HOW MUCH OF THE TRAGEDY IS FENTANYL ETC? 4/4: 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
🧾️ Download transcript
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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is |
| 0:05.0 | CBS I on the world. I'm John Bachelor with Nicholas Aberstott. |
| 0:08.0 | His reissue of his men without work, which was published in the middle of the second decade of the |
| 0:14.8 | 21st century. We're now in the third decade and we've survived the pandemic that put everyone out of work momentarily. |
| 0:25.0 | Nick provides a chapter of some things that we can see that maybe change the argument, |
| 0:29.7 | maybe do not. |
| 0:31.7 | Nick, one of the things that I'm struck by right now, again do not only |
| 0:35.0 | only for the things that I'm struck by right now again and again is these numbers are |
| 0:37.1 | changing not only for men but also for women do I read you correctly that women without work is a rising category? |
| 0:45.0 | Yes, well, unfortunately, the men without work problem that I described in the first edition is worse now than it was then. |
| 0:57.2 | You could almost draw a straight line from 1965 to the first edition of the book to where we are now six years later. It's a kind of |
| 1:07.1 | uncanny. But it looks as if other population groups may also be joining this flight from work, including people who are older Americans, 55 plus, and now we're seeing some, I think, warning signs for Prime Age women. |
| 1:26.6 | I don't want to say it's a red flashing light, but maybe a yellow flashing light. |
| 1:31.3 | Is it a shock or is it a shift of the labor force? |
| 1:35.0 | Nick asked that question. |
| 1:37.0 | What is the China shock? |
| 1:38.2 | How would that contribute to the unknowns? |
| 1:41.9 | Well, the China, the first China shock was the China entering the World Trade Organization, which provided an avenue for Chinese manufacturing and low cost goods into our economy, |
| 1:58.4 | did a lot of things to lower inflation in the U.S. but it also wreaked havoc on our manufacturing sector over the course of a few years and changed our manufacturing patterns including work. |
| 2:12.0 | We've had a China shock with with COVID as well and that |
| 2:17.6 | brought us to the brink of a global economic collapse with the shutdowns that you described. |
| 2:26.0 | And we also have right now an introduction to I think it's called Universal Base basic income UBI which is a debate in our |
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