Decline of the Dad Job
flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com
flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com
Progress toward the agnostic treatment of men and women in raising children, providing for the household, and making a home is still far behind the reality in most (not all) Courts, despite claims to the contrary. It took most of my net worth to ensure my presence in my kids lives would be regular and meaningful and to ensure child support reflected my former wife's multi-million dollar net worth.
Perhaps a level playing field is emerging as the 'Dad Job' declines, I don't know. Its of little benefit to the tens of thousands of men in the United States whose reality is of no concern to anyone.
Edit: But I could be wrong. I found several anecdotal articles about this subject on the NY Times and elsewhere. Here's a more informative article on the topic http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/child-support-an...
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/02/robert_meachem_i...
Of course they didn't survey professionally, yadda yadda.
Of course most men don't end up in jail for anything at all, ever, but it's a common enough experience to notice.
Disclaimer: I'm divorced, paid child support for 15 years, and was nervous all the way to the last payment.
... how does that make any sense?
Petitioning the court for an adjustment is a fairly low cost approach; both partners' 1040s in the US / T4s in Canada would be compared on a rolling average or similar formula to adjust the payments. Self representing for this isn't out of the ordinary, if costs need to be saved.
A good example of a reliable resource is [0], which is a fairly comprehensive list of divorce outcomes by state, co-written by an MIT CompSci professor. It also includes excerpts from interviews with very experienced divorce attorneys in most states.
If you don't like this site for some reason, there are other good resources too. Please don't just believe the comments here as gospel truth.
Canada in particular has some challenges around vagueness with "best interests of the child" as the main focus of separation and customary and access cases... but for 20 years now there is almost no reason two partners wouldn't get joint access/custody 50-50 if one of them wants it and has shown past interest in parenting + doesn't have evidence of violent/absuive conduct. You'd have to fight for it potentially, if your former partner wants sole custody, but that's a very high bar to prove. court is potential great cost, but you would probably settle to 50/50 beffore it went to trial once reality sinks with your ex.
My wife had to take a job-- and I cannot, and I mean cannot find anything that doesn't expect startup hours or would allow me to pick up my daughter from day care on time (and the last thing I want for her is day care believe me).
But then backtrack here and miss the point "A lot of us, men and women, grew up thinking of male full-time jobs as real jobs. It’s no wonder that many find the decline of the dad job so unsettling."
I don't think it's 'realness', whatever that means, that matters. It is the benefits like healthcare, ability to afford a place to live, education, and further the social and mental health benefit of working in proximity with people with similar interests and abilities.
As business and industry has become more abstract, more interconnect, more outsourced, and as in general human capital's value has crashed much harder than any graph from the article will show you, it becomes significantly harder for an employee to understand how his or her role actually translates into value. Or if it is understandable, it's abstracted away through a few other layers of the business and many of those layers change often, leaving you wondering if you're going to continue to be a part of it.
I think 'realness' factors hugely into it.
But I agree that "size" in this case definitely does not mean geographic size. Geographic size might be a factor for why America doesn't have better telecommunications or rail system, not health care.
I think most insurance providers are multi-state entities so higher costs in one state can be balanced by lower costs in others. But there may be some limits; if the ACA requirement that insurers use 80% of revenue on health care costs is applied per-state, they may not be able balance out a really unhealthy state. But this isn't an issue due to America's geographic or population size or even the quantity of states, it's that America has much more political power at the state level.
Just set up multiple systems. The US even has very convenient boundaries to split up the systems along: States, just like the EU.
Even most countries with universal healthcare further subdivides their systems. E.g. Norway (5 million people) operates regional health trusts that are largely independent. The UK (60 million) does the same on a larger scale (more trusts) and leverages the number of trusts to improve management of individual trusts by occasionally having successful trust take over the running of trusts where management is failing.
The "size" argument is almost always a total red herring.
