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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

#681

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…

> In addition, there doesn't appear to be any broad social system that is geared towards supporting men.

What planet are you on? The whole social system is geared towards supporting men. 70% of the U.S. government is men. Most companies are owned by men. Most of the C-suite of most companies are men. Most engineers, doctors, lawyers, investors, and all other desirable, high-paying jobs are dominated by men. Just look around.

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

#682

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…

The article actually addresses this in the final sentence: “Nearly half of prime age men who are not in the labor force take pain medication on any given day; and in nearly two-thirds of these cases, they take prescription pain medication.” I think more prominent than the soybeans/BPA/microplastics kind of causes is just plain old opioid dependence.

... or they suffer from chronic pain, something that is dismissed as "drug seeking" far too often nowadays.

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

#683

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 pro…

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

Equality of outcome is not possible or even desirable. That is the problem. The more people try to force some completely unnatural result, the more terrible things they'll have to do (e.g., discrimination on the basis of body attributes, as if there is some good way to do it) and the worse things will get.

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

#684
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No condoms

We've got it ladies and gentlemen. The secret to halting population decline in the developed world is banning condoms.

I don't feel like the effect of contraception on population growth is a secret...

The second order effects get a bit complicated though...

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

#685

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…

Can you point to any examples of negativity towards masculinity instead of towards toxic masculinity?

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

#686
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a slow motion tragedy. From an environmental perspective, this kind of minimalist lifestyle actually seems quite healthy. They don't drive, and I assume they don't fly or buy a lot of stuff, so their carbon and other resource footprint is small. They don't take up much extra space, so they reduce suburban sprawl and land required for housing. They probably won't have kids, which further reduces their environme…

> Maybe we should encourage more people to live this way. Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror. Life is meant to be lived ; the purpose of life is at least eudaimonia, not slowly rotting away in front of a computer.

That usage of "lived" is a romanticization. It's the grandparent telling the starry-eyed children about the good old times, glossing over the decades of toil and hardship.

Many video games similarly skip time to focus on heroic moments. You don't role-play the 10,000 hours studying tomes at Hogwarts to become a 1st level wizard; instead you start the adventure at graduation, or at most do a training montage.

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

#687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why do you say that you're never going to be able to buy a house, but maybe will end up retiring before you're 40? It's not necessarily about being able to afford a house, but rather about whether home ownership is the best option financially when compared to other options. 20 years ago, homes were so cheap that I'd be willing to buy a home just for the sake of being a homeowner and enjoying the security that entail…

In a market with rapidly escalating home prices, assuming you're interested in living in the same area for a long time (>5 years probably, depends) buying a house can be a good bit of a hedge against real estate inflation. Home prices going up (usually) drive up apartment prices. My mortgage won't change, maintenance costs won't change, property taxes might. But if my property taxes go up, you can bet rent prices are…

Parent means the BTC returns cover that no problem.

> Ownership would need to provide concrete financial benefits when compared to other investment

And

> retiring before my 40th birthday.

Are quite the Freudian slips

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

#688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of validity to the social struggles of men in a lot of online discourse, but to say “society“ punishes us for not being women flies in the face of almost every useful metric of socioeconomic success. Women did not create the society that is hurting men emotionally and economically. Buying into that victim complex is a distraction from your own self-development and healing.

Most kids spends their first 15 years mostly surrounded by women. Their doctors, their kinder garden teachers, their school teachers etc. Almost every authority figure is a woman there. If those boys have problem I feel it is ok to say that it is mostly those grownups fault, and they happen to be mostly women.

majority of serial killers are raised by single mothers

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

#689
post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country, there are 50% more women in colleges than men, and our colleges still work more to attract more women (with eg. girls-only workshops, etc... we used to call this segregation and/or sexism back in my time). Lets say you have Alice and Bob... they both finished college, both are looking for a job, and they both decide to start their own company - Alice will make plastic spoons, and Bob will make plastic…

Curious which country this is. That ratio sounds really high.

It would appear to be Serbia. His username is supposedly a reference to celebrity, "Vladan Aksentijević, better known by his stage name Ajs Nigrutin, is a Serbian rapper and actor."

From the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia[1], a quick glance at the Higher Education statistics would seem to indicate there are 32% more women.

[1] https://www.stat.gov.rs/en-us/oblasti/obrazovanje/visoko-obr...

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

#690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of validity to the social struggles of men in a lot of online discourse, but to say “society“ punishes us for not being women flies in the face of almost every useful metric of socioeconomic success. Women did not create the society that is hurting men emotionally and economically. Buying into that victim complex is a distraction from your own self-development and healing.

> Women did not create the society that is hurting men emotionally and economically The extreme elements of 3rd wave feminism has influcenced society in ways that unfairly and negatively impact boys. Specifically the concept of "toxic masculinity". Toxic people are toxic. Toxic behaviors are toxic. Toxic people should be shamed and toxic behaviors should be discouraged. Boys should not be shamed for being masculine,…

The problem is that some behaviors traditionally associated with masculinity (mostly violence) are toxic, hence toxic masculinity.
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