Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The 'Quiet Catastrophe' Of Men Choosing To Not Seek Work
Investors Business Daily ^ | 10/06/2016 | GEORGE F. WILL

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 ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 2016issues; bhoeconomy; economy; employment; georgewill; investing; layoffs; males; unemployment
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 221-240241-260261-280281-295 next last
To: expat_panama

George Will thinks he works.


241 posted on 10/06/2016 2:05:19 PM PDT by LibWhacker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Boogieman

>>If your spouse wants a divorce,

She doesn’t. I don’t. Neither did our parents.

We live as we were raised.

Your Millage, living in and of the culture of poodle “slave” dung, May Vary!


242 posted on 10/06/2016 2:05:58 PM PDT by HLPhat (It takes a Republic TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS - not a populist Tyranny of the Majority)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 238 | View Replies]

To: 9YearLurker

Yep, all my personal experience of young, able-bodied males not working are ones who choose not to work and are using a combination of disability payments and/or money from their parents to get by.

I think both easy money from government programs and parents who are “too wealthy” and never had any desire to discipline their children are causes.


243 posted on 10/06/2016 2:17:44 PM PDT by JediJones (Social conservatism is the root of all conservatism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: PapaBear3625

It also suggests she was more interested in marriage as a social goal to impress her friends and may not have any real interest in her husband as an individual companion.


244 posted on 10/06/2016 2:21:10 PM PDT by JediJones (Social conservatism is the root of all conservatism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 168 | View Replies]

To: Bryanw92
Get some skills and do work under the table and you can live like a king and still be “poor”.

Have more than a few friends that do just that. Life on their own terms.

245 posted on 10/06/2016 2:24:37 PM PDT by Kudsman (Hillary has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft. DJTrump 6/22/16)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: Boogieman

>>Well I asked you where God commanded that, and you responded with a quote from Matthew, which implies you believe the command was located in those verses you quoted...

That sort of manipulative disengenuous character implies why your relationship status is what it is.  SMH.

>>You continue to pretend that we aren’t all accountable to the same laws whether we like it or not.

And you continue to pretend the "laws" of the USA are not subordinate to the Laws of Nature.

My 30+ year relationship to my wife and family is accountable to Christ’s command, example, and judgement first.

We were raised to understand and live in His Word --- WE don’t expose ourselves - or our children, to the damage that’s self-inflicted by “slaves” who CHOOSE not to RTFM and instead CHOOSE to live according to secular poodle culture.

It may come as a shock to you, but many Christian men and women NEVER find themselves or their children in family court - and that's probably because they live according to a higher standard.

YMMV!

246 posted on 10/06/2016 2:30:29 PM PDT by HLPhat (It takes a Republic TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS - not a populist Tyranny of the Majority)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 240 | View Replies]

To: JediJones

I would add to that guys in their 40s or 50s who held out for a next job close to thw pay or prestige of their old one until they were barely employable at all—and chose moving back home with mom or dad or living off savings rather than face that indignity. Oh, also, there is an ex-corporate guy taking a year for a supposed slow build to a startup while his wife frets.


247 posted on 10/06/2016 2:32:11 PM PDT by 9YearLurker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 243 | View Replies]

To: Bryanw92

>>That’s why Third-Worlders keep making babies they can’t feed.

Meanwhile fitness is measured across multiple generations of reproductively viable offspring - and yours is still....

ZERO.


248 posted on 10/06/2016 2:36:06 PM PDT by HLPhat (It takes a Republic TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS - not a populist Tyranny of the Majority)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 239 | View Replies]

To: HLPhat

“That sort of manipulative disengenuous character implies why your relationship status is what it is.”

Boy, more “Christ-like” personal insults. You really shine with the light of grace and love, buddy. Besides, I only said what your comment clearly implies. If someone asks a question about where God commands something and you reply with a Bible quote, it is implied that you are answering the question with that quote. That’s how conversations work.

“And you continue to pretend the “laws” of the USA are not subordinate to the Laws of Nature.”

Where did I say that? You wouldn’t be manipulatively or disingenuously trying to attribute something to me that I never said, now would you? Surely you can provide a quote to back up your assertion.

“It may come as a shock to you, but many Christian men and women NEVER find themselves or their children in family court...”

It may come as a shock to you that many Christian men and women who thought they would never end up in a family court actually did end up there anyway, since they were bound by the same laws as everyone else in this country. Your “it could never happen to me” attitude is just wishful thinking. If your wife ever decides she wants a divorce, you’ll end up there too, and there won’t be anything you can do to avoid it.


249 posted on 10/06/2016 2:37:13 PM PDT by Boogieman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 246 | View Replies]

To: Bryanw92

The problem is there aren’t many women left worth putting in the work for. Try finding one who isn’t a fat lazy slob, a left-wing wack job and/or a feminist man-hater. Then try to find one among that group that actually wants to have children before she’s 45 instead of spending all the money on herself.

