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Education and Men without Work

nationalaffairs.com

181–190 of 342 posts

Re: Education and Men without Work

#181
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the current prevailing theory is that the guys are getting high and playing video games? What's the current prevailing theory for the girls? Doing unformalized work that doesn't show up in the stats? Also playing games and doing drugs?

Look at the chart. There are now a lot more women in the labor force than there were in the 1940s. Back then, they were staying home with the kids. Now, women are having children later and often working (at least part time) once they have them.

Sure, I'm talking about the 25% of women and what the theory is for them that's analogous to the 10% of men that aren't working.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#182
post #90

>Even after controlling for age, ethnicity, and education, married men are decidedly more likely to be in the workforce than men who have never married. This "marriage effect" is so powerful that married prime-age male high-school dropouts generate labor-force participation rates in the same league as their never-married, college-graduate peers. Analogous but somewhat less powerful effects are seen when we drill deep…

Yeah, most men work because people depend on them. I don't like my job but I show up at work because what the hell else would I do? I have two kids who need food and a roof over their head.

Isn't this why most people (incl. women) work? We work because we want to pay for food/water/shelter. Then past that we work for things that we want.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#183

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…

So... what do you want? A government program to promote the joys of being a housewife? Do you really think that will move the needle on a systemic socioeconomic issue? Or would you rather see an authoritarian solution? I'm sure that will go over well. Keep in mind regardless of what you want as a woman, there's very real economic risk to being dependent on a man. Wanting to live a happy life as a housewife doesn't pu…

> Wanting to live a happy life as a housewife doesn't put food on the table when he loses his job and doesn't pay rent when he divorces you. It doesn't make life any easier when you find he has a mistress but you don't have the means to leave him.

By and large, these two issues did have solutions.

> Wanting to live a happy life as a housewife doesn't put food on the table when he loses his job and doesn't pay rent when he divorces you

With regard to job loss as well as death and disability, fraternal organizations (such as the Knights of Columbus) were basically founded for this purpose. Still today, they offer a highly rated insurance program and provide scholarships for the children of any members who die before their kids attend college or vocational school.

Divorce was handled by simply not allowing divorce without reason, and requiring the husband to pay upkeep. In more civilized legal systems, wives have automatic access to their husband's finances (community property).

> It doesn't make life any easier when you find he has a mistress but you don't have the means to leave him.

In all 50 states, adultery is still a civil crime. A cheated on wife can sue her husband for adultery if he spends money on his mistress and neglects her and forcefully garnish the wages if she has too.

The merits or lack thereof of these solutions is up for debate, but I don't think we should pretend they didn't exist and stay at home wives were left for dead by society. By and large there were support systems.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#184
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, most men work because people depend on them. I don't like my job but I show up at work because what the hell else would I do? I have two kids who need food and a roof over their head.

Isn't this why most people (incl. women) work? We work because we want to pay for food/water/shelter. Then past that we work for things that we want.

I mean clearly some people work for other reasons. Tom Brady still wants to play football at age 43 after achieving enough for two separate Hall of Fame careers. Meg Whitman is CEO of a new company even though her net worth is over $5 billion. They are doing it for other reasons.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#185

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…

"the preponderance of easily accessible government money" is kind of a stretch.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#186

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…

While I think you make some fair points, did you really need to be so adversarial and self-righteous? I wonder to what extent such a delivery neuters productive discussion.

Ah, you inadvertently hit the crux of the issue with your question. You see, diplomacy is a tool for maintaining the peaceful status quo. It is a tool for conflict resolution with little variability in the outcome. Countries build nuclear weapons so they may level the playing field, in order for diplomacy to be an effective tool.

Otherwise, you will be stepped on. The sophisticated, well-spoken man is he who already has an advantage. You must obtain an advantage, or at least almost equal standing, in order for diplomacy to be effective.

The fact that we see the problem but do nothing to fix it is because of extreme diplomacy. I want to see men passionately pursuing what is best for their happiness and growth. I want to see my country, its families, and society prosper. What is happening today is the exact opposite, despite our "high standard of living" watching NetFlix, ordering Amazon Prime, eating McDonald's, and swiping right on all the girls on Tinder.

This is not a problem of reason, this is a problem of passion, of primal connection to one's manhood. The more we disconnect from our nature and manhood, the less true control we have over our own lives, the farther we stray from holding society together, the more we shrink and become hopeless.

I want to incite passion in the most cerebral people I know of. Right fucking here.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone can survive comfortably without working then that is exactly what they should be doing; work isn't especially fun unless someone is a bit lucky with what they enjoy. As someone planning on retiring early, I completely agree, but these men are dependent on government benefits, which, being taken from my paycheck, are lengthening the amount of time I have before I can retire.

"taken from your paycheck" is a bit of an overstatement. many people on federal or state disability have previously paid into the social security, disability etc pools with paycheck deductions just like you have. the average person on benefits is not a freeloader. when I got put on disability by my doctor, you weren't paying for me to not work. I was, because I've been paying into the fund for my entire career just l…

If you’re on disability, it doesn’t take long to receive more back in benefits than you put in.

The system works because most people never draw a dime.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah... It was beyond my imagination that GGP would believe, or intend to imply, that there's any shortage factory work to be found in China. But since you find that you do meet people who actually believe that... Then all I can say is I'm just very amazed!

It's Andrew Yang's whole platform: automation is putting us all out of work. But it's not true - China is putting Americans out of work, not automation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/politics/andrew-yang-a...

Re: Education and Men without Work

#189
post #158

I've only skimmed the article, but nowhere does it seem to compare men to the overall population. As it stands, these distressing trends could hold for everyone, which makes the focus on men needless. Did I miss something here? Does anyone know whether these trends are unique to men? Because if (and that is a big if) this is not unique to men, that would be some horrible cherry picking / manipulative statistics. Rega…

I think the article takes as a given that men's labour participation is tanking, while women's isn't. For most of the audience, this will be common knowledge. Here is a graph about female participation: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.NE.ZS?lo...

Re: Education and Men without Work

#190
post #74
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think most people care too much about that I feel like a LOT of people care strongly about this. Almost all of our national dialogue about immigrants, taxpayer-funded healthcare, etc, is centered around how unfair it is for Other People to get Free Stuff. The idea that we could _build housing and give it to homeless people_, or just pay for everyone's basic healthcare needs (even if you could still get bett…

> The idea that we could _build housing and give it to homeless people_, or just pay for everyone's basic healthcare needs (even if you could still get better by paying more), raises the ire of a significant portion of the population here. Does that surprise you that people who earned their own houses and their own healthcare through their own work resent the idea of skimming some of the fruits of their labor and giv…

As I understand it, it is a matter of looking at the total picture instead of just the free house. I don't have specific numbers, but I recall an article I read several years ago which was talking about costs that are incurred by a homeless person, covering such services such as police, hospitals, etc, and concluded that the costs were way higher than giving the homeless person a house. Therefore, the reason to give a homeless person a house is not motivated by just altruism, but actually also from saving taxpayer money. It's a similar concept to making sure the poor have good healthcare, so that the spread of diseases are contained.
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