Decline of Men in the Workforce | Hacker News Reader

Decline of Men in the Workforce

wsj.com

27 pointsdzonga32 comments

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

The article brings up a useful point, but then diverges into reactionary terrible "video games are bad" take that really doesn't look at the main reason why this is happening in my opinion.

People are stopping work, sitting at home and checking out because they see "it"... it being the treadmill but not getting anything for it. The incentive to work is gone, and people realize that it's not going to result in enough improvement for a life-change. The desire to have friends/girlfriends etc is gone because social media provides a facade of social interaction, and dating is a competitive game that's analogous to the treadmill mentioned before. Why take part?

In 1971 US started printing money for the global economy, which caused people who worked with money to get rich while for people who worked with real stuff nothing really changed. But normal economy people since then needed to compete for everything with money printing economy people who drove up the cost of everything.

It's especially visible when you look at the prices of hard stuff like gold or real estate in dollars. If your income doesn't grow on par of them you are working in the wrong part of the economy.

At this point to understand situation it would be better to express value of dollar in terms of value of gold, to see that it's not gold appreciates but dollar depreciates and along with it average men incomes and savings.

That's conflating a lot based upon the gold standard -- which most serious economists think should have been removed (including the freshwater ones). Also just look at wild swings of inflation before and after the gold standard if you think it was better then.

https://www.macrotrends.net/2497/historical-inflation-rate-b...

The true cause is that demand for labor in US has never been as high as WWII -- which created the middle class. Automation, offshoring, are both major contributors to the lack of middle class labor demand.

Further, God didn't file gold under America, so we'd no longer be in control of the value of the currency.

I'm not making any value judgements about things before and after gold standard. I'm just saying that making dollar the currency of global economy while making it printable by USA had this effect on US economy. Splitting it in half. One half stealing the value from all other countries (that's what trade deficit is) and the other half getting barely any share in the booty while being forced to compete for products and services with the beneficiaries of the first half.

Learning is painful. It doesn't trigger any of the pleasure centers in the brain -- that is until you learn enough to find things like physics or programming stimulating and fun.

TV, Social media, sports, gaming -- that's easier, and there's an immediate and pleasurable reward.

“..it being the treadmill but not getting anything for it..”

Sure. I knew a few people who worked 6 days, and COVID lockdown in 2020 gave them an unexpected “vacation”. They went back to work grudgingly, but, yo! Baby needs new shoes.

At a quick glance, this sounds like a pretty poor insight. Their main takeaway is the 7 million that have walked away are all (basically) "playing Call of Duty stoned". This seems like a classic reactionary conservative take that this is situation at play (as opposed to any number of other social/eco situations). They only draw their conclusion on this on one fact that more males are getting prescribed painkillers. Yep.

   > as opposed to any number of other social/eco situations

Well don't keep us in suspense, lets discuss them. What are they?

Does it really need to be listed? You can work getting paid under the table, raise kids, care for family member, trade online, onlyfans, make yt videos, deal illegal items, go to school, help family business. i mean the limit is your creativity really. I don't even know if that stat includes gig workers like uber drivers either.

Well, yes. Considering this is a NEW development, listing a bunch of things that aren't new doesn't exactly answer the question, does it? That leaves your argument consisting of...OnlyFans?

Yeah, men do that believe it or not and cams.

Yes, I'm sure there are some men that do it. There is no data to indicate that the MILLIONS of men disappearing from the workforce are supporting themselves from OnlyFans.

So we're back to the original question again.

Of course not but that is one thing among many other possible things. It is just as silly to assume they are playing games all day. The whole point of the original comment was this is speculation as supposed to actual research.

Well, they're not in the workforce, which was the point. What they're doing with all of their free time almost doesn't matter. Well, until they start bitching about how they don't make enough money and can never buy a house etc. Because we know why they're not making enough money. They're not fucking working. The data shows us that.

But how many are not working as opposed to working in unreported ways or contributing to support their family or somehow still contribute to society. The concern is if a lot of them are unhappily idle at home it could be bad. Details matter if you are interested in finding solutions.

Which is why I brought up how miserable they all seem to be. All they do is bitch and whine and complain about life, but then they sit at home and do...nothing?