That tiny pool of decent women gets snapped up very quickly by people who are at the very top of the economic earning ladder. No woman worth supporting is available to a middle-class to upper-middle-class wage earner.

Western women are bred to hate men and resent men. They become social outcasts in this culture if they admit that they might need a man in their life.

So the idea that men should still desire to work and support a family when the women who would both merit such attention and genuinely appreciate him for providing it are a rare and unattainable commodity.


250 posted on 10/06/2016 2:41:17 PM PDT by JediJones (Social conservatism is the root of all conservatism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: 9YearLurker

>>living off savings

What’s wrong with that?


251 posted on 10/06/2016 2:43:04 PM PDT by HLPhat (It takes a Republic TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS - not a populist Tyranny of the Majority)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 247 | View Replies]

To: HLPhat

Nuttin’—but it impacts the stats this article is based on.


252 posted on 10/06/2016 2:44:45 PM PDT by 9YearLurker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 251 | View Replies]

To: HLPhat

Nuttin’—but it impacts the stats this article is based on.


253 posted on 10/06/2016 2:44:53 PM PDT by 9YearLurker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 251 | View Replies]

To: HLPhat

Nuttin’—but it impacts the stats this article is based on.

(And with better opportunities they would still be working.)


254 posted on 10/06/2016 2:45:40 PM PDT by 9YearLurker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 251 | View Replies]

To: HLPhat

“She doesn’t. I don’t.”

Good for you, but your situation does not apply to the entire country, and the rest of us have to live in the world as it actually is, not as our wishful thinking declares it should be.


255 posted on 10/06/2016 2:50:57 PM PDT by Boogieman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 242 | View Replies]

To: HLPhat

>>Meanwhile fitness is measured across multiple generations of reproductively viable offspring - and yours is still....

Fitness?? Fitness to do what? Any animal can reproduce. Your need to measure your self worth by what your genitals can do is a little silly. There’s 7 billion people on earth. I doubt the human race will go extinct because some people made a business decision and decided that procreation isn’t worth the cost.


256 posted on 10/06/2016 3:01:49 PM PDT by Bryanw92 (If we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 248 | View Replies]

To: Boogieman
>>you really shine with the light of grace and love, buddy.

Eat your words:

"volunteering to become a slave so some woman can sit on her lazy ass."

I'm not your "buddy" - and if you don't like being rebuked then keep your manipulative, disengenuous, smirking misogynist mouth shut.

>>your comment clearly implies.

Only in the context of your twisted question.

>>If your wife ever decides she wants a divorce, you’ll end up there too, and there won’t be anything you can do to avoid it.

And "IF" I jump off a cliff the law of gravity will apply!  Go ahead and hold your breath for that.

Meanwhile, there was no "IF" for the altruistic parents of my wife or myself, or our grandparents - and none of our siblings are eunuchs either!  I can think of numerous families in our circles of childhood friends who've enjoyed the same CONSERVATIVE marital fidelity and longevity.

It's unfortunate that progressive "culture" manufactures poodles without the benefit of such role models, along with those who rationalize such liberality -- culminating in multiple generations of FAIL but, it is what it is.

257 posted on 10/06/2016 3:22:24 PM PDT by HLPhat (It takes a Republic TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS - not a populist Tyranny of the Majority)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 249 | View Replies]

To: Bryanw92

>>Your need to measure your self worth by what your genitals can do is a little silly.

Reproductive fitness includes having and passing on the ability to acquire the resources required for ensuring the success of those multiple generations offspring, super genius.

It’s more than just thinking with your pants.


258 posted on 10/06/2016 3:26:14 PM PDT by HLPhat (It takes a Republic TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS - not a populist Tyranny of the Majority)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 256 | View Replies]

To: HLPhat

>>Reproductive fitness includes having and passing on the ability to acquire the resources required for ensuring the success of those multiple generations offspring, super genius.

>>It’s more than just thinking with your pants.

You can claim that belief, but that doesn’t make it true. If you don’t reproduce, then you don’t have to worry your multiple generations offspring.

That’s why I’m a genius compared to you. I don’t think in some 19th century “I need a bunch of kids because I need more farm hands” paradigm. It’s the information age. We don’t need help slopping the hogs and bringing in the alfalfa crop.


259 posted on 10/06/2016 3:47:28 PM PDT by Bryanw92 (If we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 258 | View Replies]

To: Bryanw92

>>You can claim that belief, but that doesn’t make it true.

The sociobiological truth is rendered by several billion years of natural selection.

>>It’s the information age.

History is littered with the remains of cultures that became infested with Technocrats who worshiped themselves and abominated natural law.

The morbidly obese effeminate, and impotent poodles constituting the “community” of Barry Obumble and Co. aren’t the first, and likely won’t be the last, to make that mistake.


260 posted on 10/06/2016 7:21:12 PM PDT by HLPhat (It takes a Republic TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS - not a populist Tyranny of the Majority)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 259 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 221-240241-260261-280281-295 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson