Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016)

brookings.edu

133 pointspaulpauper188 comments

I've started some treatment recently, and for some reason I immediately started dating and looking for mates again.

I quickly realized how difficult it is. You can't find women unless you have a job, while women have made outstanding progress in education and the workforce, and for some reason they have a hard time dating people who have a less comfortable situation than themselves. I don't want to ride the whole mensright bandwagon or to criticize feminism, but it can be a difficult source of unhappiness for some.

I dated this young mother of two who managed to be a teacher for kids, she got help from her middle class parents, I can really say that when you feel the class struggle seeping into your love life, it is a very weird feeling. Of course it's not the only reason, I'm not saying it, but it can the source of other problems.

One generation behind us, women still sort of relied on men, and now that the tables have turned, women might need to make a compromise.

Not to mention the whole tinder generation which is making things a little weirder.

EDIT:

This comment is full of personal opinion, so take it with a big grain of salt.

I'm really not sure how having a job helps you find women; being trapped in a box segregated far away from them for most of the day just seems counter productive in that respect. You have the weekends but so does everyone else.

I really think something has changed about how people socialize and it's simply become harder to meet like minded people; It's harder to network professionally, it's harder to find fabricators, workers, mates etc. Fundamentally, that's the problem that needs to be solved.

EDIT: I've misinterpreted this.

You don't think having a job helps you when the person you are interested in is deciding whether they are interested back?

Particularly women evaluating men. In general, women see the ability to protect and provide as desireable qualities in a mate.

I'm past dating age (and anyway I have a relationship that has survived 20 years), but when I was younger, I never considered what the woman would bring to the relationship financially. I'm very traditional, though, so perhaps this attitude is no longer as common as it was when I was younger.

In popular American culture in our time, there is not an emphasis on what the partner brings to the relationship financially. I also did not think much about my wife's earning power (or at least, not explicitly, although we met in college so there is some same-class-ness happening there).

But I think that is not typical of cultures across space and time. Just ask Jane Austen. :-)

Well let's be honest, job status, not unlike height/ethnicity/appearance is one of the many discriminating characteristics used in dating.

Let keep it honest, job status is directly related to ethnicity/appearance.

I disagree. I don't think its harder to meet like minded people. Meetup and Facebook solved that issue,

I think the issue is that it's SO EASY to find people that there is very little incentive to actually care about a specific group more than any other. Its like criticisms of modern dating. The ocean is so large and easy to navigate that there is no incentive to get anything to actually work. Just moving on is easier.

I think you might have misread GP's post a bit; I didn't understand him to be saying "Without a job, there are fewer opportunities to meet eligible women." Rather, I think he was saying "Without a job, fewer women will consider you eligible. (Contrasting with last generation where employed men were fine with dating unemployed women, this generation of employed women are not as fine with dating unemployed men.)"

Your edit is right... your view on this is clearly heavy with your personal situation. But the bigger perspective is that for a relationship to work, both sides need to contribute. Whether the old-fashioned way where the man works while the wife take care of kids, or both work, or the wife works while the man take care of kids, or something completely different... the point is that both sides need to contribute. Take gender out of it, and then look again -- it is just two people, together. They both should add value to the relationship.

So lets look at a single person without a job in that context: On day one when two people meet, when both are single, if one of them doesn't have a job, it is a red flag that the person without a job might not be willing or able to contribute in the future. The relationship starts without a shared home, so just one person spending all the money. It isn't balanced.

So when you get down to it, it isn't a gender thing. It is a money thing.

Well, a few generations ago, Men were OK with being in that kind of relationships. In fact, it was a culturally enforced value that the "Man should pay for everything" and it seemed to work fine.

I agree with your premise that unequal incomes (especially if they are glaring) can be a significant barrier to relationships. But what if e.g. the woman makes enough for the both of them, and all she is looking for in a partner is emotional well being, someone to talk/share activities etc.

So its not just a money thing IMO. It seems like the US culture has still not adopted to the economic realities of today. And it hurts everyone: a woman may know that she doesn't care about income differences and wants a partner for other reasons, but she will be dissuaded from pursuing such relationships by her friends/family etc.

> and it seemed to work fine

It worked well unless you were a woman with ambitions outside of the kitchen and bedroom. In that case, it was living hell and maybe you'd get luck with a world war.

Slavery worked fine too, unless you were a slave.

Please don't quote me out of context. "Everything" was not everything in society (out of context), but everything pertaining to the problem of beginning a relationship.

> pertaining to the problem of beginning a relationship

Reading your post, it's not obvious that this is what you meant.

And in any case, you are still ignoring the woman's perspective. It was entirely too common for women to enter into relationships that they had no real interest in out of social and financial necessity.

Many men are forced in to that exact process in 2017! Except they're simultaneously being told by the women that they're not good enough because they can't get jobs that don't exist. Something women back then didn't have to worry about, despite all their other problems.

> In that case, it was living hell

Not it wasn't living hell. Having professional goals was a luxury.

Living hell was participating in wars, working 12 hours a day in a coal mine, etc.

Experiences that mainly men had the pleasure to enjoy

> Not it wasn't living hell

The nice thing about this is that it's largely a statement of fact, not an ideological question. It's an issue we can actually evaluate using evidence.

So. Where's your evidence for this claim?

I have plenty of evidence for mine. We can go read memoirs, first-hand, and second-hand accounts from women in the 19th and early 20th century. The downsides are well-documented.

> Having professional goals was a luxury

Those well-documented downsides extend far beyond the absence of professional goals.

Financial dependence is coercive, especially when paired with lax legal protections. Lack of personal economic autonomy, enforced by culture and in many cases law, gives rise to a whole range of depressing conditions. Lack of professional ambition was only one contributor to a huge constellation of factors that made many women's lives a living hell.

> Living hell was participating in wars, working 12 hours a day in a coal mine, etc.

Of course, men also enjoyed professional positions in academics, in industry, and in government that women were cut off from.

> Experiences that mainly men had the pleasure to enjoy

What is the relevance of this observation to the current discussion?

Does doing a crappy job entitle a man to the affection or devotion of a woman? If not, then what bearing does the existence of crappy jobs have on the status of women in society?

Also, there's plenty of pain and misery to go around. No reason to turn it into a contest. And we certainly have no good reason to condition women's status in society on the total abolition of men working undesirable jobs.

On the other hand, the traditional role of the man as the provider for the family causes some men anxiety if they can't fulfill that role, leading to family trouble. Either way, reducing equality in the work force is not the solution, but a fairer economy.

You can't fight biology.

Women are hardwired to look for men with resources or the ability to get them. It comes down to whether a man can provide the woman with a safe and clean place to have her babies. In the past, this signal has taken the form of physical strength, number of slaves, land, goats, whatever. Today, it's jobs and/or money.

Then add a layer of the instinctive hunger for status within any social species.

For a given batch of economically successful women, most would rather share a successful man or stay single rather than compromise and mate with a low-status man with no resources.

Can't blame women for looking for these things the same way men can't be blamed for looking for youth and fertility in a woman.

People are hardwired to prefer partners they find attractive. Beyond a well documented bias towards symmetry in and a certain range of ratios of physical features, attempts to find some sort of innately desirable traits that are not confounded by the incredible strong signals sent in a given culture & generation's media always fail. When you say, "Women are hardwired to look for men with resources or the ability to get them. It comes down to whether a man can provide the woman with a safe and clean place to have her babies," it's quite peculiar how societies with more of the first have a massive decline in the second.

The snarky way to reply to this is, if you're so smart, why can't you get laid?

edit: are not confounded by. Also, if you're downvoting in response to something other than the useless snark at the end of my post, please comment.

Not sure why getting downvoted.

To dismiss out of hand thousands of years of evolution and think the last 50+ years of modern societal change can completely counteract biological forces is.. wishful thinking?

I mean, this explanation is at least as good as any other speculation in this thread.

