The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/upshot/the-rise-of-men-who-dont-work-and-what-they-do-instead.html

by cjdulberger • 12 years ago

264 274 12 years ago

MCRed8• 12 years ago

Look ma, that's me! Free of a soul crushing corporate job, back to doing a "startup", I may not have the cash rolling in, but at least I'm in control of my destiny. Hey Ma, I'm moving in!

I think there are a lot of people out there like me. I have some money coming from side projects, several opportunities to grow that, and several opportunities for new side projects.

And quite a long personal runway before I have to "get a job" again.

If I can get to personal ramen profitability, that would be great.

And if my cofounders and I get a real startup off the ground that can pay us salaries.... well, then I can start showing up in statistics as employed again.

But either way, it's not as big a deal to me as it would be to men of my age 20 years ago.

And that's a huge shift-- in opportunity towards the individual.

brandonmenc2• 12 years ago

it's not as big a deal to me as it would be to men of my age 20 years ago.

Less than 6% of workers are working computer or math jobs - of any kind - which suggests that the overwhelming majority of people still have a difficult time when they're listed as "unemployed."

IndianAstronaut5• 12 years ago

One common trend I have seen in my social circle is the lack of any employable skills. They may or may not have college degrees, but in general their degrees did not give them concrete job skills or they don't have a degree and no skilled trade.

What would ideally happen is people learn a skilled trade if they are stuck on the job market. This training should also happen in high school.

marcell• 12 years ago

It is great that you are able to do this, but not that your situation is not the one described in the article. The article discusses men who only qualify for low/no skill jobs paying $10-15/hr. That is markedly different from a tech startup cofounder who could get a software engineering job paying $100k+ with benefits.

rtpg• 12 years ago

yeah, a big problem with the whole "Don't need BigCo's job cuz I'm running a SV startup!" narrative is that it's really only accessible for people who already belonged to pretty privileged classes (exceptions exist, obviously.)

A portion of the population does not get opportunities to develop these skills and were once allowed low-skilled jobs that paid "decently" but have now found themselves squeezed due to inflation and companies hoarding cash instead of spending it.

7Figures2Commas• 12 years ago

I may not have the cash rolling in, but at least I'm in control of my destiny. Hey Ma, I'm moving in!

How are people who don't have a meaningful source of income and who are dependent on their parents for shelter any more in control of their destinies than corporate worker bees?

gutnor2• 12 years ago

It is not only that - even when you run your own company you can and often are effectively dependent on your clients/market ( especially that big client making 80% of your revenue ), or the need of your dependents ( you still need to pay your mortgage ) . That's a common complain here on HN of founder "selling out", "losing the original spirit", ...

There is a cultural bias for entrepreneur, especially in the US (that's not a bad thing BTW), so struggling directly against the market is seen as more glamorous then through a corporate structure/middleman.

In the end, you are as in control of your destiny as much as your wealth permit, no matter how you made that wealth in the first place.

Kurtz793• 12 years ago

Not all corporate jobs are soulless, mind crushing Orwellian nightmares, and nothing prevents you from looking for a fulfilling job if you are unhappy with your present one, especially in our field.

tluyben22• 12 years ago

I have never had 'a job' and had startups (and later mature companies) since I was 15 (I am 40 now). I am not sure what age you are, but you need to know this thing for sure if you are past, I think, around 30 as running a life like this can be very painful. There simply is a tiny chance of 'big success' while most just live in almost poverty the first 20-30 years of doing this. That's also why I think you are probably young and haven't seen that yet ; most give up and tell stories to their kids later about it.

Not to squash your enthusiasm; just saying that 'control of my destiny' is mostly not true at all; you are being lived by actual constraints of life. If you get a mortgage, kids, spouse, investors etc these constraints can easily 'live' you instead of you controlling anything. I was lucky, but just saying to be careful in thinking this and keep tabs on the 'do I actually still like this' factor. A regular job, for most of my friends who started out with me, was a blessing.

MCRed8• 12 years ago

I'm older than you. Have done this before, spent 6 years "unemployed" traveling the world before I "got a job" that turned out to be a terrible decision.

Of course you don't have control over your destiny to the point of just wishing you had a million bucks... but I also now don't have a psychotic boss whose only experience has been in the military micromanaging software development and doing everything he can to "control" things without any understanding of software development.

LargeCompanies• 12 years ago

I've lived with a parent (it's a big house they'd alone otherwise here) for I guess too many years then I've should. Also I'm old and my g/f who is similar age of five years also lives with a parent. Though she is getting antsy and wants kids and she only has a few years left. I want a family too but have been holding off for that big moment when my team and I start generating money and or sell our work. Ugh will that happen I don't know but I need to get back into the workforce and do our startup on the side. This what I was doing for the last year and half until I lost yet another developer job because of my incessant need to startup. I've lost two jobs in the two and half years because my bosses found out about my startup or we become friendly and I talk about it a lot.

Ugh I'm sorta feeling stuck professionally and tomorrow I start my 3rd incubator yet im unemployed.

You might want to reconsider startup pursuits after your early to mid 30s.

