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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   21794 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026

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Oh yeah sorry, I was thinking of the general prime age labor rate which is at 90s levels, males have gone down a little.

However, we know the reasons why and we know that they don't want jobs and their problems are not because jobs are lacking

https://www.mercatus.org/research/research-papers/whats-behind-declining-male-labor-force-participation

While many observers assume that increasing inactivity rates reflect more men “dropping out” of the labor force out of frustration with the job market, relatively few prime-age inactive men fit the picture. Just 3 percent meet the official federal definition of a “discouraged worker,” and in 2014 just 7 percent of prime-age men inactive the entire preceding year said their reason for not working was that they could not find a job. The increase in their ranks accounted for just 9 percent of the rise in full-year inactivity from 1968 to 2014.

Few inactive men say they want a job in a typical week, and most of the increase in inactivity has involved men who do not want a job. This study estimates that only about one in four inactive men in 2014 wanted a job, and only about 25 percent of the increase in inactivity in a typical week from 1969 to 2014 involved men who wanted a job. Less than one-third of non-disabled inactive men want a job.

Again there is not a horde of American citizens who want jobs but can not find them. These inactive men do not want jobs, because they're disabled or caretaking or whatever.

Of the few who do have trouble finding it, well they're mostly just shit and that's why they can't. If you've ever done hiring for any lower level position you might have seen a few of them yourself, the people who you will simply never hire. Lazy addicted losers who won't show up on time or pay attention to their work no matter what you do, the type of person who gets themselves fired from fast food or door dashing. The dregs of society are the bottomfeeders not because of the 1% wealthy or immigrants or whatever other scapegoats, but because they're shit and can't even tear themselves away from drugs long enough to hold an interview.

Am I taking crazy pills - “7% of men saying they aren’t in the labor market is because they can’t find a job”. That’s a huge amount of men.

The job market sucks. I’ve worked for prop trading firms and they can pay extremely well. And I went thru a period of burn out or perhaps something like YIPs in baseball. I couldn’t hit a fastball anymore and make money and needed a break. So I looked for opportunities. Even with solid degrees (Ivy engineering + M-7 MBA and prior top performer) no one would even interview me.

Now I’ve rebuilt a solid 3 year track record and it seems like I can hit a fastball again. So I guess that’s better than taking a job, but I would still consider the right opportunity at a reasonable salary for economic security. In my experience the anecdotes are true and I have zero idea how I could add more valuable traits. The traits I have are elite. The anecdotes of a lot of people saying the job market sucks appears to be true.

Am I taking crazy pills - “7% of men saying they aren’t in the labor market is because they can’t find a job”. That’s a huge amount of men.

Not 7% of all men. 7% of those not in the labor force. Almost all men who want to work can get jobs, of those without jobs they don't want to work to begin with.

And this is just a poll. Public opinion polls are known to be flawed and tweaking questions can get much different results. Scott Sumner pointing this out a decade ago that polling makes no sense because of wide differences between polls.

The rising amount of disability makes absolutely zero sense. We do not have more disabled people today than we did 50 years ago when more people worked in factories where they could get hurt.

Increasing retirees does make sense. Almost everyone I know has family money because America the American upper class has gotten rich so formal work isn’t necessary. But that doesn’t explain surging disability when people have fewer disabilities today than in the 1970’s. It makes much more sense today your disabled when your discouraged than that there are no jobs.

The rising amount of disability makes absolutely zero sense. We do not have more disabled people today than we did 50 years ago when more people worked in factories where they could get hurt.

Disability numbers are significantly lower than they were ~10 years ago. 14 million https://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ to only 7 million now https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/2026-01.html?

And percentage wise 30 years ago (back when everything was so good with our millennial nostalgia), quick check with chatbot

So despite the U.S. population aging, the share of Americans receiving SSDI is actually slightly lower today than it was in 1996 (about 2.5% → 2.2% when counting all SSDI beneficiaries). The program grew through the 2000s, peaked around 2013, and has declined substantially since then as application rates fell and many baby boomers aged from SSDI into retirement Social Security.

The main thing I know of to increase is veterans

1996: roughly 8–9% of living veterans received VA disability compensation.

2026: about 40% of living veterans receive VA disability compensation (around 6.6 million recipients out of roughly 16–17 million living veterans).

Which uh yeah, is actually pretty bad. But that's not something politicians are going to even talk about yet alone want to solve, for the very reason why it got so bad there. They gotta "support our troops" and signal how much they love vets. The vets don't wanna work, they wanna be on disability and no one will touch it.

Aren’t you changing sources? Your other sources said 58% of people out of the labor market are on disability while the amount of people out of the labor force has increased dramatically. If you are going to argue something you should use the same definition and data sets.

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