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The Idle Army: America’s Unworking Men

50 点作者 randomname2超过 8 年前

13 条评论

fengb超过 8 年前
Stay-at-home dads explains 2 million of this article&#x27;s main statistic. So even if the remaining 5 million of the &quot;needs work&quot;, the employment number is closer to 89%.<p>Edit: there&#x27;s a reason economists usually use &quot;looking for work&quot; for unemployment numbers: it&#x27;s really hard to gauge why people don&#x27;t look for work.
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hellogoodbyeeee超过 8 年前
This is something that I&#x27;m worried about. I&#x27;m three years out of college and in my (very small) group of friends, two of us have full time ccorporate (middle class) jobs, one is starting his second masters degree, one is a part time personal trainer, and one is doing seasonal work at a farm. All of them have college degrees and all of them express interest in entrepreneurship and start-up culture. I think there is a problem with these guys (and myself) of being content with a bottom of the ladder corporate job. We all feel like we should be having more of an impact on our world and our jobs. I can&#x27;t decide if this is a misplaced feeling of entitlement or a legitimate want of a &quot;good&quot; job that provides professional satisfaction.
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jschwartzi超过 8 年前
Is it truly a flight from work? I think most of those men would work jobs if they A) existed and B) paid better than disability.
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parennoob超过 8 年前
Note that the article has the word &quot;women&quot; in it only twice (and in an inconsequential sentence); and the word &quot;female&quot; 0 times.<p>Discussing the unemployment levels of men in America without taking into account the vast sociological changes involving the genders in the last 20-30 years e.g. a lot more women in the workforce, societal expectations of more parenting involvement from men, etc.) is not much use unless you are trying on some sort of strange shaming tactic on men. FWIW I don&#x27;t think the author is doing this intentionally.
googletazer超过 8 年前
Vast majority of these &quot;unworking men&quot; are employed in the underground economy, working under the table, which provides a subsistence living. Perhaps only 10% are true NEETs with recognized disabilities&#x2F;parents wealthy enough to carry them.<p>I don&#x27;t see it as a good or a bad thing - society has reorganized itself and there is no place for these people anymore. With greater and greater levels of automation the problem is only going to get worse. 30% of people find it hard to do math beyond 8th grade, where would they fit in the modern economy? Furthermore if you start from the very bottom, some people will struggle and succeed, but most will give up - whats the point anyway? Living a minimalist lifestyle supporting your own limited needs beats working for Amazon and keeling over at 35 with a heart attack.<p>Seems as if success and fulfillment in modern society is on the edges of the distribution - either you&#x27;re a minimalistic bum or balls to the wall businessman.
amyjess超过 8 年前
I&#x27;m really disappointed that the author didn&#x27;t even try to analyze why these people weren&#x27;t working and instead just went into a rant about how they&#x27;re destroying society by living lives of pure pleasure.<p>How many are stay-at-home dads? How many are living with wealthy parents vs. how many are on welfare? How many of them were looking for work but eventually gave up after their efforts proved fruitless? How many of them have actual, legitimate disabilities?<p>These are all interesting questions. And for actual disabilities, I don&#x27;t think living with cystic fibrosis and being unable to work is the life of pleasure the author thinks it is.
larkinbrown超过 8 年前
The recent employment report was dubbed solid by many economists. 94,391,000 Americans not in the workforce is not good no matter how you try to slice or spin it !
speeder超过 8 年前
I have the impression the article got the cause and effect ordering confused.<p>It states for example on one paragraph, that the men not working, exacerbate family breakdown.<p>As someone in my 28s having lots of problems like in the article, I can personally claim, that for me, and all my friends, it is the other way around:<p>Creating a family in the current society, is almost impossible, two incomes is necessary, thus reducing time available to take care of kids, divorce is too easy, making it too risky for men (in my country, 72% of &quot;no-fault&quot; divorces were initiated by women for example), young women are not interested in serious relationships (instead they are interested in having fun, one-night stands, drinking, sex, etc...) because it gets in the way of having a career.<p>So, because of all this, starting a family, even if you really, really want it, is excessively hard.<p>So... why bother? Why put a massive effort to work your ass off, if you won&#x27;t have anything to do with the money?<p>Alright, you go and work 60 hours&#x2F;week, save money... and now what? Buy a house, to live in it alone? Buy a car, that doesn&#x27;t fit your parents garage that has their car already? Or buy videogames that you can&#x27;t play because you work 60 hours&#x2F;week?<p>It is logical, that the thing to be done, is do the mininum necessary to support a loner lifestyle, this is not my case (far from it), but I&#x27;ve met people where their current simple non-creative jobs can pay for international trips, restaurants and prostitutes, but are still too far from supporting a family, so... why not just stay where they are, and enjoy international trips, restaurants and prostitutes? Why work so hard to not have any leisure time, if the result would be reach old age alone, rich, and with nothing to spend that money with and no friends?<p>EDIT: people are making some assumptions about me and understanding this wrong. So to clear things up:<p>1. I am more of a exception guy, I don&#x27;t like one night stands and whatnot, and don&#x27;t go to bars or clubs, I look for women in my social circle, that is academia, workplaces (related to tech, always), and church. The women I described is what I saw there, maybe women elsewhere are different.