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Comment by goldenchrome | Hacker News Reader

They’re NEETs. Likely live with their parents. May sell odd things here and there to make a buck. Likely invested in cryptos which until recently was enough to get by. Often getting some government gibs like unemployment or disability benefits.

American society doesn’t know how to use low skilled men so we keep ‘em fed and put them to the side.

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"Low skill" is often also something of a misnomer. Many are highly-skilled, but have difficulties navigating the social environment of both employment and self-employment. Neurodivergent people often fall into this category.

Others are moderately-skilled, but not to the magnitude of their competition (common in art/design); or, they have technical skills that are only useful in jobs that also require conceptual/design skills (or vice versa); or, they're skilled in a niche set of tasks which hiring managers see as nice "add-ons" to another prerequisite (if outmoded) set of skills. As an anecdote: until the Meta crisis the past fall, there were a lot of openings for jobs that amounted to, "Builds XR prototypes/vertical slices so that when VR/AR goggles take off we have some sort of killer app concept ready for production." This requires someone with 3D art and software engineering and interactive design chops, for an interaction paradigm that's maybe 30% finalized. My vantage point was as an intermediate-level amateur 3D artist trying to stumble my way around Unity/UE, watching devs stumble their way around Blender/C4D/etc., all of us watching UX designers used to Figma et al. stumbling their way around both. With no room for people to bring what they CAN do to the table, and learn the rest as they go, many don't find anywhere to land.

>American society doesn’t know how to use low skilled men

What's the solution though? I can think of 3:

1) Bullshit jobs (i.e. fake jobs or real jobs that exist only to support fake jobs. This is the current answer)

2) Universal Basic Income - Doesn't solve the problem of giving people meaningful work, but gives them some freedom to discover/create their own solutions

3) Artificially making life more difficult - For example, banning furniture companies that are too good at their job. Want new furniture? Here are some tools, go and make it. Maybe find some friends to help you with it too. This solution would solve the problem, but it would be extremely unpopular and would likely need to be enforced globally, or people would just go to a place where they can buy furniture cheaply.

First solution will likely continue to be the most popular one. I hope the second solution continues to gain popularity, maybe not directly as UBI, but something similar. Third solution is extremely unlikely, it's more of a thought experiment to realize how solving real problems gives us meaning and creates bonds among people. Kaczynski writes about this when he writes about three groups of human drives.

Blue collar opportunities abound in the trades, where skills can be acquired on the job. Welding, wiring, plumbing, and construction.

However, these jobs are viewed as harder and less attractive than white collar work and some people balk at them.

Cynically speaking, supported and freely provided voluntary euthanasia is also an option as well... with all the good and ill that option brings. I'd certainty take that option if I couldn't ends meet.

Pathetic

There used to be places for them but they were replaced with immigrants, women, automation and outsourcing.

Women have meaningfully been part of the workforce since at least the 70's. Both of my silent generation grandmothers worked outside of the home most of their lives.

Immigration has increased since the mid century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat... but I don't think many low skill jobs would exclude a native born applicant

You say "low skilled" but many of them have university education. I do not think that is the problem at all

Probably a lot of FIRE too, if I remember right.

Edit: Why disagree?

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