I did not downvote the parent.

My claim: almost every human adult has had at least one sexual partner. I can only find decent studies surveying modernity, but for example: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/19374216/. Assuming most humans having sex is not a recent development, any evolutionary pressures, if they exist at all, on the sexually active population are unclear at best; however, there may be pressures against the tiny few who go through life abstinent.

Your claim might be false.

"After a study by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research last year found a massive increase in the number of virgins in [Japan], some academics criticised the way the research was reported.

Of 5,000 single people surveyed, the government department found 42 per cent of men and 44 per cent of women had never had sex."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japan-couples-s...

My views of Japan's sexuality mostly align with those in that article. It talks about the recent trend of many Japanese not having sex (I claim that historically, most humans in general do have sex); furthermore, it claims a likely significant cause is the extreme pressures needed to maintain social status. It does quote a man citing similar trends in Britain; strange again, considering that at least as of 2014, studies show Britain having about a 4% virginity rate. Japan seems to be an outlier whose culture is resulting in a collapse of sexuality. Can you extrapolate evolutionary selection pressures from this?

Because it's the worst kind of ad hoc evolutionary psych bs?

Women marry a lot of different kinds of men, for example: men who make them laugh. Men who are attentive, or ambitious, or well spoken, travelled, groomed, serious, sensitive, quiet, gregarious or any number of adjectives, none of which directly reflect their income.

In simple terms, a lot of,the thread here is guys super imposing the logic of power and position onto 'women'.

A specific type of person seeks mates primarily because of their position, these tend to be ambitious and ambition valuing people.

This is in no way the full set of women.

Yes Statistically, the logic of evolution will result in a bias. Women would love to marry an Adonis who was a PE fund owner, or a cardio-neuron surgeon.

It doesn't mean people wither away, waiting for it to happen.

The most popular trope is not of dr rich, or mr moneybags - its Prince Charming.

Your spouse will be found through the places you visit, the education you attend, via the people you meet, the places you work and and the hobbies you enjoy.

Not just because of the size of your paycheck.

And your spouse will very likely try their level best (all things held equal) to help you out when your paycheck is down, the same way many wives have been all through the recession when people were laid off, and their husbands (and themselves) weren't rising up the corporate ladder.

You may never know why, precisely, your spouse decided you were worth spending the rest of their life with.

But its not just because of biological programming.

Many people who fight for social equality between the sexes also believe that all psychological differences between the sexes are cultural, not biological. The post above directly opposes that viewpoint, and thus got downvoted.

Personally, I don't agree with their belief. We can acknowledge differences between the sexes, yet maintain equal opportunity for those who want to oppose the norm.

"All psychological differences between the sexes are cultural, not biological" is obviously not a reasonable view. The view you need to address is that current, rigorous psychology has yet to advance to the point where it can quantify the innate psychological differences between the sexes; further, culture is a highly confounding factor that we don't yet know how to isolate in regards to sexuality.

It's very popular to white knight/feminist with little regard to data or reason right now. This ostracization will lead to more extremism, loss of empathy, and further gender alienation.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

There's a lot of comments basically calling women golddigging p-zombies but not citing any evidence or personal experience here. I think that's more family pressure when it exists.

> Today, it's jobs and/or money.

or being supportive, or making their life better/easier/funnier. I have dated women that were higher status than me and I'm still friend with many of them.

Being nice is a much more appreciated quality than being wealthy, especially if at work they must fight everyday to prove that their value is the same of men in the company, if not higher.

The same applies to women: I prefer nicer ones and, I must say, usually it is associated with higher education.

Not everyone can become rich or have a good job, that's true, but everyone can become a better man.

EDIT: I'm in my 40s, not exactly a kid anymore.

> One generation behind us, women still sort of relied on men, and now that the tables have turned, women might need to make a compromise.

You mean the system was heavily stacked to make women reliant on men. I won't call that a compromise.

The tables haven't turned, the game changed. We have drastically removed many of the forces meant to keep women as dependents of men. If the tables had turned, then men would be systematically be kept out of jobs, particularly high paying careers. They most certainly are not being kept out of those jobs.

Yes, this, a thousand times this.

People look at stuff like alimony or whatever and think "oh women just get all the breaks". When really, stuff like that exists because women were expected to forego career for marriage, etc., essentially shackled to a man for life.

Women being independent, expecting a guy to have his shit together? I think that's great. I say bring it on. Independent women are far more interesting to talk to, and if I have to have a good job lined up, well, that's how you play the game.

Now...if society is breaking in a way that it's tough for men to get good jobs, then let's look at that. Women aren't to blame for that, though. Let's look at what's really going on.

So what do you do when there simply aren't enough jobs for most men to "have their shit together"?

What are all those men going to do when they have both no stake in the economy, and little or no chance of finding a woman to love them? What percentage of men like this can society handle before some sort of tipping point is reached?

I refer you to this comment from "wingless" from another discussion currently on the front page:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13795855

I'm always aware of this whenever the usual stuff about the "gender pay gap" gets trotted out by the media. Men and men women are playing entirely different games in the employment market. A woman is working for the money and whatever satisfaction she derives from the job itself. A man is working for his ability to attract a girlfriend, his status in society, his entire sense of "value". It's hardly surprising that men are motivated to choose riskier and higher earning careers.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw that connection.

What I'd do is this:

1) Vote for politicians who are going to create real structural change in society, e.g. Bernie, not just systems maintainers like Hillary, or rich guys who want to rip us off, like the guy who won. (And really work at a local level to enact structural systems changes!)

2) Work to change the cultural baggage around one's value being tied to one's day job. Make it sexy to be a poet, writer, singer, househusband, whatever, derive personal/interpersonal value from something other than a career. (And again, work at a local level to make it OK not to have a big thriving career, since it's not gonna happen for a lot of folks.)

That's what I'd do. The system of "men are worth something because of their career" is broken, and will never come back. I wouldn't even try to resuscitate it.

>Make it sexy to be a poet, writer, singer, househusband, whatever, derive personal/interpersonal value from something other than a career.

I would dearly love to believe this is possible, but I fear it's not. I don't think (most) women are capable of overcoming their programming to seek a high-status provider.

Really? I give women more credit than that.

For the first time in how many centuries, they don't have to be chained to some dud with a good job, and they're figuring out what they want.

Good poetry? Being a good househusband? There's going to be quality in that.

World's changing, and you can't get away being a schlub just cause you've got a good job anymore. I say bring it.

If the prestige were great enough, maybe (and good luck with that.) Now add in the extraordinary reluctance of most women to date men shorter than they are.

I think it already is sexy to be a poet/writer/singer/whatever... those single women who don't want to marry are getting pregnant with "non-marriagable" men, after all. It becomes a question of, why become economically tied to these sexy losers.

There are lots of studies where they found that the first kid was not the biological offspring of the husband at the time.

I know this will sound pretty bad...

but I actually interact a lot, in a volunteer capacity, with the black community where I live. I'm just realizing that I've never noticed that the whole "men are worth something because of their career" thing there. I'm not passing relative value judgements or anything, but I do wonder if there is something sociologically about black american subculture that makes women look past all that???

I am not a woman. So I can only say what I see, (and there seems to be a lower tendency towards marriage in their community anyway). But from what I see... there are black female doctors with laid off garbagemen for instance. I see self employed business women with unemployed guys. (Generally laid off laborers.) I see a lot of really high ranking corporate vp or law firm type women with teachers/community organizer types. (That one happens a lot.) Couples like these constitute a sizable portion of what I would call the "black middle class" where I am. And of course, you have the regular couples that look like what we would call more traditional, with both parties working at the same level. But that doesn't happen NEARLY as often as you'd think, and the egalitarian pairings also don't seem to last as long as the high ranking female-low ranking male pairings. (Divorce-wise I mean.)

Here's the thing though... I can't actually recall ever coming across a couple where the man was "higher ranking" than the woman??? There are probably a few out there, but I don't come across them in my interactions.

