By Laura PerrinsPosted on 08/25/2016 5:04:25 PM PDT by annalex
Something strange is going on with the working class men of America. Many in this class of men are no longer working, and it is not for the lack of jobs.
As Charles Murray explains in White America – while upper middle class men (and their wives) work more and more, working-class men work less and less to such and extent that we must insert those quotes – the working class man, is now the ‘working’ class man. This phenomenon has caught the attention of the White House and is said to have caused the rise of Donald Trump.
Both Murray and similar accounts confirm that although the collapse in traditional working class jobs is partly to blame, it is the collapse in working class culture that has driven this change.
In fact, an incredible ‘7 million American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are neither working nor looking for work. That amounts to 12 per cent of all men in those prime working ages – and that doesn’t count another 2 million who are looking for work but haven’t found it.’
These numbers are staggering and have commentators from Left to Right in a flap. In fact, “participation among prime-age men peaked in 1954, declined only slightly until the mid-1960s, and then began to decline in earnest in the decade between 1965 and 1975. Since then, participation has fallen persistently, with sharper declines in recessionary periods that were not fully reversed in the subsequent expansions,” according to this official White House report.
So it seems just as women were liberating themselves from the prison of the home, working class men have liberated themselves from work. Perhaps unsurprisingly one liberation – that of women – has been celebrated, but the other is causing panic.
Ah, but my feminist sisters say, these men are just the new modern man. They are taking over childcare and home duties while their partners go to work. That was our grand plan it is all coming to fruition. Not quite.
Instead, these men are having a bit of ‘me’ time. “They’re not spending any more time on child care or chores.” Instead these men spend up to 10.5 hours a day on media in all its form. They are playing Grand Theft Auto is what they are doing.
This commentator views this as an ominous sign, “the time and money these activities rob from relationships, work, and savings can hardly be overestimated.”
What has caused this collapse in work ethic in the ‘working’ class man – it cannot be solely the draw of the gaming experience? What, now remind me again, happened between 1965-1975 in the US? Ah yes that was second wave feminism telling men how they were ‘tying women to the kitchen sink’ while the husbands enjoyed the life of Riley outside it (The Feminine Mystique was published in 1963).
And the husbands were having a great time in the working world, were they are not? Here, Jack Arnold the patriarchal father in the classic Wonder Years, explains the fabulousness of it all to his son. “I get up at five in morning. I fight traffic; I bust my hump all day. I fight traffic again and then I come home. And then I pay my taxes. The end.” And Jack was middle-class - so you can just imagine what it was like for the working class man.
So should we really be surprised that the ‘working’ class man says, you know, thanks – but no thanks. What with welfare, he can just about make it through and no longer needs the often spirit crushing job he had to support his family.
Because this is something the feminists never thought through – men can opt-out and survive. They will not thrive, and I think ultimately it is at great personal loss to themselves and others, but if they don’t like the family and work deal offered, they’ll just opt-out of both. They will not organise, they will not take to Twitter they will just ‘socially withdraw.’
The truth is since the 1960s the working class man has not only seen his economic prospects hit, but more fundamentally his position in society has been trashed. The status he had as ‘head of the family’ no matter how menial and meaningless the job was on its own, had meaning and dignity as it sustained a family.
But this status has been gradually eroded over the decades, first by the feminists, who poured scorn on the husband who provides, then by the welfare state who said we can do this job better than you, and finally by the liberals who said fathers were surplus to requirements.
All of this spells disaster of course for the working class woman who is left scratching a living in low-paid jobs and welfare while holding the baby. This will cause the elite with their married dual career parents to pull further away, while the children of lone mothers fall further behind. And the liberals will continue to decry this ‘inequality’ without ever grasping the fact that they caused it.
Working class is a stupid term, like fixed income. My income has always been fixed all my life.
In my office a lot of men are retiring, and I’m one of them.
I’m 65, and I’m retiring this year. There are a couple who are a year or two younger, and a couple in their late fifties. We’re all getting out, because it’s not worth it to continue.
Bitches be trippin’
Woman bitch judge, bitch lawyers destroyed me in family court. They didnt even pretend to be neutral. My reputation was destroyed over it..im just now bouncing back a little
If you have never watched Divorce Corp. watch it.
The other law firm most likely donated more to that judge than yours did.
Just out of curiosity I’d love to see a racial and ethnic breakdown of those numbers....
Hilarious!!
I hear you. I have a job that can only be described as “highly skilled” for which you need a ridiculous amount of education. And I still work plenty of 10 or 12 hour days.
I am not buying this, especially the length of time it is supposed to have been going on.
Good. The people that make things happen finally saying FU.
There is also the demonstrated case of illegal immigrants working for less than natives (by not having to be paid or pay SSDI and other taxes), displacing native born workers.
This has hit blacks hardest, but certainly affects low skill whites, too.
As others have pointed out before, ‘working men’ work for a reason. That reason used to be Family. That is a Wife and children that are ‘his’. A working man will work himself to death for his family.
Along come the ‘feminists who would and did rob him of his dignity and his family by saying he was ‘stupid’, not needed except for as a sperm donor and then to add insult to the injury... All he was needed was to provide money to his ex-wife and the court system as they teamed up to destroy him financially and in the eyes of his children as a dead-beat.
The children of divorce saw what happened to their dads and the boys who grew up to be men decided that they didn’t want to participate in such a farce. Enter in the working men who won’t, are they lazy or are they smart to reduce their footprint to a level that will not attract the attention of the feminist woman who is looking for her ‘sugar-daddy’ for life and for her children?
My bet is on smart, men I will admit are inherently lazy. We will work our butts off to come up with a better, ‘easier’, way of doing something so that we can have more time to ‘relax’, fish, hunt, etc. Or yes... play computer games.
So congratulations go out to the feminists of the 60’s and 70’s. You did it, you changed the way America works and looks at work. I hope you are happy with what you’ve accomplished.
outside of a few locations or specialized skill areas,
there are almost NO jobs in Obama’s Transformed Amerika
(by design...he’s been destroying our jobs for his entire 7.5 years)
MANY people (men included) are not working because they can’t get work, period. For these millions and millions of Amerikans, unemployment is NOT VOLUNTARY and the article is therefore mostly BS
ps: blaming the victims of Obama’s job-destruction-derby
does not help fix the problem
Vote for Mr. Trump!
This phenomenon has caught the attention of the White House
>>Work is for suckers
It really is. The American Dream is dead for most Americans. They are in a weird “consume to survive” mode and a lot of unencumbered men do not want the family, picket fence, and lots of bills. There’s no working up the ladder because companies airdrop women and minorities in to fill every position with a desk.
X-Box, good internet, and hanging with friends is a pretty good life. Piling children on your back is not a recipe for a good life these days.
And the funniest part is that their lifestyle gets the girls as long as the guy doesn’t get too fat because feminism and the media tell the women that being a semen receptacle is empowering.
spirit crushing job
If you are out of work more than a year, you aren’t counted as “unemployed”. So the unemployment figures are phony.
You are assumed to be no longer looking for work, because a statistician has declared it so.
And now they are asking, what has changed that so many people are “no longer looking for work”. As if its a mystery.
That is what is happening.
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