21–30 of 342 posts
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.
What does this have to do with men?
"Apart from the small fraction (around 13% in 2015) of prime-age male non-workers who are adult students, the remainder report spending many of their waking hours watching and playing on screens — over 2,000 hours per year on average. Almost half of these non-working men report taking pain medication on any given day (which should raise a red flag for those worried about the opioid crisis)"
The watching and playing on screens isn't ideal (2000h/y == 40h/wk on average -- which doesn't seem to leave a ton of room for a base level of healthy exercise and socialization) - but at least it is relatively harmless.
But that half of these folks would take pain medication on a daily basis seems staggering.
The author seems to correlate this abuse with the availability of opioids via Medical and Medicare. That does seem like a problem. However, reading further into the blog of the quoted author[0], that writer (who visited many affected areas during their research) attributes it to the private sector pushing opioids heavily.
Personally it seems fairer to attribute most of the cause to the private industry which made the painkillers popular and mainstream, as opposed to Medicare and Medicaid, which functioning as desired should be making all healthcare more accessible (with the unfortunate inclusion of opioids as a dangerous subset of that).
[0] - http://samquinones.com/reporters-blog/2016/11/21/donald-trum...
As unpopular it may be to say such a politically incorrect thing (admitting this is a generalization, and all the caveats that come with it) -- Men generally have the biological need to go do and wander and discover things. I don't know whether it's hormones or what. Debate all you like elsewhere (I'm not trying to debate that point here). My point is that when they don't get an outlet to do this, they cause trouble.…
> Men generally have the biological need to go do and wander and discover things. I don't know whether it's hormones or what. Debate all you like elsewhere (I'm not trying to debate that point here). What an obnoxious thing to do. You know you're stating a controversial opinion, or you wouldn't have said that. You don't get to set the rules of conversation like that.
"I'm going to say a deliberately inflammatory thing and also it's not up for discussion. But it's also the foundation upon which my argument is built. No critiquing that though, because then my argument might not be sound."
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…
Also, if society is so plentiful that it can handle a certain percentage of people doing nothing but living for pleasure, why not let them? Work is not valuable except for its product, and if its product is not needed, the work is worthless.
If you are using work to bend adult people to a specific ideology (making the worker the product of his/her own work), you're being inefficient - it's not the job of a profession, company, etc. to provide social or moral training.
Your comment seems to indicate a serious hatred of pleasure.
I don't mind working hard, but if we don't have to, there's no point in it.
>”The fall in participation for prime-age men has largely been concentrated among those with a high school degree or less... …” What would a high school diploma or 2 year college give them that would enable them to get higher skilled jobs? I’d be inclined to think that rather than needing “GE” (general Ed) they need vocational type trading that focuses on making them skilled in a particular area (no, not coding). Tha…
It's not that it provides any particular skills, but rather that it acts as an indicator that someone can take direction and instruction. If an employer has 100 applicants, half of which have a high school degree or less, then they're just going to toss those applications and interview the other half simply as a matter of cost/time savings and risk reduction.
It’s more to the point (addressing skills needs), is more attractive to potential enrollees (since it’s not about “stuff I’ll never need”) and you can add soft skills as part of the technical training.
In the modern workplace, the primary challenges are emotional, and I don't think a lot of men have the tools to deal with them. Many men never had to learn how to deal with anxiety, fear, uncertainty or anger. Bad behavior from men was tolerated or even celebrated until recently. What worked to get them where they are is no longer appropriate going forward. So it's no wonder more men are opting out of work altogether because they feel they are in a no-win situation. You see a lot of this in "incel" communities where many self-deprecatingly refer to themselves as "neets" (no employment, education or training).
To be clear here, I'm not blaming men as this is a societal problem. It does not affect all or even most men. This is part of the "toxic" aspect of "toxic masculinity" -- it harms men just as much as it harms women, only in different ways. It is possible to undo, but it takes years of therapy and a commitment to "be better" in the face of misleading signals that say you don't have to change / compromise.
As unpopular it may be to say such a politically incorrect thing (admitting this is a generalization, and all the caveats that come with it) -- Men generally have the biological need to go do and wander and discover things. I don't know whether it's hormones or what. Debate all you like elsewhere (I'm not trying to debate that point here). My point is that when they don't get an outlet to do this, they cause trouble.…
I see no evidence that this is a male thing, versus a female thing, or even that all men feel this. I see plenty of men who just coast through life with no curiosity or drive. They don't explore or discover, they just consume and do what they're told so they can consume some more.
I thought it was almost a truism that people work for retirement, i.e. the point in their life when they have enough saved to stop working and just relax and travel or fish or whatever.
If there's a way to skip 30 years of working at a job you hate and just start now, most people would take that option.
This is the basic problem with basic income, although I still think it's important and necessary, we're going to have to undertake a huge cultural shift and accept a large XX% of the populace just sitting around, vaping and playing video games all day. Not everyone is built to seek out the constant struggle of self-improvement.