Millions of Men Are Missing from the Job Market
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I loved my job. I worked at MongoDB in Palo Alto for 3 years, contributing to the core database (C++) and designed a performance testing platform (among other things). It was a true pleasure to have worked with some extraordinarily brilliant people throughout my career. I biked ~5 miles to work from the house I shared with my partner in Atherton. Life was perfect.
I now live with my parents in Florida, and have symptoms that have progressed to what could be MS (I'm undergoing a complete work up at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL).
Life sucks. I'm depressed, but who wouldn't be? I also take prescription pain medicine, which helps me get out of bed and shed some of the 105lbs I've gained since this started. Being 6'2" and 285lbs is depressing in it's own right.
That said, I want to stress two things:
1. Opioids are daemonized by the media, but there is no better option (aside from suicide). The implied correlation with pain medication in this article seems to reinforce the stigma I've been facing; that somehow I'm lazy, weak or an addict. But all I can offer is my word.
Like most people who enjoy software engineering, I gained immense gratification from solving difficult problems, learning new things, and completing a piece of software I'm proud of. Opioids don't replace that feeling (for me anyway). Nothing does. But the lesions on my brain make writing software effectively impossible.
2. Debilitating conditions predicate losing a job and starting pain medication. Maybe some people are just lazy and hate their jobs, but please don't punish me (and others like me) for it. Even if they're in the majority, please don't punish me. I suffer enough.
For me (and possibly only me, I don't know your situation), what worked better than anything was to start eating a keto (low carb, and incidentally no wheat) diet, which some attribute to having anti-inflammatory effects: http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/01/low-back-pain-chiropra.... The pain went away very quickly (for me within a week of starting the diet) and I can walk normally again.
I'm not saying it will work for you, I don't know, but I've been on the diet for four months now, and the pain hasn't returned since. You might want to consider it. It significantly improved my life. I also lost 40lbs as well in that time period, with not a whole lot of exercise, which I'm hoping will help insure the pain doesn't come back in the future.
It's awful and it dictates your life when you have it, I know. I hope you figure out what's wrong and find something that works for you.
Also, if nothing else, I noticed that I could stay in the pool pretty much as long as I wanted when I had back pain, due to its buoyancy effect, so when I did have back pain, I got my exercise in by going to the pool regularly, and found relief from my pain while I was in there. You might want to consider that for weight loss as well.
If you are interested in keto, check out http://www.reddit.com/r/keto. It's a great source of information, motivation, and similar stories such as mine by real people, not paid endorsements.
For anybody else reading this I'm a similar situation, please do follow cableshaft's advice and try new diets. I also recommend physical therapy.
The cause(s) of MS and many similar diseases are not well understood. At all. FWIW, I lived a pretty healthy lifestyle before my symptoms started.
The best ones I've seen were both athletes who succumbed to back injuries. But there must be good PTs who learned by the book too... I hope.
There was a study in the UK where 90% of back pain goes away in 1 year, so they advised against any surgery. Of course this was in the UK so they couldn't get surgery within a year.
In CO, the deaths by opioids have gone down significantly.
But since moving to Florida, I have to take a drug test every month before my pain management doctor will prescribe anything. It's on the ballot in Florida next month.
The current opiate epidemic and crackdown is also unfortunately affecting people like you, who are legitimately in pain.
I don't really have anything, besides saying that we as a society should do what we can to get you healthy, but I feel that when there's people who are healthy enough to train for the army, and mentally capable, and still refuse to do anything, that's when society in general starts feeling "why do we have welfare?" and, essentially, their behavior hurts those who actually need the help.
I wish you the best.
"Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place."
Just as we don't like to think about dying, we don't like to think about getting sick. Fatigue, depression, pain, etc. -- they're all real, and can be completely debilitating. Nobody is immune. But sadly, people can indeed fake many of these symptoms; even the best MRIs and latest technology (like DaT scans) can't prove or disprove nearly as much as I thought before my first hand experience. That said, I don't _think_ that anybody faking a condition would subject themselves to as much radiation or spinal injections as a truly sick person would...
Anyway, you make a very valid point about what society sees, and their knee-jerk reaction. I felt this first hand when I moved from CA to FL (the former "pill mill capital of the US") nearly two years ago. Years before I moved back here, the state legislated limits on opioid prescriptions, and I had to reduce my dose when changing doctors. Did this legislation reduce opioid prescriptions in the state? yes. But heroin use has also skyrocketed. And legitimate patients are still suffering. But I digress... Thanks again for your comment.
Ziconotide is a fine choice. It works better too. The only downside is that you can't take it in pill form.
That drug can't even be given by IV or IM, can it? I'm a candidate for the intrathecal pain pump, which looks to be the only way the drug you mentioned can be administered. But most doctors have suggested I wait for some clear answers before hooking a drug pump directly up to my spinal cord.
Thanks for mentioning this drug though. I'll ask my pain mgmt doctor about it.
Every month I check a box online to certify I am actively looking for a job, but honestly I am not. How on earth do you want people like me begging for a job? It makes no sense. The worst thing is how society treats you and blames you for "laziness", yet those people are increasing but it seems nobody wants to hear it.
In some meeting with other people with disabilities, I suggested that there should be companies whose job is to match candidates with companies directly, so that candidates do not have to move sky and earth to find a job. I think it's not even a problem of investment and risk taking, it's just that there is nothing to build or to make, except software and robots, which require education, which is always money-constrained, unsurprisingly. Either that or people don't want to work anymore, and it's fine, because work is less and less necessary.
What kills me even more is the whole "get motivated" movement. I know I'm ranting but to me, society looks like a giant treading mill. Happiness and the slow, intelligent life have been forgotten in favor of a society of endless work and jobs. Contributing to the labor force has become a religion. The simple idea of idleness and staying at home to paint or draw seems to drive people crazy. It should not.
It kinda does, because for you to be able to idle and sit in your home painting, somebody else has to go on the "giant treadmill" to feed you, house you, and clothe you. Do you think I wouldn't like to idle at home as I please, and paint and write and read and laze about? Only if everybody did that we would all starve to death. It seems to me to be a gigantic sense of entitlement, that you deride people who work and brag about not looking for a job and complain about being called lazy, when in fact those people are the ones paying for your food so you can lounge about your house and paint and what else. Unless you have a legitimate disability, yeah, that pisses me off.
It hasn't, and we're still working 40 hours a week, but now it's to support the consumption machine that WWII created. Do we really need new original Netflix programming? Do we need whatever crazy-ass pumpkin and coffee flavored beverage a hard working soul at Starbucks or Tim Horton's has cooked up for the fall season? Do we need bigger, cheaper televisions? Faster computers? A new diet craze? A new exercise regime that will be better than the last? Where does this end?
Not to be overly dramatic on a Monday morning, but where are we going with our hustle and drive? When you stop and meditate on that, you realize that to feed, house and clothe us requires 10% of the energy we burn every day, but not if we expect a hedonistic lifestyle where you eat something new, fresh and delicious everyday. I'm not free of that expectation either, so that's not a judgement, just an observation.
Your life is what you make out of it. I work hard, think consumerism is dumb, and I generally spend my extra income by investing it. But I also enjoy getting some really great coffee (not necessarily from Starbucks) or watching a really fun TV show. Try not to worry too much about what frivolous things people spend money on, or it'll drive you crazy.
Because it's either BS consumerism or subsistence farming?
The same is true for a number of horrible things too: some people like them and go for them. That doesn't make them less bad.
I'm not in favor of total relativism...
That said, I think a lot of overconsumption originates from traumatic childhoods (people trying to fill a hole in their hearts) and the welfare state (people don't know what things truly cost).
Actually they are quite limited on their own. And they're not usually about things either -- aside from food and shelter, people want sex, love, security, etc.
That's why it takes a whole lot of convincing, advertising, conditioning etc. to get people to consume at the level modern societies do (and it took a whole lot of convincing, installment buying, easy credit etc. and nagging to jump start this trend, back in the pre-WWII days).
For instance, Elon Musk has developed a desire to colonize Mars. Bill Gates has developed a desire to combat malaria. That is exactly the sort of thing that has to happen in everyone who acquires great wealth. After seeing to the needs of your immediate family, and possibly also your grandchildren, you have an economic duty to spend money, and not just invest it such that it comes right back to you.
Ordinary folks never have quite enough socked away that the economy has to worry about their non-circulating currency. But the rich, as a class, seem to lack the vision to "throw away" their money on grand-scale consumption. The middle classes have picked up some of that slack by buying phones and game consoles and affordable vacation packages, but that has largely served to make the wealthy wealthier, still with no corresponding increase in vision.
So the economy has two options. The rich start actually spending, like Gates and Musk. Or the government breaks the misers' fingers and pries the gold bars out of their grip, to spend on enormously expensive things like wars, welfare, and mega-engineering projects. The latter choice has become somewhat problematic, as the wealthy have discovered and developed ways to recycle the government spending back into their pockets before too much of it is lost to the hoi polloi--largely thanks to the military-industrial complex and corrupted political systems.
So what can a non-wealthy person do to unlock those resources wasting away as the immobile savings of the wealthy, or the tight-looped investments that turn only a few economic gears before returning to the coffers?
Try to get them all addicted to expensive drugs, perhaps? It would be nice if the rich folks of this era actually developed some sense of noblesse oblige, and decided to spend resources on developing the general welfare rather than increasing numbers on balance sheets. Depending on the scale of the wealth, this could be a patronage fund for local artists, or supporting donations to cultural institutions like museums and libraries, or underwriting improvements in the public transit system, or even collecting expensive items like classic cars or celebrity memorabilia.
If your only desire is to be Scrooge McDuck, and swim in your vault full of money, society is far better served by inspiring your heirs to have expensive dreams, and then arranging an unfortunate accident for you. If you don't want that, then spend some of your rassafrassin' money on isht you don't need, whenever you can afford it! If that cash doesn't move, some people out there might not be able to find work.
What about incessant advertising?
Personally, I think the only real reason to have human workers in our automated future is to have some human contact. So there's no reason to have human baristas: those people stand behind a counter and I may or may not be able to interact with them, depending on how the establishment is laid out. But if I go to a café and sit in a comfy chair and order a drink, I'd rather have a cute college girl bring it to me than a robot.
