Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

brookings.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 226 posts

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#31

Post by 20160226 »

jokoon wrote: post #2

I've started some treatment recently, and for some reason I immediately started dating and looking for mates again. I quickly realized how difficult it is. You can't find women unless you have a job, while women have made outstanding progress in education and the workforce, and for some reason they have a hard time dating people who have a less comfortable situation than themselves. I don't want to ride the whole men…

You can't fight biology.

Women are hardwired to look for men with resources or the ability to get them. It comes down to whether a man can provide the woman with a safe and clean place to have her babies. In the past, this signal has taken the form of physical strength, number of slaves, land, goats, whatever. Today, it's jobs and/or money.

Then add a layer of the instinctive hunger for status within any social species.

For a given batch of economically successful women, most would rather share a successful man or stay single rather than compromise and mate with a low-status man with no resources.

Can't blame women for looking for these things the same way men can't be blamed for looking for youth and fertility in a woman.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#32

Post by skylan_q »

swiley wrote: post #12
rudrigu wrote: post #10

"... or the wife works while the man take care of kids" Then wifey starts seeing hubby as a sexless entity --- sort of like the son she never gave birth to --- and loses attraction for him. "... it isn't a gender thing. It is a money thing" Humans spent millennia as hunter-gatherers. Men hunted, women gathered. Men protected and provided, women nurtured the children. If women provide and protection is provided by the…

I would argue it's rather dangerous to use evolution as support for theories about human behavior. This kind of argument is what brought us eugenics.

Eugenics is always happening. Ruth Bader Ginsburg admitted as much in her defence of abortion.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#33

Post by ArkyBeagle »

And ( to my ear ) the always reliable Dean Baker addresses "the money thing" in "Rigged". Scott Sumner has also written at length on the subject.

There are two mandates to the Fed - price stability and ( Humphrey-Hawkins ) employment. With the exception of the Greenspan era pre-2000, Fed policy has set employment in the back seat.

Because "Inflation BAAAAD!" ( in the manner of Phil Hartman's Frankenstein's monster ).

So we have 2% growth targets that we undershoot and low growth. The population has adapted in ways described in Tyler Cowen's "The Complacent Class".

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#34

Post by randomdata »

csa wrote: post #18

I think that there is more to this story that just "low education low skill men not working". I personally think that this has more to do with the poor state of psychological health at this socio-economic status. Specifically, the people I know who fall into this category have one or more problems: 1. One (big) problem is that they often have an enabler -- that is, someone who is supporting these folks not working in…

Besides, education has never been more accessible. One can sit down at their home computer – or one freely provided by a local library – and gain skills, across a variety of professions, that can make them highly marketable.

These people aren't sitting at home watching TV because they lack education. They lack education for the same reason they are sitting at home, which is a much more complex topic, and not solved by simply making education even more accessible.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#35

Post by owebmaster »

colmvp wrote: post #11
swiley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really not sure how having a job helps you find women; being trapped in a box segregated far away from them for most of the day just seems counter productive in that respect. You have the weekends but so does everyone else. I really think something has changed about how people socialize and it's simply become harder to meet like minded people; It's harder to network professionally, it's harder to find fabricators…

Well let's be honest, job status, not unlike height/ethnicity/appearance is one of the many discriminating characteristics used in dating.

Let keep it honest, job status is directly related to ethnicity/appearance.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#36

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #26
rudrigu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is as valid as creationism. Please abstain from such worthless platitudinous statements.

His point is that people love to confirm their biases on subjects like this with "facts" about evolution, without much critical evaluation. Arguements like this have long be used to support why women shouldnt work or vote because thats the "natural state".

[deleted]

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#37

Post by swiley »

IanDrake wrote: post #25

This article strikes out at the end. The answer for the folks who have given up looking for a job isn't easier access to college as suggested. When someone drops out of high school it's not because they had too few choices to go to college, it's because they didn't see any value in the education they were already getting. We need more vocational education and it needs to start earlier in life. They should also teach…

I think even better would be to make education completely voluntary. This would help highlight the benefits so that the people who don't value it could make better choices.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#38

Post by jimhefferon »

OK, warning: what's coming is a wild personal opinion based on anecdotal experience with a couple of guys.

There are a couple of guys I know who fit into the category in the article. I don't believe that the solution proposed would have any effect. It just is at an impedance mismatch with the mindset, with the culture.

I'll mention one guy I know, a neighbor, who fixes cars in his folks's barn, for a living. He has no qualifications, no certifications and not much special equipment. I hear him doing a lot of banging. People who have not much money know him as a car-fixer guy who works cheap and bring him cars.

I very much admire his work ethic. When I let the dog out at 5:30 in the morning he is at work already, banging hard, and I often hear him at 8 at night. But he can't make any real money at it. People come to him precisely because he doesn't charge much.

To an economist the thought is that if a person could improve their economic and social standing by getting training or investing in specialized equipment, like a lift, of course they would do it. The mathematical argument is compelling.

But as I understand it, proposed solution of having these folks go in for training just does not fit the culture. I heard him the other day in a conversation about welding. He welds a little, but the guy asked him about a particular job and he had to say that for that you'd need training.

Training is never going to happen. It isn't a lack of energy, or the needed intelligence, or a belief in entrepeneurship among the men I know in this category. It is a culture thing; "school" is just a non-starter.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#39

Post by emiliobumachar »

thrownblown wrote: post #21
rudrigu wrote: post #10

"... or the wife works while the man take care of kids" Then wifey starts seeing hubby as a sexless entity --- sort of like the son she never gave birth to --- and loses attraction for him. "... it isn't a gender thing. It is a money thing" Humans spent millennia as hunter-gatherers. Men hunted, women gathered. Men protected and provided, women nurtured the children. If women provide and protection is provided by the…

In my marriage, I bring home the bacon with a small SaaS and the wife is in graduate school. We split the raising of our child 50-50. I like it just fine. She doesn't. She's admittedly jealous of how much time I spend with my son, she resents having to continue on her career path and not being able to be a stay-t-home mom. She doesn't understand why I would rather raise my son than work a real programming job. We are…

Sorry to hear you're about to get a divorce.

Here's some unsolicited, opinionated advice from my position of ignorance, take it with a grain of salt:

If she wants to stay at home, let her. But make it clear you're happy with your job as is, and wants to be part of your child's life. Find some not-childcare-related housework that she can take off your hands to keep things fair. Preferably something you don't like anyway.

Re: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

#40

Post by csa »

xt00 wrote: post #28

One big issue with this problem is that these men are not all in the same location. Many of them are distributed through the so called rust belt areas -- I've seen maps of this previously. So simply creating a few factories here and there will only address a small part of the problem. They mentioned infrastructure improvement as a way to put some of these people to work -- I think that sounds reasonable because you c…

While I think location may be part of the problem, I think it's a relatively small problem. IMHO, the biggest part of the problem is that many of these people are not employable, and due to having an enabler, are not motivated to become employable. There are lots of places in the Rust Belt looking for people to hire, but they need people who will show up clean and sober who will also do the work. These low requirements probably seem like a given to most of the people on HN, but in some communities and some socio-economic classes, this is definitely not a given.
Post reply on HN