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Education and Men without Work

nationalaffairs.com

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Re: Education and Men without Work

#131

Post by majormajor »

allovernow wrote: post #102
jfengel wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem, I think, is that the article seems to believe that the solution is "return to the 1950s". The world has changed. The relationships between men and women have changed. The relationship of the economy to individuals has changed. The article seems predicated on the notion that this number (male participation in the labor force) is the metric that matters, rather than anything about their mental health -- ha…

>The relationships between men and women have changed. The relationship of the economy to individuals has changed. >Well, if only women would return home, there would be more lucrative jobs for men, and more need for the women to be taken care of by a man". That ship has sailed Worth noting that the current changes are explicitly counter to traditional roles which have existed for thousands of years. Yes, appeal sole…

Which social changes would you roll back to counteract the technological changes that have resulted in menial jobs without a career ladder or higher-than-subsidence pay?

How would we be better off with a bunch of men chasing these same still-meaningless jobs but with more dependents tied to them? How should we value the frustrations of the people least suited to compete in this new system against the frustrations of people not even allowed to compete in the old system? The more-options-for-more-people scenario has strong "better off" appeal right there.

You could just as easily conclude that the solution is to push forward and make it acceptable for single-income women-led houses, with "househusbands" who play video games all day while babysitting the appliances and kids. We've automated the shit out of the non-emotional-labor parts of that "housewive" job too, after all!

You preach a return to historical tradition but those traditions were forged in a vastly different technological landscape with far more physical labor required for survival, resulting in some splits generally around physical strength. Today is far different, so it's unreasonable to conclude that those old traditions are the best fit.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#132

Post by leereeves »

jbay808 wrote: post #82
leereeves wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't have any factories anymore. Factories still exist, they're just in other countries. And in China alone, they employ 100 million people.

I don't think the parent meant otherwise. Or are you suggesting that Americans looking for unskilled factory work can just move to China and get a job? Aside from the cost and language barrier and family ties and other challenges of relocating, I think legal barriers alone (visa issues, work permits) would make that hard. It's already hard enough even for highly skilled professionals to get work permits in another co…

I just think it's important to properly identify the nature of the problem, so we can try to solve it.

Many people assume that we don't have factories anymore because of automation, but worldwide, manufacturing employment is still enormous. An import economy is good in some ways, but it's bad for people who would like to have a factory job.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#133

Post by Mikeb85 »

Merrill wrote: post #14

This story really needs another graph showing "NOT-IN-LABOR FORCE RATES FOR WOMEN AGES 25-54; 1965 TO 2019". See https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/images/hipple-fig6.png It appears that the non-participation rate for women is about twice as high as for men.

The traditional role for women has been to stay at home and take care of children, and while it's not the majority anymore, a significant amount still choose this path. Also, there's no stigmatisation of women who choose not to work.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#134

Post by theflyinghorse »

r0pchainer wrote: post #116

I am trying to figure out when people will realize that a society without healthy men taking charge and pushing forward is a dying society. It's even more obvious when we see other countries whose feminization of men has actually led to the decline of their population. Reading the sterile, cerebral responses here is a bit disconcerting, but expected given the participating audience, because "smart" people assume that…

I'll bite - what do you propose modern societies do? The world has changed and is changing more rapidly every year. Folks on this forum (me included) spend our days thinking of ways to remove humans from work. Now, if there is no work and the only possible value a person can have is tied to work then what do people who are automated do precisely?

Re: Education and Men without Work

#135

Post by hellisothers »

tathougies wrote: post #5

The article is long on detail and short on suggestions (which is understandable). However, the suggestions it does make are not obviously going to work. The men illustrated in the article do not seem incapable of work, but rather disinterested. Vocational training isn't going to fix the fact that the government benefits the article cited allows the men to stay at home playing video games all day. Most people (but esp…

> (but especially men, given the propensity of the male psyche to become dependent on dopamine)

Where is this from, sounds interesting?

Re: Education and Men without Work

#136

Post by ameister14 »

linuxftw wrote: post #110
roenxi wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a well written article for presenting facts. The lack of solutions is welcome to me; and I recall that the word 'crisis' is closer to meaning an unstable situation than an actual problem. The big open question here is what exactly should these people doing instead? 'Getting a job' is meaningless in itself - it isn't an end goal like 'secure my family's future'. If someone can survive comfortably without working…

> If someone can survive comfortably without working then that is exactly what they should be doing Sure, as long as they are able to afford this on their own dime. Why should others have to work so some can stay at home all day?