So basically, until femmebots are invented and perfected, the big value that humans can provide that robots and automation cannot is sex and socialization.
And if they ever invent AI robots that look and act just like people, it's all over for humans because the robots won't have our annoying flaws.
Or like the old definition of "hacker" WRT computers.
The ship has sailed, begging the question now means leading someone to ask a question, hacker means two minutes hate against computer criminals, and hedonism means laughably pitiful time preference problem or what is the opposite of a wise plan for the future.
I would argue, however, that hedonism is a human philosophy that leads to pleasure maximization, which means consumerism and excess compliment it.
There are other ways to live your life, that seek to maximize the impact of your effort in other's lives, which do not work was well alongside consumerism.
My wife does...
I work a certain amount to earn the basics, and everything after that is for nice things that I want. Is that bad?
Adam Curtis - HyperNormalisation was released last night (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis-hy...).
Haven't watched it yet but I do think there seems to be a certain type of crazy happening in the world and I can't put my finger on it.
We have whole generations of young people that have been disenfranchised and are having to carry the financial burden of baby boomers. A group in our society, that as it ages, becomes selfish and politically more conservative in their approach.
Something big needs to change and the idea "you must work to survive" within our society is beginning to sound very disjointed.
You'd be able to take walks, sit by the river and write in a journal, or do whatever idle activity appeals to you, but it won't be fancy.
What many people fancy here based on my observation is the removal of stress to work on job with low productivity because of fear of becoming homeless and starving instead of working on some personal project that may or may not lead to success.
> Some experts suspect that frequent use of painkillers is a result of being out of work, because people who have no job prospects are more likely to be depressed, become addicted to drugs and alcohol and have other mental health problems.
A job is more than a way to earn money. Jobs help people structure their lives and live with a sense of purpose.
Our culture is so wrapped up in the idea of the necessity of jobs that I predict we will see government programs to pay 1/2 of the people to dig holes and the other 1/2 to fill them in, before we see Basic Income.
Every generation faces difficult challenges, and the financial issues of the millennial generation are just a matter of national policy. Okay, so some activism is needed to change this. Every generation had to engage in activism to create a more equitable society, why should the millennial generation be the exception? I think the future looks very bright overall, although I can totally see why some millennials see only doom and gloom because of their personal situation.
And don't forget, millennials have been shouldering this global war on terror crap for the last 15 years. While WW2 was horrific, at least they were fighting for something they believed in, and at least it was over after 4 years. Oh and then add in the second worst financial crisis ever putting millions out of work, and crushing student loan debt in order to even participate in the workforce.
The greatest generation fought the greatest war, but their kids were the worst American generation we've ever had.
To be fair, that's largely because engagement was so low[1]. Under 10% of the population were college graduates. If we returned to those levels, costs would drop dramatically.
[1] http://i.imgur.com/1xUOimy.jpg
> home ownership was a given
But so was living in small town/rural areas, something that is completely unfathomable to most people these days. Like college attainment, urbanization is an upward trend. The difficulty of trying to fit more and more people into a relatively fixed area is what is largely responsible for the increased difficulty of affording a home.
The real problem here is that we think we can do what they did, with our own unique twist on it. If we actually lived like they did, those would still be true today. But we expect more, and that comes with a cost.
Want to get a job? Have to get a college degree, hence a lot more people in college.
Even with home ownership I don't think the issue is as simple as urbanization. I'd say it's more related to something like wage stagnation versus property value increases. Although I'm lucky enough to afford my own place, many of my friends can't because they can't afford to save enough because of rent prices... and it would take them 10 years to save even a down payment. That's just an example though.
In U.S., Canada, and Europe (in general) it seems like the best cities and even marginally great cities are filling up with foreign investors looking for an asset to hide their money in so their corrupt governments don't take it from them. Vancouver is the colloquial example here I think. Personally, I'd propose some sort of live-in requirement for all foreign-owned home real estate. If you're not living there or renting it out (which means rent would have to be affordable) then you should lose the property. I don't have an issue with anybody moving to the U.S. or anything, but actually come live here and don't just buy property to drive up housing costs for the people that actually live and work here. (FWIW this isn't something I deal with as I own my own place etc. etc. )
Respectfully, that's absolutely ridiculous. As you can see, even now those with degrees are only 30% of the population. The unemployment rate is nowhere near 70%, I can assure you.
I am willing to agree that the numbers have gone up because people fell for the marketing that told them they wouldn't find work without a degree, but that's entirely on them. We wouldn't give them sympathy if they bought an iPhone, that they couldn't afford, because Apple told them they had to have one.
> Even with home ownership I don't think the issue is as simple as urbanization.
It still comes down to supply and demand, and cities tend to be land-locked, leaving up the only way to expand. But as most people still desire detached homes, up is not an option to help with that market. Not to mention zoning issues, financial issues, etc. that can add considerable time to making upward growth available to those who are interested. Outside of that, the only thing that can give is on the demand side, but these cities continue to grow by leaps and bounds regardless.
Outside the cities, where supply is effectively unlimited and demand has waned in favour of urban living, we can find markets where houses have gone down in price.
> I'd say it's more related to something like wage stagnation
Which clearly dispels any myths that more education leads to higher incomes, so that isn't a justification for being there either, in case you were thinking it (many do, sadly).
> Vancouver is the colloquial example here I think.
I don't know why Vancouver gets all the attention. I think it is because Canada typically reports using mean, while most of the rest of the world use median. The mean average will tend to skew higher given the nature of the market, so it sounds scary to those not paying attention.
The median home price in San Francisco is about $1.1M USD[1]. The median home price in Vancouver is about $540,000 USD[2].
[1] http://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-ca/home-values/
[2] http://www.timescolonist.com/news/b-c/real-time-sales-number...
Now, the median income in Vancouver is about $20,000 USD per year lower than in SF, but $20K isn't anywhere near enough to cover an additional $560,000 on a mortgage. Not even close. So, in reality, the issue is far more apparent in SF than it is in Vancouver.
Yes, people are employed without a college degree, and they're working at McDonalds at or near minimum wage. I should have been specific: if you want a good job you need a college degree.
It still comes down to supply and demand, and cities tend to be land-locked, leaving up the only way to expand. But as most people still desire detached homes, up is not an option to help with that market. Not to mention zoning issues, financial issues, etc. that can add considerable time to making upward growth available to those who are interested. Outside of that, the only thing that can give is on the demand side, but these cities continue to grow by leaps and bounds regardless.
Sorry I still don't see how this means that urbanization is the issue.
> Which clearly dispels any myths that more education leads to higher incomes, so that isn't a justification for being there either, in case you were thinking it (many do, sadly).
A college degree absolutely leads to higher incomes. This has been studied and is a fact.
> Now, the median income in Vancouver is about $20,000 USD per year lower than in SF, but $20K isn't anywhere near enough to cover an additional $560,000 on a mortgage. Not even close. So, in reality, the issue is far more apparent in SF than it is in Vancouver.
I think the difference is that the reason home prices are what they are in San Francisco is because you have an accumulation of the most powerful companies in the most powerful industry on the planet. People are making a lot of money in San Francisco and there are a lot of jobs. There is some foreign investment, but people can also Why are home prices high in Vancouver?
So I'm not 100% sure how accurate this is... but it looks like more than 40% of residents in San Francisco are earning $100k +. What's that statistic for Vancouver? The median is misleading. Look at the distributions.
That's hilarious, but in no way representative of the real world. In fact, the tech industry in particular goes out of its way to welcome people without degrees with open arms. You're in the wrong place if you think the tech industry doesn't provide good jobs.
Check out the income distribution of bachelor earning college graduates sometime. They are pretty well evenly represented through every income group, just as they would be without a degree. The exception is those who have post-graduate degrees. They are disproportionately represented amongst the highest earners. But of course they are. Doctors, lawyers, etc. which are traditionally entered through post-graduate schooling implement supply management to artificially limit supply, which artificially increases their incomes.
Of course, that has nothing to do with education, just a manipulation of the market. Since we've been talking about Canada, the dairy industry there does the same thing[1]. There, you have to invest in quota instead of investing in a post-graduate degree to become one of the chosen few, but the economic results are the same.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_management_(Canada)
> Sorry I still don't see how this means that urbanization is the issue.
What part don't you understand? It's just preschool level economics.
> A college degree absolutely leads to higher incomes. This has been studied and is a fact.
If incomes have increased as more and more have college attainment, then there isn't stagnation. Which is it? You can't have it both ways.
> Why are home prices high in Vancouver?
~$500K USD for the median place isn't that high, especially compared to most world-class cities around the world, but Vancouver does have a few things going for it:
1. Low population density. About half that of even San Francisco. The city is growing and people are buying these single occupant homes with the plan of turning them into multi-occupant homes in the future. $1M when you divide it by 100 families down the road is nothing.
2. The climate! The Vancouver region is very unique to Canada, consistently warmer than pretty much anywhere else in the country. Those who wish (or forced) to remain in Canada, but not live out the normally harsh winters are immediately attracted to Vancouver.
3. The geography is breathtaking. Mountains, the ocean, and prime farmland all define the boundaries of the city. Again, there is not much else like it in Canada, especially if you want to reside in a city.
> but it looks like more than 40% of residents in San Francisco are earning $100k +
But realistically, you need about $250K+ to even consider the median home in SF. What percentage of the population does that comprise of? In contrast, about $120K in Vancouver. It would be interesting to see how those numbers compare, not the same income in both cities, because again a home is about half the cost in Vancouver.
> The median is misleading.
It doesn't tell the whole story, for sure. I welcome more comprehensive data. However, it's not misleading to tell the story of the people who live there. Median is simply the number in the middle, so we know that half the population make less, half the population make more. Likewise, we know half of the homes cost more, half cost less.
If you want the people of a given city to be able to afford homes, then the median household realistically has to be able to buy the median home. If we don't care about everyone being able to buy a home, then who cares who is buying them? They could be $100M homes and nothing would change.
It seems I have lost track of your original point here.
The greatest generation in the US had it a lot easier than their peers in Europe, but the economics are intertwined. By focusing exclusively on US prosperity you're missing that. The US prospered in large part _because_ of the miserable rebuilding effort in the rest of the world.