Kurtz793• 12 years ago

I might be naive, but I don't see having to choose self-employment or salaried work as a all-or-nothing, no-going-back decision.

You could easily secure a well paid job for a few years, and save enough to support working on a start-up or starting a consulting business.

If things do not go as planned, I can see no problems in going back to being employed, since your skills won´t have withered in the meantime, and possibily learned new ones.

It seems to me that the startup culture is seen sometimes as a "get rich quick" scheme, where the goal is to retire at 25.

A normal career in most professions lasts 30/40 years...

MCRed8• 12 years ago

I'm in my 40s and have been working for and with startups since my early 20s.

I'd rather scrape by doing what I love than make bank and hating my life.

Of course, making bank and loving it would be the ideal. But its not like I think the odds are huge.

One thing I am doing is building up my side businesses. Get enough side income going to live on and you can work for a startup at low risk.

Not the case when you have a family, of course.

sumedh• 12 years ago

we become friendly and I talk about it a lot.

Loose lips sink ships.

emodendroket13• 12 years ago

I don't think the majority of the long-term unemployed are unemployed because they're working on tech startups.

MCRed8• 12 years ago

I don't know the proportions at all, didn't mean to imply the majority were.

However, it is a trend that there are a lot more people becoming independant and making their money online via various ways (not all of which are startups, most of which are probably what would be called "lifestyle businesses" here, though I hate that term) and thus not counted on the "employment rolls".

josephschmoe• 12 years ago

Actually, I think this is less common now than it was 20 years ago.

MCRed8• 12 years ago

Well, 30 years ago there was no global internet full of knowledge and allowing collaboration-- I had to go to the college library.

There was also no global internet allowing for an instant global market to be serviced from the middle of nowhere. If you started a business in podunk, your market was the podunk area. (For the most part, there was mail order and stuff, but that still had a higher barrier to entry than the internet does now.)

So I think things have gotten easier and a lot more people are doing it.

I'm interested in hearing why you think the opposite-- I bet you're observing a different trend than I am focusing on. (eg both trends can be true)

eeeeeeeeeeeee• 12 years ago

I don't think there are "quite a lot of people out there" like you, but I guess it depends on what "a lot" is. It's great what you're doing, but you are likely in the minority. Most people do not have the luxury or skills to do that.

brandonmenc2• 12 years ago

The places with the highest rates of male nonwork include parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Kentucky, West Virginia, Arkansas and Michigan.

The areas of high unemployment in Arizona and New Mexico overlap almost exactly with the Indian reservations. A problem deserving its own analysis.

hessenwolf5• 12 years ago

Does that mean that more Indians are unemployed, or that the reservations were placed in the greatest economic crapholes that could be found?

db48x2• 12 years ago

The folks living in the reservations have not grown their economies. Economic growth isn't something that happens automatically; you have to go out and start new enterprises, invent new technologies, etc. Some cultures are simply incapable of this and will eventually die out; if you want an extreme example go read "Don't Sleep, There are Snakes" by Daniel Everett.

kaitai2• 12 years ago

Both. Many natives are unemployed because reservations were placed in really inconvenient and resource-poor places. Check out the employment rates in neighboring areas: also low.

There's also been a huge transfer of land from tribal to non-tribal/non-Indian ownership [1]: the US government held a lot of land in trust for the tribes, identified a lot of it as "surplus to their needs," and sold it to non-tribal members, and on other reservations they transferred ownership to individual tribal members and then economic pressures pushed them to sell, especially if they traditionally did agriculture and the land wasn't farmable. This land wasn't developed, in general, so there's really not that many places to work on a reservation...

[1] https://www.iltf.org/resources/land-tenure-history/allotment

bruceb• 12 years ago

There are books on this phenomenon. Part of what they say is now men have access to their basic needs with out needing to work as much. Entertainment is abundant and relatively cheap and sex isn't tied to marriage. You can lounge around and be if not exactly satisfied, at least not terrible wanting for stuff. Of course these guys are screwed when it comes to retirement.

return02• 12 years ago

just "these guys"? everyone will be screwed.

morgante4• 12 years ago

just "these guys"? everyone will be screwed.

Why? I'm pretty sure I'll be totally fine in retirement (predicted savings of $5M+).

mtbcoder• 12 years ago

Who is saying that and what is their data? I wouldn't say it never happens, but it sounds more like the kind of argument a random, obnoxious TV pundit would make.

ctdonath3• 12 years ago

Shortly before meeting m'lady, I'd nearly paid off the house and otherwise driven my expenses to near zero. The prospect of withdrawing from the system ("going Galt") was becoming a realistic option; grow much/most of my food (as my folks had growing up), find a mundane job in walking/biking distance (notable as I lived in the country), and spend my time writing what software I wanted and puttering in a back-to-basics life. We live in a culture of cheap abundance, and if un-hitched and rent/mortgage-free then very little work effort is needed to get by in a comfortable, if humble, lifestyle. (Then I met m'lady, and life got very expensive very fast.)

humanrebar5• 12 years ago

This is a really good point, actually. Parent says:

  Part of what they say is now men have access to
  their basic needs with out needing to work as much.

