Not all the factors are the same. It used to be legal in all states to leave school at age 16, which is part of why the traditional workforce participation statistic is for ages 16-64. But that only remains true in 16 states; 34 states have raised the minimum school-leaving age, yet the workforce-participation statistics are still calculated for age 16-64. Naturally you would expect lower workforce participation among people aged 16-18 when it's illegal for them to drop out of school and get a job instead.
It's also now more de-facto expected than it used to be that you attend at least some university (2 years of community college if not a 4-year university), so workforce participation rates for people aged 18-20 are declining for non-mysterious reasons. Although that's at least something you can legally choose not to do.
- 15% more Millennials went to the uni comparing to Baby Boomers
- In my friend's production company that works for BBC almost everybody is a contractor - 20 years ago very few were. (Similar pattern exists in big banks)
I think you hit the nail on the head with this sentence: "A few of years ago, Gallup found that what most people wanted, all over the world, was a secure full-time job. That, after all, is the way most people get enough money to live on."
But then backtrack here and miss the point "A lot of us, men and women, grew up thinking of male full-time jobs as real jobs. It’s no wonder that many find the decline of the dad job so unsettling."
I don't think it's 'realness', whatever that means, that matters. It is the benefits like healthcare, ability to afford a place to live, education, and further the social and mental health benefit of working in proximity with people with similar interests and abilities.
I do think 'realness' factors into it though. If you can connect what you're doing with the value the company gets from you doing it, you naturally are going to feel like you doing well == company doing well == security for all. This is, in fact, the implicit bargain in long-term employment.
As business and industry has become more abstract, more interconnect, more outsourced, and as in general human capital's value has crashed much harder than any graph from the article will show you, it becomes significantly harder for an employee to understand how his or her role actually translates into value. Or if it is understandable, it's abstracted away through a few other layers of the business and many of those layers change often, leaving you wondering if you're going to continue to be a part of it.
Yes, I almost expanded further on the healthcare point for that reason, but then realized the author seems as if they are possibly writing from the UK.
Can you clarify what impact that has in regards to population? I don't believe the US has significantly different medical needs compared to any other OECD nation?
I don't know if America's "size" is really used as an argument against single-payer working here but if it is, I'm sure what is meant is population size. What's an example of referencing a country's large size meaning more diverse or heterogeneous rather than greater population?
But I agree that "size" in this case definitely does not mean geographic size. Geographic size might be a factor for why America doesn't have better telecommunications or rail system, not health care.
I'll walk that last part back a bit, geographic size, and having sparsely populated areas, can make providing health care for all more difficult and therefore more costly. But I think it would be a very minor factor and Australia serves as a good example of that, it has a much smaller population but some of it is comparably far-flung.
I agreed with, and upvoted your answer, but upon reflection, so long as insurance policies in America are still constrained by state borders, there might well be a (fairly arbitrary) hurdle on risk pools. States with more and a higher concentration of population centers may benefit from a more diverse risk pool than states that look more like Alaska.
Trump and some Republicans have argued for allowing selling policies across state lines but I think more knowledgable people have said it would not make a significant difference in health care costs and poses some race-to-the-bottom risks.
I think most insurance providers are multi-state entities so higher costs in one state can be balanced by lower costs in others. But there may be some limits; if the ACA requirement that insurers use 80% of revenue on health care costs is applied per-state, they may not be able balance out a really unhealthy state. But this isn't an issue due to America's geographic or population size or even the quantity of states, it's that America has much more political power at the state level.
Makes no sense. The EU has a larger and far more diverse population than the US, and yet has universal healthcare and demonstrated exactly how to handle it if you're so diverse:
Just set up multiple systems. The US even has very convenient boundaries to split up the systems along: States, just like the EU.
Even most countries with universal healthcare further subdivides their systems. E.g. Norway (5 million people) operates regional health trusts that are largely independent. The UK (60 million) does the same on a larger scale (more trusts) and leverages the number of trusts to improve management of individual trusts by occasionally having successful trust take over the running of trusts where management is failing.
The "size" argument is almost always a total red herring.
I really don't understand this argument. I can only assume it's some sort of euphemism I don't have the cultural context to understand.
Belgium is split right down the middle by language and culture, with many people supporting a split into two independent countries. Spain has Catalonia and the Basque country, two culturally and linguistically distinct regions that have long fought for independence. Ireland has spent most of the last century in a slow-burning civil war. Half of Germany was part of the Soviet Union until 1989.
When people say that universal healthcare can't work in the US because of "diversity", what exactly do they mean by that word?
The point was that, given the NHS, the health benefits issue is probably, for good reason, not something I would expect the author to consider in their summary of dad jobs.
Yes! This "health insurance is a job benefit" is an artifact of labor competition in the US during WW2. In Switzerland, where health insurance is mandatory, your employer specifically isn't allowed to purchase it for you...you have to go into the same market as everyone else (which is more fair, and doesn't impair labor mobility).