WW2 also lasted for 6 years, not 4.
As for your claim that boomers are the worst generation in American history, surely you're not suggesting that they're worse than the slave-holding generations? That position is frankly untenable.
I think perhaps the concept of continual war has been advanced to conceal the fact that we as a civilization don't really need all hands on deck any more. Governments have been inventing busy work for people, desperately hoping that no one notices that an increasing fraction of the necessary labor is being done by robots, and unskilled laborers have become increasingly superfluous. But the Puritanical, Calvinist, Bradfordian cultural undercurrents in the US frown deeply and disapprovingly on idleness, even as those doing the majority of the frowning and tsk-tsk-ing are now "retired".
In the slave-holding generations, the institution of slavery was largely perpetuated by wealthy plantation-owners, as a political minority. Slaves could escape on foot. Nowadays, the student loan debts may not be discharged in bankruptcy, and will follow you to the far ends of the Earth if you run. You generally cannot inhabit a dwelling without steep rent or mortgage debt. You cannot work without making payments into a system that transfers 15% of your earnings to mostly the retired Boomers, through a system that may not even be solvent at the time Gen X starts retiring. Is that worse than slavery? That's a matter of opinion. I think most would say not, but some might say yes sarcastically or as hyperbole in addition to those with a genuine and vehement disdain of Boomers.
Your post is also bad history.
Firstly, a full third of households held enslaved people in the south. Not just the rich elites.
Secondly, enslaved people couldn't just run away. Of course some tried but the risk of getting caught was very high and the consequences dire:
> The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 strengthened provisions for the recapture of slaves, and offered them no protection in the justice system. Bounty hunters and civilians could lawfully capture escaped slaves in the North, or any other place, using little more than an affidavit, and return them to the Slave master.
> Many escaped slaves upon return were to face harsh punishments such as amputation of limbs, whippings, branding, and many other horrible acts
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_slaves_in_the_United_...)
Not exactly comparable to the burden of college debt, wouldn't you say?
The history of the Underground Railroad and Caribbean slave rebellions shows that it was, in fact, possible for slaves to escape slavery. Smuggling yourself to Canada won't get you away from Experian et al.
But if you had read my post more carefully, you might have noticed that I did say that most people would share the opinion that slavery is worse, and those who did not were probably just doing it for rhetorical effect. It's the same sort of behavior as saying someone is "literally Hitler"--extreme hyperbole.
For the US, the war lasted 4 years, not 6.
No, slave-holding generations weren't worse, because not everyone owned slaves; that was mostly unique to the South. That's like claiming that Millennials suck because they all love 4x4s and mudding and having lots of guns and are big Trump fans. The US fought a nasty war over that issue because most of the population was not part of the slave-holding class, and even the poor white people in the South didn't own slaves either, only the rich ones, though they suckered the poor ones into fighting for their stupid cause.
What in the hell are you talking about (or smoking)? If you're talking about the US, which seems to be the case given your talk of financial struggles and "Millennials", the US won the lottery with WWII. In case you forgot, the US was completely unscathed (except for some bombed ships in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii), and there was no rebuilding to do! Instead, we were the only industrial power left standing, so we made out like bandits by helping everyone else rebuild. Why do you think we became so economically powerful? All the other powers had to buy all their stuff from us! The "Greatest Generation" wasn't "tasked" with much: they put up with 4 years of war (mostly finishing up the job after England and Russia duked it out with Germany, plus dealing with Imperial Japan), and in return they profited handsomely.
If it weren't for WWII (and maybe WWI before it), America would not be a superpower now. We'd be more like Mexico: a good-sized economy, but probably not the most powerful nation on earth both economically and militarily, as Germany and Britain and maybe France would have been too much competition.
At 18, he had to join the Army. He spent the next two years in Europe.
He came home, and went to school on the GI bill.
He then went from job to job--trying to find one that had purpose. He decided to live in a commune. He bought a Indian motorcycle, and took off across the United States. When he need money, he would take odd jobs.(almost impossible today, unless you want to end up like that guy in Alaska who died in a bus.) He liked to drink, and smoke. He got into bar fights.(see how that one lapse of judgement will ruin your life today.) He finally found a job he liked. It was journalism. Within months, he had Union benefits.(again--try to find that today). Within a year, he had a house.(again--blah, blah, blah.) Then a wife, and kids.
I took away two things from that speech.
I couldn't imagine having to go to war at 18.
The other was all the things he did when he got home, and how now---just one mistake could ruin the future of a young person.
I'm not a millennial.
That said, I don't like this economy. I don't like knowing if I make one mistake, I could seriously derail my life. I don't like the fact that we have made so many things, once legal, illegial. Hell, you can't even smoke a cigarette in a park. You can't bum around until you find youself. You're lucky if you have a parent that has a basement you can throw a mattress in.
I really just don't like this current American society.
Would I want to be thrown into a war at 18--no.
That's about all I don't like about the past though.
(I won't be back to debate all the clever counter points. All I know is it's not great today. America has lost a lot. This is not the best country anymore. We need change. I would like to start with rolling back laws. It seems like there's a law against everything? Again, I won't be back, but understand the frustration out there.)
We have huge numbers of talented people burning themselves out on things which absolutely do not matter, and are only subtracting value.
Some people are just not equipped to log in day after day, doing things that don't matter.
The question is about handling the productivity gains. One option would be to use the gains to have more (intelligent, as was proposed) leisure time.
You do not have to work 8 hours a day if the job you did could be done in 30 minutes of work.
You can still keep working for 8 hours (or as it common, more) to squeeze even more out you than was possible before.
There is no explicit need for exponential growth of the productivity or population but for some reason industrialized word tries to maximize the first while the rest tries to maximise the last.
In combination it has lead to devaluation of the human life and our ideals.
You're confusing doing work with being at work.
I suspect for bean counting reasons and putting on a really good show, we'll all have to "work" for sixteen hour days in open offices generating great departmental metrics, but we'll actually work about 30 minutes a day and goof off on social media and online shopping and complaining about how busy we are for fifteen and a half hours per day. Well sure I spent three hours eating lunch at my desk and another three hour break is coming up in an hour for dinner so lets get the planning meeting for the pre-meeting for the meeting started...
You know how when you drive by a construction site and inevitably there's like six guys watching one guy operate a shovel? Same idea. Due to all the social media and online gaming, its gonna take ten programmers working together for weeks of pair programming to write fizzbuzz, but at least we'll all be putting in 16 hour days on paper. The whole business world is going to be like that.
The future is here, although unevenly distributed.
I agree, 100%. Even if we aren't at that stage now, we will be very soon, with the automation revolution and continued optimisation of the industrial process. Many people will soon have the realistic possibility to do their same jobs, for the same value creation, in 2 or 3 hours 4 days a week. Yet free market dictates that they work 8 hours per day 5 days a week for even more productivity growth, because if you don't you will fall behind, in a capitalistic free market.
You can easily have a system where a large number of people are unemployed and everyone still gets fed and employed people don't feel resentment.
Do you think men resented their wives for the centuries when it was normal for wives to be homemakers? I would hope not.
It's one thing to be in the work force vs being at home and idle, and it's another to be in the work force vs at home clean / caring for children, etc.
People feeling the social pressure to do stuff, already do stuff and always will.
Its interesting to watch retired people.
Some social groups do just sit at home and watch TV and get inebriated, and no government program is going to stop them, or start them down that path. Others do all kinds of volunteer crazy work.
My retired MiL has a near part time job of volunteer work, around 20 hrs week. My wife was unemployed for awhile many years ago and she did some volunteer work to pad the resume and took training and educational classes. All the classes were theoretically STEM/useful but were completely useless in practice (if there's no job, it doesn't matter if you're now a freshly minted MCSE of Excel if there's no job).
My near retirement accountant neighbor can do nothing accounting like on his own, although he could have helped me a lot when I was a treasurer for a volunteer org, I was pretty lost the first few weeks. Also he spends about ten hours a week in his woodworking shop and I suspect after 40 years he's pretty tired of accounting even if he is an expert. He's a better woodworker than I (and I'm not that bad) so if we were both out of work permanently I'd probably apprentice under him for a few years.
Worthless people are going to be worthless and that's always been the case. People who aren't worthless are always going to be doing something (maybe not what you like or expect, but they'll be nose to grindstone on something...) and that's always been the case. A mere economic policy isn't going to change any of that.
Much like being fired or downsized usually doesn't change most people forever, merely being fired or downsized forever isn't going to change most people very much.
This is becoming less and less true, as there are less and less demand for labor, because of automation.
You only look at the physics aspect of the economy. Meanwhile, labor is changing. A job is privilege, not a right. People consent to work. They decide that they want to get that money. The concept of "contributing to society" belongs to communism, not capitalism. The world works with self interest. I don't think people can really pretend they go to work to help others.
So, why don't you? If you really value these things more than your current life, maybe you should pursue them and let someone else take (part of) your place on the treadmill?
So why don't you? I get that if everyone did that, it wouldn't work, but you aren't everyone. You're just you.
Some people have the "luxury" of lazing about at home but that kind of lifestyle is not sustainable for society at large. Expecting someone else to carry your weight just because you don't want to is rather childish.
The OP said he wanted to do something that wouldn't work if everyone did it. But he's not everyone. If he did it, it would work, and he said that's what he wanted to do. He wants to do something that will work. So why not do it? Since it will work.
Expecting someone else to carry your weight just because you don't want to is rather childish.
Boo hoo, cry me a river. So what? If you're the kind of person who doesn't want to be seen as childish, then there's your motivation for not mooching around at home all day, but the OP does want to mooch around at home all day, so why not do it?
So you're saying that this:
"So why don't you? I get that if everyone did that, it wouldn't work, but you aren't everyone. You're just you."
doesn't tell me anything about your mindset? You're telling me that it's okay to stay at home and be lazy because, why not, it's just you right? It could work if OP is willing to be a mooch on society, yes, but that's not the kind of thinking anyone should be condoning.
To take it to an extreme, you could say "if you're the kind of person who doesn't want to go to prison, then there's your motivation for not murdering people, but OP does want to murder people, so why not do it?" The logic is the same.