...but men don't have access to enough resources to fulfill their basic responsibilities. If you're a celibate hermit who pays his taxes and is funding his own retirement, that's fine. But I don't know many of those.

In reality, one of the easiest ways to be poor is to have a single mom. In other words, one of the easiest ways to be poor is to have a dad who isn't (can't or won't) fulfilling his responsibilities. Men and women who are fertile and sexually active need to be able to care for a child for eighteen years. Yes, birth control, please. But there are millions of single moms out that came from somewhere.

Additionally, someone needs to pay for current social security retirees, poverty programs, etc. And if you aren't having kids, someone else's kids will be paying for both their social security checks and yours.

I say all that not to be judgmental, but to point out that the numbers don't add up for men to just live the minimalist lifestyle free of guilt. Like I said, that's possible, but you'd literally have to live (and die!) off the grid while somehow caring for orphans, veterans, and windows at the same time (lifestyle choices don't count).

EC1• 12 years ago

Are you saying 'm'lady' unironically?

mbrameld• 12 years ago

Why do they exclude men in the military from their numbers?

maxerickson4• 12 years ago

They aren't really market participants when it comes to the labor force.

robotic2• 12 years ago

Why aren't they considered market participants?

robotic2• 12 years ago

I like in Columbus, GA, which is right next to Fort Benning, one of the largest Army bases in USA. If these soldiers were included in the stats, then our numbers would look better.

IndianAstronaut5• 12 years ago

Some countries have developed policies that encourage older people to leave the labor force, so they do not “crowd out” younger workers

Classic lump of labor fallacy.

bildung• 12 years ago

Classic lump of labor fallacy.

That fallacy is far from proven, see e.g. http://econpapers.repec.org/article/tafrsocec/v_3a65_3ay_3a2...

briandear2• 12 years ago

Here in France that fallacy is a clear as the baguette in the corner bakery.

geebee3• 12 years ago

You've alerted us to the existence of a fallacy, but you make no effort to explain what the fallacy is or how the argument you are refuting has committed this fallacy.

You did this in a previous discussion with me as well

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8691296

Of course, you are absolutely free to do this if you wish. But I did take the time to explain why I felt you had misdiagnosed the situation, and explained how the position I held was not undermined by the lump of labor fallacy.

Just my own opinion, but if you're going to cite this fallacy, I do think you should be explain how you feel it relates to the current discussion and be prepared to engage in a debate about whether it is relevant.

IndianAstronaut5• 12 years ago

Fair enough.

The main reason why there is a lump of labor fallacy is that it rests on the fact that there is just a fixed quantity of jobs in the economy. A fixed amount of jobs means that thers is only a fixed amount of goods and services people desire. But this is wrong because human wants and desires are unlimited. This is the basic condition in economics. So in theory there is an infinite amount of jobs to be done to cater to our infinite wants.

Now, there are structural reasons for why there isn't universal employment. These can range from government policies, to technological reasons. If people want multistoried houses, and builders can build them, they will have jobs but if the government has policies which block those houses, the builders will not have those jobs. Another thing people want is to travel into space, say a visit to alpha centauri. There may be tourism operator jobs who can do that but technology does not exist which can take us there.

The main focus of government policies to promote and encourage job growth should be on building technology to promote new job creating industries, promoting skills growth to manage these industries, and removing or modifying policies which hinder job growth.

If trade or immigration caused a loss of jobs, the 90s would have been a time of high unemployment. It wasn't because a new industry came up to generate jobs and other jobs were created to service those workers. The same goes for policies to shorten hours or promote early retirement.

ottocoder• 12 years ago

I know this isn't entirely on point but I couldn't help thinking of Mr. Jaggers replying to Pip's question "what will I do?" with "Be a gentleman, of course!" (Dickens reference) when I saw the title.

vidyesh2• 12 years ago

There are lot of factors which are discussed but not considered when it came to concluding this topic.

The increase in population : Instead of comparing the ratio or the percentage of working vs non-working with the present population it compares x out of every 100.

The increase in jobs : 2000 vs 2014, the number of jobs available has also changed which is not taken in account. As mentioned in the article older people end up creating more jobs.

The increase in unemployment rate : Yes, this contradicts with the above mentioned increase in jobs point but this should also be a factor. This also is affected by people not-from US who work in US.

The Shift in Generation : 14 years brings/builds a very different minded person and this person might have a different approach to living.

The higher standard of living : This also is one of the reasons why older people are still working and won't leave their jobs as their value is appreciated, helps pay the debt and they could satisfy all their needs to live a life of luxury(?) and fulfil all their ambitions.

coob2• 12 years ago

Middle East wars creating more disabled people.

vidyesh2• 12 years ago

And the article very precisely says

(People in the military, prison and institutions are excluded from these figures.)

