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Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

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Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#671

Post by samatman »

motohagiography wrote: post #631

> Improvements in video-game technology help account for young men’s detachment from the labor force, according to a 2017 paper by economists from Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the University of Rochester. It found that an increase in the playing of video games by men 21-30 accounted for somewhere between 38% and 79% of the differential in the decline in their time spent on paid work vs. the smaller decli…

Couple things to consider:

The "not your Daddy's ditch weed" line is basically fake. Cannabis users take enough to get where they want to be and stop, more potent weed just means they smoke less. It's also a partial agonist, so past a point smoking extra is just wasting drugs.

Second point is that cannabis use isn't increasing, if anything it's decreasing: 20-somethings reported higher rates of use in the 90s than they do now.

So really the impact is less people getting entwined with the legal system.

I won't bother engaging with the rest of your ramble, just the egregiously wrong part.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#672

Post by rayiner »

krastanov wrote: post #448
harryh wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except for the part of an economic system that requires unending growth This is such a tired phrase. Like if we had socialism or communism or some other -ism it wouldn't matter. But that's just not true. The issue is math and the fact that prime age working people (25-55ish) are the ones that, for the most part, make stuff. If you have a shrinking population then the % of the population that makes stuff gets a lot sm…

What about the scifi trope of robots making things? After all the productivity of a single human has been skyrocketing for more than a century now. I do not which -ism that is. Somewhere between socialism and startrekism I guess.

Fun fact, it hasn’t, outside of a handful of sectors: https://aneconomicsense.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/real-val...

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#673

Post by TrispusAttucks »

flippinburgers wrote: post #511

Men are not doing as well as women in school. If you look in the wrong places on the internet, media, or daily life, all you see is negativity towards masculinity. In addition, there doesn't appear to be any broad social system that is geared towards supporting men. The fact that men don't tend to be a socially adept doesn't help. This all feels like the perfect storm and there are plenty of people who act like "men…

At a recent scholarship awards ceremony I attended the woman gathered much more scholarships than the men. Of course they probably very well deserved it. However there were many women-only scholarships that I am assuming were setup to increase college admissions of women. Which is of course also perfectly okay. However, there is a huge growing gender gap [1] in college admissions that favors women.

If an equality program is so successful that it creates an equality imbalance in the other direction what do we do?

We could cancel the programs and call it's goal completed, but this seems wrong.

We could create new programs that target raising admissions of men, but that also seems wrong, at least in the current climate.

Maybe it's just the case that men don't prefer college as much or perhaps it's too expensive when you can't get scholarships because your not the right identity.

[1] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/prediction-no-graduation-spea...

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#674

Post by throwaway306744 »

dcist wrote: post #637
jart wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well maybe they're smart enough to know that, in a world where most things have either been automated or offshored, the only purpose most jobs serve in the grand scheme of things is to increase the velocity of capital. If you had a choice between the fake purpose offered by an office job where you get to be a peon, versus the fake purpose offered by a video game where you get to be a hero: which would you choose?

But a job provides you real money that gives you real options in life. You can't take someone out on a date with your video game points.

I get what you're saying, but with just "a job" these days you won't be taking that attractive person out on a date either.

Real life's feedback loops and progression mechanics are slow and unreliable when compared to games.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#675

Post by fb13 »

smolder wrote: post #622
JoeyBananas wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, it might not necessarily be narcissism that causes someone to always do the bare minimum in life. What it really comes down to is lack of discipline.

What it often (of course not always) comes down to is that they have experienced some trauma or unfairness that ruins their trust in the delayed reward systems that the survivor contingent happily takes advantage of. It's a much greater emotional load to maintain discipline when you experience setbacks that are out of your control, even partly. If 100 people break the law and 10 get the book thrown at them and 90 get…

> How do you address this issue? I think it's cheaper and better for everyone to address unfairness than to try to fix people after they come to feel abused by the world.

Yes, but somehow forward thinking isn't a common phenomenon in our society.

> Dear downvoter, I'd be interested in reading why I deserved it.

Undoubtedly you didn't "deserve" it. The voting system is just a way for the prevailing cliques to signify who's present. This thread is ripe with the hateful and helpless young men referred to in the article, evident by many of the comments. The worse part is that growing trend in this direction on HN. I'd say HN is currently experiencing max Q and I'm not sure it will make it to the other side without succumbing to the pressure(ie decent people leaving the site for good).

The experience here is worse than before, but still better than elsewhere. I think that means HN is ripe for innovation!

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#676

Post by samatman »

dijit wrote: post #2

If the goal is gender equality: what's wrong with this? The idea that every able bodied person has to work is not supposed to be the way our society functions; at least not in the last 100,000 years.

If you wanted penmanship equality (for the sake of argument) you could get closer by intensively training people with poor penmanship.

Or you could cut everyone's dominant hand off. Equality achieved!

Most of us don't want that kind of equality.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#678

Post by dillondoyle »

soucy wrote: post #559
flippinburgers wrote: post #511

Men are not doing as well as women in school. If you look in the wrong places on the internet, media, or daily life, all you see is negativity towards masculinity. In addition, there doesn't appear to be any broad social system that is geared towards supporting men. The fact that men don't tend to be a socially adept doesn't help. This all feels like the perfect storm and there are plenty of people who act like "men…

Bullshit. There are problems but it's not because of some "war on masculinity". The real issues are economic.

I agree 100% on the dramatic economic problems we are facing.

But I also can't help but feel commenters are conflating 'attack on masculinity' !== 'attack on toxic masculinity.'

There is not some organized movement trying to make young boys 'less of a man.'

I'm guessing a very large % of HN is male so would be nice to amplify any female voices who want to chime in.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#679

Post by lifeformed »

tristor wrote: post #305

This thread is full of people talking about cultural, societal, and economic factors that may influence this outcome. I've yet to see anyone mention the factor that I wish we more thoroughly investigated: health. This has been discussed in some articles at length, but we still haven't identified primary causes, but testosterone levels are falling in men (at a given age) at a pretty steady pace year over year. This is…

I don't understand the soy argument. Do Asians have increased rates of hormone problems since they eat so much soy?

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#680

Post by gregimba »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #34
futureshock wrote: post #22

This seems like a kind rational economic choice. If there are not enough good jobs that can support independent living, providing for a spouse, buying a home or raising a family, then staying home with the easy accomplishment of video games makes sense. Most people never live outside their home states and can't afford to leave the support network of their family and close friends. If you grew up in a medium or high c…

Until this year, I lived in the same place I grew up, one of the highest cost-of-living places on the planet: NYC. Until the pandemic, the goal of owning a home did seem totally out of reach for me, even with my remote SV tech job salary. Then I moved to an unincorporated community in TN, because NYC's lockdowns, mask mandates, and general cultural decay was too much for me to bear - financially, emotionally, and eve…

I plan to do the same in a couple years, my hometown is unaffordable, with tech like Starlink coming online and the pandemic making remote work more common I can foresee a subset of tech workers choosing this path if they feel alienated in the larger tech cities.
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