Belgium is split right down the middle by language and culture, with many people supporting a split into two independent countries. Spain has Catalonia and the Basque country, two culturally and linguistically distinct regions that have long fought for independence. Ireland has spent most of the last century in a slow-burning civil war. Half of Germany was part of the Soviet Union until 1989.
When people say that universal healthcare can't work in the US because of "diversity", what exactly do they mean by that word?
[1] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/mark_warshawsky.htm...
The big problem with employer provided insurance is that they suck a lot of healthy people out of the individual market. We already know richer people are healthier, and they are likely to be enrolled in group plans. So what is left in the individual market are necessarily less healthy on average, so the premiums suck.
For us, it's that our insurance is tied to our jobs, so we can't think of leaving or even "taking a break" if we can afford it!
It means the employee can get their treatment weeks, even months before they would have otherwise - that's important if you have a painful or debilitating condition. That is, the employee struggles to be an employee due to government budget constraints.
A suspect a few people are going to read "weeks, even months before they would have otherwise - that's important if you have a painful or debilitating condition. " and assume that is a given for a public system. You often have to wait for non urgent issues in the US as well if you want a specific doctor or clinic.
At the very least, there should be a federal program that covers all children. We can easily afford it.
Why I have to choose health insurance and my employer together is beyond me.
Of course, before Obamacare it was because pre-existing conditions made the private health insurance market ridiculous.
Of course, the trick with healthcare funded through taxation is to avoid having it cut down until everyone is worse off, not just low income earners.
I can't choose not to die. I can't choose not to get sick.
I can choose not to continue my family's income. I can choose not to receive medical treatment.
There is nothing uniquely special about health insurance.
For example I tore my right ACL last summer. I chose to wait 6 months to have an MRI and surgery (in fact, I had no idea what the injury was for that entire time), because we have a high deductable and my wife will give birth this year.
You might say that's just an artifact of a broken system, and you might be right. But say, if I was 50+, I'd likely choose to avoid the surgery and expense altogether. People forgo medical treatment all the time.
Since EMTALA means the hospital has to treat you, and as a society people will ensure you get taken there, you are in fact incapable of doing the opting out at the times it's likely most expensive.
And frankly, as a society, we shouldn't trust you: because the outcomes speak for themselves - people don't voluntarily choose not to get medical care. They lie about it when they don't need it, to suit their politics and greed.
My sarcasm detector is weak today, but I'm assuming that's what that is.
I think this paper hits on a bigger issue: http://www.ddorn.net/papers/Autor-Dorn-Hanson-MarriageMarket...
As men's employment opportunities drop relative to women's, their value in the sexual and marriage markets drop significantly. And women's employment opportunities have done nothing but rise. Female hypergamy is probably the real issue here.
Of course it can. Ever heard of debt?
I lold. Shouldn't there be corresponding data on debt then? National individual debt rising in relation?
Without data on hand, though, I do believe that has been the case
While the housing stock is on average larger is is also significantly older than it was 30 years ago.
The thing being sold is really the debt instrument, not the house itself.
https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/high...
AIC - measured in PPP and inflation adjusted terms - has risen in the US and Europe.
The realty and education bubbles are inflated by cheap credit. The cheap credit in the US exists mostly because Federal Reserve can print more money, and the whole world will buy. "There is a huge demand for $100 bills worldwide." If not dollars, US government papers ate considered safe, no matter the amount printed.
This is also makes US labor unable to become cheaper and compete with the places where it currently escapes. Hence some of the problems with dad jobs.
The rise of the so called "gig economy", and the increasing reliance on freelancing and remote work, does a lot to undermine the comfortable patterns and routines of traditional 9-5 work - for some people this is great (no drudgery of commuting is just one benefit of many), and for others I suspect it's quite the opposite. In so many of the "how to work remotely" guides you do, in fact, see a lot of importance placed on effectively separating work and non-work life, designating a specific area for working, and working particular hours - much of this, really, is intended to recreate something akin to the routine of the dad job, except without the office and the commute and the physical presence of your coworkers.
so there is 14% decline in a group of people from 16-64. It's missing:
- Universities, training, gap years etc.