I never thought about that until I read through this thread.

It would be interesting to look through some of these smaller communities to find out how they deal with what seems to be slowly happening in the larger society. Just throwing that out there because they seem to be further down the road towards this "jobless" economic system. The reasons may be really simple. ie - maybe they just have a different culture??? And that's fine. Or maybe it's that the pressures on women in certain american subcultures are different??? Or whatever??? Who knows??? As I said... I'm not a woman... but I think it would be worth looking at.

The more I think about it... the more differences there are popping into my mind right now. It really is fascinating. I never stopped to think about it before.

This is going to sound even worse, but..

I think there was some data from okcupid that showed black men are a lot more popular (based on messages sent etc) with women of other races than black women with men of other races (I have no idea why).

The uncomfortable truth could be that high-status black men have their pick of other races, leaving high-status black women to date lower status men.

> The uncomfortable truth

Which you've just fabricated on the spot based on some racial stereotypes (and your presumably very important feelings).

The data reflect the same basic anti-black racism as the rest of society.

https://theblog.okcupid.com/race-and-attraction-2009-2014-10...

I'm pretty sure the data supports what I said, even if I missed some of the nuance. Black women are more penalised than black men.

I think you're right. I don't have a reference handy, but I recall reading a long time ago that there are more educated, professional black women in the US than educated, professional black men, and it makes it difficult for them to marry someone at or above their level in those areas. And they have a lot of resentment against successful black men who marry white women, because that further exacerbates the imbalance.

> Work to change the cultural baggage around one's value being tied to one's day job. Make it sexy to be a poet, writer, singer, househusband, whatever, derive personal/interpersonal value from something other than a career. (And again, work at a local level to make it OK not to have a big thriving career, since it's not gonna happen for a lot of folks.)

I really hate (nothing personal) this "wishful-thinking" type of activism ("we really need to do...!". You want to change women's sexual preferences? How, through CRISPR? How will you "work at a local level" to make fat 50 year olds with high school diplomas more attractive to women?

> "men are worth something because of their career" is broken, and will never come back

Instead of saying that, how about saying that everybody, including 50 year olds in mainland America, deserves the opportunity of a good job? It's like saying "fat people should be just as attractive" instead of just losing weight.

The current situation is not a refutation of "men are worth something because of their career", just a confirmation. It doesn't "have to come back", because it never left. This is how it has been, is, and will be. You're saying men without ambition or money are entitled to relationships, which they're not. Some people just can't compete, doesn't make the competition obsolete.

I tend to agree with this, yeah. There is plenty of room for change in how we run the economy giving everyone a chance for a good job.

For one - the working hours in the US are crazy. Cap it at 32 hours and badaboom, everyone has a job. Combined with a decent minimum wage, you'd be fine. And yes, if this would result in economic collapse, Europe would've gone to sheise a looooong time ago yet the countries rated as best to live are the ones who have executed exactly that recipe.

>1) Vote for politicians who are going to create real structural change in society, e.g. Bernie

Bernie Sanders 2011: American dream more apt to be realized in Venezuela where incomes are more equal https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/close-the-...

Six years later, Venezuelans are facing malnutrition from severe shortages in basic goods. 75 percent of Venezuelan lost 19 pounds in 2016:

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2017/02/19/Venezuela-...

I don't think any other oil economy has seen 75 percent of the population lose 19 lb in a year from malnutrition. The total ignorance of Venezuelan economic officials is what is behind the severity of the shortages. This quote from 2011 is emblematic of that:

“The law of supply and demand is a lie,” Karlin Granadillo, the head of a price control agency set up to enforce the new regulations, said on state television. “These are not arbitrary measures. They are necessary.”

http://www.pressherald.com/2011/11/26/venezuelas-price-contr...

For reasons like this, I find the promotion of socialism to be morally reprehensible.

Yet this has little to do with socialism but rather with Kleptocracy, which is the same in USA and now coming to the US with this new president.

Pretty much everywhere in the world, lower income inequality is closely correlated with being a nicer place to live in for everyone - like Finland, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Germany and so on.

That there are countries where the government, under the ruse of either socialist or libertarian policies, steals from its people has little to do with it.

>Vote for politicians who are going to create real structural change in society, e.g. Bernie, not just systems maintainers like Hillary, or rich guys who want to rip us off, like the guy who won. (And really work at a local level to enact structural systems changes!)

Bernie Sanders 2011: American dream more apt to be realized in Venezuela where incomes are more equal https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/close-the-...

Six years later, Venezuelans are facing malnutrition from severe shortages in basic goods. 75 percent Venezuelan lost 19 pounds in 2016:

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2017/02/19/Venezuela-...

It could be that... or the crushing economic sanctions and the low price of oil.

I wonder which might have a higher economic impact?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Venezuel...

Shortages of the kind Venezuela suffers are a classic consequence of price controls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortages_in_Venezuela

> A woman is working for the money and whatever satisfaction she derives from the job itself. A man is working for his ability to attract a girlfriend, his status in society, his entire sense of "value". It's hardly surprising that men are motivated to choose riskier and higher earning careers.

I don't mean to go all PC police on you, especially since I agree with the first part of your comment, but this is most certainly not the case with most millennials (and even many women of the generation before). Most of the young women I meet today very much subscribe to the same notion of getting their sense of worth through their jobs, independence etc. So I would argue they are playing the same "game" in the employment market. However, our (US) society continues to propagate certain gender-stereotypes about careers which seep into all other aspects of our culture as well. e.g. its much more acceptable/common to be a female engineer in China and India. Now once these stereotypes are removed, you would see a lot more cross-participation which would be REALLY good for the US economy.

He is saying that women don't need careers to increase their status, but men do. It's more or less implying that women gain value in American society from their looks, rather than their contributions to society.

Is it sexist? Is it true? Is it a different story in China?

> Is it a different story in China?

In China, both genders are equally judged on looks. It's common for job applications to require headshots, which I find odd, but apparently that practice also exists in Germany and some South American countries.

> Now...if society is breaking in a way that it's tough for men to get good jobs, then let's look at that. Women aren't to blame for that, though. Let's look at what's really going on.

I don't think the comments in this section suggested blaming women for reducing men's partipation in the workforce. Specifically, the comment's OP seems to be suggesting that while the economic tables have changed, socially it is still a requirement for men to have a regular, well paying job (or whatever that expectation is) which perhaps also need to change to accommodate the reality that a lot of men may not satisfy that requirement, while still being good partners in relationships.

What I was responding to was this: "women might need to make a compromise."

Nope, if women are happy, then good for them, they certainly don't need to make a compromise. They don't owe men anything.

The modal verb "to need" is highly depend on the context.

You might have seen it in a different context than the author. While you may have interpreted it as saying that if women don't compromise, then they are bad, the author could have meant that if women don't compromise, then (the population will decrease/whatever else that might make sense).

> When really, stuff like that exists because women were expected to forego career for marriage, etc.,

Well, that's the whole point. Family courts are still heavily biased towards women. As long as women and men are not treated differently, and alimony and spousal support are evenly distributed between genders, then yes, "bring it on".

> Women aren't to blame for that, though.

I did not say that. But "expecting a guy to have his shit together? I think that's great." is not so great. If you start to put socio-economic criterias for a relationship, I don't think you really want a relationship.

> They most certainly are not being kept out of those jobs.

What about college graduation rates? New college grads are heavily biased in favor of women, and women earn more money than male counterparts on average(until some decide to take off in their career to have/raise kids).

My point was simply that men with credentials for a job aren't being rejected solely because they are a man. A few decades ago, women were routinely rejected solely for being a woman.

Sure, but now we have a society which has swung the other way. Shouldn't college attendance rates be 50/50 by gender? Thats the conventional wisdom, at least when it's women who are getting the short end of the stick

>If the tables had turned, then men would be systematically be kept out of jobs, particularly high paying careers.

hundreds of thousands of men that we have imprisoned, thousands of men with mental health issues and drug addictions. men that took a wrong turn in life and ended up homeless, destitute or in the prison.