You're right though. If you want to be a non-contributing member of society and act like a child, that's completely your prerogative but it's an absolutely childish, selfish, and narrow mindset to have.
Didn't say that. You have taken a question, and assumed that I'm advocating something. This is, long story short, incompetency on your part. If you don't like that I'm pointing this out, so something about it. Screaming at me won't do anything. You need to improve your thinking.
It does tell you something about my mindset. It tells you I am capable of understanding that other people think differently, and I am asking why someone thinks the way they do. I'm not saying they're right; I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm not assuming that if someone explores a view, they agree with it. That is extremely childish, literally. Young children who have not developed a theory of mind do this, as do you. For someone throwing around the word "childish", you have a remarkable lack of self-awareness.
This tells you one thing only about my mindset; that it's wide enough to embrace different views, and ask people why they don't consider alternative options for themselves based on these different views. I DISAGREE with staying home and doing nothing, living off welfare. Amazing. I DISAGREE with that, yet you believed I completely AGREED with it because your thinking is so primitive.
You drew exactly the wrong conclusion about my mindset. I see this frequently; anyone capable of entertaining ideas other than yours is narrow minded. Labelling someone dismissively is much easier than having to actually expand your own thinking. Grow up; start thinking.
Oh, feel your anger. How dare a line of text on a screen be so mean about you. Why not take this opportunity to actually improve yourself, rather than having a hissy fit?
>"So why don't you? I get that if everyone did that, it wouldn't work, but you aren't everyone. You're just you."
I fail to see how "You're telling me that it's okay to stay at home and be lazy because, why not, it's just you right?" misrepresents that statement at all.
>"I DISAGREE with staying home and doing nothing, living off welfare. Amazing. I DISAGREE with that, yet you believed I completely AGREED with it because your thinking is so primitive."
And where in the world did you ever imply that you disagreed with that? Everything you've said so far advocated for this position for at least OP. If you wanted to have a discussion about what's right or wrong about this situation as it pertains to other people, if not society at large, then maybe you should have done that instead of your whole "[b]oo hoo, cry me a river" line. If you're so capable of understanding other peoples way of thinking then perhaps you could have understood why I would not catch on to your supposed Devil's Advocate position. You don't know a thing about me.
The inactivity and the feeling of exclusion is soul-killing
The simple idea of idleness and staying at home to paint or draw seems to drive people crazy.
From what you write, it seems that you want someone to just give you a job, without you really having to going put in the effort to work for it. You say you're also training to be an army reservist, which implies that you're at least physically fit, and you know how to code, so you're at least mentally capable, so I'm guessing the disability is related to something like depression.
Now, I have no intention to knock depression, but it is on you to figure out how you can live that will satisfy you and provide your needs, whether it is working a corporate job, working in a field or being an artist.
But the way you describe yourself, I think the majority of people would classify you as being lazy, and I would say they are right to do so.
My issue is how people have been transformed into labor machines. Being rated by a salary is meek metric to begin with. That's a problem of principle.
> I think the majority of people would classify you as being lazy, and I would say they are right to do so.
And they would, but until you can find a good reason for me to contribute to a society, I would call that relatively low motivation. If I have to beg to get a job, and if it is literally work to find a job, then it is not going to make a lot of sense to me since I am not legally obligated to work. If there is actual unemployment, but there are no simple jobs to do, then maybe laziness is not the problem, maybe it's something else. It's so biblical to call somebody lazy.
> without you really having to going put in the effort to work for it
In the current system you will get removed instantly if you are not competitive enough or take a little too much time to work on something. That's how capitalism works: only the numbers matter. People are not machines. Competition can be a problem if it becomes more important than cooperation. Unemployment is the failure of cooperation.
I know exactly how to give you a good reason to contribute society. If we stop giving you free food and shelter, and if you want to not starve, you will find a job.
In the current system you will get removed instantly if you are not competitive enough or take a little too much time to work on something. That's how capitalism works: only the numbers matter. People are not machines. Competition can be a problem if it becomes more important than cooperation. Unemployment is the failure of cooperation.
Yet basic income has become a large conversation.
> If we stop giving you free food and shelter, and if you want to not starve, you will find a job.
Sure, go do that. I'm not against it, I'm just scared that so many people will starve and not find a job, that those people will start rioting pretty quickly. That's an aspect you don't seem to think about.
> How would you know this? By your words, you have never worked more than a month in your entire life.
Well not getting hired for the same reason is the same thing.
Nobody owes you a living. "Contributing to the labour force" isn't a religion; it is a necessary condition of life, without which we starve. There's no free lunch.
I think that, to protect your ego against accusations of laziness, you've projected this idea of society as a pointless activity, so you can defend to yourself your choices. It is self-delusional.
.. and that's why we turn pensioners out into the snow once they cease contributing.
Oh, wait, no we don't, because we recognise that they're human beings and members of society.
The OP is talking about cases where you are not in retirement, and not disabled, the society expects you to pull your own weight. It is only fair, no?
2. Even minimum wage earners have retirement contributions deducted through payroll. Not a lot of money, true, but poor people's pensions are slightly subsidized by higher earners (which is fair, IMO).
"There is no good or bad, it's only what you can or you cannot do".
Everyone will act in it's best interest, according to the possibilites that is has available.
Those possibilites are refined by the feedback from the other members of society.
100 years ago this may have been true, but there has been this great thing called automation (letting machines do our work for us) which has flourished over the past century (especially in the area of food production).
Food production is a solved problem. ~40% of food goes wasted in the US every year.
So no, we don't need "all hands on deck" to keep us from starving anymore. Insisting on such in the face of obvious surplus and an obesity epidemic is what is delusional.
Since FDR, social programs has been implemented, so actually, yes, everyone is owed something because we understood that society can easily crash if some people don't have food.
Well you should knock to doors in all the ghettos you can find to get an answer or at least some bit of conversation.
> I thought social programs were more about moral aspects
It's also a matter of society not drowning in crime. It's better if government can give money to people instead of criminal paying poor people to sell drugs.
Those who haven't lived through a depression will never understand your plight and obviously not be able to "see" the challenges you face -- how oddly suppressed your voice is against this entire world -- but walk out of this ditch right now. It is going to kill you and even then the world will not understand your pain because it's designed that way.
You don't have to contribute or be a part of the machinery. Do not feed the for-profit machinery that you, like many of us, sorely dislike. Go into non-profit mode perhaps?: help a charity, give shelter to other underprivileged people or may be start an open source movement to make the machinery bleed.
Don't just sit and lose these moments explaining your situation to people who're blind and deaf and presumably dumb. They'll never see. They'll never see until this depression hits them for reasons of their own.
It may not!, but usually healing others is also self-healing.
One has to figure this path for themselves.
> I think you need to fix the depression issue first.
Absolutely! However, solving inability to work is equally important. Otherwise the patient will fall back into a depression again.
P.S: The comments above were for OP's inability to work, find work or be motivated about it. It isn't a solution for depression, which obviously needs thorough professional or medical help.
> How on earth do you want people like me begging for a job? It makes no sense.
What do you mean with "people like you"? What is your problem? I'm taking the first paragraph to mean depress or some related disorder, but then you have
> In some meeting with other people with disabilities, I suggested that there should be companies whose job is to match candidates with companies directly, so that candidates do not have to move sky and earth to find a job. I think it's not even a problem of investment and risk taking, it's just that there is nothing to build or to make, except software and robots, which require education, which is always money-constrained, unsurprisingly. Either that or people don't want to work anymore, and it's fine, because work is less and less necessary.
Do you mean this would be a more systematic issue due to changes in labor requirements? Or that we currently have a shitty situation in job finding?
I'm the archetype loser.
> Or that we currently have a shitty situation in job finding?
I think companies don't care about the candidate they are looking for. Of course it's a market, but it's not well "regulated". Nobody really knows who is available for what, and due to that, companies can't really hire properly. If there were an actual database of candidates, and if there were better profiling, and less job websites, maybe things would be much smoother. The job market is a complete anarchy. I would be glad to give $500 to a company so that this company can find me a good job that I will keep for 6 months. That would be an awesome investment. Yet this doesn't seem to exist for some reason.
I think that the number one occupation we should have is to live our lives. The way we do this should be according to our values and not neccesarily to how others think we should.
Now, life has a mechanistic component driven by neccesities and an artistic one driven by ideals, self expression and pleasure.
The promised goal of modern technology was that a large part of the rutined work covering the neccesities of life would be outsourced to machines while humans could occupy themselves with the more pleasurable aspects of life..
I'm not sure if many realize, but in such a world very few would actually work. All the rest will play.
This is what AI will make a reality, and the job market needs a radical reform.
We should all prepare to transition from a work based paradigm to a play based paradigm. If you're doing it already good to you.
The subject is vast and has multiple implications but that's all I could distill in a HN post.
I'm not sure if many realize, but in such a world very few would actually work. All the rest will play.
Right now, the reason some people bust their ass working, is being they can get paid more and live a higher quality of life. If everybody get everything they want, why would anyone work?
But remember, AI may change things a lot. It'll not be a problem of you will work so I can sit, but more a problem of you and I will have some machines working for us, so what's left for us to do..
One of the implications I was talking about, is that the human psyche is built to function under survival pressure, when the pressure is removed, then depression may occur. So it's going to be very tricky, unless we train ourselves to function in a different mode.. where we are the masters.
your English is good, given your skills background if you applied to 1,000 junior software dev positions (which would take you less than a year at the lowly pace of three per day) you would be employed in short order. But nobody is paying you to do that. You are, however, being paid to be disabled.
your comment is simply an example of people responding to incentives.
- Disclaimer: please don't respond to this comment. since I expect a bunch of responses from you let me preempt them by saying that I don't believe the above (or it's a joke) and I just copied it from a neo-Nazi web site, it's obviously completely wrong and not worth responding to, thanks. I just wanted to give it an example of what people say who are literally worse than Hitler. don't respond. I will just say that you're obviously completely right in every way and your response wasn't worth writing.
And no, I don't get paid for my disability, I just get welfare like other unemployed people.
- If companies need me so much, they would be contacting me. If they don't, they can do without. Those are incentives too.