- People that have retired early
- Permtractors (some portion of them have a company in a different location, like Isle of Man and do work in, say, London)
- Disability benefits and eligibility
It's also now more de-facto expected than it used to be that you attend at least some university (2 years of community college if not a 4-year university), so workforce participation rates for people aged 18-20 are declining for non-mysterious reasons. Although that's at least something you can legally choose not to do.
- 15% more Millennials went to the uni comparing to Baby Boomers
- In my friend's production company that works for BBC almost everybody is a contractor - 20 years ago very few were. (Similar pattern exists in big banks)
There are so many variables.
For most of human existence, multiple generations and cousins &ct. living together was fairly common, and it's rapidly looking like we may have to go back to that. You already see this for the working-poor in coastal California; I don't know if this trend continues inland as housing becomes less expensive.
we are failing at this, and it is tragic, and it is not a world any of is should be happy to be in.
we have immense, mind-blowing wealth as a culture and as a nation. we need to do better.
You have to listen to it, not fight it.
Rural areas aren't a cultural wasteland either. Urbanization had been a consistent pattern for centuries now - decreasing economic opportunity isn't anything new to rural areas.
can you do that anymore? i dont think so. we've lost something.
But yeah, it's not as crazy as SF for sure.
That's quite the broad brush.
Most desirable locations are pretty much by definition going to be expensive to live in. Well, some people like the sunbelt and it's less pricey than the coastal cities that people like. In any case, cities create their own culture. There's nothing unique to a handful of coastal areas that are in vogue with the tech crowd.
Well, if those nice cities refuse to build enough housing for everyone, even though they have the land-area... yes.
Lack of jobs is another economic signal but our recent election has shown that voters have an expectation that they will be able to stay in their communities (an interesting contrast to centuries of increasing urbanization).
Smaller apartment blocks (3 stories etc) doesn't have to come at the expense of the lifestyle either - the large European cities I've been to all had thriving neighborhood's , likewise with parts of larger US cities.
> Smaller apartment blocks (3 stories etc) doesn't have to come at the expense of the lifestyle either - the large European cities I've been to all had thriving neighborhood's , likewise with parts of larger US cities.
Of course you can. That's not the issue. The issue is that in many of these areas the current residents largely do not want this because they don't want the character of the areas to change.
It boils down to how much control you want existing residents to have over planning. This would be equally hard to change in most of Europe in places where you have geographically constrained areas full of wealthy owners that does not want the area to change too much.
Given the political environment in the US I fear it would take decades for an area like SFO to recover, if at all. Many companies would likely just leave the area.
"Find cheaper employees elsewhere" is another message.
i also think with amount of money sf spends -- which is A LOT -- we could provide way better circumstances, if better managed.
"rent control" - grandfathered in old program that affects a very, very small number of apartments, not enough to make any market price difference, except for the lucky few who happen to have these
"rent stabilization" - a huge proportion of apartments are affected by this program, but it only applies to buildings built before 1970something, so it obviously can't affect new construction incentives. Even if it did, it's so full of loopholes I don't see it affecting the market prices. Outside of lower Manhattan, rent stabilized apartments often have official maximum prices well above the current rent. The difference is explained by a legal fiction called "preferential rent" ie, the landlord is giving the tenant a temporary discount and reserves the right to raise up to the maximum legal rent at any time.
So, no, in NYC, rent regulations aren't significantly contributing to a housing shortage.
The main obstacle to building more housing, is building more housing. Duh.
What gets me, there's no talk about this anywhere I see (IRL). It's like no one wants to admit there's a problem.
Most of what is written on that site doesn't resonate with me but it's a good window into that discussion ...
Now, that measure is under threat because of a recent ballet proposal that wants to stop all housing development under the pretense of stopping gentrification.