These men have been systematically kept out of jobs. There has to be special kind of hypocrisy in action to conclude society influences women's choices( eg: giving them barbie/pink toys) and prevents them from having a STEM career and yet turn around and say men at bottom belong there because of their own failings. Men at the bottom must pay the price for the 'privilege' enjoyed by men at top.

According to the narrative, a rich woman is 'systematically be kept out of jobs' while a poor boy man in a war/drug-torn urban environment is not. I just hate this line of thought so much.

Sex is not a deterrent to one's success in todays America, parental income is, a privilege that can be precisely measured.

Those are all fair points. My point wasn't that any man can simply roll up and get the high paying job and it's never been the case. Many men would have been rejected just based on the color of their skin or because they had a Jewish last name.

By and large, men aren't being denied access to an interview simply based on their gender. If we go back a few decades, women were denied access to an interview simply based on their gender.

That may have once been the case, but not anymore. Almost all companies have some sort of affirmative action hiring process that is rigged against white men. I see tons of job postings where women and minorities are "strongly urged to apply." That's kind of wording makes it sound like a white man would not be considered for the position.

There is no better time to be a woman in Tech from a hiring perspective. Two of my female classmates from college who are more or less the same as me ( a male ) are inundated with offers from top tech companies in the valley, not even exaggerating. Meanwhile, it would be a minor miracle if recruiters even call me back.

there are other issues like pervasive culture of sexual harassment in tech but getting hired is not one of them.

By compromise, he probably means that women will have to get comfortable dating men who earn the same or less than them. Or are less ambitious than them.

In my perception most women don't look at men who aren't more well off than themselves or lower status than themselves.

You are entirely theoretically correct. Unfortunately reality is far more complicated.

You may want to reassess your approach after reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13795367.

In short: Data indicate our current society doesn't function in a world where men aren't substantially better off - and we're equitably continuing to head away from that.

An intelligent, thoughtful, rational approach would be ideal rather than seeking to score points "white knighting" or "feministing" in the gender war.

Or keep picking on them and ignore the problem. Help show the world that feminists are no better than the men they deride. Besides, what type of harm can broken family units and a substantial disillusioned male subclass possibly cause anyway?

Try making her laugh. Try listening to her. Be honest. Don't open by trying to fuck.#

Yes, it's a skill that like any other, requires deliberate practice. The skill, however, is being a generally enjoyable person to be around.

#(If it seems like the last point contradicts the honesty, don't go around making sex your goal. Most humans are horny, it ain't anything you really need to draw attention to.)

edit: downvote with comments

e2: A known effect of attacking (without confronting the core of the problem), or suppressing, or dismissing parties expressing certain beliefs or engaging in particular behaviors is that the opposing party reaffirms their actions or beliefs. Two-way intelligent and earnest discussion makes both sides amenable to the reasonable positions of the other.

> A known effect of attacking (without confronting the core of the problem), or suppressing, or dismissing parties expressing certain beliefs or engaging in particular behaviors is that the opposing party reaffirms their actions or beliefs. Two-way intelligent and earnest discussion makes both sides amenable to the reasonable positions of the other.

The downvotes are here not because people disagree with you, but because the comment doesn't confront the core of the problem and doesn't contribute to the discussion in a productive way. It can be hard not to take downvotes personally and get defensive, but the comment in question is not defensible.

Maybe I misunderstand the parent? He says "You can't find women unless you have a job, while women have made outstanding progress in education and the workforce, and for some reason they have a hard time dating people who have a less comfortable situation than themselves" - I'm interpreting the core of his argument as "men have an inordinately difficult time finding a mate if they are significantly lacking in social status." I disagree with this fundamentally - my assertion is that the most reliable and broadly applicable way of attracting women is to be charismatic, and that charisma is a trainable skill. Does this clarify things, or am I still offbase?

e: a broader point that I touch on in other comments is that the bar to having a partner in general is low-to-nonexistent. However, doing the above opens up the most options. e2: Yes, having status also expands options. However, it's neither broadly applicable nor helps maintain the long term emotional bond. Parent expressed frustration at the economic tension involved in middle class relationships. The answer to this is emphatically not wealth or status, as relationship-wise, that only trades one class of stressors for another.

Meta (since it's too late to edit my original reply):

The sole fact that you commented compelled me to clarify my position and admit that I may indeed have misunderstood the original poster. That is why I am so insistent on actual discussion. My original reaction was, "these people aren't using their words to address mine? Clearly they can't even use their words, so they must be wrong and I must be right." Obviously that reaction isn't rational in this case, but I don't really know what to do about it yet other than to always try to provoke earnest debate.

It's a lazy Sunday, I'll reply to both here.

Downvotes are essential. Replying to a poor-quality comment wastes time and effort, downvoting means that other people won't read it.

> Obviously that reaction isn't rational in this case, but I don't really know what to do about it yet other than to always try to provoke earnest debate.

Consider that the reaction may not be rational in other cases. The appeal here is basically an emotionally-founded ultimatum, "Reply to me or else I won't change my opinion." That's how I interpreted it.

A core problem with earnest debate online is that comments are so often misinterpreted. Maybe I just misinterpreted yours! You can write defensively, but defensive writing is less clear. My writing on Stack Overflow, Hacker News, etc. is very defensive and it suffers for it, but I deal with fewer comments that misinterpret things. You can also interpret comments liberally. Consider, "You can't find women unless you have a job." Literally it means that unemployed men are incapable of getting girlfriends or wives. This is obviously false, so there's no point in replying to the literal interpretation here.

> I disagree with this fundamentally - my assertion is that the most reliable and broadly applicable way of attracting women is to be charismatic, and that charisma is a trainable skill.

Here are the problems I see with this series of comments:

The original comment did not make this claim, no matter how generously I read it. At best, that claim is a presupposition of the original comment. The difference betwen presuppositions and claims is critical for good discussion. It is cumbersome to reply to a statement when you disagree with a presupposition, which is why unjustified presuppositions are considered a type of informal fallacy.

The second problem is that the claim is not germane. The comment by jokoon claims that it is much more difficult for unemployed men to get a girlfriend, and saying that charisma is more important than employment status is tangential at best.

The third problem is that the reply to jokoon's comment is poor quality. The first four sentences seem like they were copied from the section headings of a random dating advice article. The advice is so obvious that the comment seems to carry the implication that jokoon must be a true idiot in order to need this advice.

Dove anyone have real data on what's nature vs. nurture? So many people make arguments on this important topic that depend on huge assumptions.

For example someone below said women won't mind dating men with less status once our culture evolves. Are we so sure of that?

This is not a criticism of females. I doubt any gender can be cultured out preference for physical attributes.

We can support equal rights and still acknowledge innate differences right?

>I doubt any gender can be cultured out preference for physical attributes.

These are evolutionary traits and will most likely not change at least at the time scale of a few generations.

>We can support equal rights and still acknowledge innate differences right?

That's the idea. Law and human rights are deeply "contra natura" by definition.

Ignoring nature to the extent we are doing as a species will not end well as far as having a just society.

I replied to another commenter expressing your same view here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13798051. My comment asserts your core view is inconsistent both with apparent human sexual activity and how evolutionary pressures work.

> Assuming most humans having sex is not a recent development, any evolutionary pressures...

Here I think your assumption is factually wrong. DNA testing shows that it is relatively recent (very few thousands of years)

Can you link to some studies? I'm having trouble Google'ing for anything relevant :\

> now that the tables have turned, women might need to make a compromise

Most of us here on HN work in the tech industry, with its notorious sexism and underrepresentation problems. So let's get real here.

To claim that the tables have turned reeks of the same claim to victimhood that the straight white christian men that voted for Trump use to justify their crap.