Great point about labor mobility. Many would be American entrepreneurs may never take the plunge (start-up, small business, etc.) because of healthcare cost and fears.
Many would also work part time (e.g. to spend more time with their kid) if they could got health insurance at the same time. Detaching health insurance from your job is great for lots of reasons.
There is another huge issue with the employer playing for health care right now. On econtalk[1] Mark Warshawsky suggested that the current regulations and tax incentives lead to rising health care cost that also leads to a stagnating take home salary for lower end workers. Legally everyone at a company must get access to the same health care benefits. Since health care benefits are paid for in pre-tax money high earners who are already well off benefit quite a bit from better health care. Someone who pays very little taxes and can barely pay the rent probably would rather take some more cash home. However, most companies are more focused on "attracting top talent" so more gold plated health care plans emerge. According to the author most of the wage increases for low pay workers has just been eaten up by increased health care cost. That's supposedly were the income gap is coming from to a larger degree. If everyone got to pick their own insurance on a fair market this would look very different.
Gold plated plans are not really the problem in driving up health care costs, that has more to do with private operation if what is essentially a public service with a natural monopoly (you can't shop around in emergencies, and you probably wouldn't look for the best price if you wanted the best care instead). And really, are you going to say no to that cat scan because it has a small chance of finding anything?
The big problem with employer provided insurance is that they suck a lot of healthy people out of the individual market. We already know richer people are healthier, and they are likely to be enrolled in group plans. So what is left in the individual market are necessarily less healthy on average, so the premiums suck.
For us, it's that our insurance is tied to our jobs, so we can't think of leaving or even "taking a break" if we can afford it!
Interesting. I don't think the most middle class Americans would go for this, they like their "perks", and...if they did this, I'm not confident that individual policy premiums would fall like they should.
I literally stay at my job because I'm the sole earner for my family and the health insurance is very good (PPO) - if it wasn't for health insurance I'd probably freelance and spend more time at home
Private healthcare insurance is also offered as a benefit in places like the UK, but it tends to be the bigger companies that offer it.
It means the employee can get their treatment weeks, even months before they would have otherwise - that's important if you have a painful or debilitating condition. That is, the employee struggles to be an employee due to government budget constraints.
I'm not sure what the UK is like but New Zealand has a public system and, to be clear to American readers who only hear negatives about wait times, you generally are not waiting if you have a life threatening issue. The wait time if for issues like joint replacements and varies depending upon your need and the availability of medical staff etc.
A suspect a few people are going to read "weeks, even months before they would have otherwise - that's important if you have a painful or debilitating condition. " and assume that is a given for a public system. You often have to wait for non urgent issues in the US as well if you want a specific doctor or clinic.
In the UK most of the private insurance is "top up" type insurance where you go to an NHS GP first, but then can ask to get referred privately if your condition isn't serious enough to get you seen by a specialist "quick enough". So you are paying mainly for extra convenience and speed over what is medically necessary, which also makes these insurances cheap, since with most of them you'll use the NHS for anything urgent.
When Obamacare was first passed I thought that the best thing they could do for healthcare in the US would be to phase out employer medical benefits. If the cost of healthcare wasn't hidden, I don't think it would be used in the same way as it is now.
At the very least, there should be a federal program that covers all children. We can easily afford it.
I get to choose my car insurance separate from my closing my job. I get to choose my life insurance separate from my job. I get to choose my liability insurance separate from my job.
Why I have to choose health insurance and my employer together is beyond me.
I think viewing healthcare in terms of choice is the wrong angle to approach it from. You can choose not to have a car, you can choose not to have life insurance. You cannot choose not to get sick. Healthcare is not a market but a basic right that almost everyone needs at some point in their life. Everyone can get the same illnesses and then need the same treatments, therefore aside from a few perks like single vs double hospital rooms there really isn't such a thing as different levels of healthcare. Given that everyone needs healthcare and how much care you need has nothing to do with your income level the fairest way to fund it is progressive taxation, from each according to ability and to each according to need in traditional socialist fashion. Any other system creates perverse outcomes, like forcing people to die sooner because their parents couldn't afford a better school for them which limited employment options.
Of course, the trick with healthcare funded through taxation is to avoid having it cut down until everyone is worse off, not just low income earners.
For example I tore my right ACL last summer. I chose to wait 6 months to have an MRI and surgery (in fact, I had no idea what the injury was for that entire time), because we have a high deductable and my wife will give birth this year.
You might say that's just an artifact of a broken system, and you might be right. But say, if I was 50+, I'd likely choose to avoid the surgery and expense altogether. People forgo medical treatment all the time.
Actually you can't choose not to receive medical treatment, generally. In emergency situations you are distinctly unable to choose not to have medical treatment, because you're essentially incapable of informed consent.
Since EMTALA means the hospital has to treat you, and as a society people will ensure you get taken there, you are in fact incapable of doing the opting out at the times it's likely most expensive.
