Men (not) at work

January 21, 2022. A great analysis of why the "great resignation" is just the culmination of a pattern of people choosing not to work. This is one of the logical extensions of Nancy Pelosi's justification for Obamacare: Allowing people to do as they please while receiving subsidized if not free health care from those who do work, all the time they're thinking that the government owes them and pays for this "right."

Here is the original, complete interview.

The Underside of the ‘Great Resignation’ - WSJ.pdf

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And here are the key excerpts:

Mr. Eberstadt, 66, wrote the book on this decadeslong flight from the workforce. As its title suggests, “Men Without Work” (2016) focuses particularly on prime working-age males. But the trend also applies to women and seniors, including in the Covid era. “Overall labor-force participation peaked in 2000 at about 67%,” Mr. Eberstadt says, counting everyone 16 and older. “We’re currently about 5 points lower than that.” Population aging is a major cause of the drop, with a greater share of Americans now at retirement age. “But the work rate for prime-age people—25 to 54—has also been going down since the turn of the century.”

The decline started with men, at the same time women entered the workforce en masse. “In 1961, labor-force participation for prime-age men was at 96.9%,” Mr. Eberstadt says. Since then, “the chart looks more or less like a straight line down.” By November 2021, “the seasonally adjusted rate was 88.2%.” Almost 1 in 8 men is sitting out during his best years.

That may not sound huge, but the drop is unprecedented. “Would we think it was a crisis if the work rate fell below the Great Depression level?” Mr. Eberstadt asks. “Well you can check that box. We’re already there.”

In stark economic and accounting terms, there are too many job openings and too many people unwilling to work. And none of these data impact the "unemployment rate" figures so casually and callously tossed about by politicians and progressive pundits. Fill these ten million openings with these not-technically-unemployed-but-not-employed-either people and much of the federal and Social Security annual budgets would climb almost into the black in a very short time, while the costs of these formerly unproductive people and the productivity of these now-employed people would buttress our GDP, i.e., more goods and services produced, increased supply to combat inflation, increased economic activity, etc.

Fundamentally, we have shifted from a society based once on natural, negative rights, i.e., rights granted by God that the government protects and can not take away, to one based on positive rights, i.e., rights to free or subsidized goods and services provided to individuals by taxpayers, e.g., healthcare, education, housing.