Firstly, this is written in absolutely perfect English, including the idiom "do without". You're a highly skilled intellectual worker, far above the average employed French person in terms of employability. You're talented even before we introduce the fact that you can code. While people might train to become a junior pastry chef in a few weeks (to use another recent thread), while learning on the job, it takes far more than a week or two to be able to program in a single language, let alone three of them, with one being the industrial language C++. You have a naturally very high wage, discounting the friction of being placed at a job, which is high.
You are correct when you say that employers have an 'incentive' to hire you, this is a good point and I want to reply to it, but here you are using the term 'incentive' a bit differently from the part I originally quoted, and it's a problem for thinking clearly about the argument that I originally quoted. So, in the part I quoted that says "people respond to incentives" it is very narrow, such as a bonus. What it means is that if a restaurant enacts a rule, "The waiter who upsells the most bottles of champagne, being at least 25 bottles, to parties of at least 5 in a given month will receive a $500 cash for (ANY explanation/justification)" this is an incentive. It doesn't matter what justification is put. What "people respond to incentives", in the very narrow sense, means, is that regardless of what the explanation/justification is, as a direct result of that policy, waiters will be selling more bottles of champagne. So, by enacting that policy, the bottles of champagne being sold to parties of 5 or more will increase. (It might have other effects: for example, perhaps Yelp reviews will start talking about waiters/waitresses becoming "very pushy" -- perhaps near the end of the month when one has sold nearly 25 bottles and needs to make it to 25. But it could also have an effect where near the end of the month a waiter will themselves personally invite a party to a bottle of champagne, paying out of pocket but not noting this, to win versus some other waiter. Both of these behavior changes are "people responding to incentives." The very existence of the rule that the waiter who upsells the most bottles of champagne, being at least 25, in a given month, will receive a $500 cash bonus will affect people's behavior. Even though it is literally part of every waiter's job every single day to upsell expensive beverages -- plus, since waiters in America are usually paid as a percentage tip, they already have even a financial incentive to upsell by themselves.)
So if we take this very narrow case of "incentive" -- perhaps let's call it "financial transaction rule" to make it very explicit -- for example "There is a financial transaction rule that in each month the server who has sold the most bottles of champagne to parties of at least 5, being at least 25 bottles in that month, will receive a financial transaction from the house of $500." It's just a rule. There's no "morality" there's no "what it's for."
If the government enacted the "financial transaction rule" that any person who ate foul-smelling food received a welfare payment, then as a direct result, some people would begin to eat foul-smelling foods. Even if it's not really worth it to them. Even if they don't like to do it. And even if it costs them more to do so in direct money. They are simply responding to the "financial transaction rule."
So, in this sense, the very existence of the "financial transaction rule" resulting in people such as yourself receiving disability payments while having to check a checkbox "I looked for a job this month" (even if it's not true and you sent zero resumes/CV's), will result in some employable people receiving those payments and not working. It's a simple direct consequence of the universal fact that people respond to "financial transaction rules".
I switched from using "incentive" to using "financial transaction rule" so I could address your broader point, that companies, too, have an incentive (let's call it 'motivating factor') to contact you.
We can make quite a simple analogy. So, I'm single at the moment, but take care of my body, have free time, some people find me humorous and I'm generally fun. I'm pretty picky about my girlfriends and often went years between one, and was in long-term relationships. I don't often have one-night stands or the sort. Now, I know for a fact that there are a lot of women who would find me interesting - I know this because when I take the inordinate amount of effort it takes to be in a position to interact with them, whether on dating sites, in some social circles, while going out, and so forth, I get positive feedback and after all connected with my previous long-term significant others this way. But the existence of this "motivating factor" on both sides (mine and theirs) is not enough to magically 'clear' the market. How could they contact me, if I'm not available anywhere?
Likewise, how could I contact them, if they had other things they were focusing on? If I would most of all like to be connected with women who place other things far above partying and going out and socializing, that makes it somewhat difficult to find them.
So the existence of a "motivating factor" is insufficient to make things happen on its own. Companies can't find you if you are not out there on the job market - as you said, you are not.
Finally, I wanted to address:
- And no, I don't get paid for my disability, I just get welfare like other unemployed people.
So I think I've discussed that it is a "financial transaction rule", and in this sense you do get paid. Now I want to just say that there's no moral aspect here. For example, if someone were a well-trained programmer but homeless (they could be very highly trained and really expert), the friction with placing them in a new job might be too high, even if they were sending in applications. Perhaps they don't have access to the Internet, cannot dress and smell cleanly for a single interview, perhaps cannot afford transportation across town to make an interview, may not have a charged cell phone, and many other problems.
So while the existence of a 'financial transaction rule' will change people's behaviors, still, society is making a correct choice by having some of these in place in certain cases. It's really not easy.
Perhaps if, rather than make you check a checkbox (lying) saying you've sent out applications, you were forced to send a screenshot of sent email applications, then in your case this may be enough for you to have started working. I can't say.
I can say for sure and with certainty that in your case you are qualified for a job, and I can say for sure and with certainty based on your post that you are meeting the requirements of a financial transaction rule, including checking the checkbox that you're looking for a job.
If I were the government, I would look at the interaction of both "motivating factors" (including reading, drawing, bettering yourself on your own time) and the "financial transaction rules". I don't think everyone should work 60-hour weeks as a corporate drone.
I don't think there's anything wrong with your lifestyle. I do think that working could be part of it, and that as you reported there is a financial transaction rule that you are meeting the requirements of.
I hope this explains everything in the thinking that I quoted earlier. It seems you are ready to make serious responses, I will read them carefully and think about and address anyhting you have to say about those matters.
Note: if you want to discuss the details of your disability I'm not really open to it and would just say that I agree with you and point out that Nazi's exterminated people with disabilities and that the thinking I quoted is from a neo-Nazi website and obviously wrong, so in that case this discussion is over.
That way I wouldn't have to argue with you about genetics and intuitive eating and how the body knows what it needs, and all the wrong things fat people believe.
I don't want to argue with you about all the wrong things long-term unemployed people on state benefits believe. . So I've given you all the information I have and there's nothing left to discuss.
You don't seem to have questions or followups, so thanks for the discussions and reading what I wrote.
If you will leave it as the empty kneejerk comment reading "at least put some effort in" (which is against HN policy and derails the thread) all I have to say, as promised, is oh those aren't my thoughts, we obviously agree and I was just quoting off of a neo-Nazi message board. No need to reply. Thanks for your understanding.
(If you wanted to make a constructive reply, you could start by saying "If we were to take that argument seriously for a moment..." and then state your thoughts.)
There's really no need for any other short comment, I will just agree with you. We can just agree to agree.
I'm not in your place so I'm not saying you should do it, or even that I would actually do that if it were me. But I think I would try to consider this as an opportunity.
On the other hand, I have absolutely no problem with people being supported without doing productive work, because that's the way some of the greatest artists, inventors or scientists have been able to do their thing in the past.
I think universal basic income is the answer to this situation. The fact that you are (apparently) able to survive in our society without being a productive worker seems to be proof that society doesn't need everyone to be workers, contrary to what current politicians (at least in France) say about work, and how having a job seems to be the most important part of life and of citizenship. While the most important thing should just be taking part in society, and having a job clearly doesn't help with that unless you think society is just a large company, which is wrong.
Anyway, just don't forget that a lot of people don't have a problem with others staying at home to paint, draw, write or think. Society isn't blaming you for being lazy, only most of its rulers are, and those people who listen too much to them. It's not easy, but try not to get too influenced by the opinions you keep hearing in public medias, because they're all run by people who have an interest in having citizens think they have to work.
I can understand that the OP is getting tired of job hunting. It makes sense he believes working is not necessary and I actually agree with the OP somewhat. However, I think the only reason he has this stance is because of his difficulty in finding a job.
I could work at mcdonalds.
The problem I have is how we tend to reward some attitudes, which to me seems weird. I have a huge problem with the job interview process and how I'm advised to behave or not. It sounds like I'm on some reality TV. And still, getting a job is one thing that could solve many of social problems, meaning socializing.
I agree with you on some levels, this idea of ultra-productiveness is a religion. I would rather see high levels of productiveness to WORK LESS and ENJOY LIFE more. I'd love to work a 30-hour week so I can pursue other interests.
Instead, ultra-productiveness is causing a burnout loop of WORK MORE to allow more time to WORK MORE.
But this is all pointless. In the future, the amount of lazy people will be astronomical as robots and computers take over 99% of jobs.
-- Just 2 eurocents from fellow european. I have had my share of handicap and exclusion, it took long arduous years but now I can stay idle whenever I want and not give a fuck about people thinking what I should be doing instead.
Sounds like a good trade-off to me...
I mean, to a degree i can understand what you mean. We are seeking happiness in the treadmill and that rarely seems to bring it. We hope that after the treadmill there will be happiness, but few are sure of that.
My problem though, with what i took from your words, was that it sounds like you believe work is becoming less and less required. I don't feel that's true, unfortunately.
I think that will become true, in time, but we don't have the technology to automate the work we need to. Sure, we have various factory line jobs replaces with robotics, and we're working on lots of general replacement (Taxis, for example), but most of the labor force, even "just" manual labor, requires specific intensive understanding that we are not even close to replicating with robotics. Hell, we're still struggling to walk easily and effectively. Sure, walking robots are becoming more natural and skilled, but it's definitely still a WIP.
My robotics leap may have seemed odd, but that's what i believe is required before your comment holds true. Work will always be required - there is no doubt about that. Someone, some thing, will be doing work. And humanity will only be able to ignore work once we've enslaved something else to do it for us.
So back to topic, i think part of the stress you feel from society is a bit of a "i have to do it, so you have to do it" thing. Why should you get to do what you like, when others so clearly cant? You could argue that we're all expecting too much, we don't need the gadgets/etc, and that living very frugal can be a means to happiness, but living frugal doesn't absolve yourself from work.
The frugal lives of the world still work. Some may not work as hard, some may have much more free time, but there's still work to be done. You still have to learn the trades to repair your stuff, or pay someone else to do it for you. To grow your food, or to pay someone else to. And etc.
