51–60 of 147 posts
The author doesn't even mention how many more women are in the workforce as compared to 1950. The main loss here is the exodus of manufacturing jobs. No simple way around it.
Partially related to having a family becoming more risky for men. If you are not protected in case of a separation, you are less likely to want to commit to a family. If there is no family, there is less motivation to earn more.
I find that a pretty suspect statement, and I'm not sure I've ever encountered any man who's decided to avoid starting a family for that reason.
You have to wonder which of those trends are "secular" (in the economics sense) and which are indirect causes of high unemployment. The article already hints at this: Apart from the young cohort (until mid-20s), the rise in men going to school is probably less about an increased desire for education and more about an inability to find work. More men caring for their families may be a good thing (increasing equality b…
> And is it really plausible that more men are disabled today compared to 15 years ago? Sure. The population is much older than it was 15 years ago. I wouldn't care to speculate whether that makes up all the difference, but having a disability and trying to overcome ageism at the same time sounds pretty brutal.
Something hinky is going on here - we live in a bubble-wrapped safety-first society, yet disabilities jump 50% in 15 years?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As others noted, they're excluded from the study. But if you're shocked at 1%, 2.9% are in jail or on probation or parole. They are mostly non-violent offenders. Laws are unequally applied toward African Americans at a ratio of about 10 to 1 (when accounting for incidences of the illegal behavior in each population) with African Americans receiving 60% longer sentences than whites for the same crime. Prisoners are th…
Curious question - if hauling someone through the justice system is how we determine whether illegal behavior actually happened or not, then how does one separate the metrics "laws being unequally applied" vs "incidences of illegal behavior"?
There are various biases that impact the validity and reliability and there are methods for accounting for those biases. Rates of criminal behavior in the population is a very active and mature area of research.
Another method is extrapolation from statistical trends in crime. For example, most violent crime occurs within race. So you can take victims of violent crime that were not solved and extrapolate fairly good estimates of the perpetrator's traits from the victim. Of course, you still have to account repeat offenders and other confounding factors.
Short answer is, there's not just one way.
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> Basically the only reason most people struggle financially in the US is due to their own financial illiteracy and living above their means. If you manage not to fall victim to either of those then you can save a substantial portion of your income towards a very early retirement should you choose to do so. That is really only true for households above the median income. So "most" is not a factual statement. About ha…
If you can only save a few thousand a year then you fall firmly into the "living above their means" category in my personal opinion. Having children you cannot afford is a common way that lower income people live above their means, even if it sounds crass to word it in that way. My anecdotal experience working alongside lower class workers is that most of them run into trouble through trying to live a middle class li…
Of course the alternative view is to blame these folks and tacitly assume that the right to a comfortable lifestyle with a couple kids is a luxury only for the rich.
Partially related to having a family becoming more risky for men. If you are not protected in case of a separation, you are less likely to want to commit to a family. If there is no family, there is less motivation to earn more.
Partially related to having a family becoming more risky for men. If you are not protected in case of a separation, you are less likely to want to commit to a family. If there is no family, there is less motivation to earn more.
I know you're getting marked down for this, but I have read other articles talking about the withdrawal of men from the dating/marriage marketplace. I think it is a growing phenomonen for men to drop out like that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can only save a few thousand a year then you fall firmly into the "living above their means" category in my personal opinion. Having children you cannot afford is a common way that lower income people live above their means, even if it sounds crass to word it in that way. My anecdotal experience working alongside lower class workers is that most of them run into trouble through trying to live a middle class li…
Or, alternatively: the erosion of wages in the face of rising inflation has placed a reasonable lifestyle out of the reach of many people. No longer can a household function on a single income while owning a home and raising a couple kids. Unfortunately society demands such a lifestyle from folks in order to be deemed a "success" and so people life beyond their now eroded means because they only alternative is to giv…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a subreddit dedicated to this idea, although I warn you it's largely terrible. http://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence Basically the only reason most people struggle financially in the US is due to their own financial illiteracy and living above their means. If you manage not to fall victim to either of those then you can save a substantial portion of your income towards a very early retirement should y…
Mr Money Mustache also also comes to mind. It's too late for my 30s being 31, but this stuff has really woken me up and I'm shooting for FIRE close to 40.