You claim you don't want to right the "whole mensright bandwagon", but you're already on it.

The tables aren't even close to having been turned, the disappearance of many jobs that men continued to claim for themselves until they stopped existing is just a coincidence.

I'm in the US. Women have every incentive to get a STEM degree, given the fact that nearly every major tech company has an affirmative action hiring process. But guess what? Women are choosing to get other degrees. It's not sexist to have some differences between the sexes as long as there's an equal opportunity.

> some treatment

Can I ask what this refers to? SSRI?

>have a hard time dating people who have a less comfortable situation than themselves.

This may be evolutionary wired, but forget about it. That mental model has no potential to help.

Effective relationships must provide value to both parties.

So demonstrate value. "Comfortable situation" is one shortcut to measure value. "Great father", "good listener", "considerate", "sane", "stable" are all incredibly valuable and crazy hard to measure.

The dirty truth: Many men don't provide value.

Well, a man with a less comfortable situation might have some self esteem issue that can potentially cause trouble in a relationship.

So it is not a direct cause, but it can be a cause.

> "Great father", "good listener", "considerate", "sane", "stable" are all incredibly valuable and crazy hard to measure.

Well only women can really evaluate and "feel" those qualities.

Evolutionarily speaking here: Pregnancy and child rearing is expensive for females (of any species). Men have a far greater store of sperm than females who have limited eggs available during her reproductive time window.

This means that a male can father many more offsprings than a female can in her lifetime.

Even though monogamy..as a modern concept..is more prevalent, it is more often than not, serial monogamy.

But. Because. Evolutionary hardwiring.

Women want males to be providers because males can impregnate multiple females at the same time. Without being a bonded pair, or the resource costly job of raising offsprings would not be a shared endeavor. Bringing forth children takes a physical toll on a woman in more ways than one. It doesn't cost men anything other than ejaculation to create offspring. So women give birth. Men provide.

Of course, society has changed so much since cave men days, but our wiring probably hasn't..

Tying back to original topic...when women provide for themselves, what is the role of men? Perhaps our free floating relationship matrix without the need to be bonded pairs to bring forth offsprings is the reason.

Birds spend a lot of energy while flying..they have hollow bones and have a high metabolism. They expend a lot of energy just to exist. They migrate.

Mammals hibernate. They know how to conserve and regulate metabolism. Their energy needs are less expensive. Maybe that's why birds are monogamous and many mammals have harems.

As mammals, the human animal is already living within a moral but artificial construct of monogamy. Female apes share responsibilities to raise their young communally. Monogamy is an evolutionary disadvantage. It conserves energy and resources. It promotes kinship.

Human apes don't. Right or wrong, that's different. But we don't. If women can provide for themselves and have control over their reproductive freedoms, why do they need free range men anyways? The Y chromosome is supposedly composed of junk DNA.

This is bit of a ramble, but I would like to think it made at least some go 'a-ha'!

You're very right, but

> why do they need free range men anyways?

Because people need affection and to have fun, even isolated mothers. When you start to put socio-economical criterias into your love life, some people will get frustrated. That's the whole point of tinder, so that people get out more and just spend some good time for their well being.

You said that we are wired, and this is true, so when civilized society start to meddle with this wiring, it can be a weird feeling.

Well..that was a pieced together free flowing thought process. I don't know..trying to grasp at creating an explanation. Truth is..I don't know. I could come up with another using only economic and political indicators rather than biological. Or sociological. Or psychological. It is an interesting statistic, nevertheless..

The explanation is that the government massages unemployment figures to make the economy look better than it is. The government has been doing this for decades, under Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. Unemployment is one of the most widely watched and therefor political numbers; anyone who is in power wants it to look as good as possible.

One of the tactics to make the official unemployment rates look better is to classify some unemployed workers as "not looking for work." Voila! They don't show up in the official estimates and it is their fault!

Most economists are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other powerful institutions that have little interest in questioning the official numbers. Hence lengthy academic discussions to try to "explain" the seemingly odd behavior.

It's shocking, just plain shocking, how short people's memories are, in regards to their own governmental details. The manipulations to deflate the unemployment numbers, I was cognizant of in high school, have never stopped. New techniques come up every administration (seemingly every year). It's like how "the tech industry innovation value" is now added to the UDP arbitrarily. Smoke and mirrors. Google "US employed population" then click "What percentage of the US population is working?" -

What percentage of the US population is working?

According to the October jobs report, the seasonally adjusted employment-to-population ratio was 59.2% last month, one percentage point higher than it was a year earlier. Over that same period, the “official” unemployment rate fell from a seasonally adjusted 7.2% to 5.8%.Nov 7, 2014

For that 59.2%, who counts as employed and who counts in the population? To have 40.8% not employed, they must be counting people in school, people who are retired, probably stay-at-home parents, people with serious disabilities, and the people wealthy enough not to work. How is that a useful figure?

The official figure doesn't include people who are too young or too old and doesn't include people who are not looking for work. Certainly there are some people who society would say should be looking for work and we'd like to count them amongst the unemployed but there isn't a good way differentiate them from the people who have good reasons for not looking for work. So the official number is based who says they are looking for work.

That seems like a low number, but babies tend not to be allowed to work in this country, and more people are going to college, retirees are living longer.

A better number might be NEET - self employeed under the retirement age vs entire population. Thats still not entirely fair, since it misses those who have deliberately chosen not to work, but that number is probably pretty small.

59.2% is quite misleading because it includes students and retirees. The next two paragraphs from your own source[1] say:

    One reason for the difference is that the share of Americans saying they 
    don’t want a job has trended up since the Great Recession: from 31.9% of
    the working-age population in October 2008 to 34.6% last month (on a 
    non-seasonally adjusted basis). Some of that increase, though, may be due
    to Baby Boomers reaching retirement age; as they leave the workforce over
    the next several years, labor economists expect the employment-to-population
    ratio to trend lower. Young adults staying in or returning to school also
    may be a factor.

    So if we look at just the 25-to-54 age group, which strips out most students
    and retirees, the employment-to-population ratio has been slowly improving
    since it bottomed out at 74.6% (not seasonally adjusted) in February 2011. 
    Last month, 77.3% of all 25-to-54-year-olds were employed, which is well below
    the indicator’s pre-recession high in October 2006, when 80.7% of people in 
    this age group were employed.

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/07/employment-v...

Why should we exclude students and retirees from our key employment metrics? Society must pay for students and retirees, and the higher the employment-to-population ratio, the easier that is to do.

I suppose it depends on the purpose of the metric you are evaluating. If your goal is to find the percentage of people currently unemployed because they are looking for a job but unable to get one, then it does not make sense to include students or retirees that are not currently looking for work.

Besides, I'm not sure it's accurate to claim "society must pay for students and retirees". Some students can pay for themselves (via loans) and some retirees can pay for themselves (via their own retirement savings).

> 59.2% is quite misleading because it includes students and retirees.

Misleading does imply context, which is used to confuse the issue and has traditionally been used to alter the statistic to meet agendas.

People who aren't looking for work, students, retirees, etc is irrelevant. It's a statistic about who is employed versus not employed as a relative portion. While I don't think there is a canonically sound source anymore, we have had a serious system problem for awhile. When even the curated sources by one agency are more pessimistic than the celebrated federal numbers, it's now a question of how wrong they are, not what they say.

"Massages" makes it sound like the change the measures on the fly which is not the case. See my other comment about counting those not working vs. those not looking for work.

I use "massages" to cover two factors. First, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has redefined the way it measures unemployment and employment several times over the decades. In addition, there are a range of seasonal adjustments and other possible variations in the surveys and number crunching that are more difficult to understand and less well documented.

See for example this discussion of discrepancies between the BLS unemployment rate and the Gallup Poll unemployment rate (since 2010):

http://unemploymentdata.com/unemployment/is-the-government-f...