<p>2. I am from Brazil, sometimes I forget how confortable life in US is in general, many people replied that you don&#x27;t need two-person income if you have a non-luxurious life, here in Brazil, the US &quot;middle-class&quot; life, of having two cars for example, is only for rich people, most of the population can&#x27;t afford even a single car (I for example don&#x27;t own a car, even if I summed all my income of the last 5 years, I would still not have enough for a car), here two-person income is necessary even if you are going to live in a favela shack with walls made of discarded wood and roof tiles, I just assumed this was the case for most of US too. I would love some detailed information if that is true, or not.<p>3. From what I&#x27;ve heard, housing, healthcare, and some other basic necessities are very expensive in US in general, housing is very expensive in Brazil too, even if bad quality &quot;supermarket&quot; food is cheap, you can&#x27;t start a family with a single income if you can&#x27;t afford housing and healthcare, for example if your kids get sick, how you will pay for it? Even here in Brazil where the state gives completely free healthcare, people still consider it too risky to not have healthcare money, sometimes your kid need something <i>now</i> and you don&#x27;t have time to wait the state.<p>4. Some people reading the text are assuming I am a NEET myself... that is not the case, I just find myself seriously tempted to do so though (because I am trying, very hard, to get money to start a family, yet I never got a legal job, and so far my total net worth is negative, some months I paid more in interest than the monthly mininum wage)
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internaut超过 8 年前
Wages must rise. They have not risen for nearly four decades in real terms. Major life expenses are unaffordable to all but the wealthy, such as housing.<p>This single fact explains lots of things in the present. It appears we&#x27;re trapped in a local maximum while journalists and politicians blithely ignore the plateauing of growth, wages and technology outside of computation.<p>If you think everything is getting better and better, you&#x27;ve taken your eyes off the road for a while now.
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larkinbrown超过 8 年前
The recent employment report was dubbed as solid by many mainstream economist. 94,391,000 were not in the work force. That&#x27;s not good no matter how you try to slice or spin it !
ollerac超过 8 年前
Google link to get around the paywall: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj23bGW7fDOAhUCgx4KHU15DbcQqQIIHzAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fthe-idle-army-americas-unworking-men-1472769641&amp;usg=AFQjCNHk0rKbh-8VWT7QvcQJEyZA2JZ8qQ&amp;sig2=1IpLylmM38cmnuOEaFR9gw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;c...</a>
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taxicabjesus超过 8 年前
Early one morning I got a fare at a house at the southern edge of Chandler. It was a young family - Man, Woman, Infant. They were going to the airport...<p>The man said that he&#x27;d tried driving for the taxi company, but it didn&#x27;t work for him. I had various other passengers who&#x27;d also tried their hand at taxi driving, and couldn&#x27;t make money. The traditional model for running a taxi service involves leasing cabs out for 12 hour shifts. Drivers have to work as much of those 12 hours to maximize their income. The first couple hours pay for the lease. An hour or two pays for gas. The last few hours are when you pay yourself.<p>This passenger had started driving for the Venture Capitalists&#x27; &quot;not-a-taxi&quot; business, and he thought it was great. The venture capitalists&#x27; business taps into the vast hoards of people who aren&#x27;t good employee material, and those who want to supplement their income. But the money wasn&#x27;t really enough for this passenger - he was working on a way to increase his income. After expenses, driving for the venture capitalists is the same as driving for the taxi company: they&#x27;re both low-skill minimum-wage jobs.<p>It was a very nice neighborhood... I imagined that this family had support from their parents to be able to live there.<p>When I was talking to my ex-wife yesterday, she pointed out that I value freedom more than anything else. This is why I was drawn to taxi driving, and why I stuck with it for so long. The taxi company had their dress code, and standards. They didn&#x27;t care what I did with their taxi, as long as I paid them at the end of the shift. I could have found a regular JOB, but I <i>enjoyed</i> the adventure of going new places every day, and meeting new people every day, and occasionally being sent to help someone who needed more than just a ride.<p>JOB is a backronym that stands for &quot;Just Over Broke&quot;. My income from taxi driving was enough to finance my entrepreneurial ambitions.<p>The only &quot;real job&quot; I&#x27;ve had was working for Amazon [1]. I worked at a summer camp when I was 12 or 13. After I graduated from teh college with a &quot;B.S.&quot; Computer Science degree (it is an expensive piece of paper that hangs on my father&#x27;s wall), I worked at various family-owned businesses, and helped take care of my grandparents...<p>I am not well-suited to being an employee. Now that I don&#x27;t drive around in the taxi anymore, I&#x27;m thinking about applying for the IT department at the local hospital... Recently I went to visit a friend in the ER, and this fellow was swapping out a scanner, so I struck up a conversation... It&#x27;d be a temporary gig.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taxiwars.org&#x2F;humanitys-second-best-hope&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taxiwars.org&#x2F;humanitys-second-best-hope&#x2F;</a>
susan_hall超过 8 年前
This is an interesting opening, coming from the Wall Street Journal:<p>&quot;Millions of young males have left the workforce and civic life. Full employment? The U.S. isn’t even close.&quot;<p>If the USA is not close to full employment, then the USA does not have to work about inflation. And yet, in other commentary, the Wall Street Journal has been obsessed with the risk of inflation, for many years now. They have urged the Fed to raise rates to head off a surge in inflation. But if there is hidden unemployment, then rates can remain low longer, with little risk of inflation.
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