And frankly, as a society, we shouldn't trust you: because the outcomes speak for themselves - people don't voluntarily choose not to get medical care. They lie about it when they don't need it, to suit their politics and greed.
It's not that it's taken care of - you just don't have much choice in terms of healthcare and neither do your peers, so you end up not caring. If the local healthcare can't help you, you will pay the big money in America anyways. Or you'll just die/suffer. Of course, the degree to which that happens depends on the country.
And yet, people consume more healthcare, education, and live in bigger homes than ever before (as measured by consumption statistics). So that clearly can't be the issue.
As men's employment opportunities drop relative to women's, their value in the sexual and marriage markets drop significantly. And women's employment opportunities have done nothing but rise. Female hypergamy is probably the real issue here.
>>And yet, people consume more healthcare, education, and live in bigger homes than ever before (as measured by consumption statistics). So that clearly can't be the issue.
What does this mean? Someone builds a house and has their livelihood provided for while they do it. Once the house exists, it can be used for shelter. Money is imaginary. What is "financed by the future" and what does it mean?
It means that money is worthless unless it can eventually be converted into goods and services that you want. Debt means "money now, goods and services in the future". But what happens when you arrive in the future - as inevitably you will - and those things aren't there?
Maybe that is the case for some, but I think your argument misses a large percentage of the workforce, which is, the part that is already married and / or has kids.
The realty and education bubbles are inflated by cheap credit. The cheap credit in the US exists mostly because Federal Reserve can print more money, and the whole world will buy. "There is a huge demand for $100 bills worldwide." If not dollars, US government papers ate considered safe, no matter the amount printed.
This is also makes US labor unable to become cheaper and compete with the places where it currently escapes. Hence some of the problems with dad jobs.
A secure full time job is code for "consistent income". It's hard enough for people to budget and live on a consistent but middling income. Even more so if it's very low income. Inconsistency creates high anxiety and is a form hand to mouth living. It's very stressful. I don't think it's so much about the type of work it's just not having to live in fear.
I also think there's a lot to be said for the routine of the "dad job". For many people, it's comforting to have structure in one's life, for every day to follow a similar pattern; surprises are stressful, and when every day is much like the last, you don't get many surprises. Someone like Elon Musk no doubt has busy and chaotic days, perhaps no two alike, and many people, in their heart of hearts, would not relish the prospect of that.
The rise of the so called "gig economy", and the increasing reliance on freelancing and remote work, does a lot to undermine the comfortable patterns and routines of traditional 9-5 work - for some people this is great (no drudgery of commuting is just one benefit of many), and for others I suspect it's quite the opposite. In so many of the "how to work remotely" guides you do, in fact, see a lot of importance placed on effectively separating work and non-work life, designating a specific area for working, and working particular hours - much of this, really, is intended to recreate something akin to the routine of the dad job, except without the office and the commute and the physical presence of your coworkers.
I completely missed the excitement of being downvoted, sadly! You're probably right, though I find saying anything negative about remote work on HN tends also to get a less than stellar reception.
here in sf many people are out on the streets. families are out on the beaches & hills of hawaii. we have got to make it, as a culture, possible for anyone willing to play along at a reasonable level to have a good life.
we are failing at this, and it is tragic, and it is not a world any of is should be happy to be in.
we have immense, mind-blowing wealth as a culture and as a nation. we need to do better.
You can't "make it" or legislate that everyone gets to live in San Francisco or in a house by the beach if they work a minimum wage job. That's how you get into the unafforable mess. Most cities with unaffordable housing, like NYC and SF, have rent controls and zoning issues artificially increasing demand and tightening supply simultaneously.
but non-city areas are cultural wastelands. theyve been hollowed out. does it really have to be the case that nice cities by the sea can only be the playground of the elite and the workaholic childless?
Many mid size urban areas (often away from the coasts) are having a small renaissance and have a thriving local culture.
Rural areas aren't a cultural wasteland either. Urbanization had been a consistent pattern for centuries now - decreasing economic opportunity isn't anything new to rural areas.
for sure i exaggerate. but still: look at hemingway, for example. he could work and live in new orleans, easily, with plenty of time left over to write.
can you do that anymore? i dont think so. we've lost something.
New Orleans isn't the best example. Costs have gone back up somewhat post-Katrina but 1BR rents are still close to $1K/month depending on location. New Orleans isn't a particularly expensive city, especially outside a few premium uptown locations.
Most desirable locations are pretty much by definition going to be expensive to live in. Well, some people like the sunbelt and it's less pricey than the coastal cities that people like. In any case, cities create their own culture. There's nothing unique to a handful of coastal areas that are in vogue with the tech crowd.
Is the resistance to more high density housing in SFO just due to a NIMBY mentality? Building up seems like such an obvious solution and one that would only benefit the economy there - how much talent avoids moving to the Bay area due to the cost of housing and associated issues.