I'm not trying to come off aggressive, so i hope it doesn't seem that way. Perhaps i'm missing your point, but the statement of:
> ... and it's fine, because work is less and less necessary.
Seems very very foreign to me.
Because I'm free to do so, because work is consented, not forced.
> Seems very very foreign to me.
The most basic things are becoming cheaper and cheaper, so I don't think there are good enough reasons to run on that treadmill to deliver pizzas or wait tables. Those are bonus, yet we warrant that those things are necessary in society, instead of giving a basic income.
My rant is not only about automation and the need of jobs, it's also political, it's about resource allocation. Arguing that "everybody has to do its part" is a paradox in a free capitalist society. If there is known inequality on top of it, asking people to get that job will not make sense, especially when you hear that people are working hard to automate everything. So either your take unemployed people and you train them at robotics, but you can't tell them to deliver pizza when engineers are working on pizza-making machines.
I mean, you're not really addressing the argument with that part. I'm not forcing you to do so, but do you really think you are entitled to live off welfare of others? Because that is the implication of that statement.
If you want to not work, not pay taxes, and live in the woods, by all means. But if you expect society to support you, with no contribution, then you're just abusing the system. Sure, you may "be free to do so", but that doesn't make it correct. And if everyone abused the system like that, it wouldn't work.
So yes, work is less and less necessary, regardless of your religious beliefs to the contrary. No, not all work is going to go away; we'll still need engineers for a long time (unless they invent human-level AIs to do the engineering work for us). But not everyone is capable of being an engineer or doctor or other worker requiring significant education; most people just aren't capable of those jobs.
The other big factor is: how much work? Why do we need to work 40 hours a week or more? With more work being done by automation, and our productivity at the highest point in history, when can we finally take more time off and do enjoyable things instead of putting in "face time" at a workplace because of the quaint notion of hourly pay? Why are we not all benefitting from automated labor making our lives easier and more luxurious?
It does not entitles me to money, but companies must have 6% of handicapped personnel or they must pay some small fine.
It's in the "armee de terre", meaning ground army. It's not the usual army training, since it's the reserve. It's only a 2 week training.
They seem to receive even less understanding or sympathy.
I think the other factor is simply technological productivity. A handful of software engineers can run e.g. Facebook, a social networking site for billions of people. A handful of farmers can produce food for billions of people. Every job opening receives 100s to 1000s of resumes because the world's productivity to consumption of human labor ratio increases every day. If you're not like a top .01% skill level person, you're really not needed. Your brain has been obsoleted.
There needs to be a re-configuration of the global economy and its system.
People like me late 20's and younger might be feeling that they have no future. At least I do. I am working full-time and thats fine. That only pays my day to day expenses, coming the end of the month am always out of money waiting for the next paycheck. Me buying my own house? That sounds like some sort of sorcery to me...
Unfortunately prices went up, on houses etc and nowadays you got Tech involved in anything you do. You have to have a smartphone, and your wife wants the smartphone with the bitten apple no matter if it will cost half a months salary. Your kids want an Ipad or some sort of tablet. Your household needs a TV with netflix, amazon and whatever so you don't get bored. Add all those small things around and the era where everyone is obsessed with "BRANDS", yes let me buy a GANT sweater cause it going to make me so cool, while I could have bought a sweater much much cheaper of the same quality.
Unfortunately that makes you think that ok... live today and let tomorrow be.
Also another thing that I see around a lot is the use of Drugs and Weed especially. Several people I know or most I'd say they make daily use of Weed. Thats definitely affecting their mind and tbh they've reached the level of obsession with it where they really don't need anything else to live off.
There is literally no goal set for me. Will I get a pension when I get older? WHO KNOWS? Will I ever get off working even when I reach a very old age? Who knows, most likely i'll be working for the rest of my life... Will I be able to afford a house and a normal way of life? Probably in the next 20 years, thats too late but its the truth I'll be around 50's when I'll be owning a house. Not an expensive house, a house that prolly when I sell it won't even cover me for 5 years of living without a job. Thats the sad situation that I and all youngsters are in, let alone people in the US or even Europe with Student loans, I don't even wanna think of them and what kind of future can they have.
P.S I am referring to an example of what the average person around me thinks of. Don't call me self-entitled that's harsh and you don't know me.
No, you don't NEED an Apple iPhone, and a TV with Netflix, and Amazon, and a Gant sweater. There are thousands of families that are surviving just fine without any of that. We have survived for centuries without external entertainment, and suddenly, you NEED this so you don't get bored?
Why not have a conversation with your wife. Sit down at the dinner table and have a conversation with your family. Go for a hike out in nature. There are ways to entertain yourself without modern technology.
If you want to keep up with the Jones's, yeah, you're going to have to make more, or sacrifice your life in other ways.
You want to buy a house in your 30s? Figure out how to increase your value so you can get paid more, or start saving your money.
Pensions are long gone. They have IRAs. If you're worried about retirement, set money aside right now. Of course, this may mean you can't be the most recent iPhone that was released. Tradeoffs. Everything has tradeoffs.
There is nothing guaranteed in life but death and taxes. Keep that in mind, and figure out what's most important to you. Welcome to the real world.
It's not even just ads and commercials that are guilty of this. Most mainstream media assumes the "American Dream" happens to involve a lot of material possessions, and proceeds accordingly. It's in the little things, and it's everywhere.
The original poster wants everything and expects to be given everything. Whats worse is he thinks previous generations had it so easy, and can't realize the sacrifices they had to make.
Owning a house was one of the things that everybody aspired to, which meant they set aside money every month, and maybe after ten or twenty years of solid savings, they could afford the down payment, and buy a house.
OP is thinking of pre-2008 days, where clown and his cat was flipping houses, but that was not a normal market, and most of them lost it anyways.
He need to figure out what his priorities are: Does he want to own his own home, save for retirement, or live the latest, greatest gadgets?
If he wants everything, there's a simple solution. Find how to make more money than the people he hangs out with.
"here are very strong forces out there proactively pushing this mindset on people."
As a human being I personally own land in my homecountry and the best way to spend my holidays on is going to my farm and enjoying nature to the maximum without carying about money or anything. I am very conservative with my wage and what I do with it, as my wife is.
I was just trying to bring up a point about how the way of life has changed, am not self entitled to anything, I've worked from construction in New York to gardner to software developer.
Trying to ignore all these things as not necessary also ignores the context in which they exist in. It feels dismissive to call that entitlement when one doesn't even know the circumstances in which someone else lives.
However, in an American university I feel often left out or ignored because I cannot be as passionate about actors, movies, or similar media as I don't watch films or television out of habit. I feel this can often deprive me of being able to network with cohorts. That's pretty significant.
Sorry can't sympathize with the iMessages problem. I can afford an iPhone quite easily as Android phones, but I choose to not. Find me on a cross platform communication app anytime.
Pensions haven't gone anywhere, unless you mean Defined Benefit ones where the company assumes all the risks and guarentees a salary from retirement - in which case yes those are basically gone everywhere except the public sector.
You want nicer things? It has to come from somewhere.
And our parents did not have it easier. I would say if anything, they had it harder, and didn't get caught up in all the bullshit commericalism that is marketed to us today.
This is anecdote, but still, my parents worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 20 years, with one single vacation, so they could raise me.
You know what they have to show for it? Social security that pays about $800 a month and barely covers their mortgage, and a pension that pays $40 a month (yes, $40). That pension was from working a full-time job for about 20 years. And yet, they manage just fine.
So, no, our ancestors did not have it better. They just don't whine about it, and did whatever they had to do to survive.
Oh, and -- like ever generation -- we whined just as much and were also call entitled. Go back and read about all the delightful things written about Generation X. We were whiney, lazy, self-entitled, and also told that life was tough and we needed to get over it. Christ, if you hadn't have called our your age in your post, I would have guessed you were my age or older.
But, sure, some things are harder. And other things are easier. It's much easier to learn skills on Coursera/Udacity/etc without having to pay for college. It's much easier to move around the country. For people who gay, lesbian, or trans, I would say life is probably a lot easier than it was in the 80s and 90s. The gig economy provides options for making side cash.
I'm sure every generation is whiny. But within the generation, everyone is going through the same things. So, live the best you can, and stop trying to compare yourself to everyone else, let alone those in other generations.
I don't understand, what do you mean by this? Does anyone force you to buy a bitten off apple brand phone? You can get excellent smartphones that last for 3 years for less than 200$. Does anyone force you to buy a gant sweater? Quality clothes are dirt cheap nowadays. Your kids "want" an ipad? Buy them a cheaper tablet, or better yet, don't buy them a tablet at all. But a raspberry pi and a couple of snes controllers and download some old games. Problem solved.
You complain that nowadays people are obsessed with brands, and that is definitely so, a legitimate observation, but if you are aware of that, what's forcing you yourself to buy into it?
I do have some sympathy for people who feel they need a Mercedes car and a North Face jacket, and consistently put themselves in financial peril to get those things. It seems like many are sincerely unable to say no to extravagant spending. Though I don't understand it, I try not to judge.
The explanation is simple: they're probably married.
You're not going to get a newer iPhone for anywhere near that figure.
And if you're questioning why someone needs a new iPhone, then you're obviously not married.
>Does anyone force you to buy a gant sweater?
Here again, you prove that you're not married.
>Your kids "want" an ipad? Buy them a cheaper tablet, or better yet, don't buy them a tablet at all.
Yet again, you're definitely not married.
>But a raspberry pi and a couple of snes controllers and download some old games. Problem solved.
This one clinches it: you are definitely not married.
>but if you are aware of that, what's forcing you yourself to buy into it?
If you ever get married, you'll find out.
Wait, no, it's just you that are a dysfunctional couple. Don't project your weird marriage dynamics on others. You have a very strange thing going on, I mean, it's really interesting the idea of marriage, and strange impositions, being something that is "forced" upon you... I wonder how you think that is normal.
Oh and if by this tirade you're implying that women in general are expensive item-obsessed creatures whose only desire is to buy expensive crap then, well, I think I may have found (one of the) reasons that you have such a dysfunctional relationship with the opposite sex ;)
That strongly resonates with my own thoughts, so kindly allow me to let you on a little secret.
