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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

#181

Post by Detrus »

protomyth wrote: post #77
db48x wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The folks living in the reservations have not grown their economies. Economic growth isn't something that happens automatically; you have to go out and start new enterprises, invent new technologies, etc. Some cultures are simply incapable of this and will eventually die out; if you want an extreme example go read "Don't Sleep, There are Snakes" by Daniel Everett.

Perhaps you should look at the conditions that were imposed on these areas. Horrible government education and health care, relocation of individuals resulting in horrific suicide rates, boarding schools that beat students for keeping their culture and language, US government mishandling resources to the point the Dept of Interior was required to cut their internet connection multiple times. Never mind the oil and ura…

There was this article recently that being poor is a set of bad habits and someone commented "poor is a permanent condition, broke is temporary."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2590535

Stating it that way seems reasonable enough. I haven't read "Don't Sleep, There are Snakes" fully but from summaries I'm guessing the tribes refused to accept Western ways and were comfortable living the way that let them survive for thousands of years. Which is a reasonable thing to do if you could isolate yourself from the rest of humanity and competition.

This article about Northern native tribes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8449134 says that they were far enough along building a settled society of farmers and villages when apocalypse struck and the survivors became roving nomads. Just like all our post-apocalypse movies!

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

#182

Post by typomatic »

Zigurd wrote: post #177
lpsz wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy if my tax money can help someone in need. However, I'm unhappy if it leads to creation of permanent poverty traps. Have any countries (perhaps in Europe or elsewhere) successfully implemented support systems that are fair both to the needy and to the taxpayers?

I suspect that angst about "permanent poverty traps" is something we're going to have to get over. For now, we're talking about unskilled and low-skilled jobs going away permanently, and there is an element of moral panic about uneducated, supposedly low-value-producing people getting leisure and government support. Just wait until it happens to a middle-class or upper-middle-class group. THEN is will be all kinds of…

> Just wait until it happens to a middle-class or upper-middle-class group.

These things don't happen overnight--there will be many years as the class of jobs that you're talking about becomes slowly less well-regarded, until when they disappear no one will care.

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

#183

Post by sumedh »

LargeCompanies wrote: post #26
MCRed wrote: post #2

Look ma, that's me! Free of a soul crushing corporate job, back to doing a "startup", I may not have the cash rolling in, but at least I'm in control of my destiny. Hey Ma, I'm moving in! I think there are a lot of people out there like me. I have some money coming from side projects, several opportunities to grow that, and several opportunities for new side projects. And quite a long personal runway before I have to…

I've lived with a parent (it's a big house they'd alone otherwise here) for I guess too many years then I've should. Also I'm old and my g/f who is similar age of five years also lives with a parent. Though she is getting antsy and wants kids and she only has a few years left. I want a family too but have been holding off for that big moment when my team and I start generating money and or sell our work. Ugh will tha…

> we become friendly and I talk about it a lot.

Loose lips sink ships.

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

#184

Post by zaroth »

jameshart wrote: post #172
zaroth wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's not just disability benefits. When you stop and really analyze it; Medicaid and health insurance credits, SSI, food stamps, EITC, FICA, progressive income tax rates, refundable tax credits, phased-out tax deductions, even things like housing and energy assistance, etc. There's easily $60,000 of services, utilities, fees, and taxes that you pay when earning $100k, that you get for free or don't have to pay if…

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 from the Fed) if your household income is $33k. So under just one program (ACA), $30k of incremental work disqualifies you from $12k of assistance. And that's for the same exact plan/service.

Then you get below $33k household income and instead of paying thousands for a Silver plan with a $6,000 family deductible, you pay basically nothing and have no deductible for Medicaid / Medi-Cal. That's effectively a $24,000 / year value for a family of 4. [1]

In both cases, you can argue about access to top-specialists for chronic care, but certainly access to acute care coverage is equivalent (i.e. hospitals can't base their ER services based on ability to pay). In many ways Medicaid is better because deductibles are a hell of a lot lower than $13,500 Bronze / $6,000 Silver.