Lack of jobs is another economic signal but our recent election has shown that voters have an expectation that they will be able to stay in their communities (an interesting contrast to centuries of increasing urbanization).
Many places building up would negate what made the people currently living there choose to move there. It's a tradeoff between the interests of those currently living there and those who aspire to living there.
Is that unique to the bay area though? It's been a few years since I was there but to seem I recall some larger high rise buildings.
Smaller apartment blocks (3 stories etc) doesn't have to come at the expense of the lifestyle either - the large European cities I've been to all had thriving neighborhood's , likewise with parts of larger US cities.
The Bay Area is very diverse. What residents would object to varies accordingly.
> Smaller apartment blocks (3 stories etc) doesn't have to come at the expense of the lifestyle either - the large European cities I've been to all had thriving neighborhood's , likewise with parts of larger US cities.
Of course you can. That's not the issue. The issue is that in many of these areas the current residents largely do not want this because they don't want the character of the areas to change.
It boils down to how much control you want existing residents to have over planning. This would be equally hard to change in most of Europe in places where you have geographically constrained areas full of wealthy owners that does not want the area to change too much.
But that misses the point, which is that it is not what many of those currently living there wants. Hence the conflict between present inhabitants and those that aspire to live there.
The Canterbury earthquakes have done something similar in Christchurch, New Zealand. There has been a lot of political contention over how best to rebuild the CBD and fights over bike lanes/slower speed limits as well as concerns about the impact of redevelopment on outlying areas that picked up the slack when the CBD was being leveled.
Given the political environment in the US I fear it would take decades for an area like SFO to recover, if at all. Many companies would likely just leave the area.
It's also a signal saying "try to develop business clusters elsewhere" to government, and that's where it often falls apart - a large chunk of demand for housing follows job availability.
Government almost everywhere, including even places like the US, does however do things like provide tax incentives and subsidies or plan infrastructure improvements in order to shape where businesses choose to locate themselves.
"rent control" - grandfathered in old program that affects a very, very small number of apartments, not enough to make any market price difference, except for the lucky few who happen to have these
"rent stabilization" - a huge proportion of apartments are affected by this program, but it only applies to buildings built before 1970something, so it obviously can't affect new construction incentives. Even if it did, it's so full of loopholes I don't see it affecting the market prices. Outside of lower Manhattan, rent stabilized apartments often have official maximum prices well above the current rent. The difference is explained by a legal fiction called "preferential rent" ie, the landlord is giving the tenant a temporary discount and reserves the right to raise up to the maximum legal rent at any time.
So, no, in NYC, rent regulations aren't significantly contributing to a housing shortage.
The main obstacle to building more housing, is building more housing. Duh.
The number of tents on the sidewalks and under overpasses has gone up dramatically in the last year. I walk to work in the East Bay (across from SF) and it's really worrying.
What gets me, there's no talk about this anywhere I see (IRL). It's like no one wants to admit there's a problem.
This is a highly visible public issue in Los Angeles, so much so that voters recently approved a $1.2 billion proposition for housing the homeless.
Now, that measure is under threat because of a recent ballet proposal that wants to stop all housing development under the pretense of stopping gentrification.
Side note: Along with this, I've noticed that the demographics of the homeless has been changing. More and more of the homeless don't look like what one would expect (alcoholic/drug addict, older/rough look due to addiction, etc.) Just anecdotally, in my area, there has been a recent uptick in crime as well and the crimes are becoming more brazen. I'm extrapolating, but it seems like the opportunity cost of crime has gone down. Perhaps more people feel the system failed them and have lost faith and/or simply do not care for a society that doesn't care about them.
In any event, it's an unsettling trend that is being glossed over when statistics say that we are at full employment. I saw these trends in 2006-7 before the financial crisis.
> It would be surprising if this didn't lead to an increase in crime in California.
This doesn't explain it IMO. My neighborhood is undergoing a huge spike in rents and average income. At the same time there has also been a spike in homelessness, with the vast majority being young (20's-30's), white, and devoid of any tattoos. I'm not sure how it's classified, but most of the crimes are non-violent theft of mail and bikes or simple trespassing (sleeping on the roof, hiding in the garage during rainfall, etc.). It's more of a desperate type of survival than it is people living a life of crime.
Sign of the times, but I am not optimistic towards the future..especially when the jobs being promised are primarily low skill labor that can already be done by people in 3rd world nations and will undoubtedly be ripe for elimination by automation.
Using total employment rate (16-64) is disingenuous. Much of the drop is more people going to university, or just finishing high school before working. For women that effect is hidden by the decline in homemakers.
Trump said recently as last week that all non-employed people in this age group are unemployed. That number is 41% in US. Note this includes all the women-folk in Trumps family- four housewives and a student.
Female hypergamy has existed as a sexual strategy since the dawn of humanity. Why would it suddenly cause all this change? I think you're getting the cart before the horse. A lack of dependence on men has caused an increase in the expression of hypergamy strategies not the other way around.
