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No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

robkhenderson.com

461–470 of 600 posts

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, society can fix the system if it so chooses. Otherwise, it must make peace with rational actors making rational decisions in an irrational and dysfunctional system. In my small acts, I am gifting agency and freedom. Society is free to make a better offer (I wish it would), but we know it won't. Prof Scott Galloway asks, "Do we love our children? [1]" I can prove that we don't, beyond a shadow of a doubt. It i…

I'm curious how you would prove it? The biggest indictment of humanity to me is our destruction of the biosphere for future generations (and at the rate we're going, a few current generations as well). Is it that or something else?

I can enumerate the long list of policy that treats youth as a resource to extract from vs supporting and enabling their success. Is that what you had in mind for this?

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#462

> Amy, a white thirty-year-old mother of three, ages six, five, and three, had a boyfriend who worked steadily but insisted on spending on selfish pursuits. This is what eventually broke the young couple up. ‘He wouldn’t spend money for the kids’ food. I had to send my kids across the street to my mom’s to feed them and stuff. That’s what I got fed up with. I shouldn’t have to live like that…I said it’s time for him…

Whether the boyfriend in question was the father was not explicitly stated. Further, I'd argue that if you want to date a lady, her kids come with that as a complete package. My two cents.

No, dating a lady does not obligate you to support her children from other men. What a ridiculous take. Accepting their presence and being good to them, sure, but those aren't the same as being made to support them. If I started dating a woman and quickly asked her to fork over money to support my aging parents or my own family responsibilities, it would be rightly viewed as an unfair and manipulative emotional/financial hijack of responsibility. The opposite doesn't hold true?

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#463

What I took away from this article is that many low-income men have no real interest in being fathers or raising children. Yet, they tend to produce children anyway. We should focus on making birth control more accessible, instead of trying to make people take responsibility for raising children they obviously don't want. That guy who spends all his money on weed and booze while his kids go hungry? He should have got…

It's called eugenics and was widely practiced in the 20th century against the exact people you propose. Edit: Down vote as much as you want. Eugenics is the above. Doesn't mean I'm for or against it. It was promoted at the time as a way of protecting children from growing up with "unfit" parents.

The difference is eugenics involved forced sterilization against your will, where what people here seem to be calling for is a free voluntary sterilization option.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#464
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gen Z are the richest generation in all of American history on a median per-capita real income basis, compared to older generations when they were the same age. And it's not even close. Millenials are the second richest in American history. The only problem is housing. Any discussion not focused 100% on housing is not grounded in reality.

Income isn't the only measure of wealth. Also, there are two major expenses affecting Gen Z: 1. Education 2. Housing Both have been increasing at a rate faster than inflation for some time now. While Gen Z may have a greater income, their major expenses are even greater. When all is said and done, they're poorer as a result. Turns out that simply having money is insufficient to solving all financial problems.

No, even in real-terms, Gen Z (in America) is shaping out to be the wealthiest generation so far: https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80...

Gen-Z is also owning homes at a greater rate than Millennials were at the same age: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/04/16/g...

> Bolstered by high incomes, American Zoomers’ home-ownership rates are higher than millennials’ at the same age

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#465

> Amy, a white thirty-year-old mother of three, ages six, five, and three, had a boyfriend who worked steadily but insisted on spending on selfish pursuits. This is what eventually broke the young couple up. ‘He wouldn’t spend money for the kids’ food. I had to send my kids across the street to my mom’s to feed them and stuff. That’s what I got fed up with. I shouldn’t have to live like that…I said it’s time for him…

> Translation: “I was impregnated by 3 other guys, and they all left me, and now I finally found a boyfriend but it turns out he doesn’t want to spend his money to feed my kids.” This just in, when you date a single mother, you will probably end up being involved in her children's lives and supporting them. Didn't think we needed to spell that out but here we are.

You simply dating her and naturally being involved in her childrens' lives doesn't make you responsible for financially supporting and raising them. This is a ridiculous viewpoint and one that implicitly places men who date a woman with children as automatic cash cows out of some grossly twisted notion of patriarchy.

I wouldn't think something so bloody obvious would need to be spelled out but here we are.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having done both I vastly preferred the service industry. Factory job had more unpleasant coworkers and boss (thanks to grueling physical labor) plus a submissive attitude towards unpleasant machinery. The factory money was better though.

> a submissive attitude towards unpleasant machinery. Are you referring to litteral or methaphorical machinery here? Actual machinery can be a pain. Your 'a submissive' attidude is a good wording for the 'are you a fag or what' mindset many seem to have to work conditions that suck. I worked a summer mounting rear axis on trucks, so my experience is kinda limited. But it was really bad and the clock was ticking for e…

you mean rear axles, no? Not rear axis, which isn't a named thing.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how you would prove it? The biggest indictment of humanity to me is our destruction of the biosphere for future generations (and at the rate we're going, a few current generations as well). Is it that or something else?

I can enumerate the long list of policy that treats youth as a resource to extract from vs supporting and enabling their success. Is that what you had in mind for this?

No need to enumerate the list; I can imagine rather a lot of it, and it probably isn't limited to youth, but they're usually the least able to deal with those who would extract from them.

But I still think the largest indictment of humanity is our failure to care for our home. Buckminster Fuller gave us the idea of "Starship Earth"; that we are all the crew of a spaceship that winds through the galaxy and we must all cooperate to maintain it for those that come after. It seems almost certain now that we will not make it.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#468

Something that intend to write on someday that I'll excerpt here: the phenomenon of "young men with nothing to do" is driven by a society-wide misallocation of capital that is itself driven by wealth inequality - specifically, old people and elites who command too large a proportion of wealth. This concentration of wealth in the hands of a cohort that is less diverse, and has less diverse interests, than the general…

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Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#469

> Those who sit at or near the apex of the social ladder (who decide what behaviors are prestigious) have decided that family stability is unimportant. The author unironically writes this after pointing out that research shows that affluent families the share of families with biological parents has only dropped to 85% from 95% while the share for poor families has dropped to 30% from 95%. The idea that the social ape…

> The idea that the social apex has decided that family instability is unimportant is disproved by the numbers the author themselves shows.

Henderson acknowledges this explicitly. He spends a great deal of time pointing out the hypocrisy of wealthy Americans proclaiming that marriage is outmoded and unnecessary for raising children, yet mostly wait to get married before having children themselves.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#470

I see this as the victory sign of feminism. Women doesn't need men anymore so men are left on their own. Nothing wrong with that.

But the article talks about how the men are basically doing whatever they want and women are left as single mothers with multiple kids...

Independence achieved at last, for men and women.
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