It is difficult to know if in practice the household surveys are done the same way each time and also what seasonal and "one-time" adjustments may be occurring either during the first measurement or subsequent corrections.

As the discrepancies between the BLS and Gallup numbers indicate, there is evidence of shorter term massaging not captured in the major redefinitions, such as excluding "discouraged workers" who want a job but supposedly have not looked for one recently, in the 1994 revisions to the unemployment measures.

This view really bothers me. The generally reported "unemployment" figure in the media does have the problems you mention. But the US Gov't through Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out all the numbers you say are being hidden. More numbers than a typical person has time to consume in it's entirety.

They're just not termed "unemployment", it's labor participation rate or sometimes U-7: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

or other flavors: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

Now I'd agree it is a terrible shame that political and business news media almost completely ignore any introspection in the labor stats of this area.

This is the opening paragraph of the BLS press release on employment from Feb. 28, 2017. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/srgune.nr0.htm

For release 10:00 a.m. (EST) Tuesday, February 28, 2017 USDL-17-0286

Technical information: (202) 691-6392 * lausinfo@bls.gov * www.bls.gov/lau Media contact: (202) 691-5902 * PressOffice@bls.gov

                REGIONAL AND STATE UNEMPLOYMENT -- 2016 ANNUAL AVERAGES

Annual average unemployment rates decreased in 38 states and the District of Columbia, increased in 9 states, and were unchanged in 3 states in 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment-population ratios increased in 36 states and the District, decreased in 12 states, and were unchanged in 2 states. The U.S. jobless rate declined by 0.4 percentage point from the prior year to 4.9 percent, and the national employment-population ratio rose by 0.4 point to 59.7 percent.

Note that BLS uses the U-3 "unemployment rate" of 4.9 percent without qualifications or explanation. Yes, if you read through the fine print in BLS documentation (not the press release), you can determine that U-3 omits allegedly "discouraged workers" as in fact does the broader U-6 measure as well.

The mass media is following the government/BLS lead in promoting the U-3 measure as the "jobless rate." Again, there is no qualification in the opening paragraph, no mention of the broader U-6 measure or the general issue of purportedly discouraged workers.

The uncritical, almost universal repetition of the U-3 number raises the question of the independence of the major mass media, the so-called Mainstream Media or MSM, and the government, and vice versa.

It's a press release, not a data digestion guide. The data you want is in the second link I provided from the BLS. We should hold government to high standards, but in this area, the methodology is printed, and data is available.

There are some many areas (such as wiretaps and spying) where we could be pressing the hold the gov't to more transparency, or even discussing the actual problem of long term unemployment instead of casting aspersions on data manipulation which is straightforwardly accessible. I think the term "unemployment" simply does not mean exactly what you want it to mean. To move forward, one might need to coin a new catchier term in which to associate the problem for which you want greater awareness.

The real unemployment rate, U-6 is probably closer to the truth: http://www.gallup.com/poll/189068/bls-unemployment-seasonall...

I think that there is more to this story that just "low education low skill men not working". I personally think that this has more to do with the poor state of psychological health at this socio-economic status.

Specifically, the people I know who fall into this category have one or more problems:

1. One (big) problem is that they often have an enabler -- that is, someone who is supporting these folks not working in some way. The fact that they don't do more chores or childcare supports this hypothesis. As the video said, sometimes it's the wife, sometimes it's the government via disability, sometimes it's family.

2. Another problem is issues with authority -- some of these folks are difficult or impossible to manage. Of course, sometimes it's because the company/manager is dysfunctional. Other times, the "issue" is that an employer sets healthy boundaries, and someone who does not have healthy boundaries will struggle to work within such an environment.

3. A third problem is simply drug use. There are a not small number of jobs that can be done by people with low education and low skills, but the employee must be drug-free or must be a "functional" drug user. There is definitely a chicken-egg question about drug use, but once drug use begins, getting and keeping a job becomes much more difficult.

In the video, they say education is one of the keys to help the situation, and I am not convinced that this is true with the current state of education in the US. The education that needs to be done is more social/psychological in nature, imho. Until this happens, these dysfunctional people will continue to be dysfunctional. I don't want to pretend like this type of education is easy, but I think that it's closer to the solution.

Besides, education has never been more accessible. One can sit down at their home computer – or one freely provided by a local library – and gain skills, across a variety of professions, that can make them highly marketable.

These people aren't sitting at home watching TV because they lack education. They lack education for the same reason they are sitting at home, which is a much more complex topic, and not solved by simply making education even more accessible.

I'd note, though, that most people can't really engage in self-directed study without structural motivations. After college, I think most people never read a textbook with such ferocity ever again. If you could just dump kids in front of Kahn Academy, life would be a lot easier.

Precisely.

I'll also add there's huge benefits to live collaboration and apprenticeship, namely the ability to solve roadblocks with the help of others at a pace that's likely to be faster than working alone.

You act like lower-class "uneducated" men _should_ be unable to get a job. That's a bit messed up in my opinion. At a time of unparalleled wealth, all classes should be prospering.

Also, I say "education" in quotes because today in an age where anyone can learn anything on the internet, a lack of degree does not mean a lack of education. A degree just shows you're willing to be compliant and follow an arbitrary education system for years just to improve your social status. It doesn't mean you're unable to learn.

It sounds like to me randomdata is suggesting that personality or psychology is the 3rd missing variable, and that this psychological or personality trait leads to both joblessness and poor education.

Suggesting that an entire block of the population doing poorly is simply because they are lazy is definitely a stretch. Everyone wants to feel like they are valued and are accomplishing something. Maybe they behave this way because the opportunities for the uneducated have been eradicated due to globalization and illegal immigration lowering the value of their work.

> You act like lower-class "uneducated" men _should_ be unable to get a job.

Where did you get that idea? As a farmer, I see endless work opportunities where the employers would just be happy to have someone show up. It seems most aren't willing to do the work though[1]. Which is fine. It's not everyone's cup of tea. Even more comfortable or 'higher status' work is also easily attainable with a bit of effort.

However, none of this addresses the reason for the situation they are in, and I don't mean just because they are lazy like you insinuated in another comment. There are a number of reasons why some people struggle in the workplace and it is related to the same reasons why they struggle in school, or even learning on the internet for that matter. To pretend that we can just throw education at this problem is misguided. Lack of education isn't the problem.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/15/north...

Not like you can sit at a public library's computer all day. You get timed about an hour a session and can only do three sessions a day and of course, if it there's a wait list, you have to wait.

Also, many libraries nowadays have been turned into "after school" centers where there's a whole load of talking on the kids section of the library.

There is a "quiet" zone, but people still whisper and really just straight out talk and you can very much hear the kids down the hall yelling and what not.

Unless you live in a huge metro area with a very large library (even then, the computer limit is still there) and instead of loud kids you get loud bums who are told every 10 minutes to be quiet by the guard...a library isn't really a great place to "sit down and gain skills across a variety of professions".

The only kinds of library where that romantic environment exists is at Universities, which many can only be accessed if you're a student there.

State university libraries are generally open to any resident of that state, student or not. Private universities might not be.

I suppose, generally, but I go to a state university, you do need to swipe your active student ID card to enter the library through a turnstile. I've also attended many hackathons at other unis where turnstiles exist as well and you can't enter unless you're a student there.

I mostly remember because of the pain it was to get clearance from security at those unis to be able to get out of the hackathon (at their libraries) and get back in; had to leave ID and take my visitor badge with me.

I'm sure many state unis are open to residents of that state, but I know not all. To be honest, I prefer it to be that way for the same reason "actual" public libraries just aren't conducive for actually studying something that takes a lot concentration.

Education has never been more accessible, but unfortunately, at least here in the US, the education system does not nurture intellectual curiosity and promotes a submissive style of education where "the student" is dependent and subservient to "the teacher".