Female employment is the result of central bankers targeting full employment, which lead to inflation, which has lead to globalization[1] to escape labor cost inflation, which will again lead to inflation and of course automation is the only answer. Capitalism rewards those with leverage and automation is the ultimate leverage (beyond capital itself).
As the paper I cite shows, what changed is that women are entering the workforce and finding better jobs than men. I think we are saying the same thing.
I follow you. I take issue with "Female hypergamy is probably the real issue here.". That strategy isn't the problem. It's a constant in the equation. As far as men are concerned it might as well be Planck's constant. From a purely biological approach you should be more concerned about things that give the opposite sex a more competitive edge not declare that they should cease to be competitive.
The stability of the strategy can be the problem. If the strategy assumes increased attractiveness of males with higher relative income, then the higher the female income becomes the fewer men fall into the higher relative income category which boosts hypergamy even more. Therefore a constant hypergamy strategy coupled with growing female income lead to increasingly less effective dating market for both male and female sides of it. To resolve the problem either the female income should decrease (which women don't want to do), or the strategy should change (which women can't do). Otherwise we're heading into a fundamental social crisis.
Oh people are going to be unhappy that's for sure. I'm looking forward to the day when progressive minded people decide they liked things better the old fashioned way.
Only works if you don't treat women like chattel and remove the financial disincentive to end abusive relationships. Enter MRA crybabies re: alimony, child support, etc.
You obviously are not a divorced male with children. The alimony and child support laws were laid down in an era where there was an almost insurmountable financial disincentive to leave an abusive relationship. Therefore the courts purposefully favor the woman. Divorce is unfair by design. However circumstances have changed so men have some right to complain now.
Two things could change this, the advent of male birth control, and men realizing that legal marriage is an unfair contract.
The former would give men outsized control over when to have a baby and that choice can be made without signaling intent (less obvious than a condom). This is the advantage a woman has now. She can choose when to have a baby without signaling intent, and can even change her mind after the fact.
The latter gives a man no reason to marry a woman much less the beloved mother of his children except to appease her nagging. As female agency increases males will be less and less willing to risk the exposure of legal marriage and children when they will be left footing the bill. A hypergamous wife (AWALT) with equal or more agency than you is a risky proposition.
Sorry for the meta-comment, but just in case you're interested: I think all the jargon used in this thread is unhelpful to your argument. That I've read this whole thread and still can't quite figure out what "hypergamy" is from context, or exactly how it is "the real problem" signals to me that I'm an outsider of whatever community it is that talks casually about this stuff in these terms. That's probably fine if you're just trying to preach to your choir, but if you would rather not be ignored by someone like me looking in on an unfamiliar situation with curiosity, it isn't very effective.
I hope this doesn't come off as flippant but you're going to have to Google this one. This is a sub area of what I'll casually refer to as "amateur male sexual competitive philosophy". Terms like hypergamy, AWALT, feminine social primacy, etc. are all symbols of a lot of meaning. You couldn't break each one down and justify its correctness in a single comment here. Nor would you want to.
If you need stealth birth control, then what you really need is to split up. If you two can not talk openly about having/not having kids, the relationship is going to be hell.
I didn't declare that anyone should cease to be competitive. I simply pointed out that the proximate cause of the problem is a decrease relative to women, not any absolute decrease in position as the parent post claimed.
>Female employment is the result of central bankers targeting full employment, which lead to inflation
1. Your citation says:
"It follows that if the government intervention aims at achieving full employment but stops short of increasing effective demand over the full employment mark, there is no need to be afraid of inflation."
2. Inflation levels were through the roof long before the Fed Reserve Act established full employment as a mandate.
I dunno. I think that at least globalization - as in the easily agreed on definition of globalization - is declining. After all, the various China seas seem to be becoming a Chinese lake, if we can project the construction of sand islands some.
Automation is both already in full sway and at the same time, the remaining things to be automated seem out of reach - not of the technologists, but of the leadership class. But we can't give the techies status enough to do it right :) It is also anything but clear that automation should displace labor necessarily, at least over a long enough time line.
"Inflation is, everywhere, a monetary phenomenon." - Milton Friedman.
I don't think that what Conservatives call "the destruction of the nuclear family" is the goal, but that the models in use don't work to keep Dad jobs available. The nuclear family will most likely evolve out anyway, because we can't even hit low (2%) Fed growth targets. At any rate, Dean Baker, "Rigged", yadda yadda.
I keep wondering what kind of jobs are going to be there for my kids and what I need to be teaching them. My oldest daughter wants to have a beauty business instead of go to college. I think she might be better off that way. I mean, the day when women would rather gossip to a machine while getting their hair cut by it is a long way off.
I'm not so sure what to do for my other kids though.
Not everyone needs a four-year degree but on top of whatever education and training makes sense for the "beauty business," I think taking some classes on how to run a business would be important.
