Education and Men without Work • Hacker News Board

Re: Education and Men without Work

#61

Post by downerending » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #57

downerending wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care a lot more about the social effects than the "taking my money" part. Having lived in areas with very high unemployment rates, there's not much good to say about them.

> Having lived in areas with very high unemployment rates, there's not much good to say about them. Indeed, and for this precise reason incentivizing unemployment by supporting the vaping and video game habits of the unemployed is exceedingly bad social policy. Suppose government didn't do redistributive welfare. If you're a typical HN user, you'd probably then end up with tens of thousands of extra dollars a year sa…

I'm not a typical HN user. I probably earn less than 70% of you, and most of my salary goes straight to alimony. Taxes take half of the rest.

It's not that those taxes don't sting for me--they surely do--but rather that I think the social effects of worklessness will be huge. It wouldn't take that much for the US to drop into the second world.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#62

Post by gknoy » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:48 PM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #40

CptFribble wrote: post #30

I don't see why this is such a surprise, most people hate working. 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, alt…

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 I don't think most people care too much about that. Unlike communist states which forced people to work, even if the job was bullshit, this is a free country, and if someone wants to sit around doing nothing useful all day, they are perfectly welcome to do so. What…

> I don't think most people care too much about that

I feel like a LOT of people care strongly about this. Almost all of our national dialogue about immigrants, taxpayer-funded healthcare, etc, is centered around how unfair it is for Other People to get Free Stuff.

The idea that we could _build housing and give it to homeless people_, or just pay for everyone's basic healthcare needs (even if you could still get better by paying more), raises the ire of a significant portion of the population here. Our country is in love with the idea that if you fail, it was because you made mistakes, and _deserve to be punished_ for them. (Never mind that often times, people go bankrupt because of unplanned medical issues, etc.)

Re: Education and Men without Work

#63

Post by Mirioron » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:49 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #5

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…

I don't think the two causes listed in the article are actually the causes. I think both are yet another symptom of an underlying problem. I would argue that men doing worse in schooling is likely another symptom of the same issue.

I think that the heart of the issue is that more men nowadays feel that they just don't matter. Not to society nor to anyone else. This leads to a situation where they will simply sacrifice less and try to enjoy more.

So why would men feel that way?

My initial thoughts were that perhaps it is due to the recent demonization of men and the removal of some of their privileges, while the burdens (selective service, unfair family court) remained. While I think that these could be contributing (accelerating) factors, I don't think this is at the heart of the matter. We see similar trends in other countries, where lots of (young) men are essentially checking out from society. Japan is an example of a country where this problem has likely progressed further than in the US. My initial thoughts don't fit, because they couldn't explain why this same process would happen in countries with a pretty different culture from the US.

I'm stumped. Perhaps it's somehow linked to the falling testosterone levels in men that we have observed?

Re: Education and Men without Work

#64

Post by thephyber » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:50 PM UTC

Seenso wrote: post #47

tathougies wrote: post #5

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…

> 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. > Enabled by the preponderance of easily accessible government money, drugs, etc, these men... The benefits we're talking about here are disability benefits, and the intended outcome of those is that some people will be able to stay at home all day. "Fixing" this…

> “ Fixing" this problem by curtailing the benefits...

Another way to address a partial fix is to decriminalize getting a job after previously being on disability. Currently that is used as evidence that there was no previous disability and can lead to prosecution for fraud and attempts to claw back those previous benefits.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#65

Post by didibus » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #5

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…

It seems you speak as if you understand the underlying causes, and that really bothers me, because I see no explanation why you would, nothing to back up your assumptions, and nothing to demonstrate your causations. You don't even have anything to demonstrate correlation. So it's a very weak argument you are making.

And, I'm okay playing hypothetical, but theorizing should be clear. You're theorizing and your theory is most likely wrong, and only minimally likely to be true. Due to the fact that for any issue, there are more theories that are wrong than right, those are the starting odds of theorization.

And now more directly addressing your partocular theory, why do you believe people would rather choose video games over a vocational activity given exposure, access, and training to both?

Re: Education and Men without Work

#66

Post by commandlinefan » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

tmux314 wrote: post #42

There's a very weird "let them eat cake" attitude in this thread which I find distressing. The study reports on the millions of working age men in the US who are essentially too depressed and face too many obstacles to search for work. Instead, they're spending their days staying inside, getting high, and playing video games. They essentially have little to no chance to pursue romantic relationships. Many of them eve…

As far as I can tell, men have always been treated this way, in all societies: accomplish or disappear. The difference now is that automation is rendering the hill insurmountable.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#67

Post by lidHanteyk » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

tmux314 wrote: post #42

There's a very weird "let them eat cake" attitude in this thread which I find distressing. The study reports on the millions of working age men in the US who are essentially too depressed and face too many obstacles to search for work. Instead, they're spending their days staying inside, getting high, and playing video games. They essentially have little to no chance to pursue romantic relationships. Many of them eve…

To give my perspective: I'm a cake-eater. I have a dayjob, but I don't really care about it beyond basic professionalism, and I spend a fair amount of my spare time with cannabis and video games rather than with people.

Who cares if my male peers think I'm a loser? Most of them are incompetent mooching pieces of shit, and I don't have to believe in their crab mentality. They can say "loser" all they like.

Who cares if my female peers think I'm a loser? I've gotten laid enough in life, and it's not like job sites are dating sites. I already dodged the bullet of having to raise somebody else's kid or having to be stuck in a loveless marriage, which makes me not-a-loser in my book.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#68

Post by Mirioron » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

Merrill wrote: post #14

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.

The trend is completely different for women though as is the way people view women that are not participating in the labour force.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#69

Post by o09rdk » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

throwaway55554 wrote: post #13

> Among economists and policy analysts who have examined these unsettling trends, the general consensus is that declining male workforce participation in modern America is mainly a structural, demand-driven problem — a matter of evaporating local jobs, and especially jobs requiring limited skills, in an increasingly dynamic and globalized marketplace. Basically these are the men would have traditionally "built stuff"…

In the US, you have heights of inequality, underemployment, and rampant rent-seeking monopolies, along with ageism.

In my experience, among those who are employed and paid well, the hours are often brutal and huge sacrifices are being asked.

Then as a society we pretend it's all a meritocracy and if you are just talented enough and hard working enough it will work out. If it doesn't, it's your fault. Says the survivors.

Is it any surprise so many are tuning out?

It's cliche that's nevertheless true, but for many the system is rigged and it's looking more like that all the time. If you feel like it's all a rigged game why deign to play it at all?

I worry that the focus on basic income etc and loss of labor jobs is kind of missing the point: a lot of these individuals could and would work if the right social contracts were in place, and people were really allowed to provide what they are capable of in a competitive market.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#70

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #26

tathougies wrote: post #5

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…

I'd rather the losers of society stay in their house, high and playing video games, rather than trying to impress women and provide a family legacy by engaging in gangster behavior to get money. 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 wo…

[deleted]