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posted by Fnord666 on Monday March 20 2017, @10:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the rent-is-due dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 20 2017, @05:13PM (2 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @05:13PM (#481596)

    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.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 20 2017, @06:38PM (1 child)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @06:38PM (#481665) Journal
    Mexico is four times as large as Iraq was in population and almost five times as large in land area. And it has a large narco/guerilla population which has already had plenty of opportunity to practice hiding and waging war against Mexico's military forces. The US won't be able to take over the country and reduce its violence level to Baltimore levels without a lot of bloodshed.

    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

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 20 2017, @08:01PM (#481726)

      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.