits pay for almost the entire cost (aka $12,000 of tax-free income fr…

While this is interesting, I'm not sure what point we should really be taking away from it. That government assistance is so good it's a motivator not to work? It's easy to play with numbers and make it look like you're "losing money" by working, but it's somewhat disingenuous. For instance, in practice that "$30K of incremental work" is statistically very likely to involve a job with a company that provides health care for their employees and dependents.

Furthermore, your description of the way food stamps work is correct but elides how that "phase out" works. Under current CalFresh guidelines[1], a household of 4 grossing $30K a year would get $98 a month. If they grossed $24K a year that would go up to $218 a month -- an extra $1440 a year, when you work it out, which is to say much less than what they'd net by just making another $6000 a year.

[1]: http://foodstampguide.org/calculating-the-grant-how-much-do-...

In practice, I'd suggest that most of these calculations are going to work out in roughly the same way: yes, you're "losing out" on government assistance by making more money, but the benefits you accrue from actually making more money more than offset that.

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

#229

Post by scarecrowbob »

golemotron wrote: post #132
emodendroket wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

True, but child-support and the children go overwhelmingly to the mother.

I might be wrong, but something like 4% of divorce cases have custody determined by the court, so that's a decision made by fathers (I have custody of my kids, and had no problem getting it, FWIW).

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

#230

Post by zaroth »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #228
zaroth wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely a qualitative argument. Certainly that's what you see if you turn on any ad-supported media, and you're inundated with that "quality of life" everyone is selling to the middle-class. But for example, you can pay ~$1000/mo for a family of 4 for "Silver" health insurance and earning > $63k you would have to pay the full amount. Credits pay for almost the entire cost (aka $12,000 of tax-free income fr…

While this is interesting, I'm not sure what point we should really be taking away from it. That government assistance is so good it's a motivator not to work? It's easy to play with numbers and make it look like you're "losing money" by working, but it's somewhat disingenuous. For instance, in practice that "$30K of incremental work" is statistically very likely to involve a job with a company that provides health c…

chipotle_coyote, you give the perfect example (actually it's close to the worst case part of the curve). A family of 4 making $24k/year, working their ass off to increase their income 25% to $30k/year. But at the end of the year, what happened?

  Gross Increase in Income: $6,000
  - FICA:                  ($  918)
  - Fed Income Tax:        ($  900)
  - State Income Tax:      ($  500)
  - Reduced Food Stamps:   ($1,440)
  - Reduced EITC:          ($1,260)  [21% phase out after $23,260]
  - Reduced ACA:           ($ ???)   [Just about to lose Medi-Cal]
That's just top of my head. There are other programs I'm definitely forgetting or don't know about. There's at least $5,000 of additional taxes you pay, and credits you lose, for earning that $6,000. If I had all the numbers, I'm sure said hypothetical family is worse off earning the extra $6,000. They literally now have less money to spend on food every week.

Think about how broken this is. At the point in the curve where adding $6,000 in family income could actually be life-changing, the government claws back at least 83% of it?! Fucking A... (sorry, this really makes me mad).

> "$30K of incremental work" is statistically very likely to involve a job with a company that provides health care

I count benefits as part of income. So if part of the increased payroll expense is actually spent by the employer paying for a private health plan (with a high deductible and cost sharing with the employee) that's a huge net-loss for the family versus getting cash income from the employer and keeping their free health care from Medi-Cal. (It makes zero difference to the employer, ACA penalties aside, either way it's a fully deductible business expense)

Edit: I see you gave two examples, $24k vs $30k, and lets say $30k vs $60k. If we do a detailed realistic budget accounting for all costs, credits, programs, etc. you will find "earning $60k" you actually have less money to spend than "earning $30k". You will be net-negative if you have any significant health care expenses at all. It's completely counter-intuitive, and in fact, borderline insane.

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