Posted on 10/06/2016 4:00:53 AM PDT by expat_panama
The "quiet catastrophe" is particularly dismaying because it is so quiet, without social turmoil or even debate. It is this: After 88 consecutive months of the economic expansion that began in June 2009, a smaller percentage of American males in the prime working years (ages 25 to 54) are working than were working near the end of the Great Depression in 1940, when the unemployment rate was above 14%.
If the labor force participation rate were as high today as it was as recently as 2000, nearly 10 million more Americans would have jobs.
The work rate for adult men has plunged 13 percentage points in a half-century. This "work deficit" of "Great Depression-scale underutilization" of male potential workers is the subject of Nicholas Eberstadt's new monograph "Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis," which explores the economic and moral causes and consequences of this:
Since 1948, the proportion of men 20 and older without paid work has more than doubled, to almost 32%. This "eerie and radical transformation" -- men creating an "alternative lifestyle to the age-old male quest for a paying job" -- is largely voluntary.
Men who have chosen to not seek work are two and a half times more numerous than men that government statistics count as unemployed because they...
...Only about 15% of men 25 to 54 who worked not at all in 2014 said they were unemployed because they could not find work.
For 50 years, the number of men in that age cohort who are neither working nor looking for work has grown nearly four times faster than the number who are working...
...The "economically inactive" have eclipsed the unemployed...
...Eberstadt does not say that government assistance causes this...
...America ranks 22nd, ahead of only Italy, in 25 to 54 male labor force participation...
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
>>Its a state of mind, not so much a location.
Yeah, well my location has property taxes.
This is true. It is nigh impossible to find a job over a certain age, especially for men. Especially for white men.
Welcome to the 55+ basket!
As long as they are making more money as "sugar babies" than they would as welfare moms, they will avoid getting pregnant and thus keep the welfare rolls lower.
Pretty much.
Want to quit and become a parasite, but can’t bring myself to do it. Self respect. Honor. Duty That sorta thing.
“That’s just your ignorance of altruism on display.”
You’re the kind of person who would argue a slave should altruistically continue to slave for their master? Seriously? No point in even talking to someone who would propose something so idiotic.
“Maybe that describes the female role models in your family but it doesn’t describe the women in mine.”
You’re mistaking your microcosm for the macrocosm. Step back and look at the state of marriages in society as a whole instead of in your little corner of it, if you want to discuss problems that affect the whole society.
Ha ha—I joined that basket this summer!
And I too think of moving down to where it is cheaper and warmer.
“Real men support their wives and families as directed by Jesus Christ.”
Show me where Jesus commanded for us to get married...
Well, I’ll save you the bother of trying to find it, because it never happened.
What is it like for young late 20-somethings who are poor to even think about marriage? They can’t afford anything nice, like a wedding, a trip, a house. They probably think, why bother with marriage? Only the very religious would see a point to it.
I went to a wedding of two late 20-somethings who are wealthy. From wealthy families, each has a well paid job. It was like going into the past. All the trimmings, must have been close to $100,000 for the damn DAY. Then the honeymoon to the Amalfi coast. Who can do these things any more?
“They will be the first to die withing a month when the entire system collapses.”
The key for the productive class is surviving that first month, particularly if you’re close to a city...
>>where our system is replaced by something akin to...
Egypt managed to wobble along with its state-established man/woman-gods/Tzars for 2000+- years before....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYdEYJ21mlQ
Rinse, Wash, Repeat.
I actually think we were better off in a lot of ways when late 20s somethings weren’t prepared to spend heavily on weddings, trips, etc. If that’s what’s motivating them to marriage, that’s not great either.
It used to be that men had to have an awareness that they’d be able to support a wife and the kid(s) that could come from marriage, but not necessarily with a luxury lifestyle. High income men tend to work upwards of 60 hours a week in their prime years, and even working class men ought to be able to support such with such hours in their prime years, if needed.
With a wife working as well and birth control to delay kiddos, even minimum wage types can typically afford a decent one-bedroom apartment now.
If anything IMO millennials suffer from expecting the comforts of their parents’ lifestyle right off—and that didn’t used to be the case.
>>it never happened.
Matthew 19:4-6
4Havent you read, he replied, that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female,a 5and said, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one fleshb ?6So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.
What does this mean?
>>Youre the kind of person who would argue a slave should altruistically continue to slave for their master?
No, Im the kind of person who recognizes the natural relationship between reproductive instinct and altruism - as quantified by sociobioligical fitness.
You anthropomorphize/rationalize your own social word-view upon nature; but the self-evident natural reality is that parents are no more the slaves of their children than bees are slaves of their hive.
“You anthropomorphize/rationalize your own social word-view upon nature; but the self-evident natural reality is that parents are no more the slaves of their children than bees are slaves of their hive.”
I never said they were. Apparently you can’t argue with anything I’ve said if you have to invent things I didn’t say to argue with.
It’s an argument against divorce, as explained in the following verses that you didn’t bother to post. In fact, verses 11 and 12 make it crystal clear that Jesus is NOT issuing a commandment to marry:
“11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.
12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”
You can stop wasting your time searching for some commandment from God to marry, because it was never issued.
"volunteering to become a slave so some woman can sit on her lazy ass."
"Better to live for 70 years than to be a slave for 72."
You could've chosen to be a eunuch instead of being a "slave" to a wife and children:
Matthew 19:11-12
11Jesus replied, Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by othersand there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.
But YOU didn’t CHOOSE to be a Eunuch, DID YOU.
Add me to your daily finance thread, please.
>>Its an argument against divorce,
It’s Jesus’ description of the natural relationship between a man and woman - which is also reflected in His relationship with the church.
The abominable whining of poodles to the contrary is nothing new - as Romans chapter 1 illustrates succinctly.
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