Side note: Along with this, I've noticed that the demographics of the homeless has been changing. More and more of the homeless don't look like what one would expect (alcoholic/drug addict, older/rough look due to addiction, etc.) Just anecdotally, in my area, there has been a recent uptick in crime as well and the crimes are becoming more brazen. I'm extrapolating, but it seems like the opportunity cost of crime has gone down. Perhaps more people feel the system failed them and have lost faith and/or simply do not care for a society that doesn't care about them.
In any event, it's an unsettling trend that is being glossed over when statistics say that we are at full employment. I saw these trends in 2006-7 before the financial crisis.
This doesn't explain it IMO. My neighborhood is undergoing a huge spike in rents and average income. At the same time there has also been a spike in homelessness, with the vast majority being young (20's-30's), white, and devoid of any tattoos. I'm not sure how it's classified, but most of the crimes are non-violent theft of mail and bikes or simple trespassing (sleeping on the roof, hiding in the garage during rainfall, etc.). It's more of a desperate type of survival than it is people living a life of crime.
Sign of the times, but I am not optimistic towards the future..especially when the jobs being promised are primarily low skill labor that can already be done by people in 3rd world nations and will undoubtedly be ripe for elimination by automation.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/manufac...
I'm not so sure what to do for my other kids though.
It might be a while before it happens, but it will happen. I believe that the answer to "when will my job be done by a robot" is "sooner than you think" for all professions.
I'm pretty sure that going to college with only a fuzzy idea of why you're there and what you're expecting to get out of it isn't a smart move any more. Me and a whole lot of my peers did just this and it mostly worked out OK for us, but it's a different game now.
I don't know that my kids will be ready to be intentional about college at 18. They might be better off waiting a few years, working an unskilled job and learning some of that side of adulthood before going to college. Of course, "they" say if you do that you'll probably never go to college at all. I don't want my kids stuck in low wage jobs forever either.
One thing I'm hoping for is cheaper ways of getting college credentials. I've seen some stuff around the edges here, but nothing that has rung the awesome bell yet.
Additionally the use of jail to persuade child support payments can also perpetuate this downward spiral. Credit account closures/declines in credit lines for imprisoned cardholders can adversely affect credit scores and employment opportunities. I understand paying child support is necessary but garnishment and seizure of tax refunds should be enough.
Many people will need to begin to reconsider what is home/community. They will need to avail themselves to the flexibility of labor markets. Doing so alone is possible but if you have a family it is burdensome without some governmental support. People once had that mindset... constant moving... constant searching for new opportunities. It is tiresome but many more will need to adapt to that mindset.
Female employment is the result of central bankers targeting full employment, which lead to inflation, which has lead to globalization[1] to escape labor cost inflation, which will again lead to inflation and of course automation is the only answer. Capitalism rewards those with leverage and automation is the ultimate leverage (beyond capital itself).
[1]: Political Apects of Full Employment, Michale Kalecki, Political Quartly 1943 http://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf
1. Your citation says:
"It follows that if the government intervention aims at achieving full employment but stops short of increasing effective demand over the full employment mark, there is no need to be afraid of inflation."
2. Inflation levels were through the roof long before the Fed Reserve Act established full employment as a mandate.
Automation is both already in full sway and at the same time, the remaining things to be automated seem out of reach - not of the technologists, but of the leadership class. But we can't give the techies status enough to do it right :) It is also anything but clear that automation should displace labor necessarily, at least over a long enough time line.
"Inflation is, everywhere, a monetary phenomenon." - Milton Friedman.
I don't think that what Conservatives call "the destruction of the nuclear family" is the goal, but that the models in use don't work to keep Dad jobs available. The nuclear family will most likely evolve out anyway, because we can't even hit low (2%) Fed growth targets. At any rate, Dean Baker, "Rigged", yadda yadda.
this is why it will never get fixed. every story, no matter how bad, is met with disbelief.
i, for one, am never getting married, precisely because i DO believe all these stories, and in fact i extrapolate there to be many more, far worse stories, that never get told. people don't like recounting these experiences, even anonymously.
this isn't a judgment on marriage; it's a judgment on me. i couldn't deal with a divorce and having my assets stripped from me.
thank you OP for joining the growing chorus of voices speaking out against how truly awful this entire racket is.
also, tongue in cheek "did you just assume my gender?"
http://nymag.com/news/features/gay-divorce-2013-3/index1.htm...
