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posted by janrinok on Monday December 15 2014, @03:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the chasing-the-vanishing-jobs? dept.

Binyamin Appelbaum writes at the NYT that the share of prime-age men — those 25 to 54 years old — who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent as many men have decided that low-wage work will not improve their lives, in part because deep changes in American society have made it easier for them to live without working. These changes include the availability of federal disability benefits; the decline of marriage, which means fewer men provide for children; and the rise of the Internet, which has reduced the isolation of unemployment. Technology has made unemployment less lonely says Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, who argues that the Internet allows men to entertain themselves and find friends and sexual partners at a much lower cost than did previous generations. Perhaps most important, it has become harder for men to find higher-paying jobs as foreign competition and technological advances have eliminated many of the jobs open to high school graduates. The trend was pushed to new heights by the last recession, with 20 percent of prime-age men not working in 2009 before partly receding. But the recovery is unlikely to be complete. "Like turtles flipped onto their backs, many people who stop working struggle to get back on their feet," writes Appelbaum. "Some people take years to return to the work force, and others never do "

A study published in October by scholars at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies estimated that 37 percent of the decline in male employment since 1979 can be explained by this retreat from marriage and fatherhood (PDF). “When the legal, entry-level economy isn’t providing a wage that allows someone a convincing and realistic option to become an adult — to go out and get married and form a household — it demoralizes them and shunts them into illegal economies,” says Philippe Bourgois, an anthropologist who has studied the lives of young men in urban areas. “It’s not a choice that has made them happy. They would much rather be adults in a respectful job that pays them and promises them benefits.”

 
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  • (Score: 1) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday December 16 2014, @02:20AM

    by curunir_wolf (4772) on Tuesday December 16 2014, @02:20AM (#126378)

    Regulation is historically LOW.

    No, it's not. Your anecdotes are nothing but statist talking points. What has happened is regulation has shifted from regulations that affect the largest multinational corporations, to instead handing out perverse incentives to those businesses while squeezing the small- and mid-sized businesses. Glass-Steagall affected ONE industry (possibly two if you consider banks and investment houses two different industries - which would be weird). There are arguments to be made that certain incentives and regulations actually made the implosion much worse. I won't try to make that case to you, since you seem to be in government, or supportive of a government with unlimited authority, but it's a compelling argument.

    Taxation on the people most able to pay taxes is also historically LOW.

    Your tax rate chart is meaningless without context. In fact, if you compare this to the percentage of revenues collected, you will find that the taxpayers with the HIGHEST incomes actually paid proportionally HIGHER amount of taxes with lower top rates. This is caused by ... economics. Something people concerned more with using government taxing authority for social engineering do not understand, and the cause of many problems resulting from misguided policies... like, for instance, driving people to black markets as a result of excessive market interventions.

    This, of course, is the classic case of blaming people for acting in their own self interest. After enacting these policies, and finding that the economy works differently than the promoters envisioned, they inevitably blame economic actors for not behaving the way the policy makers want.

    The actual reasons for high jobless rates and black market labor are low union participation, trade deals that kill tariffs and end up exporting jobs, and a gov't that is for sale to the highest bidder.

    OMG are you from the Communist party of the 1930's or something? WTH? I'll grant you the last point. But union participation is low because the jackals running the unions are just as bad as the jackals running the multi-national corporations. It's bad enough being exploited by a company, most people do not want to be exploited by the company AND they union.

    So what tariffs would you put in place, anyway? I can't think of anything we actually make any more that would make much of a difference, other than weapons and weapon systems, and those are selling very well - we're the market leader, after all.

    The last time things were this bad, FDR put 15 million people on the public payroll and rebuilt/expanded America's infrastructure.

    So why not try that again? Well, first of all, the administration plays around with numbers to make it look like unemployment is better than that. And far from looking to put Americans to work doing labor-intensive jobs, the big policy effort is to bring in more immigrants to do that instead. And, of course, move as much manufacturing to China as possible. Regulation drives that, too, because our factories have actual clean air requirements that the Chiners do not.

    You're completely wrong about regulation, and taxes are far too high on the middle class. The upper (really upper) class and the elites generally don't pay taxes at all, or it's a pittance in comparison (not talking about the 1%, who pay a higher PROPORTION of the tax burden than ever - we're talking about the 0.0001%. The group that owns the regulators and use them to throw up barriers to competition make smaller companies less competitive). The fact that you don't realize what kind of regulatory environment we are dealing with today just means that you have never tried to start a business of your own. Once you do, you will realize why the workforce participation is so low.

    --
    I am a crackpot
  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday December 16 2014, @03:56AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday December 16 2014, @03:56AM (#126395) Journal

    Your sig stating "I am a crackpot" is oh so apropos as the second you bring in code words like "statist" we know you are a libertarian nutbar. BTW just FYI we have already seen what rampant unleashed capitalism gets us, it was called "the age of the robber barons" and gave us such lovely things as...indentured servitude, women burning alive in sweatshops, the rich hiring their own goon squads to insure those peasants knew their place like the Pinkertons, rivers so filled with toxins that you didn't have to worry about fish giving you cancer because nothing could live in it, the country being divided up among trusts to insure nobody could actually compete with the uber rich, golden vaginas deciding who ruled thanks to insane trust funds, groups like Goldman Sachs who literally cannot lose because they can simply use their immense wealth to have laws written to reimburse them when they make a mistake. hell I could go on all day.

