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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.”
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 16 2014, @05:00PM
Do you mind telling what exactly it is that you do with your time then? This is the classic argument against socialism -- if people didn't have to work to put food on the table, they won't work at all. And frankly, I've never been able to buy that. I have an endless list of things I want to build or do. Much of it solely for myself, but much of it that could be useful to others as well. Ordinarily I don't get much done. I work 40 hours a week, and I get home tired and burned out and sit on the couch watching TV or playing a game. But as soon as I have three or more consecutive days off, I start getting busy. Give me at least three days off and by day three I'm setting up public servers, looking for open source projects to contribute to, building hardware and posting photos and build details online. Granted, it's all pretty small personal projects, but that's just because that's all I have time for anymore. Give me three months off and I'll be back contributing to Freenet or some other project like I used to. As it stands now I get so few opportunities with sufficient time and motivation that it takes me a couple years just to set up my home network. I'm a pretty lazy dude, I can spend a *long* time hedonistically watching TV, smoking joints, and ordering takeout...but at a certain point even I will be driven out of my freakin' mind with boredom.
So...yeah, surely you can't just be sitting there watching TV and reading Soylent all day, right? You must be doing *something* productive...? I mean if we're comparing hobby level work to employment level work, that just means you have to be at least as valuable to society as the guy flipping burgers at McDonald's, not necessarily curing cancer or building the next space shuttle.
Or perhaps you just travel or something? I'm pretty sedentary too so that makes the boredom hit faster I guess. Or wife and kids maybe? I'm sure that would keep you busy, but I'd certainly consider raising children to be something of value.