I don't think it's right to encourage people to get married and apply a low bar for such a commitment. However when they want a divorce it's not as easy.
Child support is a different matter though. Criminalizing people for not paying does no one any good. It pushes people to work for cash paying jobs and just hides the problem. Criminalizing it just forces everyone in the situation into a poverty trap. It causes the parent being pursued for child support to resent the other parent or child.
http://www.postandcourier.com/archives/cost-is-high-to-jail-...
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/why-people-get-sentenced-...
Terrible divorce settlements really are about poor planning and communication of expectations than something inherent in marriage or common law relationships.
I don't think most people should get married or move in before age 30 - too easy to focus on the short term and get taken advantage of, unless you're really willing to make a leap of faith in the other person.
But otherwise divorce isn't as big of a deal when no children are involved and both partners work at reasonably equal jobs. Maybe there is a split in the house equity and bank accounts, with one party possibly giving a lump sum to the other, and you're done - mostly a clean break with no ongoing payments. I've seen this multiple times among friends.
It's when your partner is stay at home, marrying them (or in many jurisdictions, merely entering into common law relationship) also sets an entitlement of lifestyle and income.
Basically if your partner doesn't work, you need to be okay with supporting them to various degrees for the rest of your life, unless you can enter into a pre-nuptial agreement that says otherwise.
Now, add children into the mix and it's much more complicated and has nothing to do with marriage. Child support is technically the child's money, and the state enforces its payment on the grounds that your child is entitled to your earnings based on some kind of income-equity formula.
So for me, there never was any despair about finding a partner, it was more about understanding what I wanted:
- we split what assets we put into the marriage if it fails, what we brought in is mostly hands off so that the one with more property can't be milked. I say mostly because capital gains etc. may happen on past assets that your partner should be entitled to.
- we put each other into our wills otherwise and ensure we have life insurance for the other
- we both hold jobs, even if one of us makes more, alimony and child support wouldn't be absurdly high
- a partner that isn't afraid to talk about what their expectations are for lifestyle, income during and/or after the marriage if it doesn't work out
Being afraid of having your assets stripped implies you don't think you could hire a strong lawyer to defend your interests and also implies you wouldn't have the ability to define stuff before the marriage. But it's totally doable.
As with any life commitment there needs to be trust in another human being... but some safeguards if they turn out to be very different people than you had thought.
have you ever been in litigation, or received the threat of litigation? it's 100% crystal-fucking-clear from the outset that, yes, the entire system is against you. every single thing that happens in the system drives this point home further. not only that, it is costing you obscene amounts of money at every step. at any point along the way, if you can't pay, you lose. too bad, so sad, pay up sucker.
people commenting on HN are not children, they are fully formed adults with careers, businesses, and life experience, and the judgement and opinions that go along with that. i know for a fact going into a divorce will be a huge battle, uphill, traumatic, extremely expensive, and probably psychologically damaging, so i'm going to reduce that possibility to ZERO through whatever means necessary.
going to court over business matters is bad enough. it'll be a cold day in hell before i go to court over flesh and blood.
some people avoid starting a business because they are afraid of going to court, or the costs, the hours, or risk of bankruptcy; i can't say i blame them at all because it's all true. and i'm certaintly not going to make up some feel-good woowoo malarky about them not believing the world is against you, because it very much is, and if you don't believe that deep down in your soul, you aren't going to survive long, and most people don't. i might not even survive it in the long run.
As for discovery, hearings, etc, this just whittles away the value of the estate and is in neither party's interest. Most cases settle for this reason.
From a public policy perspective here, the family justice system is designed to encourage settlement and not go to trial: almost all cases need a dispute resolution or case conference ahead of trial to provide a preview ruling.
What is the policy you would prefer?
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13791488 and marked it off-topic.