I grew up in a small town with some people like this and I think what you are observing is actually a hindsight view of the situation. The vast majority of the people were unable to get a job for some reason and then moved back home to ya know avoid starving. Then on your second point many of these people did not start out with a bad attitude but end up feeling like they constantly are struggling due to others treating them badly in jobs -- often due to a lack of skills or education. Then finally many of these people become depressed about their life situation and end up taking drugs to avoid dealing with how their life is not going in a good direction.

So while the things you mention can likely be true, the behaviors you are talking about are very much related to people having difficulties in their 20s finding jobs and potentially getting laid off or fired and then struggling to get a new job. Basically my thought is that many of these people need some place that will really "help" them. Meaning that they need a type of job that will give them a good chance and allow them to make mistakes. Then help them get off drugs or other things that are hindering them.

I really like Germany's trade school concept. There are tons of people who could do those jobs well and if you give them a shot to do that at a young age you give them a marketable skill. Some people just honestly don't do well in a super academic environment.

I think the government would be very smart to say lets make it practically free to have people in various areas hard hit to do some trade skills programs.

We as a society benefit if there are more plumbers and welders and carpenters.

I keep wondering about this. It's so obvious that trade schools are a good thing. I have nothing against code academies, but where is the similar kind of shiny kind of get people employed for the sake of society and do social good" for trade schools? Combine that with an income based repayment for tuition and you're cooking with gas.

Yea seriously, coding schools are not gonna happen for many people with not the best education.. I mean I know tons of smart people who don't want to write code even though they could do it. So the trade school thing can be economically explained very simply:

Current situation in 2017: I pay a plumber to fix my pipes $800 for 2 hours of work. Ouch. 1000 other people in my area pay that same amount. $800,000 USD has been transferred from many different people rich or poor to the plumbers.

Future, where we have more plumbers competing for the same job: Job costs $400. 1000 people pay only $400k to get the job done. So the people in that area have $400k more in their pockets to spend on other things. The now greater number of plumbers all make less money than the small number of plumbers that existed before. However, you have maybe 50 plumbers in an area instead of 25. So you have more people who are working a job that keeps them alive and busy and happy and far less likely to be doing drugs and likely they will have kids and get married.

So basically the concept of asking a community to cover the cost of paying for trade schools for more people is I think extremely smart to do. And the people who get cheap education to do these trades generally are going to feel pretty happy about that as well -- like "hey people in my area care about people doing these jobs..., so I'm a valuable person in my community.."

OK, warning: what's coming is a wild personal opinion based on anecdotal experience with a couple of guys.

There are a couple of guys I know who fit into the category in the article. I don't believe that the solution proposed would have any effect. It just is at an impedance mismatch with the mindset, with the culture.

I'll mention one guy I know, a neighbor, who fixes cars in his folks's barn, for a living. He has no qualifications, no certifications and not much special equipment. I hear him doing a lot of banging. People who have not much money know him as a car-fixer guy who works cheap and bring him cars.

I very much admire his work ethic. When I let the dog out at 5:30 in the morning he is at work already, banging hard, and I often hear him at 8 at night. But he can't make any real money at it. People come to him precisely because he doesn't charge much.

To an economist the thought is that if a person could improve their economic and social standing by getting training or investing in specialized equipment, like a lift, of course they would do it. The mathematical argument is compelling.

But as I understand it, proposed solution of having these folks go in for training just does not fit the culture. I heard him the other day in a conversation about welding. He welds a little, but the guy asked him about a particular job and he had to say that for that you'd need training.

Training is never going to happen. It isn't a lack of energy, or the needed intelligence, or a belief in entrepeneurship among the men I know in this category. It is a culture thing; "school" is just a non-starter.

If you stop learning, you stop growing, financially and, much worse, intellectually. People who refuse to learn have to make peace with the fact that they remain in their exact place for the rest of their lives. However, I do ask myself, how can someone who works from 5.30AM to 8PM afford to spend any time to learn?

Let me tell you how I did it.

I found a job for which I was overqualified and when I was done with the job for the day I studied for a better job.

After doing this recursively a few times I landed a well paying job with great health insurance.

It gets easier just as sailing in the ocean is easier than sailing near the coast - you don't risk running aground.

I don't know that gender has much to do, necessarily, with the fact that it's hard to find a partner when your life consists of not doing much and watching reruns.

The guilt-shame-depression-guilt cycle is certainly reinforced in non-working men by indoctrination in a particular strain of patriarchal gender roles. Having a little voice in the back of your head constantly yelling at you for being a failure and "not really a man" can't be healthy.

The evolutionary strategies are different between the genders, mostly because the biologically expensive act of growing a child for months and raising it for years means women need to be more selective towards their mates.

I pretty much regard "well, sexual pressures on evolution!" to be the biologist's cop-out answer when they don't actually know what's going on.

I am male, and I would not want to date a woman who spends all day watching TV and nothing else, either.

Are you suggesting there isn't a difference in reproductive strategy between men and women? Edit: to those downvoting me, read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mating_strategies

One big issue with this problem is that these men are not all in the same location. Many of them are distributed through the so called rust belt areas -- I've seen maps of this previously. So simply creating a few factories here and there will only address a small part of the problem. They mentioned infrastructure improvement as a way to put some of these people to work -- I think that sounds reasonable because you can apply those jobs and money in the areas hardest hit, but if it only lasts 3 years then it doesn't solve the problem. It would make more sense to incentivize these people to move to areas where there are just more jobs available -- for example, work doing construction for somebody in Indiana for a while then transfer to someplace else. There are tons of jobs across skill levels in areas where there is a growing city. But if you live someplace where the population is declining and have less than high school education then both companies and government are not super excited about investing heavily there. Better to invest in the suburbs of Chicago or Minneapolis rather than small towns that barely have enough jobs anyway. But I think we need to help people move to places it's easier to support long term. So my point is the location of these people is a big factor.

While I think location may be part of the problem, I think it's a relatively small problem. IMHO, the biggest part of the problem is that many of these people are not employable, and due to having an enabler, are not motivated to become employable. There are lots of places in the Rust Belt looking for people to hire, but they need people who will show up clean and sober who will also do the work. These low requirements probably seem like a given to most of the people on HN, but in some communities and some socio-economic classes, this is definitely not a given.

Very true. It's definitely now a situation where we are dealing with the fallout from years of not dealing with the problem. Yea I recently read a story where a factory tried to hire around 50 people and could only hire a small number due to the vast majority failing drug tests. I was actually fairly surprised to hear that. So yea now we are dealing with the problem that has been festering and getting worse for years..

> could only hire a small number due to the vast majority failing drug tests.

I'm surprised mandatory drug testing is a thing in the US. In Germany it's actually outright illegal to do drug tests on employees (exceptions are rare, generally employers need reasonable suspicion (!) and the job must be safety critical, per http://www.zeit.de/karriere/beruf/2013-11/arbeitsrecht-droge...).

As long as it does not involve any heavy machinery, weapons or healthcare no one gives a f..k here what you do in your free time as long as you don't show up drunk or high on the job. And even then, many policemen and healthcare personnel has issues with alcohol abuse...

Yes, practically speaking, the way its done now, corporate drug tests are indeed of not insignificant cost and of questionable deterrence.

There sometimes is financial incentive for them (insurance discounts), but unfortunately at least some of the reason they show up here more than anywhere else is image. The modern mandatory corporate drug test in America sprung up during the Reagan era, when zero tolerance / "War on Drugs" culture was at its peak. (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/drug-te...).

"Zero tolerance" policies are rightfully being softened in some of the US, but unfortunately in certain quarters, this attitude lives on.

Yea I recently read a story where a factory tried to hire around 50 people and could only hire a small number due to the vast majority failing drug tests.

Maybe the problem is whatever stupidity requires/incentivizes employers to police what "their" employees do when not at work?