Doctor_Fegg• 12 years ago

"Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead"

Surprised that "read HN" isn't listed as one of the "insteads". Which reminds me, I really ought to do some work.

mamurphy• 12 years ago

I am mesmerized by the age 40 bar. It barely moves; a few more people are retired or are in school. My armchair speculation is that turning 40 really makes people reexamine their decisions.

marktangotango2• 12 years ago

At 40+ you realize you've pretty much accomplished everything you're going to with your life. All those plans and ambitions? You've had 40 years to act, if you haven't done something yet, chances are you're not going to. Its all down hill from there. Hopefully you've got a family you can put you're energy into. At least this was how i felt 40+, ymmv.

3pt14159• 12 years ago

I'm not 40 yet, I'm 29, but I feel like I've only had 9 years to act so far and I have another 30-40. Look at how old Elon Musk is and he's finally hitting his stride. Still got time man.

philbarr2• 12 years ago

How depressing! I'm 37 and still feel I've got loads to learn and try out. Although I note that many of my peers are planning their escape routes to retirement.

If I try to create a startup I'll be doing it on my own.

marktangotango2• 12 years ago

Thanks for the down votes, guess it's wasn't obvious enough I posted my personal experience, was the ymmv (your mileage may vary) at the end not enough?

hessenwolf5• 12 years ago

That's an awesome graph. I mean, we could say some things like that the thickness of the gray bit is not so clear, or that it might be better if smoothed, perhaps the legend would be better elsewhere than in the coloured areas, but... it is still a totally expressive and elegant graphic.

aragot• 12 years ago

Yes it made me realize the rise of retirement-aged persons who don't retire. "Can't" retire? What a shift, in only 14 years!

hessenwolf5• 12 years ago

I did a lot of work a while back doing longevity projections, i.e., stochastic models of the rate of change of mortality rates at different ages as time goes by. It is a bit of a trend that pension funds might choose to offset their risk by entering into longevity swaps, which work like interest rate swaps, swapping floating payments for fixed payments.

Anyway, I attended a few conferences on aging, and all that fun. One thing that stuck out was that, in Germany at least, the ratio of workers to retirees of 4:1 will be more like 2:1 when I reach the current age of retirement.

Another is that you need to consider years of abled life.

A last is that I will never retire, and probably you won't either.

Note that, in Bismarck's time, life expectancy was about 55:

One persistent myth about the German program is that it adopted age 65 as the standard retirement age because that was Bismarck's age. This myth is important because Germany was one of the models America looked to in designing its own Social Security plan; and the myth is that America adopted age 65 as the age for retirement benefits because this was the age adopted by Germany when they created their program. In fact, Germany initially set age 70 as the retirement age (and Bismarck himself was 74 at the time) and it was not until 27 years later (in 1916) that the age was lowered to 65. By that time, Bismarck had been dead for 18 years.

blueskin_• 12 years ago

De-paywalled: https://archive.today/nOnpV

cJ0th• 12 years ago

To the extent that rising nonwork reflects more men graduating from school, that’s good news. Male high school graduation rates have risen 5 percentage points since 2000, and people with more education earn more and are less likely to be disabled later in life.

I am not positive this computes. People with more education might earn more now but that doesn't mean that their wages or the amount of jobs in their domains won't go down when more people have a degree.

ttty• 12 years ago

When more older people are working, they are earning money that they will then spend in ways that may create more jobs for young people, for example.

But... older people earn 2-3 times more than a younger one (at, least in Portugal). So for each old people there could be 2-3 younger working.

So if you lay off 100 old people you can get ~2500 younger people working. Of course, I doubt that the productivity will be lower per person, but here you are paid by how old are you (not, experience) * what you know

mkingston• 12 years ago

(A little facetiously, but..) Perhaps this is just the decrease of work required that was historically expected by economists, being applied unevenly.

Of course there's nothing in the article to suggest many of these people are happy.

blazespin• 12 years ago

The problem is there is a multiplier affect from technology today that causes unemployment. The average IQ required to be economically relevant is increasing each year.

zo1• 12 years ago

Do you have any alternatives to what we seem to be doing at the moment? Namely, propping those individuals up from life-failure by state aide programs funded by people that are able to sustain themselves and supposedly others.

marvin• 12 years ago

I would say that this is actually a good solution. It's lopsided today since we don't officially acknowledge that this is what we're doing, but if the trend continues, you and I will also eventually be hit by this development (unless we're exceedingly lucky).

Global wealth tax on large personal fortunes (say, 0.2-1.0% per annum of fortunes greater than $2MM) and even redistribution to everyone will make the solution more transparent and fair.

emodendroket13• 12 years ago

It's not as though if everyone were a Harvard-educated brainiac it would suddenly be possible for everyone to have high-paying jobs.

zanny3• 12 years ago

Well, one, being Harvard educated does not necessarily mean you are really a brainiac. Above the curve certainly, but you still have deviations from the mean in both directions.

And no, even if everyone were a genius, there are limited funds allocated by geniuses to pay geniuses to be geniuses. But if everyone were brilliant and have complete information and comprehensive educations about everything, either we are already in post-scarcity singularity utopia or we are imminently going to get there because you have hundreds of millions of geniuses capable to work on it, and geniuses running the system capable of realizing that potential and working to make it happen.