> I mean, the day when women would rather gossip to a machine while getting their hair cut by it is a long way off.
It might be a while before it happens, but it will happen. I believe that the answer to "when will my job be done by a robot" is "sooner than you think" for all professions.
My kids are teenagers now, I'm looking at this too.
I'm pretty sure that going to college with only a fuzzy idea of why you're there and what you're expecting to get out of it isn't a smart move any more. Me and a whole lot of my peers did just this and it mostly worked out OK for us, but it's a different game now.
I don't know that my kids will be ready to be intentional about college at 18. They might be better off waiting a few years, working an unskilled job and learning some of that side of adulthood before going to college. Of course, "they" say if you do that you'll probably never go to college at all. I don't want my kids stuck in low wage jobs forever either.
One thing I'm hoping for is cheaper ways of getting college credentials. I've seen some stuff around the edges here, but nothing that has rung the awesome bell yet.
Tip of iceberg. I'm a divorced father of two sons and lucky enough to have a position that gives me some (not a lot) of flexibility in work schedule. The Courts, as many divorced fathers will say, haven't heard the news about the ever increasing decline in the 'Dad Job'. In my state thousands of men are in jail for non-payment of child support because the 'Dad Job' isn't available in this state.
Progress toward the agnostic treatment of men and women in raising children, providing for the household, and making a home is still far behind the reality in most (not all) Courts, despite claims to the contrary. It took most of my net worth to ensure my presence in my kids lives would be regular and meaningful and to ensure child support reflected my former wife's multi-million dollar net worth.
Perhaps a level playing field is emerging as the 'Dad Job' declines, I don't know. Its of little benefit to the tens of thousands of men in the United States whose reality is of no concern to anyone.
I'm sure this situation is very real for you but you exaggerate a little. Most men do not end up in jail for failing to make child support payments. Child support enforcement is a long drawn out process.
I don't think it's an exaggeration. In some areas its not permanent jail, you just go to jail on weekends. However, the structure of justifying best efforts to pay child support exists in a world of dad jobs. You can't get letters from Uber stating you gave it a good effort X many days this week. Getting an attorney costs money, if you had money I am sure it would go to child support. Additionally, it is not easy to take time off most jobs to attend court hearings. It also does not reflect well if you ask your employer for time to attend such hearings.
I didn't say most men. I said thousands in my state. And, the problem is worse than you know. For every man jailed for non-payment of support there are (anecdotally) probably 50 or so desperately struggling to meet their support obligations AND find time to have an impactful presence in their children's lives. I can tell you from personal experience and those of my friends that these struggles are met with indifference by the Courts and Legislators. Worse, the struggle is used as leverage by non-support paying spouses to control and alienate. Until you live it its impossible to understand how inequitable the process is.
Anecdote: I've talked to a couple people who were in jail locally (in the US). Their experience was that "most" of the people in jail with them were in for DUI or child support. "Most" can probably be thought of as "enough to notice."
Of course they didn't survey professionally, yadda yadda.
Of course most men don't end up in jail for anything at all, ever, but it's a common enough experience to notice.
Disclaimer: I'm divorced, paid child support for 15 years, and was nervous all the way to the last payment.
What kind of jail were they in? That is going to affect the population. If they were in minimum security or small town jails, then it seems perfectly natural that most would be DUI and Child Support because others would go to different institutions.
Yes, it was county/city jail. And yes, that's where they would "naturally" go, but many of the child support cases probably don't need to be in jail. Some do, some don't, the ratio is debatable.
It doesn't. Courts take hardship into account, but only retroactively. If you had a good job, then lost it, your required payments will not automatically be adjusted. You will need to petition the court for an adjustment - which apparently many people lack the awareness or resources to do.
Well I'm not sure how automatic payment adjustment would work - seems easy to defraud.
Petitioning the court for an adjustment is a fairly low cost approach; both partners' 1040s in the US / T4s in Canada would be compared on a rolling average or similar formula to adjust the payments. Self representing for this isn't out of the ordinary, if costs need to be saved.
On the topic of courts, there is a lot of severely misleading legal misinformation in this thread. I really really encourage people to read reliable resources (aka not the comments here) before making decisions.
A good example of a reliable resource is [0], which is a fairly comprehensive list of divorce outcomes by state, co-written by an MIT CompSci professor. It also includes excerpts from interviews with very experienced divorce attorneys in most states.
If you don't like this site for some reason, there are other good resources too. Please don't just believe the comments here as gospel truth.
It does depend on the regional court to some degree, but many urban jurisdictions these days make a presumption of joint custody and look at the income disparity to determine the child support and/or alimony formula. There's no sex-preference involved beyond what you bring to the case (did she stay at home for maternity leave? Did he take paternity leave? How did the parenting responsibilities split?)