    --
    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 1) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday December 17 2014, @03:45AM

      by curunir_wolf (4772) on Wednesday December 17 2014, @03:45AM (#126728)

      ... indentured servitude, women burning alive in ... the rich hiring their own goon squads to insure those peasants knew their place like the XXX, rivers so filled with toxins that you didn't have to worry about fish giving you [DISEASES] because nothing could live in it, the country being divided up among trusts to insure nobody could actually compete with the uber rich, golden vaginas deciding who ruled thanks to insane trust funds, groups like [X, Y, Z] who literally cannot lose

      I hate to break this to you, but ALL of these things have gone on for THOUSANDS of YEARS. These problems were not created by capitalism (or what you call "rampant unleashed capitalism", whatever that is, like it's a kraken or something), but are the result of humans being powerful dicks. Like for thousands of years. What capitalism do was improve the living conditions of the vast majority of people. I know, history, right?

      groups like Goldman Sachs who literally cannot lose because they can simply use their immense wealth to have laws written to reimburse them when they make a mistake

      If you think that has anything to do with "capitalism", maybe you're confusing it with "corporatism", or "fascism", or some other system with massive market interventionism (only for some, of course), but it's nothing like what I would consider capitalism (a market in which consumers have the power over the producers).

      Your sig stating "I am a crackpot" is oh so apropos as the second you bring in code words like "statist" we know you are a libertarian nutbar.

      Oh, sorry, I missed that you were a bigoted partisan stool pigeon.

      --
      I am a crackpot
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 16 2014, @05:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 16 2014, @05:59AM (#126421)

    anecdotes

    ...which are emblematic of the trend:
    Congress (at the behest of the uber-rich) weakening regulatory agencies.
    If the small businesses are getting the attention, it's because the inspectors are so poorly funded and spread so thin that it becomes easier to show results with a smaller target.
    Don't blame the players when the commissioner was bribed to game the rules.

    revenues collected

    Again, lowered as a result of agencies (IRS, DoJ) defunded to benefit the oligarchs.
    "Austerity" measures absolutely suck.
    Let's stop spending $billions on weapons manufacturers and get the homeland straightened out with lots of jobs and safe workplaces.

    blaming people for acting in their own self interest

    A media outlet I consume mentions how borders are completely porous for capital but sealed tight for labor.
    That's something to think about re: class warfare (with the only 2 actual classes: the ownership class and the working class).
    ...and calling oligarchs (aka corporations) "people" really bothers me.

    are you from the Communist party of the 1930's or something?

    Labor achieved changes in the 1930s that got people talking in terms of a "middle class" (a term I hate).
    You don't get that kind of change without organization.
    The big boys have teams of lawyers and consultants--and, traditionally, leg breakers.
    The David and Goliath story worked once--but that was a fluke.
    Showing up to a gun fight with only a knife makes you a fool.

    what tariffs

    All the ones that were in place back when the joint was jumping.

    I can't think of anything we actually make any more

    "Those jobs aren't coming back". Yeah. That's defeatist talk.
    If we want a working class that has enough cash to buy stuff--y'know, an ECONOMY--we need to make sure enough money stays here.
    The way that was done when things were booming was tariffs--and high taxes on the rich.
    What we have now is a race to the bottom and an expanding underclass.
    In many places (e.g. WV), we are a third world country with tiny pockets of affluence.

    why not try [the New Deal] again?

    Amen. Repeating successes is a great idea.

    the administration plays around with [unemployment] numbers

    We agree there.
    Now, can we agree to stop electing Reds and Blues?

    [Regulation drives manufacturing to China]

    It didn't in the days when we had standards.
    Neoliberal trade deals killed that.
    TPP et al wants to exterminate what little is left.

    You're completely wrong about regulation

    Well, I may have been several decades late getting started, but I'm definitely not wrong.
    You, OTOH, seem to want to eliminate all standards and expect that driving toward the cliff even faster will magically improve things.

    a gov't that is for sale to the highest bidder
    I'll grant you the last point

    Ah. Consensus. (In previous threads I've mentioned Ralph Nader's Left-Right Alliance where he and Grover Norquist have teamed up.)
    Yeah. This is absolutely Step 1.
    It is gonna take a constitutional amendment to get there:
    Corporations are not people; money is not speech.

    -- gewg_

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 16 2014, @06:59AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 16 2014, @06:59AM (#126426)

      Corporations are not people

      in the current albeit shitty environment, corporations pay taxes so legally they are

      they shouldn't be paying taxes though, cos their employees, shareholders and customers all pay taxes

      the government has more than enough income to operate various departments of inspection. that they are totally inept at enforcing ridiculously overcomplicated rules and regulations is not the fault of corporations

      progressive retards will never listen, but eventually the collapse of the US government under its own weight might teach them (though they'll probably just blame it on someone else as usual)