So either you are in a state where employment no longer matters, or your geniuses are smart enough to devote all their overflow resources to getting there, since they are all geniuses, they can all contribute to that end goal.

We simultaneously have people who just do not have the skills or mental capabilities to contribute, and leadership that is too ignorant or selfish to acknowledge the benefits of investing in research and science, and thus neither is possible.

npx• 12 years ago

Are there any notable instances of unqualified founders beating the odds and starting a successful business?

wirefloss• 12 years ago

The only remarkable thing about this NYT article is that it appeared at all. Read Charlse Murray "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010".

manuelriel• 12 years ago

None of this is new or surprising. It would be more interesting to apply this kind of visualization to industries, % or part-time jobs, freelance workers, etc.

ctdonath3• 12 years ago

Where does minimum wage [objectively] fit in?

If an employer can't pay someone what a job is worth, either the job doesn't get done or a machine is found to do it - leaving someone without the opportunity for a job. Yes, it may not be a "living wage", but no wage is even less desirable.

I've started using Taco Bell's remote ordering app. The clerk, seeing how I'd ordered (not using his services), yesterday thanked me for making his job easier. Couldn't help thinking that rather than happy, he should be scared: with all the talk about pushing for $15/hr minimum wages, coupled with automation of order-taking, he's facing prospects of no job instead of an easy one.

I know minimum wage is meant to help, but it only contributes to increased unemployment and inflation.

Malarkey73• 12 years ago

[Objectively] in countries where a minimum wage has been introduced at a higher rate than the US and is reviewed each year it has pushed up wages but had little effect on employment.

e.g. see for instance this discussion http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/02/labour-m...

Further I can't really stand the crocodile tears of business who want to employ workers at below living level wages. Their fake concern for worker is nauseating.

If workers are having to top up wages with food stamps and government aid then the business, management, and shareholders rather than the worker are effectively being subsidised by the taxpayer.

And if you let companies lower wages to compete then the bad employers drive out the good. Far better to make them compete on the product or service not how badly they are willing to treat people.

jongraehl• 12 years ago

1. min-wage raises are so modest and so slowly phased-in (in the US) so to not produce smoking-gun employment drops, and employers prepare in advance for them, so sloppy underpowered studies don't show any large effect. marginal effects are small and so you need a powerful study.

2. do you want people who receive food stamps etc. and aren't hireable at $8/hr to have any legal on-the-books employment options or not? either way they're getting the food stamps.

3. I personally would rather see more Costcos+Trader Joes than Wal-marts+McDonalds, so i want to believe your 'bad employers winning' unless we force higher pay, but presumably people won't work for bad employers, so i don't see where your forecast is coming from. anyway it seems a little cargo-cult. you can't just start paying $20/hr instead of $8 and suddenly beat Costco.

zanny3• 12 years ago

he's facing prospects of no job instead of an easy one.

Everyone is. He is not an exception - every office worker, every lawyer, even every artist is every day one step closer to obsolescence to automation. He might just be really smart and realize the sooner we get there, and the sooner we work out the paradigm shift it requires to approach post scarcity like that, the sooner we either reach the end of free society or enter an era of utopia, and either would be better than stagnating on the brink.

JumpCrisscross• 12 years ago

The silent yet steady substitution of unemployment benefits with federal disability insurance is well covered in an episode of This American Life [1]. We, as a country, have a shoddy system for re-training low-skills workers facing technological obsolescence. We have also set up a system under which unemployment benefits are largely a state liability. Disability, on the other hand, is federally funded. The intersection of these trends, as documented by This American Life, lands us in the curious situation of state governments encouraging their unemployed to seek disability benefits (thereby shifting their burden onto the federal budget).

In the short run, state unemployment and federal disability benefits have similar effects. Social stability is enhanced through buying off the poor. But long-term disability is not designed for the under-trained. Its means-testing paradigm discourages even the exploration of employment options which might jeopardise the applicant's disability status. Thus a one-way valve to dependency on the state's largesse.

[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/t...

hyperpape4• 12 years ago

There is also an issue with disability benefits where they are structured with disincentives to work. The motivation to not pay disability to people who can work is understandable, but for people who can work some but whose disability hinders their ability to get a full-time job or one that's not highly paid, it's a disaster.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/07/aid...

This is a point that's not fundamentally liberal or conservative. Both sides should be interested in improving programs that have gratuitous barriers to work.

lstyls• 12 years ago

Totally agree, it should be obvious no matter your politics that the way disability benefits are currently structured incentivize people to not work, and serve as a de facto welfare system.

The problem is that it's going the be impossible to get an agreement on the solution. Conservatives would take this as an opportunity to slash disability benefits and walk away. Liberals would look toward new government programs.

ap222132• 12 years ago

If we consider the difficulty in obtaining disability benefits and the difficulty in keeping them, we should also consider why someone would go through the hassle. I don't think that the benefits are all that much (I could be wrong).

