Sunday, March 9, 2014

Why men don't marry

In combination with wages that have declined over the last 41 years, this chart, which shows the decline of male labor force participation from more than 86 percent to less than 70 percent, is probably almost as important in the increased reluctance of young men to marry as the legal bias against them.

Men who cannot support families will not support families. This is the societal price for doubling the number of women in the workforce.

37 comments:

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

Also, because free vag.

brian said...

The other chart at the link tells the rest of the story. Men are competing with the state for the provisioning role.

So if you, as a man, aren't generating about $60k in SURPLUS income (that is, more than you need to support yourself) you're already bid out of the market.

The future ain't what it used to be.

Anonymous said...

The second chart isn't entirely accurate as it describes a temporary situation (eventually your children become school age) and the $15k in other people provided childcare goes away.

It is also important to note that the $57k number is only obtainable if the single ho is pulling down $29k a year. If she wanted to sit on her ass all day long then you only need to have a $28k surplus, $13k if she wants to pretend to watch the kids.

So if the woman is intent on being a good mom, most men should comfortably beat the state as an economic alternative. The problem is, many women (particularly among certain demographics) have no real interest in being good mothers.

buzzardist said...

As brian said, the other chart on the same zerohedge page does a lot to help explain the downward trend. It's not just women entering the workforce, although that's definitely had an impact. It's that a single woman with kids can get more out of the state than she can out of the average husband. Women aren't going to marry men or stay married to them if they perceive that they can get better deals elsewhere.

Women marry, in part, for security and creature comforts. Men saw their wages stagnate because women entered the workforce. As men's paychecks bought less and less, women found that they had less and less need for men, particularly as the state was offering more and more. Once women reject men, the men have considerably less motivation to work, particularly if they're having to pay child support to the women who rejected them. When work isn't rewarding them with women and a family, men drop out of the labor force.

Where does this all end? Probably with the collapse of the tax base. More and more people going Galt will eventually leave the state broke, and all those women relying on it will be destitute. At that point, they will run in herds back to men. But why any single man with a house and a steady living would want the damaged goods when there will remain so many younger women who haven't messed up their lives yet is beyond me. Unless the government can find a way with a declining tax base to keep fed, clothed, and housed the growing number of people who contribute nothing back to the government, I have to imagine that a lot of those dependent women and their children are eventually going to starve.

Poverty and wealth are inherited traits. More and more demographic research over hundreds of years of data is confirming this. It used to be that the poor had fewer than two children per woman survive to adulthood, while the wealthy had more than four children per woman survive. Our backwards incentive system has reversed this dynamic, such that those who would be dispositioned to achieve in society are shrinking in numbers, while those dispositioned to wallow in poverty are increasing. When there isn't enough wealth to keep subsidizing the poor anymore, nature will take back over until the children of the poor are starving beggars. Only then, when men are rewarded as breadwinners and poor, single women aren't given incentives to bear and raise children outside of marriage, will we maybe see our societal self-destruction begin to reverse itself.

Kim said...

OMG PANIC! MEN NOT WORKING ANYMORE?

Actually, the graph is horribly misleading because of the y-axis scale. Basically, a 10-point drop in male workforce participation over the 20th century is statistically insignificant, given the huge growth of female participation over the same period.

The truly alarming drop (which IS statistically significant) is the one since 2008, during the Great Obama Depression.

Anonymous said...

@Kim

First, 87-69 is an 18 point drop. Not a 10 point drop. It most certainly is statistically significant because men and women are not equal.

First a 10 point drop is a 15% reduction Part of your mistake is assuming that all the jobs women are doing now would even exist if they went back to not being in the labor force.

Men do real jobs that run civilizations, and advance technology. Anything dealing with home building/repair, power creation/generation, waste removal, water purification, extracting and processing of raw materials, etc. are done by men. Women largely went to work to push paper around and watch other people's children. No doubt you can bust our your favorite career woman that does something genuinely productive and isn't a burden to her male coworkers, but such people are the exception.

If every man were to go on strike for a month the world would be in economic ruin, there would be tens of thousands of deaths, famine in 6 months time, and it is likely there will be some sort of pandemic. If every woman went on strike for a month, there would be an above average number of men driving around on expired driver's licenses.