This is an entirely solvable problem.

This is a very disingenuous way of arguing.

If someone isn’t working then it’s obvious that they are smuggling blood diamonds out of Africa. I mean what else could they possible be doing? Please list all the alternative if you disagree.

Also they believe that it's financed by "COVID lottery winnings".

If this article is accurate, it paints a bleak picture. I don't much care about the not working part, if you are smart enough to figure out how not to work and get by, you deserve it. The part where these guys are on a screen all day long is really bad though. I mean, you have to go out and try to have friends or get a girl, sitting at home on a server all day doesn't fill that need. I am worried this is actually making a vast psychologically damaged class of people.

Anecdata based on the men in this situation I'm familiar with: They do have mental health issues, but I'm not sure they're more than what the average employed man is afflicted by. I detect a general life fulfillment malaise, but in exchange they avoid all of the stress the rest of us deal with every day.

For this reason, I'm reluctant to call their lifestyle choice irrational since by their own measure, they seem to think they're taking the best path. They take stock of their options in various areas (relationships with women, career prospects, engaging in social activity, and so on) and say, "No thanks, I'll just play video games all day." There are virtual world substitutes for a lot of what they'd get out there in the real world now too, and though they'd probably agree it's not as good as the real thing, they can get a 50% solution for 0% of the effort. That might sound like a good deal to some, and apparently it is.

I would argue this is pre-conscious or an intuitive evaluation rather than an actual rationalization and that online gaming is not necessarily a universal result. Absconding to the internet and social media (not always "social" necessarily as Reddit and HN constitute social media) in general seems to be but there is a general inclination towards escapism given the lack of incentives or hope for anything better that they can realistically access in their present context.

Feel the same way myself. I definitely didn't need to sit down and do a pro/cons list and really philosophize about the diminished returns on my labour. I don't even think its necessarily the optimal route but like in Alice and Wonderland, (I'm paraphrasing and adapting) "when you have nowhere to go, it doesn't matter what you do". You end up at the same place and if that place is less stressfull than putting yourself out there and increasing your travel/food/exertion/social efforts for nominal gain relative to "doing nothing", it makes sense.

If people can afford to give themselves ad hoc sabbaticals, I would advise it for no other reason than it gives you the chance to slow down and reassess. Even if you don't spend the time doing self-improvement and building new skills/habits/coping mechs, the subconcious can cook up some amazing things when it has time out in the yard to run around without judgement or artificial constraints that otherwise suppress its agency.

The world depends on people with mortgages and debts who can't take a day (or longer) off and really think about what they are/aren't doing and about what they actually need and to whom their efforts truly benefit.

It _is_ irrational, because they are further destroying their (apparently already not amazing) employment prospects and destroying their future when they will need money to address aging. As you get into your 40-50-60..., people who are letting you ride for free will start dying or ditching you, and then your own health turns to shit, and then what? this approach is borrowing from and irreversibly destroying your own future.

If you’re ok with just dying when life is no longer pleasant it’s not that bad.

Civilization has largely been built by traumatized, unwell people. This is a sad but true fact. Probably the kind of fucked up you get smoking weed and posting is less bad than the kind of fucked up you get marching to the edge of the known world on starvation rations to kill people and watch your friends killed. Anyway we can hope it is.

Note that this article talks about the decline of men in their 20s and early 30s in the workforce. There's no reason to believe that there's a decline of men over 35 in the workforce.

The article also points out that there's lots of demand for workers, and workers have huge leverage because of this. We're supposed to wonder why these men in their 20s and 30s aren't taking advantage of those job openings. And it's easy to understand. Job openings have these things called "requirements" and if you don't meet them, tough luck. A lot of job openings require 10 years of experience welding, or programming, or driving a truck. So you can't fit the round peg of out of work men into the square hole of these job openings. It's just wishful thinking.

And lastly, why are these men staying home and "playing Call of Duty stoned"? Well, because their parents (Baby Boomers and Gen X) are more compassionate to their situation and allow them to live at home into their late 30s. This is much preferable to previous generations that would shame anyone still living at home past 25.

I don't understand how these people manage to get by without a job. It's good work if you can get it.

Bank of mom and dad, presumably. Not sure what they do when father time comes calling though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com