What if we, as a society, could make it easier to obtain and sustain a good-paying job? Would people be still willing to go the route of disability? Maybe there are few jobs that many people can get. Or, maybe the 'costs' associated with working are too high. There's considerable social stigma for being 'disabled'' - why would someone take on that stigma?

I'm guessing that people are making a rational cost / benefit analysis.

ForHackernews• 12 years ago

A big problem is that if people leave disability, they'll lose their Medicaid health insurance, and low-paying part-time jobs won't replace that. This is another example of America being penny-wise, pound-foolish when it comes to healthcare costs.

bluedino• 12 years ago

The disability rate of 20-30 year olds really jumped in the last few years.

ceallen• 12 years ago

Possible result of Iraq/Afghanistan wars? The army's reported 1 million injured, but I'm not sure how many of them transitioned to disability.

Would disabled veterans be reflected in these numbers?

ColinCera• 12 years ago

There's quite a lot of disability fraud going on, some of it downright shocking.

Example #1: A couple of weeks ago, my brother, an orthopedist, had a 26-year-old man come in for an ankle sprain. In the course of working up the ankle -- mildly sprained, no problem -- he found that the patient doesn't work and is on 100% disability. Why? Because of acne. Yes, acne. Apparently when he was 19 or 20 he had such severe acne that someone deemed him unable to work and he was approved for 100% disability. Even though his skin now is perfectly clear, with some minor acne scarring the only remaining blemish, this man will likely never work a day in his life -- he will be drawing a disability check from the government for the next 60 years.

Example #2: Another brother is a police officer. Or was. He recently retired, at age 52, and now will draw a $70,000/year pension for the next few decades, which is a separate but related issue. But he tells me that -- even though he didn't personally take advantage of this ploy -- it is routine for retiring police officers and firefighters to go to "friendly" doctors and have those doctors certify them as disabled so they can get disability checks in addition to their pensions. It's called "taking the disability topper" or "getting DA'd."

peter303• 12 years ago

In Colorado 80% of medical marijuana patients were 20-30 old men with chronic pain.

lpsz2• 12 years ago

I'm happy if my tax money can help someone in need. However, I'm unhappy if it leads to creation of permanent poverty traps. Have any countries (perhaps in Europe or elsewhere) successfully implemented support systems that are fair both to the needy and to the taxpayers?

seren• 12 years ago

In Europe, Denmark's "Flexicurity"[0] model is often touted as an exemplary system. I don't know the details of the implementation though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity

htns• 12 years ago

As long as a raise of income of $N docks you at most N - (whatever you consider minimum wage) dollars in welfare, you won't be outright disincentivized from working.

Zigurd• 12 years ago

I suspect that angst about "permanent poverty traps" is something we're going to have to get over.

For now, we're talking about unskilled and low-skilled jobs going away permanently, and there is an element of moral panic about uneducated, supposedly low-value-producing people getting leisure and government support.

Just wait until it happens to a middle-class or upper-middle-class group. THEN is will be all kinds of innovative to offer lifelong government assistance in the form of mincome or other such program.

And if you are worried about government spending and efficiency, wouldn't you rather see the TSA payroll supporting twice or three times as many people in a mincome program? It's better to be honest about a lack of productive jobs.

zaroth15• 12 years ago

And it's not just disability benefits. When you stop and really analyze it; Medicaid and health insurance credits, SSI, food stamps, EITC, FICA, progressive income tax rates, refundable tax credits, phased-out tax deductions, even things like housing and energy assistance, etc.

There's easily $60,000 of services, utilities, fees, and taxes that you pay when earning $100k, that you get for free or don't have to pay if you earn $0. As @fredophile says, then you still have to add in the direct/indirect costs of going out and earning that money (e.g. childcare for starters), and you can easily gain net-zero or negative benefit all the way up to $100k of household income.

I'm sure people must have researched this extensively, and can give a properly cited cost analysis, but it's something I've been calling the 'middle class crucible'. Until you break out on the other side of $150k household income, the vast majority of your earned income is effectively running on a treadmill. E.g. On the order of 80 cents of each dollar you earn.

Every progressive (means-tested) social support program or tax rate, by definition, is a penalty for working. These programs have grown so big, and phase-out so aggressively in the income curve, it's an incredible trap / attack against the middle class.

jameshart• 12 years ago

That actually sounds like you might be able to back that up - would be interesting to see the actual stats. But I think you're missing a certain qualitative difference though - the services the 100K-income household is getting for their 60k are significantly better than the services the 0-income household is being given. Obviously they're probably spending money on better food than the food stamps would cover, they're likely living in better conditions in a better neighborhood, and their health insurance probably gives them more choices than they would have on medicaid.

pc2g4d• 12 years ago

This sounds crazy to me. Maybe you're living in a place with a really high cost of living? What's included in "services, utilities, fees, and taxes that you pay when earning $100k" ?

camgunz• 12 years ago

I'd also really like to see some numbers, because I don't believe that 60% of a $100k/yr. income is lost to "services, utilities, fees, and taxes that you pay when earning $100k, that you get for free or don't have to pay if you earn $0".