Canada in particular has some challenges around vagueness with "best interests of the child" as the main focus of separation and customary and access cases... but for 20 years now there is almost no reason two partners wouldn't get joint access/custody 50-50 if one of them wants it and has shown past interest in parenting + doesn't have evidence of violent/absuive conduct. You'd have to fight for it potentially, if your former partner wants sole custody, but that's a very high bar to prove. court is potential great cost, but you would probably settle to 50/50 beffore it went to trial once reality sinks with your ex.
This. I had to quit my sw job after the psychopathic management expected me to work 70 hour weeks with a newborn. After 6 months of 2 - 4 hours sleep and insane work stress (all synthetic), the stress on my physical and mental health was not sustainable.
My wife had to take a job-- and I cannot, and I mean cannot find anything that doesn't expect startup hours or would allow me to pick up my daughter from day care on time (and the last thing I want for her is day care believe me).
The decline of these dad jobs will soon permeate itself into credit scoring as well. I have always thought of individual credit scores being a reflection of steady paycheck from a credit worthy employer and that individual's ability to manage his/her debt. Will changes be needed to reflect upon an individual's flexibility and capacity for attaining jobs in a gig economy as well as their ability to manage debt? Or will one day credit scores just be a reflection of someone's tenure at a company with a good NSCRO credit rating?
Additionally the use of jail to persuade child support payments can also perpetuate this downward spiral. Credit account closures/declines in credit lines for imprisoned cardholders can adversely affect credit scores and employment opportunities. I understand paying child support is necessary but garnishment and seizure of tax refunds should be enough.
Many people will need to begin to reconsider what is home/community. They will need to avail themselves to the flexibility of labor markets. Doing so alone is possible but if you have a family it is burdensome without some governmental support. People once had that mindset... constant moving... constant searching for new opportunities. It is tiresome but many more will need to adapt to that mindset.
I have had intermittent income for over a decade as a contractor and my credit score is excellent. Credit scores are based on making regular debt payments, paying bills on time and a lack of tax leins.
I think the OP's point is that credit scores may be conditioned to assume regular income if a person has a good payment history. In doing so they are failing to capture a new and growing dimension of risk: peoples incomes are more precarious.
this is why it will never get fixed. every story, no matter how bad, is met with disbelief.
i, for one, am never getting married, precisely because i DO believe all these stories, and in fact i extrapolate there to be many more, far worse stories, that never get told. people don't like recounting these experiences, even anonymously.
this isn't a judgment on marriage; it's a judgment on me. i couldn't deal with a divorce and having my assets stripped from me.
thank you OP for joining the growing chorus of voices speaking out against how truly awful this entire racket is.
Err... You just took this to the opposite extreme. Not recognizing that men have to face problems related to divorce doesn't mean you should throw the institution of marriage out the window as a racket.
It is admirable to take the consequences and responsibilities of committing to a marriage seriously. Divorce casts a huge emotional, financial, and societal wake that many (including the children) never recover from. More people should hesitate before entering into it.
Its not marriage. It is legislation around marriage and children that reflects the disproportionate number of voters and political doners who either don't care, are misinformed, or benefit from the system.
Marriage is a racket for men. All the advantages have been leached out over the years, leaving only responsibilities and liabilities. There's a lot of social inertia supporting the institution, but younger men are starting to view the situation more pragmatically.
yeah, sure. my entire world view is based on my assumptions, many of which you probably disagree with. what do you want me to do? be you instead of me?
I don't think marriage is bad per se, but the courts are being used to criminalize people for not paying debts which I don't agree with. Maybe posting some deposit reflecting the average cost of a divorce prior to getting a marriage license would be sufficient to prove their commitment... Maybe return such a deposit after 10 years of marriage... If they get divorced before the refund is issued use those funds to pay for divorce...
I don't think it's right to encourage people to get married and apply a low bar for such a commitment. However when they want a divorce it's not as easy.
Child support is a different matter though. Criminalizing people for not paying does no one any good.
It pushes people to work for cash paying jobs and just hides the problem.
Criminalizing it just forces everyone in the situation into a poverty trap.
It causes the parent being pursued for child support to resent the other parent or child.
Terrible divorce settlements really are about poor planning and communication of expectations than something inherent in marriage or common law relationships.
I don't think most people should get married or move in before age 30 - too easy to focus on the short term and get taken advantage of, unless you're really willing to make a leap of faith in the other person.
But otherwise divorce isn't as big of a deal when no children are involved and both partners work at reasonably equal jobs. Maybe there is a split in the house equity and bank accounts, with one party possibly giving a lump sum to the other, and you're done - mostly a clean break with no ongoing payments. I've seen this multiple times among friends.
It's when your partner is stay at home, marrying them (or in many jurisdictions, merely entering into common law relationship) also sets an entitlement of lifestyle and income.
Basically if your partner doesn't work, you need to be okay with supporting them to various degrees for the rest of your life, unless you can enter into a pre-nuptial agreement that says otherwise.
Now, add children into the mix and it's much more complicated and has nothing to do with marriage. Child support is technically the child's money, and the state enforces its payment on the grounds that your child is entitled to your earnings based on some kind of income-equity formula.