By the way, Whole Foods takes food stamps. So that's another example where you get straight up cash for not working. Up to $8,400 / year, cash on a debit card, which phases out as household income goes to ~$30k / year (plus allowed deductions) for a family of 4. [2]

If you have a qualifying disability and have to make the choice of giving up work and going on DI, assuming you have the work history credits, it's another up to $31,000 / year of income (not entirely tax-free though). [3]

That's over $60k right there, and there are many more programs to account. It would add up to well over $100k except you can't fully stack all of the programs, e.g. CA SDI payments count against SSDI payments.

I was thinking about making a "how much do you lose by working" micro-site as an excuse to play with D3 and interactive visualization, targeted to residents of California, but the whole thing was too infuriating I haven't mustered the motivation to do it.

[1] - http://www.coveredca.com/shopandcompare/#incomeGuidelines

[2] - http://www.stanworks.com/community-reports/other-services/co...

[3] - http://www.disabilitysecrets.com/how-much-in-ssd.html

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

#185

Post by wavefunction »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #166
XorNot wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the education system is bad at picking winners. What's in demand when you're in highschool is not what's in demand by the time you're entering the workforce.

It's not about picking winners. It is about giving students at least one practical skill early on, then letting them choose what they want to do. I am a programmer, but I can also weld and fix cars. This is because in high school I took some auto shop classes. Let's say for some odd reason programming doesn't work out anymore as a career(this is happening to lawyers and pharmacists), I have something to fall back on.

>>I am a programmer, but I can also weld and fix cars. This is because in high school I took some auto shop classes.

That's a pretty flippant dismissal of the knowledge required to either "fix cars" or "weld" for a living. My brother was an excellent welder and it's a very hard life.

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

#186

Post by kanamekun »

ColinCera wrote: post #128
bluedino wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 acn…

The disability topper was a huge scandal for the Long Island Rail Road in recent years:

The agency, the United States Railroad Retirement Board, which over more than a decade granted disability benefits to hundreds of railroad retirees based on fraudulent medical evidence with little scrutiny, took the action on Thursday during a five-minute meeting at its headquarters in Chicago. The vote approved procedures under which the board will cut off the benefits, which, officials said, are costing the agency $2 million a month. >>

A bunch of the people involved have gone to prison over this fraud:

Dr. Ajemian, who was sentenced to eight years in prison, is among 24 people — including retirees, another doctor and two facilitators — who since 2011 have pleaded guilty to federal charges resulting from of the investigation. Charges against eight other people indicted in the case are pending, and the investigation by the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors in Manhattan, officials have said, is continuing. >>

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/nyregion/600-long-island-r...

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

#187

Post by humanrebar »

lstyls wrote: post #100
hyperpape wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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...

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

#188

Post by cylinder »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #170
ColinCera wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 acn…

This stuff is very common, especially here in Chicago with the unions running a fairly corrupt machine. I really wish something could be done. We're taxed hard and money is spent in reckless ways by the government like this. Doesn't seem fair to those of us who actually work to make this money. Worse, there is no solution is site. Who is going to arrest these crooked cops? Other cops? They're on the take as well. >He…

Citizens should be able to pursue small qui tam suits against other citizens for things like welfare fraud. It's worked very well for Medicare fraud, I'd like to see it implemented on a micro scale.

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

#189

Post by emodendroket »

zanny wrote: post #155
emodendroket wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as though if everyone were a Harvard-educated brainiac it would suddenly be possible for everyone to have high-paying jobs.

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.

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

#190

Post by Domenic_S »

jameshart wrote: post #172
zaroth wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's not just disability benefits. When you stop and really analyze it; Medicaid and health insurance credits, SSI, food stamps, EITC, FICA, progressive income tax rates, refundable tax credits, phased-out tax deductions, even things like housing and energy assistance, etc. There's easily $60,000 of services, utilities, fees, and taxes that you pay when earning $100k, that you get for free or don't have to pay if…

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…

In California, Medicaid + MediCal is substantially better than most private insurance, at least for elder care.
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