The secret is, working for others you can AT MOST expect 20% of the value you produce. If you want to live beyond paycheck to paycheck (espetially applicable in Europe and Latin America where its literally paycheck to paycheck for expenses) you gotta work for yourself.
There is an universal retirement scheme in USA, isn't that money enough?
- political decision(s) are made with the intent of making it insolvent.
- a very long period of zero growth, or moderate period of deep recession. Worse or longer than the post-2008 crisis.
Consequently, employers simply do not have the "luxury" to set up a system that treats employees as disposable. It's not profitable at all to do what you indicated is being done, as the cost of finding, hiring, and training new employees is considerable. That's why, so often, you see businesses doing the opposite of what you describe by holding on to poor performers far longer than they should - dealing with worker incompetence is sometimes preferable to starting over hoping for a different outcome.
It's pretty well documented. Here are a couple of articles that outline the conditions at Amazon, but I'm sure there are more.
http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/life-and-deat...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...
You might want to also read up on how temp labor is treated, to see how other workers are treated disposably.
> Consequently, employers simply do not have the "luxury" to set up a system that treats employees as disposable.
Yet somehow, in many cases, they do so anyway. You might be an enlightened business owner that properly sees that as foolish, but that doesn't have any bearing on the behavior of other American businesses, especially ones where (unlike yours) the owner can't know all the employees.
"mainly all I needed to get hired was to confirm 20 or 30 times that I had not been to prison"
So it appears Amazon does struggle to get good help, employs very, very low-skilled works, and has systems set up that provide structure. Indeed, it's very controlling to the average information worker that comments on Hacker News, but just might work well within the confines of their warehouse.
You're moving the goalposts. Your initial post, which I was responding to, said that companies treating their unskilled workers as disposable "doesn't pass the smell test." Now, when confronted with evidence, you claim that same treatment is "by definition." That's not very consistent.
> The links you provided - which read like propaganda, btw
So sorry to impinge on your bubble. Too bad I couldn't burst it.
> So it appears Amazon does struggle to get good help
How did you get there from that quote? That's not the only explanation for wanting employees that haven't been to prison, let alone the most likely one.
> and has systems set up that provide structure. Indeed, it's very controlling to the average information worker that comments on Hacker News, but just might work well within the confines of their warehouse.
These workers are people, and they should not be treated like unthinking machines.
2. They read like propaganda because they set up dramatic emotional arguments about people and their families. Is it really necessary to know that the gentleman calls his wife at 2am because she "can't sleep when he isn't there"? It's manipulation, and consequently your response would lead me to feel quite comfortable that it's not me in the bubble.
3. If the economics of a particular job don't justify a higher wage, then the standards for hiring are lowered. It's not a reach at all to arrive at my conclusion.
4. Indeed, these workers are people. And because they aren't unthinking machines, they shouldn't work in a place that doesn't place any value on their well-being. The market will then sort out poor employers appropriately.
Again, it's moving the goalposts to say these situations "don't pass the smell test," then turn around to say "but it's OK because they're temps."
> Is it really necessary to know that the gentleman calls his wife
Perhaps not, but it's more engaging writing, and there's plenty of factual reporting there as well.
> Indeed, these workers are people. And because they aren't unthinking machines, they shouldn't work in a place that doesn't place any value on their well-being. The market will then sort out poor employers appropriately.
The thing is, the real situation is usually more complicated and often doesn't offer such easy choices for the actual workers. It's telling that, on the one hand, you excuse these work environments as being fit for non-information-workers, then turn around an expect these workers to have information-worker levels of economic power in job choice.
While it can be quite comforting to believe the market will sort this all out, I think that's naive and causes some people to blind themselves to the actual problems out there.
The difference, if I had to guess? You want "dependable, trustworthy employees who work diligently and productively." That's an excellent goal, and I realize that it's a hard thing to find. Employees who are known to have these traits make a significant premium over minimum wage, even at unskilled tasks.
Amazon... doesn't seek that. These are backend workers, so attitude and customer service aren't relevant. Their warehouse workers are run through metal detectors to prevent theft. They're forbidden from having phones on the job. They can't perform self-directed work; instead they're directed in every task in close detail by software. They can't schedule anything themselves; food and bathroom breaks are rigorously limited, and require checking out through metal detectors to access. Diligence is replaced by incredibly demanding standards for minimum performance.
In short, they've opted out of seeking workers with the desirable traits you mention. With decent wages in low-employment areas, people will suck up all of that, at least for a time.
You forgot to append the most important part to that statement, and instead chose to leave it implied: "at the wage I am willing to pay." Pay your employees more money and better labor will come. So say the laws of supply and demand.
"Difficult to find" is about scarcity, but it's also about the actual act of finding. Traits like 'diligent' and 'trustworthy' are hard to identify before hiring someone. You can't test for them in the short term, and everyone wants to signal that they have them. That's especially true in low-skilled sectors like retail, where you're unlikely to have common contacts or be able to see diligence in someone's work history.
From what I've seen, those traits are hard to find in a very literal sense - even given a candidate you don't know what you're getting. This is coordination failure; raising wages doesn't resolve information asymmetries.
A lot of white collar workers in the US end up in a particular catch-22: their jobs are making them sick, but because they are sick, they can't leave their jobs. They become psychologically disabled because of the pressure to return to work before they are well, the stressor of battling the insurance companies, and the suffering from the cultural shame of not actively working.
Finally, after the 12-week FMLA requirement is exceeded, absent any policy, state law, contract, a company can fire an employee for absence after returning from, or even during, disability leave.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that there are some true "fakes" scamming the system. Afterall, the largest cause of disability is Generalized Anxiety Disorder, followed by several other "invisible" disabilities that cannot be objectively verified.
That makes me very upset, given that I sufferered a massively disruptive neuropathic pain disorder that only recently subsided enough to start coding again.
During those few months, I had to hear constant negative feedback from friends and relatives, usually telling me the equivalent of "Tough it out like a man."
This false perception was further compounded by the fact that I didn't look disabled. Every photo on Facebook caused a barrage of "I thought you were sick" comments, not realizing that my medical orders were to learn to resocialize despite the pain. Then that snapshot becomes people's vision of your illness, not realizing that the quiet dinner with your friends was the one hour you spent out of bed that day.
These skeptical responses are certainly due to the widespread deception by some, as you describe. I am just grateful that I had a "hard" medical diagnosis upon which to rely.
But some people really do need the disability insurance, which they have paid to obtain, in order to survive, not lose their homes, and pay for medical care during periods of tremendous suffering.
Everyone, please remember that not all illnesses present to the naked eye, or even to physical examination. We do not fully understand how either the human body, or more importantly, the human brain functions. Without that knowledge, it is almost impossible to tell the genuine afflictions from the false claims.
The system scammed them. "Do what your teachers say and collect pieces of paper from academics and 100% of you will get a guaranteed lifelong meal ticket with great bennies"
So now they have to suicide, taking their families with them, because no job means no food no shelter no medical care ... or they can scam the system right back, just like the system scammed them. "For my whole life, did everything I was told no matter how hard or stupid it sounded, to get that lifelong real job meal ticket, they took it away from everyone in my community to save money, guess I'll just collect a lifelong disability meal ticket instead, its a lot of work and BS but the process selected for people good at putting up with BS so I'll surely get mine"
In modern America disability is our only long term unemployment system. You get pain pills for phantom pain then sell them for extra cash. The system screws you, you screw it right back. Isn't their fault they were born into a system that tossed them away like human trash. The system is faulty, not them.
This (and the related and similarly-inevitable-if-you-have-anything-worse-than-an-ingrown-nail battling hospitals and various other health care providers) is truly one of the worst parts of the US healthcare system, and one that doesn't get enough attention IMO.
For any significant interaction with that system you can expect 3 different things that are or appear to be bills for 20 different services, from 10 distinct organizations each with their own payment cycles and billing policies. Then another couple of documents from your insurance for each of those. Even with the money in the bank and the best of intentions it's easy to end up in collections for one or more of them just because it gets lost in the shuffle. And you have to watch like a hawk to make sure the providers aren't over or double billing you, and that insurance is paying what it should. Chances are high that one or the other, or both of those, will happen. Then they'll try to send it to collections while you're disputing it, so you have to watch for them pulling crap like that. It's insane.
http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/migrated/files...
"What seems to have happened is that the employment threshold has gradually moved down the severity scale, so that men and women with middle-severity impairments who would have been employed in the 1970s are now out of work and receiving incapacity benefits"
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.NEET.ZS
http://oecdinsights.org/2016/10/13/neets-policies-to-support...
How small?
> just give immigration a bit of time
Do you have a time frame? How will it effect?
The society that created the welfare state is particular enough that the change contributed by the influx of immigrants might change the society to a point where the welfare state disappear. It's more of a social change than an economical one. In that case, it's on a long time frame (decades at least), where my other hypothesis is more political and economic and is shorter, around a decade.
My guess is that the increase number of immigrants in Western Europe will cause a reduction in social benefits
[0] http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2016/02/pdf/c4.pdf
Also I think that, whether low or high skilled, when you have high unemployment rate (above 10%), more workers just mean more people unemployed, so more social benefits, that the various welfare states won't be able to assume, since they all are in deficit.
Also can you point in the document where this affirmation is made?
> a common theme is that, despite the negative short-term impact on recipient economies, they offer potential gains in the long term.
In addition, Figure 4.21 (and surrounding text) explicitly mentions the positive longer term growth effects due to migrants.
> So a part of the migrants would not influence positively the GDP for a few years and put more pressure on public welfare system, as well as public schools and hospitals.
That is assuming the current system is not good enough.
> whether low or high skilled, when you have high unemployment rate (above 10%),
Generally, migrants move to countries with opportunities.
> That is assuming the current system is not good enough.
Where I am, the current system seems sorely lacking, for example regarding the number of homeless, social mobility, existing public infrastructure, education, healthcare...
> Generally, migrants move to countries with opportunities.
Apparently 10% of unemployment is enough of an opportunity for migrant going to Western Europe (Spain: 22.7%, France: 10.5%, Italy: 12.4%, Greece: 25.6, Portugal: 13%...). But I think the migrants going in those countries are mostly refugees, which might not stay long term, so not providing the economic benefits you talked about.