So for me, there never was any despair about finding a partner, it was more about understanding what I wanted:
- we split what assets we put into the marriage if it fails, what we brought in is mostly hands off so that the one with more property can't be milked. I say mostly because capital gains etc. may happen on past assets that your partner should be entitled to.
- we put each other into our wills otherwise and ensure we have life insurance for the other
- we both hold jobs, even if one of us makes more, alimony and child support wouldn't be absurdly high
- a partner that isn't afraid to talk about what their expectations are for lifestyle, income during and/or after the marriage if it doesn't work out
Being afraid of having your assets stripped implies you don't think you could hire a strong lawyer to defend your interests and also implies you wouldn't have the ability to define stuff before the marriage. But it's totally doable.
As with any life commitment there needs to be trust in another human being... but some safeguards if they turn out to be very different people than you had thought.
A prenuptial is almost worthless when the marriage involves children because statute prevails. Its useless because in most cases attorneys are exceptionally good at persuading clients to expend fees for discovery, hearings, etc. that have little bearing on the overall outcome of the case.
No, that's not his position. His position is probably this: Judges are constrained by case load and the limits of the law - so even without an agenda outcomes are often bad. Add to that their reliance on 3rd parties and the attorneys and it goes from bad to worse.
uh, yes, the system is against me. why do you think they call it a legal defense?
have you ever been in litigation, or received the threat of litigation? it's 100% crystal-fucking-clear from the outset that, yes, the entire system is against you. every single thing that happens in the system drives this point home further. not only that, it is costing you obscene amounts of money at every step. at any point along the way, if you can't pay, you lose. too bad, so sad, pay up sucker.
people commenting on HN are not children, they are fully formed adults with careers, businesses, and life experience, and the judgement and opinions that go along with that. i know for a fact going into a divorce will be a huge battle, uphill, traumatic, extremely expensive, and probably psychologically damaging, so i'm going to reduce that possibility to ZERO through whatever means necessary.
going to court over business matters is bad enough. it'll be a cold day in hell before i go to court over flesh and blood.
some people avoid starting a business because they are afraid of going to court, or the costs, the hours, or risk of bankruptcy; i can't say i blame them at all because it's all true. and i'm certaintly not going to make up some feel-good woowoo malarky about them not believing the world is against you, because it very much is, and if you don't believe that deep down in your soul, you aren't going to survive long, and most people don't. i might not even survive it in the long run.
Yes, I've been involved with litigation, divorce, and custody battles. Yes they're terrible. But I'd posit that is because people are terrible. Courts and the justice system have been indispensable in defending the rights of my family - without them, it would be might makes right / whoever fights dirtiest wins. Or like Duels in the 18th century. This can happen, but does not have to happen. The justices in our cases saw through the bullshit every time , with few exceptions. I could not imagine restricting my life choices over fear of court. I can't say it has been positive experience, more of an affirming experience that the system can sometimes work, if you are willing to study it and work with it. I've lived a fairly long life not thinking the world is against me: I help others, and have been helped and loved by others. The choice is yours, on how you act and react to events. In the long run, we are all dead, might as well take some risks while we are here.
A pre-nuptual agreement has nothing to do with your children's statuatory rights, that's correct, but also completely fair - they're a new human and your earnings are now their's.
As for discovery, hearings, etc, this just whittles away the value of the estate and is in neither party's interest. Most cases settle for this reason.
Most cases settle when the parties run out of money. That's inherently bad from a public policy perspective, but nobody cares. As for child support, the funds wasted trying to determine both parties incomes and on discovery is the issue, driven by the receiving spouse - not by the children. Its fair on paper only. In practice its hopelessly broken.
Perhaps Canada is just different, there is no discovery for income: the judge orders sharing of your T4 (1040 equivalent) with your ex every year which shows all income, capital gains, dividend gains, etc. By law it's what's required. Child support is usually a formula taken from a rolling average difference of income adjusted by regular access (50/50 parenting vs 70/30). Ability to work at past incomes due to illness, recession, etc. can also adjust this.
From a public policy perspective here, the family justice system is designed to encourage settlement and not go to trial: almost all cases need a dispute resolution or case conference ahead of trial to provide a preview ruling.
I'm starting to feel more and more that the ability of median wealth families to live in a home (apartment, or house, rented, or owned) as a nuclear family was just a blip in the post-war, manufacturing-heavy US.
For most of human existence, multiple generations and cousins &ct. living together was fairly common, and it's rapidly looking like we may have to go back to that. You already see this for the working-poor in coastal California; I don't know if this trend continues inland as housing becomes less expensive.
so there is 14% decline in a group of people from 16-64. It's missing:
- Universities, training, gap years etc.
- People that have retired early
- Permtractors (some portion of them have a company in a different location, like Isle of Man and do work in, say, London)
- Disability benefits and eligibility
reply