Is your list "Medicaid and health insurance credits, SSI, food stamps, EITC, FICA..." things that you have to pay, or benefits you get if your income is $0/yr.? For example, you wouldn't get EITC if you had no income, but you wouldn't get food stamps if you had $100k/yr.

I would argue that it's poor framing to compare a hypothetical family with $0/yr. income to one with $100k/yr. income. You bring up childcare as an example, but when you look at a family making, say, $35k/yr., they're largely unqualified for assistance but childcare is almost certainly out of reach for them. $100k/yr. families are paying for childcare, paying tons of taxes, and buying amazing Christmas gifts.

Because only 20% of Americans even make >= $100k/yr., I don't think you can rightly call them middle class. I'm not sure we should really be concerned for those at that income level, I think it's more imperative to start looking at people working full time but still making < $35k/yr. Is there an upper-middle class treadmill? Yeah sure, I'm not even sure what your argument is, that you're not getting rich? Regardless, a treadmill is much better than the alternatives. You imply that until you make $150k/yr., you may as well make $0/yr. This is really just untrue; probably (depending on number of children) it's untrue until you get down around $20k/yr., which is where you start getting into living wage argument territory.

Finally, I'm with you on progressive taxation. Tax tiers make no sense; we need a (simple) tax function. Problem solved.

pastProlog• 12 years ago

the 'middle class crucible'. Until you break out on the other side of $150k household income, the vast majority of your earned income is effectively running on a treadmill.
it's an incredible trap / attack against the middle class.

If your household is not making $150k you're not middle class though. You're working class. Middle class people don't have to run on a treadmill like that (unless they want to).

For about 25 years after World War II, an anomaly occurred where a young blue collar veteran could go on the GI bill, or alternatively get a unionized job at the factory, and buy a car and a house in the suburbs with a stay-at-home wife who took care of the kids whose college tuition was affordable, along with long-distance one week vacations every year, a solid pension etc. Some people even extended the term middle class to these people, which had previously meant professionals. Because they were living the lifestyle of middle class people.

If anything is clear, it's the eradication over the past 40 years of the idea of extending the term middle class downward from professional households to those making less than $150k a year. This was the working class before World War II and it is the working class now. Even if nowadays it's banging out PHP code or putting Visual Basic widgets together or wiring Cisco switches together instead of going into the mines or soldering parts on an assembly line.

hyperpape4• 12 years ago

Father of two, I have earned ~20,30,40k a year at various points in the past decade, then a good bit more.

You are simply wrong. There are places below $50k where you might suffer from close to 100% marginal rates, which I view as an enormous problem, but it's not true at higher incomes. Even the 80% figure you quote sounds wrong (and of course I know I shouldn't believe you because you don't even pick a set of numbers and stick to it).

Edit: I see elsewhere in the thread, it's clear that you're not really talking about income.

joshuahedlund• 12 years ago

This related article, also dated today, was linked at the bottom, and is a longer read with more/different details and stories:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/upshot/unemployment-the-va...

theorique• 12 years ago

This article describes the growth of disability benefits and the way they are dispensed: thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/09/how_to_be_mean_to_your_kids.html

jokoon4• 12 years ago

I live in france, am 29, I worked 2 months in my life.

"what they do instead"

Trying to go back to school, I learned programming for 2 years in some technician school program, did not get the degree, after that I expanded my programming skills by myself, but it has been pretty bleak. I'm quite ashamed of myself. I have many ideas of projects, but they really seems to be out of my reach in terms of skill, experience, motivation and networking. I took anti depressants for 4 years but am not so unhealthy in term of mental health...

I'm back at school again, for some equivalent degree, but on 1 year, I have an internship starting wednesday, I really hope it will hook me to some job opportunities.

If I don't get the degree nor a job, well I could really try to start some crowdfunded game project or social network, but I don't feel the industry really needs that many programmers. Maybe I'm really incompetent.

the_real_bto• 12 years ago

I'm really sorry to hear about your struggles. One wonderful thing about software development, is that credentials and pedigree are not required. If you can make software, you can get a job. Even if you can't write software, there are lots of related jobs. I've been writing software professionally for about 15 years or so. Before that I had flunked out of an electrical engineering program a couple times, and was waiting tables to get by. I considered myself a failure. There is always hope.

Writing software isn't really about intelligence, although it probably helps. It isn't really about knowing the "one right way to develop software." It is more about being willing to admit you are wrong. Learn from your mistakes. Also a good dose of stubbornness is needed to deal with tools that don't work properly. Sometimes the documentation will lie to you. It helps to not take the little failures too personally.

Best of luck to you.

jokoon4• 12 years ago

thanks :)

humanrebar5• 12 years ago

Even if you can't write software, there are lots of related jobs.

I'm more than a little frustrated that the tech sector hasn't taken this to heart more. There's a lot of day-to-day work that we expect developers to do that anyone with good grades in high school or a liberal arts associates degree could do.

I guess what I'm saying is that there's a low ratio of administrative assistants to developers considering how much developers are paid. Perhaps it would be better if developers were paid hourly or otherwise went home at 5 p.m. like normal professionals.

adventured• 12 years ago

My suggestion for where you're at, is to start smaller projects. Completing them feels really great. You can then open source them if you care to, or shut them down if they don't go any further.