I think it's a valid concern on employers' behalf as far as opiates and meth are concerned. You do not want to be the manager of any business that has a lot of expensive stuff within arms reach -- whether it's a restaurant kitchen or a Home Depot or a jobsite or whatever -- when one of the employees loses control of their habit, needs cash badly, and commits a spectacularly stupid act of larceny to get that cash. I have seen this play out a few times in friends' businesses and it is not pretty.

With that said, I'd agree it's complete bullshit to be testing your employees to try to sniff out recreational marijuana use. A lot of BigCo middle management are socially conservative people in their 40's-60's, and unfortunately many of them operate from a simplistic baseline of "all drugs are bad"...pretty clear that this preponderance is changing, perhaps not quickly enough.

Depends on the drug of course, but since the vast majority of these substances are both highly addictive and also severely impact your ability to operate heavy machinery, people who test positive for (certain types of) drugs are obviously more of a liability on a factory floor. I don't think it's stupidity that makes employers hesitant in this case.

Companies on the west coast in US generally are becoming pretty soft on marijuana due to the recent law changes, but things like opiates or meth definitely they are screening for. There definitely are instances of risk of injury with equipment at work if they show up high, but also many businesses end up with expensive easy to sell machines suddenly walking off the site. So simply theft alone to support a habit of using drugs often is the reason for screening out drug users. The theft issue I've heard of happening from many business owners and can be pretty substantial. Like 2k a week of equipment disappearing until they figure out who it is. Typically expensive tools and electronics that are easy to sell on Craigslist.

I don't personally know any men in that age range who fit that description, but I can imagine that living in the middle of the country there are probably fewer jobs than people. I've heard people suggest that they just relocate to an area with more jobs, but it's very difficult for someone with little money (and many times, little education) to relocate to more densely populated areas.

As a whole, our society should not leave these people behind. It would be nice to see more education initiatives focused towards getting people fitting this description the training required to get them back in the workforce. Even if the country couldn't afford to subsidize this fully, maybe set up a plan that allowed them to pay 10-15% of their salary for a year or two like some coding boot camps do.

This article strikes out at the end. The answer for the folks who have given up looking for a job isn't easier access to college as suggested.

When someone drops out of high school it's not because they had too few choices to go to college, it's because they didn't see any value in the education they were already getting.

We need more vocational education and it needs to start earlier in life.

They should also teach a class in high school called "life" in which kids have to construct a virtual life for themselves, finds a place to live on Craigslist, price furniture, calculate food expenses, gas, electric, internet, mobile, insurance, etc, etc, so they have a good concept of what they're up against. Then talk about serious alternatives to pay for that life, a vocation, the military, college professional.

My HVAC guy didn't need college; it would be a huge waste of money and it would have postponed his career by 4 years. People like him can make six figures if they're good and easily support a family of 4.

I think even better would be to make education completely voluntary. This would help highlight the benefits so that the people who don't value it could make better choices.

For minors, the decision whether or not to enroll in school would be left up to the parents, which isn't always ideal for the kid or the community (see, for example, the vaxxer movement).

"We will have to write off one to two entire generations". This from one industrial client who manages a workforce in the rural and suburban south. Why? The skills gap. Drug abuse, particularly meth. Competition from disability, welfare and black market income sources. I've heard similar from other clients. Their contempt for politicians stems largely from their perceptions that rural/middle America has been left to rot as big cities and technology centers thrive. The recent election in the US should have been viewed by both sides as the mother of all wake-up calls for Congress and the President to deliver results. Instead... outright political civil war with both sides having blame.

I see this and it's very frustrating. The things you mentioned are what make it such a difficult problem, especially "competition from disability, welfare and black market income sources." So often, it's papered over and misleadingly described as something else entirely for politically expedient means, as if there was a time we could go back to where we were safe from these forces.

The truth is, we never were and never will be, and we have to be always vigilant about fighting it by working to provide opportunity and safety nets. I despise that the conversation is always framed in moral terms regarding whether those who need safety nets "deserve" them, when the question should really be about whether we're serious about winning the competition against non-productive income sources, state sponsored or otherwise. The conversation is perennially hijacked.

What's sad to me is that all those folks in those shitty, worn-out parts of the country, they're the perfect target market for a universal basic income. Why? Cause in the really poor counties, there's already a de-facto UBI, in the form of disability payments. It's just not formally universal, and people have to jump through a lot of hoops to maintain it. Simplify the whole thing, and pump some money into these places that have nothing and never will again on their own.

The results of the recent election were driven by inefficiencies in the American electoral system, such as the electoral college, gerrymandered districts that result in Republicans holding more seats than their vote totals would suggest, etc.

The "skills gap" is largely a result of the actions of employers. There is disdain for on the job training for easily learnable, high access jobs such as waitstaff, cashiers, etc. Furthermore they aim to pay as little as possible, while being as demanding as possible. They have stopped using defined weekly/biweekly scheduling and switched to unpredictable schedules that rapidly shift total hours worked, days worked, and even reduced hourly shifts. Oftentimes these jobs do not pay markedly more than one would get struggling to get by via social programs, family/friends, etc.

> Middle America's stubborn refusal to move forward

This is a form of name-calling, which the site guidelines ask you not to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I vouched for GP because they seem to have removed the name-calling.

The equivocation between parties is pretty weird, considering that a substantial chunk of the Democratic platform was about things that would offer real help to these suffering areas (for example, subsidized education in new fields), while the Republicans offered pixie dust and the claim that outcompeted mining and manufacturing jobs would magically reappear.

Like a lot of studies which simply count "jobs" this one misses the point. The combination of wages being driven down, broken unions and sky-high rents mean the real value of many jobs is worthless. Here in the UK zero-hours contracts and low pay are endemic whilst most low income earners rely on housing benefit to supplement their pay. Simply having a job does not mean having a living income.

Among other things, this man thinks there is a causality between men playing video game and not looking for work.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/11/erik_hurst_on_w.htm...

Can confirm, know a guy who plays video games and is not looking for work.

Playing video games is his work.

I think it's the other way around...able men aren't looking for work because the job market isn't attractive. They must be doing something that satisfies them one way or another. I have a problem when people start pointing out that they must be junkies doing drugs and alcohol.

To think that a dysfunctional "job" is somehow superior means there is some kind of social agenda/engineering going on...blaming the people who are affected when it's clear that the problem is employers looking for cheaper outsourcing. What we have right now is social engineering and "thought leaders" trying to excuse the obvious.

I think it's extremely concerning to think someone who doesn't work isn't a productive member of society and to conclude that they're doing household chores. Many rich people who inherit their fortunes do not work, but no one says they are junkies etc...

>What should we do about it? > >Government policy can make a difference, Furman argues. Improving education and access to college could help by making workers more attractive to employers. So would spending more on helping people find jobs, as other countries do. Providing child-care subsidies and paid leave could draw more men – and women — into the workforce. Expanding the tax subsidies offered to low-wage workers so jobs are more attractive would be a plus, too.

The Brookings institution rarely fails to advocate for corporation and profit-friendly solutions.

In the 30s, they solved (actually solved, rather than giving out corporate welfare) the problem with the PWA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works_Administration

Well if these guys aren't on disability, or married, then how are they getting money for food and rent? The article never answers that question- I don't think the us safety net is comfy enough to provide rent money. Are they all homeless?

I wonder why it is that articles like this, which cover issues relevant to heterosexual middle aged white men are never flagged as 'political' when they appear on Hacker News?

Is finding a "wife" that important?

And ( to my ear ) the always reliable Dean Baker addresses "the money thing" in "Rigged". Scott Sumner has also written at length on the subject.

There are two mandates to the Fed - price stability and ( Humphrey-Hawkins ) employment. With the exception of the Greenspan era pre-2000, Fed policy has set employment in the back seat.

Because "Inflation BAAAAD!" ( in the manner of Phil Hartman's Frankenstein's monster ).

So we have 2% growth targets that we undershoot and low growth. The population has adapted in ways described in Tyler Cowen's "The Complacent Class".

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