American men are in crisis

https://hackston.substack.com/p/american-men-are-in-crisis The Truth American men are in crisis Across education, marriage and employment, American men are struggling Liam Hackston Oct 13, 2021 Ten reasons why men think they are single - study | UK News | Sky News This is an unusual story for this newsletter. We normally cover strictly political stories, but not today. Today, we need to look at the way that men in America are struggling in ways that are interlinked, and how at the federal level, we can make life better for men without taking anything away from women. This starts at the education level. While college enrollment has decreased in full by 1.5 million over the last five years, 70% of that fall have been men. That means that just over 1 million men that would be going to college are no longer. In 1970, 57% of college students were men. Now, I’m not saying that that is good. I’d want that number to be less, to make it more equitable. However, that number is now only 40%. If this trend continues, in just five years two thirds of all college students will be women. This is in line with quality of education all the way from elementary school, where girls spend more time studying, misbehave less and get better grades all the way up from the age of 5 to graduation. However, this doesn’t mean that 1 million less men should be attending college than were just 5 years ago. This holds across age, economic background, race and other factors. This means that, unlike other issues across the American political board which are class or race related, the one of fewer college students, and all that that means, in based on gender. This is a major problem. Only 36% of new job openings across the United States don’t require at least a college degree, meaning that these millions of men are fighting for a small number of the jobs, especially as these jobs continue to be outsourced by free trade deals. There are very few industries in which someone can get a job without a degree, and there are even fewer where someone without a degree can enter into the upper echelon of our society. Debt, But No Degree: The College Dropout Crisis - OnToCollege There is another issue related to this, that being our marriage and dating lives. Like it or not, but our marital status massively impacts our economic situation. According to a 2019 Pew Research poll, about half of Americans aged 18 or up are married, down 8 percentage points on 1990. This is partly because people are getting married later, the median age being 30 for men and 28 for women, and partly because divorce rates are increased, with the rates of over 50s being divorced now double that as it was 30 years ago. Again, this is much more on men than it is on women. Almost a third of all adult men live with a parent, including about 20% of 40-54 year olds. Share The Truth This may not seem related at all, but it is very much so. This starts with the fact that people with college degrees make more money than those who don’t, which makes them a better prospect for a partner. That is not to say that women and gay men are gold-diggers - most aren’t. However, it does relate to a 2017 poll where 71% of people said that it was very important for men to be able to financially support their family to be a good husband, whilst only 32% of people said the same for women. People want a husband with a good paying job, and men largely can’t get that if they don’t go to college, and less and less men are going to college. Put simply, single men are more likely to be unemployed, economically fragile, to lack a college degree and have lower median earnings than those with a partner. This is evident by the earnings of single men compared to where it was in the 1990s, where, even after adjusting for inflation, they are earning less. With single women, they are earning about the same, whilst married women now make 50% more than they did 30 years ago. This is a unique issue to men. There is simply no surprise that the 30 year low in stable jobs and pay also happens to coincide with the 30 year low in marriage and long-term relationships, especially among men. Most unemployed Americans have considered changing occupations during COVID-19 | Pew Research Center Let’s face another fact: employers like to hire people who show loyalty, which is what married men are able to do that single men can’t with a spouse. Being married, or being in a long-term relationship, allows people to gain a certain level of seriousness that single men can’t gain. Another fact that backs up this hypothesis is that 90% of men in a long-term relationship where employed in 2019, compared to 73% of single ones. This again shows that single men are among the most vulnerable in our society. Another is that 37% of partnered men have attended college, whilst only 26% have not. It isn’t that being single leads to you being unemployed and poor, but it is often the other way around. If you are married, all the data suggests that you are way more likely to be financially stable than a single man is. Men are stuck in a loop. If you don’t go to college, you are less likely to get a well-paying stable job, and without one of those you are less likely to be married. Share And it simply is not as easy to say that men should just attend college. It is way, way too expensive for most. The average cost to attend a university in America is over $25,000 a year. The median wage in the country is just $34,000. Add in rent, food, healthcare and the rest and you don’t have enough money to spend on other things, such as getting a day out of a shitty job with shitty wages to interview for a better one, or to go get married. The truth is that going to college has become an elite institution in America, and that entry into the upper echelons of society and America have followed suit. The rule used to be that anyone could do any of these things if they just worked hard enough. That is what the American dream is. However, the American dream has died a long and painful death, but elites pretend it is ongoing because they can still achieve it, ignoring the fact that it is practically handed to them on a golden platter. There are two things at a federal level that will solve part of this problem, but the rest of it is frankly beyond me. Manufacturing Jobs: Examples, Types and Changes The first is to end the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. One of the main things that men without college degrees used to do for a stable, decent income was working in manufacturing. However, with free trade with China, NATO and the TPP, all of which have led to massive outsourcing of jobs so that massive corporations don’t have to pay their lower class workers a good wage given that in some of these countries with free trade with America still practice slavery, many Americans, particularly men, who don’t have college degrees are finding it much more difficult to find employment. This is a problem that President after President, until Donald Trump, had ignored, citing the massive growth of big businesses as evidence that the policy was working whilst ignoring the plight of your average Joe. President Trump then promised to stop the outsourcing, but then did fuck all about it because he surrounded himself with establishment ghouls and did as they said, and now President Biden is also doing jackshit. The second thing is to make college free for all students. Americans used to have free college in the 1960s, just as I’m suggesting, and it worked well. They had it through the 1950s, also known as the golden age of economic expansion. If we compare America to Denmark, a country with free college, there is a higher marriage rate there and better wages. It is simply doing better, and part of that is related to the free college policy. This isn’t me saying that women have everything amazing or anything like that. They don’t. However, life is becoming harder for men, and there are a couple of solutions that will help at least a little bit without making life harder for others.