HOW MUCH OF THE TRAGEDY IS FENTANYL ETC? 2/4: Men Without Work: Post-Pandemic Edition (2022) (New Threats to Freedom Series)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2024
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Men-Without-Work-Americas-
Nicholas Eberstadt’s landmark 2016 study, Men Without Work, cast a spotlight on the collapse of work for men in modern America. Rosy reports of low unemployment rates and “full or near full employment” conditions, he contends, were overlooking a quiet, continuing crisis: Depression-era work rates for American men of “prime working age” (25–54).
The grim truth: over six million prime-age men were neither working nor looking for work. Conventional unemployment measures ignored these labor force dropouts, but their ranks had been rising relentlessly for half a century. Eberstadt’s unflinching analysis was, in the words of The New York Times, “an unsettling portrait not just of male unemployment, but also of lives deeply alienated from civil society.”
The famed American work ethic was once near universal: men of sound mind and body took pride in contributing to their communities and families. No longer, warned Eberstadt. And now—six years and one catastrophic pandemic later—the problem has not only worsened: it has seemingly been spreading among prime-age women and workers over fifty-five.
In a brand new introduction, Eberstadt explains how the government’s response to Covid-19 inadvertently exacerbated the flight from work in America. From indiscriminate pandemic shutdowns to almost unconditional “unemployment” benefits, Americans were essentially paid not to work.
1900 DETROIT
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a post-pendemic edition. |
| 0:05.0 | This is CBS I on the World. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm John Bachelor with Nicholas Aberstot. |
| 0:09.0 | Nick Aberstot is the author of Men Without Work. |
| 0:12.0 | This is a post-pendemic edition. We'll get there, but we have to work through |
| 0:16.4 | the mystery of 10 million men without work, not looking for work, and surviving in some fashion in this rich and dynamic culture. |
| 0:27.1 | Who are they? |
| 0:28.1 | Nick, this is a mystery that can be solved by categories, I learned from you that a married man with children and |
| 0:37.6 | foreign-born is guaranteed to be at work, guaranteed. It's automatic. And those categories if not followed, oh, education, |
| 0:49.6 | with a high school or a better education, guaranteed to be at work and if those categories are not |
| 0:54.0 | followed that's who they are correct? The odds are really striking here aren't |
| 1:00.8 | they so if you are a foreign-born guy in the USA, |
| 1:07.3 | it doesn't matter what your ethnicity is |
| 1:09.4 | or practically what your educational background is, |
| 1:15.0 | in the labor force than your native-born counterpart. |
| 1:19.1 | And with respect to marriage, it's amazing how much lower the work and labor force |
| 1:30.9 | participation rates are for guys who've never been married than for guys who are married. |
| 1:37.0 | By the way, also, John, interesting fact, even for guys who are not married if they have kids under the same roof they're way |
| 1:46.4 | more likely to be looking for a job or working it's something like the provider |
| 1:51.1 | impulse you know? |
| 1:52.8 | It is, and we have another term that's obvious now, the NILF, not in the labor force. |
| 1:59.5 | As of 2015, when Nick had the most recent statistics for his publication. |
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