Hoots said...

Dearest Kim, the chart shows a 17% drop in male labor force participation over the last ~65 years. That equates to over 25 million men. Rather than negating this, the increase in female labor force participation exacerbates the effect VD is pointing out. As for statistical significance, that line doesn't look very noisy to me, but maybe my eyesight is failing.

Unknown said...

Also immigration.

Anonymous said...

It must be fun to get to decide what is and what is not statistically significant, and thereby abuse the definition of the term. Really - everything before 2008 was random chance indicative of no trend? There is a clear trend line, but it sure doesn't look like it's a "random chance process" that has seen the decline in male labor force participation of 17 basis points, 12 of those lost in a period quizzically called "not statistically significant" and then the last 5 suddenly becoming "statistically significant". Just from this graph, if you're going to demand some special significance on the inflection point around 2008, we're going to have to acknowledge that there's something that coincides pretty well with the Vietnam War...but still had men leaving the workforce.

Put down the GOP crack pipe. Hoping that once the Obamanation ends and there's somebody else in office it will all be fantastic lets the destructive processes rending American and western culture - plotted and planned in advance for the gain of the select group at the top - continue unabated. Having an "R" in the White House would not magically turn this around or cause the same downward trend to become the product of random chance, and, I surmise by your claim, nothing at all to worry about, move along folks.

Eowyn said...

My brother's wife left him last year. She said she couldn't handle his temper but her true intentions were clear when she told my mother she enjoys spending her paycheck on herself, rather than contributing toward their living expenses. She shacked up with a guy who drives get around and doesn't make her pay anything.

And my mom wonders why my two other brothers are apathetic about getting married. As my youngest brother says: there are new 18 year olds every year. Zero incentive for them to commit and settle down, given what they have to choose from.

Unknown said...

The trend is statistically significant, Kim. Statistical significance actually means something, and the thing that it means is not "this feels like a lot to me" [1].

But I don't agree with Vox. We see two correlated trends. The first is "Men aren't getting jobs as frequently". The second is "men aren't marrying as frequently". Vox implies here that the first causes the second. I hold with Dalrock that the second causes the first more often than the other way around. [2]

Marriage is a business contract. The marriage 1.0 deal is that the man produces wealth for the couple, and the woman produces (and raises) children for the couple. The marriage 2.0 deal is that the man produces wealth for the woman and her children, and the woman produces children for herself. The inertia of tradition is catching up with the legal reality of marriage 2.0 and men are opting out.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance
[2] http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/07/20/forfeiting-the-patriarchal-dividend/

Trust said...

A old friend of mine was paralyzed from the waste down in an accident and then diagnosed with prostate cancer. His wife left him for another man, despite making him live celibate for years before his accident.

He supported her for over 20 years.

Unknown said...

Trust, you're right. The basic problem is that in Marriage 2.0 there is no concept of a couple. There are just two individuals constantly evaluating and reevaluating the net present value of their partnership. It's tit-for-tat. It's "50-50". It's mercenary.

Trust said...

State meddling has turned what was once a sacred covenant into a legal partnership.

VD said...

Vox implies here that the first causes the second. I hold with Dalrock that the second causes the first more often than the other way around.

I suggest that you look at the order of when the two declines began taking place.

Roger Cook said...

What factors are accounted for in the chart? Is the increase in life expectancy? I think that would be the big one, and I wouldn't be surprised if the non-able-bodied are counted as present but not active. I suppose I should go digging at the BLS, but if someone knows already...

TetanusScrote said...

That's a sad story Trust. What a cunt wife.

As for family wage jobs, I'm getting into a trade for that so I can do my part to stymie the collapse of Western Civ. Unless you're a lawyer, doctor or Wall Street pro, as a man, there won't be any cozy jobs left to support a family on (and probably won't for the rest of my lifetime), which is just as well. They have a softening effect on the spirit.

I'm sure leftists are pissed as hell that men can fund their dreams and live comfortably all without going through 4 hollow years of soft headed nonsense. For one reason or another you don't see too many black or female plumbers, electricians, HVAC, professional marines (the tugboat kind, not the shooting kind). Thing is they're not terribly intellectually demanding jobs, you just need to know how certain things work and know what not to touch and be able to put up with being uncomfortable for long periods of time.

