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As video games get better and job prospects worse, more young men are dropping out of the job market to spend their time in an alternate reality. Ryan Avent suspects this is the beginning of something big
[...] Over the last 15 years there has been a steady and disconcerting leak of young people away from the labour force in America. Between 2000 and 2015, the employment rate for men in their 20s without a college education dropped ten percentage points, from 82% to 72%. In 2015, remarkably, 22% of men in this group – a cohort of people in the most consequential years of their working lives – reported to surveyors that they had not worked at all in the prior 12 months. That was in 2015: when the unemployment rate nationwide fell to 5%, and the American economy added 2.7m new jobs. Back in 2000, less than 10% of such men were in similar circumstances.
What these individuals are not doing is clear enough, says Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago, who has been studying the phenomenon. They are not leaving home; in 2015 more than 50% lived with a parent or close relative. Neither are they getting married. What they are doing, Hurst reckons, is playing video games. As the hours young men spent in work dropped in the 2000s, hours spent in leisure activities rose nearly one-for-one. Of the rise in leisure time, 75% was accounted for by video games. It looks as though some small but meaningful share of the young-adult population is delaying employment or cutting back hours in order to spend more time with their video game of choice.
TFA is worth reading in full. Much more deliberative than usual.
Previously on SoylentNews: Why Ever Stop Playing Video Games?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Monday March 20 2017, @01:05PM (11 children)
Speaking of hungry Mexicans the reason why a quarter of Mexico's population is in the USA is because of NAFTA replacing Mexican corn farmers with Iowa corn farmers. There's literally no jobs in Mexico that aren't corrupt as hell pemex and those are going away because Mexico is pumped out, and weed farmers / narco-terrorists. Some tourism but a couple Gringos per year visiting some beach in between getting beheaded and raped by the narcos isn't going to feed 120 million Mexicans.
My gut level guess is Trump's reaction to getting inevitably blocked on the wall will be to send M1A1 tanks into Mexico City. Having a failed narco-state on your southern border is an obvious clear and present danger. In an ideal world we'd turn Mexico and Canada into states. We'd steal Canada's health care system which is better than ours, have the army execute the narcoterrorists running Mexico at dawn, instantly wipe out the whole legal vs illegal thing...
Its not like the Mexicans could stop us, because any Mexican with a work ethic and motivation and skills immigrated to like, Kansas or whatever, a decade ago. There isn't much left in Mexico.
Mexico already has a wall on its southern border, and not being a white country they're allowed to protect their borders, and they don't have much of an illegal problem like we do, so one interesting way for Trump to "acquire a southern wall" would be to take Mexico's wall.
Every republican for my whole life has been "literally Hitler" according to the special snowflakes, so Trump getting us a bit of Lebensraum wouldn't be much of an additional propaganda problem.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday March 20 2017, @03:10PM (4 children)
Maize was domesticated in Mexico thousands of years ago. They pioneered organized agriculture in the New World, and in some sense it's they who have fed us. One trade treaty that's 20-30 years old is not going to undo that.
Why in the heck would we need Mexico for lebensraum? Have you ever been out of a metropolitan area in your life? Ever? If we approached the population densities of many other places in the world we could fit the entire US population in North Dakota. And we have lots of North Dakotas and even a handful of TexaCaliAlaskas. Even all the people China has are concentrated in a relatively small portion of that country's total area. In short, we have enough room in the current United States for a couple billion more people.
Undertaking an anschluss of Mexico would gain us nothing vis-a-vis the narco mafia. They would simply be institutionalized in our system, with American Congressmen taking over as the recipients of the bribes. Unless you're talking about a Final Solution for Mexicans, which, given your posting history might be what you're hinting at.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 20 2017, @05:29PM (3 children)
Why in the heck would we need Mexico for lebensraum?
Ah I think you're misinterpreting the use of lebensraum in the PR. See Trump is a republican which according to the nutcases means he's already literally Hitler just by party affiliation, therefore the PR backlash from the democratic party media after the occupation begins can be short circuited because hitlers gotta hitler therefore getting some lebensraum is just something hitlers do. Why leave the 6th army in Stalingrad, well, hitlers gotta hitler, thats just their thing, ya know.
Unless you're talking about a Final Solution for Mexicans, which, given your posting history might be what you're hinting at.
Ah no they're not really a problem. Or not a problem that requires that kind of solution, anyway.
