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Education and Men without Work

nationalaffairs.com

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Re: Education and Men without Work

#81

Post by TurkishPoptart »

>Even after controlling for age, ethnicity, and education, married men are decidedly more likely to be in the workforce than men who have never married. This "marriage effect" is so powerful that married prime-age male high-school dropouts generate labor-force participation rates in the same league as their never-married, college-graduate peers. Analogous but somewhat less powerful effects are seen when we drill deeper into family life: Irrespective of marital status, education, and ethnicity, a prime-age man is more likely to be in the workforce if he lives in the same home as children under the age of 18, regardless of his race or education.

This is pretty damn interesting but not all that surprising. For those whom the institution of marriage is still relevant (and those lucky enough to find a partner), getting up and going to work everyday is not a huge problem.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#82

Post by jbay808 »

leereeves wrote: post #31
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"…

> We don't have any factories anymore. Factories still exist, they're just in other countries. And in China alone, they employ 100 million people.

I don't think the parent meant otherwise. Or are you suggesting that Americans looking for unskilled factory work can just move to China and get a job? Aside from the cost and language barrier and family ties and other challenges of relocating, I think legal barriers alone (visa issues, work permits) would make that hard. It's already hard enough even for highly skilled professionals to get work permits in another country.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#83

Post by moretai »

Perhaps television fucked my head up too much, but shouldn't a society where women have equal pay, get rid of all this animal hierarchy bullshit and find someone they actually connect with? Is the divorce rate still 50%? Is all of this just to spit out a child?

Re: Education and Men without Work

#84

Post by bazooka_penguin »

Mirioron wrote: post #63
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 sacrific…

Did cavemen have a conception of worth? Probably nowhere near what we would think of it. I think if you took these men and tossed them on an island with a forest some would wait to die, many, most would start chopping wood just to have something to do. It's better than being bored.

I'm willing to bet very few of these social dropouts just lay in bed like vegetables all day, they're playing games, consuming media, doing something. And unfortunately that has a better, quicker mental payoff than going to work.

I think the problem is that in older societies you didnt have much else to do but work outside of certain hours because of strict social taboos. Work was the fruit of exploiting men's simple behavior of looking for something to keep busy. Now video games and YouTube are accessible all day long as long as you have a computer or phone and internet, which benefits can provide. I sont think there's any complex civilization level social phenomenon, we just gave men something better to do and the means to do it

Re: Education and Men without Work

#85

Post by didibus »

cheshireoctopus wrote: post #33
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…

> given the propensity of the male psyche to become dependent on dopamine Interesting. This anecdotally appears to be the case. Is there anything to back this point up?

> This anecdotally appears to be the case.

How so? You were given no anecdotes in the parent comment, so I don't understand why you think this is anecdotally demonstrated.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#86

Post by freepor »

I thought that government benefits in the US were shite? I can understand why European men might opt-out but I thought that you were basically dooming yourself to homelessness without a job in America. How are these men living?

Re: Education and Men without Work

#87

Post by HeroOfAges »

mythrwy wrote: post #71
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…

This may be an unpopular opinion but the real issue (biologically) is that we don't need all the men. We only need a tiny percentage of men. So how societies sometimes dealt with this excess of men was to send a good number of them off to war. Also occupations used to be much more hazardous so many more die working. The days of bundling laggers up in a red coat and sending them off with a musket to make the queens em…

While I would agree that this is an unpopular opinion, it's one I've come to terms with myself as I've grown older. There's a book I read that's popular in men's rights advocate circles called "The Myth of Male Power" that explores the idea of males being the "disposable" sex. Unfortunately, we live in a time where you're branded a misogynist for even mentioning the possibility that men face some serious disadvantages in modern American society.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#88

Post by burntoutfire »

Miner49er wrote: post #41
rpiguy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disability is a federal benefit (not state) and according to the article a whopping 2/3 of these men are on at least 1 federal disability benefit. Furthermore, 1/2 of the men take prescription pain medication daily. The government benefits certainly make it easier to not work, but the article does pain to say that correlation is not causation - it is a multi-factor phenomenon. Government benefits may enable the behav…

Could be the difference in pay for low wage jobs. It seems that this is what it comes down to. Many male, high-school dropouts have decided it's a better deal to just coast by on disability and money from friends/family then to work for $10/hour at McDonald's or similar. The way to bring them back into the workforce, IMO, is to offer them a better deal. If low-wage jobs in the U.S. were as good as they are in Eastern…

> If low-wage jobs in the U.S. were as good as they are in Eastern Europe, maybe more men would take them.

Are you saying low wage wage jobs are good in EE? I can assure you that's not the case. Millions of low wage workes from EE left for Western Europe upon joining the EU. They still do low wage work, but the pay is so much higher in the UK, Germany, Norway etc.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#89

Post by Mirioron »

Merrill wrote: post #75
Mirioron wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Since the participation rate for women peaked around 2000, the participation rate for men and women both declined a few percent. The curves are essentially parallel. The graph is from "Labor force participation: what has happened since the peak?" by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/labor-force-partic...

I stand corrected. I saw the graph earlier but it was difficult to tell either the reduction in both groups was similar or not. Looking at the numbers though does paint a similar picture. The rate for men from 2000 to 2016 fell from 92.1% to 88.5% (3.6% drop) and for women from 77% to 74% (3% drop).

Re: Education and Men without Work

#90

Post by freepor »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #81

>Even after controlling for age, ethnicity, and education, married men are decidedly more likely to be in the workforce than men who have never married. This "marriage effect" is so powerful that married prime-age male high-school dropouts generate labor-force participation rates in the same league as their never-married, college-graduate peers. Analogous but somewhat less powerful effects are seen when we drill deep…

Yeah, most men work because people depend on them. I don't like my job but I show up at work because what the hell else would I do? I have two kids who need food and a roof over their head.
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