But I guess that's too much for some.

Trust said...

I'm 40 years old, have a masters degree, and make a good salary as a senior executive. That said, it is amazing how much less my checks are than my salary, and how difficult it is to support a family of four on even my good income. And I refuse to take guvment money, but plenty of my money is taken to buy votes.

This chart is accurate. My wife is more serious abouts religion than I, but still has residual feminist dogma in her blood after 2 decades of public education indoctrination. She knows I can't walk, and her effort, while above average, is far below what it should be.

Government spoils everything, yet people keep voting for more government. It's like The Walking Dead... the more the takers get, the more makers turn to takers.

Ever Light said...

"Where does this all end? Probably with the collapse of the tax base. More and more people going Galt will eventually leave the state broke, and all those women relying on it will be destitute. At that point, they will run in herds back to men. But why any single man with a house and a steady living would want the damaged goods when there will remain so many younger women who haven't messed up their lives yet is beyond me. Unless the government can find a way with a declining tax base to keep fed, clothed, and housed the growing number of people who contribute nothing back to the government, I have to imagine that a lot of those dependent women and their children are eventually going to starve."

This speaks a lot of truth Buzzardist and reminds me all to well of Isaiah 2-4 (in the King James Bible).


Everyone's comments just build up on this uncomfortable but blatant consequence: Men will not marry if they can't build a family. And the men that do marry in today's time....We can only pray that everything works out for them because despite the societal problems, divorce is a SIN and rampant spiritual adultery of God's sacred union between a man and a woman will not go unpunished at the Judgment on Earth at the Last Day (coming soon...).

The best thing a young man can do today is pray and live in God's Will for their lives and do accordingly. Learn a trade and/or go to school and earn some useful degrees. Learn how to live off-grid and survive on his own, take care of his family (if he has one) and when it comes to relationships with women gauge if they are serious or not. No "sinful fornicating" boyfriend-girlfriend relationships if you intend to please God. If we are being BIBLICAL about it MARRIAGE is the only relationship (ACCEPTED BY GOD) that men and women are supposed to have sex in. In real life with people that mostly never works out but men should refrain from fornication even though their are many "easy opportunities" for some men. Do NOT risk getting women pregnant if you cannot support a family. Young men really don't have much realistic short-term options concerning this.

Ever Light said...

I don't have much access to the internet right now but I'll leave with these excerpt from Isaiah 2-4. Please excuse me if I don't get back around to replying to anyone's comments.

Vox, keep up the great work.
_____________

I encourage people to also explore:

1. www.jesus-is-savior.com
2. www.godlovespeople.com
3. www.jesusisprecious.org

to research on some Future Bible Prophecy about the Last Days we are living in. MOST OF ALL, repent to Jesus Christ believing in YOUR HEART IN FAITH the Gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) which is the 1. Death of Jesus Christ on the Cross, 2. burial of Jesus Christ and 3. the Resurrection of the alive Jesus Christ. Admit you are a sinner guilty of your sin to Jesus Christ in a prayer or simple faithful belief in you hear and you are saved as a BORN AGAIN believer who will end up in Heaven instead of Hell when you die.
___________

Ever Light said...

I'll leave you with (KJV) Isaiah 2-4. God bless everyone and stay safe in these Perilous Times. Remember: the LORD JESUS CHRIST LOVES YOU! COME TO HIM BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE WHEN YOU ARE DEAD!

1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
4 And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
5 O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD.
6 ¶ Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers.
7 Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots:
8 Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made:
9 And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not.
10 ¶ Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty.
11 The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.
12 For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low:
13 And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan,
14 And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up,
15 And upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall,
16 And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures.
17 And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.
18 And the idols he shall utterly abolish.
19 And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.
20 In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats;
21 To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.
22 Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?

Ever Light said...