From a nationalist point of view being one big country might have some interesting effects WRT people being able to stay in their homes with their own people if we're all one big (happy?) country. Why move all the Oaxacans to the chicken plant in Oklahoma if you can simply move the chicken plant to Oaxaca, after all.
It might be a "final solution" for the narco terrorist beheader types. I don't think many people will miss them, on either side of the border.
Corn production in MX is an interesting graph given the relatively non-meme looking meme that they're here because our NAFTA destroyed their farms. Basically almost everything heard or read about NAFTA is fake news on one level or another. When I pulled the actual production data a minute ago I was surprised. I guess you can't believe everything you see on CNN, which I guess I was an idiot to listen to anyway.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @05:41PM (1 child)
I suppose you imply that corn production went up in Mexico. OK, but what about the jobs? If we bankrupted the farmers (like USA a century ago) and that caused the creation of large mechanized farms, there is still an unemployment issue.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:30PM
That is an interesting way to resolve the meme that NAFTA meant the subsistence farmers all had to move to California while simultaneously factory farming in Mexico has increased overall corn levels. I was reading the meme as being false with the implication that production ceased in MX in favor of Iowa or whatever, which is not the case, but the meme may be true anyway. I suppose I could investigate further, but...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @10:15PM
Trump is a Republican? Well, since he is the President and he ran under the R-brand, I guess he is by definition . . .
(Score: 0, Troll) by i286NiNJA on Monday March 20 2017, @03:39PM
Look at your soft feelings get hurt when someone compares you to hitler.
You elected trump you dumb fuck I can call you whatever I want, the age of PC niceness is over and you're a fucking fascist. But not even a cool hardass fascist with hugo boss jackboots you're a pepe humping incel with a hipster haircut.
The era of political correctness is over!! Harden up snowflake!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 20 2017, @05:04PM (3 children)
In an ideal world we'd turn Mexico and Canada into states.
What would be the value in that? Especially, in the near certainty that the natives wouldn't like that? That indicates to me a variety of initial assumptions that really need looking at.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 20 2017, @05:13PM (2 children)
Perhaps we could reduce the level of narco violence down the mere level of Baltimore or Chicago. That would be a considerable improvement.
Its also an interesting political hack on illegals not having to either kick them out or amnesty them, merely take their country.
As for taking the Canadians that is an attempt at demographic balance, although their population only being a 1/3 of Mexico its not an effective balance.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 20 2017, @06:38PM (1 child)
Canada may be less difficult to control population-wise, but it's a high tech population. If they so choose, there could be a lot of dead people from more sophisticated terrorist attacks than Mexico can muster.
And what exactly does the US gain for all this grief? We still get the illegal immigrants, except we made them US residents and access to resources we already had access to.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 20 2017, @08:01PM
Thought experiment, send in the M1A1 tanks AND legalize. Hmm. You can fight on the front lines and lose, or you can try guerrilla work but it'll be completely unfunded due to legalization.
A significant fraction of their population is here. I'm not sure if that would help or hinder, but its certainly different than the recent re-enactment of the Crusades in the middle east.
Ya know, as the Chinese figured out half a century ago, you can't have a failed nation on your southern border. One way or another mexico has to get cleaned up. End the drug war one way or another, get used to pemex and oil production being over. I guess I'm saying if you're next door to a failed state, its not an option to clean it up or not, its merely a question of how you're going to clean it up. May as well go in with a plan.
As for what we gain from Canada, well, hot Canadian women and maple syrup and ice hockey, perhaps all three at the same time. The peace terms would involve us "stealing" their health care system and having them administrate it over us. Strange thought experiment... we're assuming we win against Canada... if on paper we lose and they impose a civilized health care system on us, its not like anyone in the usa is going to go all "red dawn" on our maple syrup overlords. "Oh darn, while our entire army was south of the rio grande the Canadians drove a convoy of Subarus playing Sarah McLaughlin into wash DC and took over and what a shame the most corrupt health care system on the planet will get replaced by the Canadian system, oh darn it all to heck"
I'm just saying, in a "war as politics by other means" sense, we get a unified economic and political block and legalized weed (if not more) and no narco terror, I'm not really seeing a huge problem here especially if people in all three countries kinda see whats up and cooperate.
(Score: 1) by marknmel on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:31AM
>In an ideal world we'd turn Mexico and Canada into states.
How dare you. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I'll be over here with the moose and geese.
There is nothing that can't be solved with one more layer of indirection.