The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead • Hacker News Board

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#141

Post by kidsthesedays » Fri, May 15, 2015, 11:10 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #131

enraged_camel wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the point entirely. The contention is society's automatic assumption that it's better to give custody of children to the mother, as opposed to the father. That's why women end up with the kids the vast majority of the time, and the only time they don't is when there's seriously wrong with them (e.g. abusive, mentally ill, etc.).

> The contention is society's automatic assumption that it's better to give custody of children to the mother, as opposed to the father. That's why women end up with the kids the vast majority of the time Or, the vast majority of the time, men use custody of the children as a bargaining chip to secure a better financial settlement, which is why they mostly don't end up with custody. In contested divorces, there may b…

I do wonder sometimes if men give up primary custody on purpose because they are afraid society won't think they are manly enough or something like that? I mean, pure hypothesis on my part.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#142

Post by kidsthesedays » Fri, May 15, 2015, 11:24 PM UTC

seestheday wrote: post #133

kidsthesedays wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what confuses me, when I was growing up there was poor kids childcare that I went to that was dirt cheap. Don't they exist anymore? Our (lower income) city offered free summer camp and I went to a variety of after school programs. Sure you can't do that with babies though (I don't think). The vast majority of my clothes were hand-me-downs or thrift store or sometimes sales rack stuff. My mom and her sisters a…

What state/city? I'm assuming you live in the US. I live in Canada and I've never heard of a poor kids childcare of free summer camp paid for by the city even here. People talking about saving money by not spending money on clothes and toys really don't know what they're talking about. Brand new clothes and toys today are super cheap compared to what they were when I was a kid. For example, I just bought some brand n…

Maybe you gotta live in a low income area. I went to the YMCA, YWCA, Boys and Girls Club, some place that is run by a couple nuns and sponsored by a charity... I think we may have gotten subsidies from somewhere though? Honestly I am not sure, I just know that they were cheap and that's where all the poor kids went (including me).

These places were pretty friggin boring though, just a bunch of sitting around doing not much of anything except playing with yarn with minimal supervision.

The "free camp" (as we called it) was especially boring.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#143

Post by Bahamut » Sat, May 16, 2015, 5:28 AM UTC

geebee wrote: post #115

Bahamut wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Northern Virginia, you can get a pretty nice house in Fairfax for $500k - the SF and Silicon Valley market is special for its terribleness (NY too).

500k isn't cheap, but of course vastly better than a mil (it sounds like fairfax is a fairly nice place, so you'd probably be comparing it to parts of SF that are more like 1.5mil). Any idea what daycare costs over there, typically? Though at 500k for housing, you have the option of one spouse scaling back on work, and if not, the lower mortgage cushions the extra cost of childcare. This is an aside, but when silicon…

No clue on daycare costs, but keep in mind this - the counties all around the DC area have the highest median annual income in the US, and Fairfax is probably one of the richest in the area.

The Valley companies in general don't like remote workers, despite all that is said about the shortage. The executives/managers want the convenience of being able to bother an engineer on whim. Amusingly, remote work is in practice more common in the DC area (and for more than just software engineering), in part because the federal government has driven telework as a huge perk.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#144

Post by nraynaud » Sat, May 16, 2015, 8:12 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #113

nraynaud wrote: post #56

I am not currently working, I guess that leaves some space for women or under-represented people to work the job I would hold.

Jobs are not a zero-sum game. If you were working, you'd be spending more money so more jobs would be available. And the money you are spending is either coming from the other people's taxes, decreasing the number of jobs available, or it's coming from your savings, which reduces your banks float, which decreases the number of jobs available.

I don't know if this line of reasoning works for the subset of CS management jobs.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#145

Post by bryanlarsen » Sat, May 16, 2015, 2:21 PM UTC

nraynaud wrote: post #144

bryanlarsen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs are not a zero-sum game. If you were working, you'd be spending more money so more jobs would be available. And the money you are spending is either coming from the other people's taxes, decreasing the number of jobs available, or it's coming from your savings, which reduces your banks float, which decreases the number of jobs available.

I don't know if this line of reasoning works for the subset of CS management jobs.

No, it only works from a very broad perspective. If you take a CS management job, there are fewer CS management jobs available, but there are more jobs elsewhere in the economy.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#146

Post by geebee » Sat, May 16, 2015, 3:26 PM UTC

Bahamut wrote: post #143

geebee wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500k isn't cheap, but of course vastly better than a mil (it sounds like fairfax is a fairly nice place, so you'd probably be comparing it to parts of SF that are more like 1.5mil). Any idea what daycare costs over there, typically? Though at 500k for housing, you have the option of one spouse scaling back on work, and if not, the lower mortgage cushions the extra cost of childcare. This is an aside, but when silicon…

No clue on daycare costs, but keep in mind this - the counties all around the DC area have the highest median annual income in the US, and Fairfax is probably one of the richest in the area. The Valley companies in general don't like remote workers, despite all that is said about the shortage. The executives/managers want the convenience of being able to bother an engineer on whim. Amusingly, remote work is in practi…

I googled around a bit and found some discussion threads on this

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/

sounds like 2k a month isn't unusual, but you can get this down if you look around and find a more neighborhood based one. These exist in SF too, they are licensed but tend to be run out of someone's house.

I'd say that for two kids, you'd probably be at over 3k a month easily in fairfax. Mortage on a 500k house with a 10% down would probably be about another 20k a year, so you're looking at a conservative estimate of $56,000 a year for childcare and mortgage costs (I know there's a deduction, but there are also property taxes and other housing related costs that in my experience offset this and then some). Keep in mind that if you're a 2 income professional family, your income is too high to qualify for a tax deduction for child care (I always wonder why people haven't identified this as one of the things that deters women from re-entering the workforce).

This is perfectly manageable on a good tech salary with a second spouse working - in SF, those numbers would probably be closer to 100k. So what is perhaps impossible in SF is absolutely workable in fairfax, though of course this really just scratches the surface, I don't know much about life in DC.

I'd still maintain that housing, health care, education/child care costs in both places probably still vastly eclipses the savings you can get from cutting back on things like cable, cars, or travel, unless you're extremely self indulgent or are in an unusual situation (such as a sick family member living at some distance from home).

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#147

Post by nraynaud » Sun, May 17, 2015, 11:19 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #145

nraynaud wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this line of reasoning works for the subset of CS management jobs.

No, it only works from a very broad perspective. If you take a CS management job, there are fewer CS management jobs available, but there are more jobs elsewhere in the economy.

good, so back to my feminist sweat pants and couch.