Take one of your ideas, scale it down to nothing more than its essence, and build the simplest form of it you can imagine to get it to work, so people can use it. Then add on to it if or when you care to.

Whatever you do, build within your means to complete; as otherwise, you'll never actually get anywhere. As you launch things successfully, your ability to build to a larger vision will likely expand.

morgante4• 12 years ago

I don't feel the industry really needs that many programmers.

That's definitely false, at least in the US.

Kurtz793• 12 years ago

...which it's a relatively small part of the world.

For example in many parts of Europe, although it is relatively uncommon for a programmer to be unemployed, salaries are a far cry from the 100k+ of Silicon Valley, meaning that the (local) industry is not exacly "starving" for programmers.

jokoon4• 12 years ago

I guess I don't have a lot of exposure since I did not announce any concrete project. But I'm not seeing a lot of hiring ads... Maybe it's because I'm not fluent in .net, javascript or java.

I don't answer so many stackoverflow questions, but I use bitbucket regularly, several stackexchange accounts, several programming-oriented forums...

I guess it boils down to immigration policy...

zanny3• 12 years ago

That's definitely false, we aren't virtualizing brains, we don't have sapient AI, and Mesa still needs tessellation shaders. Plenty of work left to be done.

Nicholas_C• 12 years ago

I'm sorry for your troubles. I do have a question: How do you pay for anything? Have you been on govt. benefits this whole time?

jokoon4• 12 years ago

yes.

I only do my shopping at aldi, so I save a good amount of money.

don't forget that in france, government benefits are pretty good compared to other countries.

rconti• 12 years ago

Pretty common in France, from my experience -- even more so than in other European countries. It would be more popular in the US, too, if school wasn't so damned expensive!

icantthinkofone2• 12 years ago

One of my neighbors is 62 and brilliant. He's worked at Pixar and Silicon Graphics. He cranked out web sites for sites you probably go to. He lost his last job when the company went under. He now applies for jobs all over town and never gets a reply.

If age is the reason, these places don't know what they're missing.

TheBeardKing• 12 years ago

Maybe with that much experience they don't think they can afford him?

icantthinkofone2• 12 years ago

I forgot to mention that. He applied at large and small companies but, the kicker is, he's all set for retirement, doesn't need the money, and only wants to bring in about $20K to $30K so he can help fund a non-profit he likes.

VLM2• 12 years ago

Its hard to do primate dominance rituals on "dad" or "grandpa" and the managers are probably in their 30s. So standard employment is not going to work.

He should consult, that was what my father was driven into, more or less for the same ageism stuff. I'm in my 30s and working a "regular corporate job" and I suspect its the last job I'll have for similar reasons. Contract / consultant work really isn't all that bad.

emodendroket13• 12 years ago

I occasionally see the rise of the single-breadwinner family where a woman has a job celebrated as forward progress for gender equality or something, but that's misguided. Frankly, a lot of men are just unable to work and then their families are forced to subsist on the woman's job, which still pays, on average, less. Newspapers talk a lot about high-powered female executives with stay-at-home husbands and so on, but that's a small sliver, not somehow representative of the trend.

golemotron2• 12 years ago

A more subtle point is that the incentive structure for men to work had has evaporated. In divorce (which is largely initiated by women), men stand to lose more in alimony and child support. The economics say that if you marry (and far more people decide not to do these days), you probably shouldn't be the sole breadwinner and you certainly shouldn't earn more than your wife.

I know a number of couples where the man just doesn't work and is supported by his wife. I don't think it's a conscious choice, it's unconscious and based on incentive.

emodendroket13• 12 years ago

Alimony isn't just magically awarded in every divorce case, you know.

wtbob2• 12 years ago

People in the military, prison and institutions are excluded from these figures.

One of these is not like the other…

Everyone in the military (at least, who's not also imprisoned) should count as fully-employed.

bachmeier• 12 years ago

I think the reason they excluded those in the military is to allow an apples-to-apples comparison through time. It could be argued that the large number of draftees through the early 1970's forced some otherwise nonemployed into employment.

protomyth5• 12 years ago

I think you are right, but I think they are wrong for doing it given the importance of the military in a lot of regions and the military being a known career path for many young males.

ap222132• 12 years ago

As of 2011, there were 3.5M disabled veterans, of which 800K were receiving significant disability benefits.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_...

patja• 12 years ago

The article states that every month the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics asks all men who are not working and not receiving unemployment benefits what their situation is.

How does this process work? Having been in this population, I know for certain nobody from the government has ever asked me for this information.

akgerber4• 12 years ago

Not all of them, just a random sample of the population which includes some of them: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/

randomname2• 12 years ago

"The decline of traditional pension plans and rising education levels, which are associated with less physically demanding jobs, may both help explain why the elderly are working longer."

Nice spin there, NYT.

innguest5• 12 years ago

Nice catch of the propaganda machine at work!

The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

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