The Idle Army: America’s Unworking Men
I have the impression the article got the cause and effect ordering confused.<p>It states for example on one paragraph, that the men not working, exacerbate family breakdown.<p>As someone in my 28s having lots of problems like in the article, I can personally claim, that for me, and all my friends, it is the other way around:<p>Creating a family in the current society, is almost impossible, two incomes is necessary, thus reducing time available to take care of kids, divorce is too easy, making it too risky for men (in my country, 72% of &quot;no-fault&quot; divorces were initiated by women for example), young women are not interested in serious relationships (instead they are interested in having fun, one-night stands, drinking, sex, etc...) because it gets in the way of having a career.<p>So, because of all this, starting a family, even if you really, really want it, is excessively hard.<p>So... why bother? Why put a massive effort to work your ass off, if you won&#x27;t have anything to do with the money?<p>Alright, you go and work 60 hours&#x2F;week, save money... and now what? Buy a house, to live in it alone? Buy a car, that doesn&#x27;t fit your parents garage that has their car already? Or buy videogames that you can&#x27;t play because you work 60 hours&#x2F;week?<p>It is logical, that the thing to be done, is do the mininum necessary to support a loner lifestyle, this is not my case (far from it), but I&#x27;ve met people where their current simple non-creative jobs can pay for international trips, restaurants and prostitutes, but are still too far from supporting a family, so... why not just stay where they are, and enjoy international trips, restaurants and prostitutes? Why work so hard to not have any leisure time, if the result would be reach old age alone, rich, and with nothing to spend that money with and no friends?<p>EDIT: people are making some assumptions about me and understanding this wrong. So to clear things up:<p>1. I am more of a exception guy, I don&#x27;t like one night stands and whatnot, and don&#x27;t go to bars or clubs, I look for women in my social circle, that is academia, workplaces (related to tech, always), and church. The women I described is what I saw there, maybe women elsewhere are different.<p>2. I am from Brazil, sometimes I forget how confortable life in US is in general, many people replied that you don&#x27;t need two-person income if you have a non-luxurious life, here in Brazil, the US &quot;middle-class&quot; life, of having two cars for example, is only for rich people, most of the population can&#x27;t afford even a single car (I for example don&#x27;t own a car, even if I summed all my income of the last 5 years, I would still not have enough for a car), here two-person income is necessary even if you are going to live in a favela shack with walls made of discarded wood and roof tiles, I just assumed this was the case for most of US too. I would love some detailed information if that is true, or not.<p>3. From what I&#x27;ve heard, housing, healthcare, and some other basic necessities are very expensive in US in general, housing is very expensive in Brazil too, even if bad quality &quot;supermarket&quot; food is cheap, you  can&#x27;t start a family with a single income if you can&#x27;t afford housing and healthcare, for example if your kids get sick, how you will pay for it? Even here in Brazil where the state gives completely free healthcare, people still consider it too risky to not have healthcare money, sometimes your kid need something <i>now</i> and you don&#x27;t have time to wait the state.<p>4. Some people reading the text are assuming I am a NEET myself... that is not the case, I just find myself seriously tempted to do so though (because I am trying, very hard, to get money to start a family, yet I never got a legal job, and so far my total net worth is negative, some months I paid more in interest than the monthly mininum wage)