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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28216 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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Yes, the total labor force participation is up due to women entering the workforce. It now takes 2 incomes to do what a single income did before. This phenomenon led to the one good idea Elizabeth Warren ever had: "The Two Income Trap". This is not a signal of prosperity, far from it.

The two income trap isn't that women enter the workforce, it's that people live paycheck to paycheck on two incomes rather than one, meaning that there's less slack in the household.

Things are obviously generally not twice as expensive in real terms as they were in the 1960s, though housing is a notable exception. However, the price of housing clearly is being driven by factors other than people having more income.

But men have been leaving the labor force in large numbers. Whereas only 5% of prime age males weren't employed in 1968, today it's nearly 14%. And, of course, this doesn't even reflect the rise of part-time labor.

Okay, but women have been entering the labor force in larger numbers.

By the way, you are equivocating between "employed" and "participating in the labor force". There are not the same concept.

Because U3 only reflects short-term fluctuations in the labor market, and not the disastrous long term changes which have occurred over the last 50 years. And the media reports on U3 but not on the things that matter more.

You've yet to show that it's disastrous, unless all you care about is minmaxing prime age male LFPR.

Yes, I think minmaxing prime age male labor participation rate is a good thing.

We don't need more hikikomori and drug addicts who don't work. (I will acknowledge that part of the change is due to people who are studying past the age of 25. But this is also bad).

There is nothing good about the number of men not working going from 5% to 14%.

Conversely, I think we'd be much better off with lower female labor participation. Many women who would prefer to stay home with children feel that they need to work, either for money or for social acceptability reasons.

We don't need more hikikomori and drug addicts who don't work. (I will acknowledge that part of the change is due to people who are studying past the age of 25. But this is also bad).

I somewhat disagree. Getting these people out of the labor force may mean better service for customers and productivity for employers. People who have low inclination to work are probably worse employees.

I'm not sure how coherent this is. If your objections are primarily socio-cultural - i.e. women would be happier in the home (I disagree but whatever, fine) - then why even bother talking about economics? If your objections are economic then these two goals obviously work at cross-purposes; if the problem is the increasing ratio of the non-economically productive to the productive, women leaving the workforce obviously makes this problem worse.

There is nothing good about the number of men not working going from 5% to 14%.

Conversely, I think we'd be much better off with lower female labor participation. Many women who would prefer to stay home with children feel that they need to work, either for money or for social acceptability reasons.

You've got a just so story for why women staying home is good and men staying home is bad, but it's easy to make up the alternate story as well. It might go something like:

We don't need more women staying home and profligately spending the man's paycheck (recall that women spend most of the household's discretionary income). Let them work to understand the value of a dollar. Conversely, many men who would prefer to stay home to raise children feel that they need to work, either for money or social respectability reasons.

I don't expect you'll be convinced by my argument, but you should recognize that yours is also only convincing to those already convinced.

I have the seeds of an effortpost about women’s socially conservative preferences conflicting with the situation on the ground. But so far, it’s just the seeds.

There are good reasons(although he doesn’t articulate them) to care a lot about prime age male LFPR. Generally fewer to care about female LFPR.

I can imagine a society in which women go to work and keep the place running, and men don’t. My knowledge of men and women points to this being a very bad society.

In contrast if you cut female LFPR to 0, well, strict Islamic countries exist. Saudi Arabia managed to be stable and functional and have a low crime rate. In practice I don’t know of many people that want to go that far- the female LFPR in America 1950 was still well into the double digits, but this was a stable functional society with modern infrastructure.

Gender roles are real. You cannot ask for men to do women’s jobs, or women to do men’s jobs, and expect that they will do them as well as if done by the sex to which they are naturally suited. And at society-wide scales, even small differences add up.

Okay, but we're not trading off 100% male LFPR vs 0%. The question is about 95% vs 86%. The fact that women don't want to work construction or whatever doesn't tell us which one of those two is better.

Generally fewer to care about female LFPR.

Fewer, except for respecting the freedom of an individual to choose whether they wish to work or not. Perhaps you can argue that women are driven into the workforce despite not wanting to do so, but you must admit that the opposite was happening in the sixties.

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