CHAPTER 3
1 For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water,
2 The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient,
3 The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator.
4 And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.
5 And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.
6 When a man shall take hold of his brother of the house of his father, saying, Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler, and let this ruin be under thy hand:
7 In that day shall he swear, saying, I will not be an healer; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: make me not a ruler of the people.
8 For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his glory.
9 ¶ The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.
10 Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.
11 Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.
12 ¶ As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.
13 The LORD standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people.
14 The LORD will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
15 What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
16 ¶ Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet:
17 Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts.
18 In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon,
19 The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers,
20 The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings,
21 The rings, and nose jewels,
22 The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins,
23 The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails.
24 And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty.
25 Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.
26 And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.

Ever Light said...

CHAPTER 4
1 And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.
2 In that day shall the branch of the LORD be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel.
3 And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem:
4 When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning.
5 And the LORD will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence.
6 And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.
__________
Love you all. Take care.

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

Good grief, who let the Bible bumpkins in?

Bob Loblaw said...

State meddling has turned what was once a sacred covenant into a legal partnership.

Marriage was always a legal partnership. Maybe even more so than it is today. What's changed is the state has become a second, non-judgemental daddy who's willing to take care of women who don't get married.

Bob Loblaw said...

It's hard to know what's cause and effect here. Is it that men aren't getting married because they can't support a family, or is it that men aren't getting married and therefor they have no reason to make more than enough to get by? I know a lot of guys who would be doing something else for less money but for the needs of the family.

Retrenched said...

Its most likely a combination of different factors. On the one hand we have the fem-centric legal system which kills the incentives men have to marry, and on the other there's fem-centric social engineering which depletes economic opportunities for the men who want to marry, making it more difficult for them to make the kind of money necessary to attract a wife.

Retrenched said...

To paraphrase Delvin, giving women more career opportunities than men does not mean that men get wives who aren't as materialistic, it simply means that they do not get wives at all.

Retrenched said...

*Devlin, dammit.

Unknown said...

I wrote about this in a paper for my 200 level English class. I await my liberal teacher's response. :)

Akulkis said...

If it's an otherwise good paper, and you get graded poorly for it, go the black-knight route.

Trust said...

The same women who complaint about the wage gaps are the same women who demand their husband make more.

Anonymous said...

Looks like a feedback loop. More women enter the workforce, so men make less money, making them less attractive as husbands, while at the same time women get more money from government and make-work jobs plus feminist anti-marriage indoctrination, so women delay marriage, so men notice women don't want to get married before 30-or-so, so men take it easier and make less money, so....

It's probably fair to say it started with women entering the workforce, followed by the damage done to marriage, though.

Bob Loblaw said...

It's probably fair to say it started with women entering the workforce, followed by the damage done to marriage, though.

It may be the damage to marriage came first. Over the years I've talked to a few women who came of age in the sixties. It seems they believed, rightly or wrongly, a generation of men was abandoning its middle-aged wives and trading them in for a younger model. For these women a career wasn't a "you go gurl" type thing so much as an insurance policy in case the old man booted them to the curb. I don't know if the numbers back that perception up or not, but it doesn't matter if they acted on it.

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Kim said...

"Dearest Kim, the chart shows a 17% drop in male labor force participation over the last ~65 years."

Mea maxima culpa - I meant to wriote 20%, not 10%. Typo. And thank you for the exquisite condescension, you twat.

I didn't really want to get dragged into a statistical argument, but let's also not forget that the growth of our technological society has created a raft of other jobs that need not be done exclusively by men. Thus, the "jobs universe" has expanded, and therefore the drop in male participation is not only overstated, but quite explicable. (To use a comparable example, this is like saying that Coca-Cola has suffered a massive market share loss in the soft-drink market since, say, 1950 -- which is true -- but when one realizes that the "soft drinks" market has expanded exponentially with the growth of fruit-based drinks, energy drinks, etc., then Coke's market share loss is likewise explicable.)

Akulkis said...

Kim, regardless of "expanding job market" we still have 30% of the male workforce unemployed... this is NOT good for society in the long run (we now have a lot of single, employed women who look down their nose at the unemployed men who SHOULD be doing those jobs? Why? Because WOMEN ARE COMPLAINING THAT THERE'S NOBODY TO MARRY!!!!) No man has ever turned up his nose at a woman for not working, but only the most insane women have even a hint of tolerance for a man without some sort of work.

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