From a utilitarian perspective, there are follow-on effects to homelessness that we don't want to encourage. That's why.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#137

Post by paradox242 »

munificent wrote: post #103
mythrwy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be an unpopular opinion but the real issue (biologically) is that we don't need all the men. We only need a tiny percentage of men. So how societies sometimes dealt with this excess of men was to send a good number of them off to war. Also occupations used to be much more hazardous so many more die working. The days of bundling laggers up in a red coat and sending them off with a musket to make the queens em…

> we don't need all the men. We only need a tiny percentage of men. Relevant: A single male galapagos turtle sired 800 offspring, single-handedly (well, I guess it wasn't his hand) saving his species from extinction. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/world/americas/diego-tort... > Also occupations used to be much more hazardous so many more die working. Right. Females are precious (in the eyes of genetics) because t…

This is the take the feels closest to the mark to me.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#138

Post by indigochill »

commandlinefan wrote: post #66
tmux314 wrote: post #42

There's a very weird "let them eat cake" attitude in this thread which I find distressing. The study reports on the millions of working age men in the US who are essentially too depressed and face too many obstacles to search for work. Instead, they're spending their days staying inside, getting high, and playing video games. They essentially have little to no chance to pursue romantic relationships. Many of them eve…

As far as I can tell, men have always been treated this way, in all societies: accomplish or disappear. The difference now is that automation is rendering the hill insurmountable.

>The difference now is that automation is rendering the hill insurmountable.

I would say "the difference now is that the failing educational system is rendering the hill insurmountable." Automation is just tools. Reasonably able people can learn to use tools. But they need the means to do so affordably and effectively. Our system of education, however, is largely stuck two generations back and not up to the task of preparing people for the fast-moving world we're now in.

And this isn't even the fact that textbooks are out-of-date before they see print, or that greedy publishers keep educational materials locked behind arbitrarily high paywalls. The problem is deeper: people are not taught how to learn, and are in fact taught to fear learning because learning means judgement. They are not taught the joy of self-motivated learning which gives them the drive to keep actively learning on their own, which I believe is becoming an increasingly crucial trait to succeed at work.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#139

Post by throwaway55554 »

leereeves wrote: post #31
throwaway55554 wrote: post #13

> Among economists and policy analysts who have examined these unsettling trends, the general consensus is that declining male workforce participation in modern America is mainly a structural, demand-driven problem — a matter of evaporating local jobs, and especially jobs requiring limited skills, in an increasingly dynamic and globalized marketplace. Basically these are the men would have traditionally "built stuff"…

> We don't have any factories anymore. Factories still exist, they're just in other countries. And in China alone, they employ 100 million people.

I didn't interpret the post as being about men throughout the world, but only men w/in the USA and so that is the context under which I posted.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#140

Post by allovernow »

majormajor wrote: post #131
allovernow wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The relationships between men and women have changed. The relationship of the economy to individuals has changed. >Well, if only women would return home, there would be more lucrative jobs for men, and more need for the women to be taken care of by a man". That ship has sailed Worth noting that the current changes are explicitly counter to traditional roles which have existed for thousands of years. Yes, appeal sole…

Which social changes would you roll back to counteract the technological changes that have resulted in menial jobs without a career ladder or higher-than-subsidence pay? How would we be better off with a bunch of men chasing these same still-meaningless jobs but with more dependents tied to them ? How should we value the frustrations of the people least suited to compete in this new system against the frustrations of…

I don't think you understand my argument. This isn't about defining what is and is not menial or what kind of lifestyle is socially acceptable. The point is that the job market is a market like any other - if you double supply without changing demand, price for labor (wages) goes down.

>You preach a return to historical tradition but those traditions were forged in a vastly different technological landscape with far more physical labor required for survival, resulting in some splits generally around physical strength. Today is far different, so it's unreasonable to conclude that those old traditions are the best fit.

I don't deny that the landscape has changed. However, human nature largely has not - and tens of thousands of generations of specialization have almost certainly optimized women (in terms of physiology, behavior, and desire) for more social and less competitive tasks. Evidence is all around us - typical male interests and behaviors tend to be far more competitive and aggressive, and we have physiological and genetic mechanisms to explain this difference (testosterone in particular).

>You could just as easily conclude that the solution is to push forward and make it acceptable for single-income women-led houses, with "househusbands"

Well, not exactly. While it could theoretically balance the labor market, what I'm suggesting is that such a campaign would run counter to human nature and lead to worse outcomes in life satisfaction and possibly even economic measures, because of innate differences between male and female psychology and evolutionary suitability (on average) for certain tasks.

I'm not suggesting that we revert to arranged marriages and dowries - and I acknowledge that most of the social progress of the past 100 years or so has been overwhelmingly positive. What I am saying is that perhaps the pendulum with respect to gender roles has swung too far and it's time for it to swing back a little close toward a healthy middle which is more consistent with human nature.

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