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Education and Men without Work

nationalaffairs.com

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Re: Education and Men without Work

#91

Post by jfengel »

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…

The problem, I think, is that the article seems to believe that the solution is "return to the 1950s". The world has changed. The relationships between men and women have changed. The relationship of the economy to individuals has changed.

The article seems predicated on the notion that this number (male participation in the labor force) is the metric that matters, rather than anything about their mental health -- harder to measure, and therefore outside the purview of an economist (especially a right-wing economist). It doesn't even really try to look at what's in their minds, much less how we could go about creating a more healthy world for them to live in -- with everybody else.

I felt as if what the article kept trying hard not to say was, "Well, if only women would return home, there would be more lucrative jobs for men, and more need for the women to be taken care of by a man". That ship has sailed.

Many men have adjusted to a new kind of masculinity for that world. Many haven't, and we'll need to discover some new things. And I don't think that's well-served by the article's tacit notion that what's really needed are more of the old things.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#92

Post by frockington1 »

downerending wrote: post #48
duxup wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that the government benefits the article cited allows the men to stay at home playing video games all day Is that actually the case? The article takes issue with the narrative that supply and demand are involved ... but I don't think this article proves this idea that folks are enjoying government benefits and that results in them not working. The article certainly mentions it, but is pretty short on evide…

It's not the kind of safety net they're talking about, but a lot of the young are supported at a livable level by their parents. (source: am doing this) I'd argue that this isn't inherently bad, but ultimately this can amount to "eating one's seed corn". In the long run, twenty-somethings that do this risk a financially more perilous life and a lower chance of being able to give their kids a good start in life.

Is there anything you have done that has improved motivation of your kids to get out of the house? I'm asking as a mid-twenty year old who has a few friends that haven't had a real job in years and wants to help. The main issue I've run into is that they just don;t care they are burdening their parents

Re: Education and Men without Work

#93

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

xyzzyz wrote: post #74
gknoy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bett…

> 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. Does that surprise you that people who earned their own houses and their own healthcare through their own work resent the idea of skimming some of the fruits of their labor and giv…

It surprises me that people actually believe the lie that you're more likely to get rich by "hard work" than by skimming the fruits of other people's labour.

If you want a comfortable life of leisure then skimming is the way to do it. And it's socially approved, in the US at least.

Speculate on and/or rent out property, own stocks, profit from tiny pointless loopholes in money markets, become a monopolist, or work for one of the huge bureaucratic IT monopolies, even scam gullible VCs and investors - all good well-paid "hard work" you can do with a clear conscience.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#94

Post by WalterBright »

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…

> stay at home playing video games all day

Playing video games is monumentally boring after a short while. I just can't understand people who disappear into them.

Even the game I wrote for myself ( classicempire.com ) I rarely actually played, I'd spend my time trying to make the computer AI play better.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#95

Post by tathougies »

freepor wrote: post #86

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?

Government benefits in the US are not shit, at all. They are very generous if you qualify. The issue is qualifying, or lying to do so.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#96

Post by xupybd »

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…

The problem is balancing two parts of human nature. People like to be rewarded for their effort, some people get horribly depressed without this. The other is that people get their happiness from their wealth relative to those around them. It doesn't seem to matter how much wealth people have if inequality is high.

How do you build a system that rewards the hard working but limits inequality while allowing some not to work?

And how do you do this in such a way that self regulates. Those who choose to work will gain power and influence. If those start to resent those that don't work conditions will likely worsen for the non working.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#97

Post by freepor »

tathougies wrote: post #95
freepor wrote: post #86

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?

Government benefits in the US are not shit, at all. They are very generous if you qualify. The issue is qualifying, or lying to do so.

Hm, then I suspect that soon enough those benefits will go the way of the LL Bean return policy.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#98

Post by at_a_remove »

wayoutthere wrote: post #28

I think male socialization has left many men poorly-equipped to deal with the modern workplace. Prior to the information age, the primary challenges in the workplace were physical or motivational. So an attitude of "be tough and work through the hard times" was effective and allowed you to earn a living. Boorish behavior was tolerated or even celebrated as "male bonding". But as women entered more professions, that b…

What male socialization?

Who are our teachers in the United States? Over three-quarters are women, less than a quarter men. And given that recent studies indicate that women teachers tend to rate boys (unfairly) lower than girls for the same performance, that's women's socialization teaching boys how to behave in schools.

Societally? Go on, search to see what doodles Google made for Father's Day.

Which parent seems to have the final say in the courts? Again, we seem to default to Mother Knows Best.

What about relationships? US society seems to have ceded the ground entirely to Venus. So very, very many "men are stupid" posts on Twitter and it does not seem to have an end in sight.

Men's clubs? Legislated away wherever possible, on the grounds that it granted men an unfair business advantage. Meanwhile, an organization set up for women in business and creating a co-working space for them had members complain that men are showing up, with a startling lack of self-awareness.

Perhaps this is female socialization not working for boys and men.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#99

Post by hondo77 »

rpiguy wrote: post #32
duxup wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that the government benefits the article cited allows the men to stay at home playing video games all day Is that actually the case? The article takes issue with the narrative that supply and demand are involved ... but I don't think this article proves this idea that folks are enjoying government benefits and that results in them not working. The article certainly mentions it, but is pretty short on evide…

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…

> Disability is a federal benefit (not state)...

Maybe in the state in which you live. I am currently on state (CA) disability.

Re: Education and Men without Work

#100

Post by TulliusCicero »

WalterBright wrote: post #94
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…

> stay at home playing video games all day Playing video games is monumentally boring after a short while. I just can't understand people who disappear into them. Even the game I wrote for myself ( classicempire.com ) I rarely actually played, I'd spend my time trying to make the computer AI play better.

Video games are more mentally challenging & stimulating overall than any other task I regularly engage in. Especially Starcraft, which is absolutely exhausting to play competitively.

My day to day work as a programmer just doesn't push me mentally very hard. The kind of deep, exhaustive thinking I needed to get through difficult CS classes is unnecessary in most of my work (and the pacing is rather languid, most of the time).

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