Edit:
So, it is possible that the afflux of refugees in Western Europe will cause a diminution of social benefits since it would strain even more a failing system and not provide any long term economic benefit since they would have gone back home, once the crisis finished (and I hope it will end before long).
Edit II: assuming, of course, that the majority of migrants arriving in Europe are refugees, which seems to be supported by the figures provided by the documents ("The European Union also received an unparalleled number of refugees recently—about 1.25 million first-time asylum " p. 14).
That said, the falling social security system in Europe is not due to refugees but to how the system is built.
I agree that the failing of the welfare state in Europe is caused by how it is built, but the refugee crisis might broke the system beyond repair.
Wait, doesn't that mean that mean that twice as many men are in prison as people are in prison?
1352 per 100,000 men 126 per 100,000 women
My first thought after understanding what you were trying to say is actually backed up by the stats you found, as while men make up slightly less than half the populace, they have a much higher incarceration rate.
With the economy the way it is (slower growth, wage stagnation etc), employers are unwilling to take the potential risk with low skilled workers (who have no degree) and there are plenty of new workers who just finished their degree which employers will prefer to employ. I suspect there would be enough jobs, if there were enough high skilled workers and a better economy. I think the problem is there is a shortage of high skilled experienced workers and an oversupply of lower skilled workers.
As some anecdotal evidence, when I search for software engineering / developer jobs in my country, I see a lot of high skilled jobs available, requiring moderate to significant levels of experience and/or education. However, there are much fewer junior/graduate/basic developer jobs available.
To become a high skilled worker, you generally have to start in the low skilled jobs, or get a PhD. If its hard to get a lower skilled/entry level job due to low demand, the rate higher skilled worker are produced is restricted. So its a catch 22.
So, I always wonder when reading this stuff, what portion of the sample just has "affluenza" and is blaming it on something else to hide the truth (which, by the way, I don't have a problem with - if someone wants to embrace being lazy and has the means to do it, then go ahead).
People don't like being held accountable for their own situation. The blame will always be shifted to society where possible. You see it everywhere. One's circumstances in a given study are rarely, if ever, blamed on the individual. People are generally assumed to be doing everything right but are simply victims of "the system"
There is massive mental illness stigma in our society at large, there are many hard working people who remain employed who are suffering long before they go unemployed and that suffering is never voiced and is discredited when they drop out of the unemployed market to become 'no longer looking'.
1. The number of veterans is very small
2. Veterans are overwhelmingly from the richer half of the population
About 0.5% of the cohort currently between the ages of 20 and 40 had any military service (compare to 12% of the WWII cohort and 6% of the Vietnam cohort), and only about half of that population saw service in Iraq or Afghanistan (e.g. I was active duty for almost all of the Iraq war and never went to theater, nor did almost anybody in my battalion).
Furthermore (and this has been troubling the Pentagon for a while), the enlistment/commissioning standards the military has make it very difficult for poor Americans to serve. The poorest 20% of Americans are the least likely to serve, followed by the next-poorest. In fact it's nearly a perfect correlation except that the richest 20% are slightly less likely to serve than the second quintile. This yields a recruit and officer candidate pool that is both richer and whiter than the nation as a whole. (On the other hand, richer whiter servicemembers have abysmal retention rates, so that the standing force is browner and poorer than the nation as a whole because most of the middle class white people leave after one tour).
The latest I've got is that in 2013 over 2.6 Million Americans had been deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq. (That number is obviously higher now).[1]
The impact percentage-wise to those returning veterans with either TBI, PTSD, etc is relatively high: http://www.research.va.gov/topics/oef-oif.cfm
No data in those articles about labor force contributions and any impacts there - that would be an interesting area to get more data to see how much the wars have contributed to the laborforce issues identified in the article.
[1]: http://www.ibtimes.com/va-stops-releasing-data-injured-vets-...
Age 25-54 men in US: 52.3 million. Currently 11.4% are out of workforce, compared to 8.5% in 2000.
2013 statistics: "As of last September, more than 1.6 million military members who’d been deployed in what’s classified as the global war on terror – in Iraq and Afghanistan, primarily – had transitioned to veteran status, VA records show. Of those, about 1 million were from active-duty service and about 675,000 from Reserve or guard deployments.
And of those, about 670,000 veterans have been awarded disability status connected to their military service. Another 100,000 have their initial claims pending, according to a November VA analysis." (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...)
So let's generously round up and say 0.8 million due to military service (majority are men). At most 1.5% of the rise could be attributed to military action. (obviously asking the question: why did the previous wars see so little effect on removal from workforce compared to the present ones?).
However, the major rises in removal from workforce seem correlated with the economic depressions.
The biggest question is: why are men getting knocked out entirely?
Painkillers, military service, and economic recessions have all been around many times since the 1950's. They aren't the reason. My hunch is the loss of valuing community and family in US culture. With no reason/motivation to work, no one depending on them, men just drop out.
I think there's a lot to this. Notice also that the divorce rate is high, and worse, the rate of people staying single is rising a lot too: many people just aren't bothering to get married any more. I'm back in the dating pool, and I'm finding a LOT of urban women these days who are in their 30s and even 40s and never got married, and after trying to date some of them it's my opinion that for most of them, they're college-educated and their professions and girlfriends have kept them busy all this time (plus lots of foreign travel it seems), and they just don't feel like they need a relationship, and I'm guessing when they get horny they just go to a neighborhood bar and pick up someone. Anyway, after dating some of them it seems to me they're all stuck holding out for Mr. Perfect, and want someone who looks and dresses like a GQ model, can run a marathon, drives a BMW, and lives right across the street from them downtown. It's so bad that many of these women are finally realizing they want to experience motherhood and are getting IVF to do it, without bothering to have a husband first. I met one woman on Tinder who was a little over 40, and told me in the very first phone conversation how she had already tried one round of IVF! WTF?
Notice also that women are going to college much more than men now (60% vs 40%), and women with any brains at all are going to college and moving into the cities. Men who aren't college educated don't do the same, so now we're having parts of the country with severe imbalances between single men and women. There's a ridiculous number of single women in NYC, for instance.
This has got to be a major contributing factor. Add in those with undiagnosed psych problems, and I'm sure it would stand out even more. [Of course, maybe they would be balanced out by the 'fakers'-- but that is almost equally alarming, and itself suggests all kinds of deeper problems.]
Both reducing the stigma of and increasing access to mental health care are hugely important right now. Most people with such issues are perfectly capable of being productive employees-- but not if they are marginalized through terrible hiring processes, workplace 'social politics' and inflexible, unsympathetic (or simply incompetent) management. A robust jobs program could certainly help.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iain-duncan-sm...
There's a great line from Madmen about people that retire early. They play golf, they go to parties and then they die.
This attitude is what keeps people from being willing to seek help when they suffer from depression or suicidal thoughts for fear that skeptics will judge them as faking or lacking character. As someone who lived for over ten years with multiple undiagnosed mental disorders and suffered significant, unnecesary setbacks as a result, I believe we still have a ways to go before mental health is treated with the appropriate amount of concern.
That causes damage. Turning your ankle or pulling a muscle might be more obvious, because it's purely physical, but there isn't as much difference as you think.
There have been studies that show that long term unemployment causes permanent changes to a persons personality, one not easily healed by getting a new job[1]. These modifications to thinking and increased stress levels lead to physical changes (and argumentatively decay). Pointing out the source of the problem in society does not change the fact that it isn't mental illness. Quite on the contrary, giving a source is similar to pointing at a poisoned well and saying "That's why everyone is sick.", but then afterwards saying nobody is really sick because we all know the well is poisoned.
[1]: http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/02/25/long-term-unemployme...
Try taking some social animal like a bonobo, and sticking it in a horrible cage in solitary confinement, and maybe poke it with a cattle prod now and then for extra measure. Do you think it's going to be a perfectly happy little ape? No, it's going to become morbidly depressed or disconnected from reality. There's nothing wrong with the bonobo; the problem is with his environment. The bonobo doesn't need anti-depressants, he needs to be put back into his healthy bonobo society in the forest and not kept in a cage and zapped with a cattle prod.
Most mental health treatments are just band-aids, just like dosing a tortured ape on anti-depressants so he doesn't have to deal with the suffering he's being forced to endure.
I couldn't even imagine going through such a process when I was at my worst. It wouldn't have happened unless someone physically forced me to do it. I actually would have ended up 'choosing' to be homeless (or dead) if it wasn't for the care of friends and family.
worse the system discourages not giving patients the designation they want because doctors are routinely subject to surveys that must come back positive, by the very patients they serve
this is not to say there are not people with mental disorders but the vagueness of some disorders leads to a lot of abuse and in some cases its because people figure they don't have to deal with it, life in general, its not their fault, its far easier to take that declaration of disorder and put the blame there and not change lifestyle, job, or habits.
The DSM has certainly done its share of damage, I have to say. I think we'd agree on that. I'm not even sure it's done more good than harm.
You keep coming back to this being a problem with our social structure, and honestly I do suspect it's probably the biggest factor. This is why I support Basic Income (with a non-ludicrous rollout, and plenty of balancing along the way).
The group is probably overrepresented in suicide stats too.
Women labor force participation rate in india 24% http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/24/opinion/why-arent-india...
Maybe I'm wrong, I'm not trying to argue; just talking out loud about my perceptions as a Software Engineering, Civ5, and CSGo player.
Does entrepreneurs constitute labor force? If so, then "labor force" and "not employed and not seeking a job" are not exactly the same
The real question is, are people who retired early (see /r/financialindependence) counted in this figure? What about trust fund kids? I'd argue that if you have enough money to not need to work, and you aren't, and you don't want to, then you should slot into some category very different than the people who can't work and aren't self-sufficient financially.
Census runs a separate survey with separate definitions, and so does Treasury -- yes, it's infuriating -- and I don't know how entrepreneurs and SBOs fit in to those, but for BLS they count as employed if they're actually doing work for the company they founded (even if they're not yet taking a paycheck).
That said, we should ban companies like Red Bull from sponsoring extreme sports. Every time you see one of those People Are Awesome videos in your Facebook feed there is an entire cohort of permanently disabled kids that went into the making. There is a great documentary called Crash Reel about this.