"Revenge of the NEET"
by John Wilder
"NEET is Internet slang for “Not in Employment, Education, or Training” – in other words, “stays at home and smokes weed and plays video games.” Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy, spent time noting last year that even with unemployment below 4%, 7 million men between the ages of 25 and 54 aren’t in the work force at all. Now, I would hate to bring up the points that if our nation:
• sends all the factory jobs overseas,
• imports millions of foreigners with H1B visas (95,000 a year, minimum, since 2006, and more going back before that), or
• just like Google®, cut hundreds of highly-skilled technical jobs in the United States and offshore them to Mexico and India,
then maybe, just maybe, the job market actually sucks because the wages are depressed to the point where living conditions at those wage levels are literally third world.
Why would people put up with that? The market. An example I read recently was of a person from India claiming that the only way they could find a place to live (this was in Canada) was in a bed in a kitchen in a two-bedroom apartment where six other Indian families were living. Admittedly, this is probably an upgrade from living in a slum in Mumbai, but these six families each pay a sixth of the rent. If a typical Canadian family wanted to rent that apartment and each Indian family was making $300 payments, the Canadians would have to cough up $1800. That’s why people are tenting it – tents are better (marginally) to the American psyche than living with six other families in a condition where “squalor” would be an upgrade.
Another example? When I was a kid, delivery work was for kids. Sixteen-year-olds were the ones frying Big Macs® and driving pizza from the Pizza Den to people’s houses. Now? Doordash® is now an adult job and everyone I see running the windows of the fast-food places has been voting for a big chunk of this century.
The United States is slipping quickly (and then, I fear, all at once) into a third world economy. To be clear, I’m not blaming those attempting to get to a better place, but it would be magical thinking to believe that once they got here and were a majority that they’d not immediately turn the United States into just another version of their homeland. You know, the one they fled.
But some of them aren’t working at all. And of those men that aren’t working, a huge number of them are white guys. It turns out that all, and I mean all, of the job growth since Corona™ became something other than a beer, went to dudes that weren’t white. In fact, the number of white people in the workforce dropped while Joe Biden “created” all of these jobs.
They were replaced. On any job where there is a remotely credible alternative with some sort of “diversity” score based on: a sexual fetish, being “female”, missing one of their six spleens, race, ethnicity, or religion. Of course, white, Christian and male is the opposite of diverse even though that category is only 6% or less of all of the humans we know of in the Solar System, excluding Phobos.
With things like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) actively putting up barriers to hiring (or keeping) white guys, I’m not surprised that many have just given up. They are pretending right now that that DEI is going away, but in reality, they’re keeping it but just naming it other things. “People and the Planet,” anyone? (Yes, it’s real.) Their goals really haven’t changed.
The big problem is that Identity is now more important than Competency. Think: Chernobyl 2.0, brought to you by DEI. Why no DEI in the NFL®? People actually care about meritocracy in football players, I guess. Also, Automation is real. Factories of almost any type, when compared by their counterparts of 1960, are much more highly automated. A guy named Fred walking around to check temperatures on thermometers to make sure the boiler doesn’t suddenly wipe Peoria off the map has been replaced with sensors that feed pressure, temperature, and flowrates back to computers that automate the process. Fred’s out of a job, and, if those boiler automation systems weren’t programmed in India (looking at you, Boeing®) then Peoria is still safe. Except for Fred, who doesn’t have that job anymore. A.I. is coming for lots and lots of other jobs. Starting now. According to Indeed®:
• Software development jobs are down 51.3%,
• Information Design down 44.3%• IT Operations and Helpdesk down 33.5%
• Industrial Engineering down 30.3%
Are all of these jobs replaceable by A.I.? Of course not. But 35.3% of HR jobs (same study) apparently are.
I’m not a NEET, but I’m sure it’s easier being a NEET without a family. No particular requirement to have shelter other than couch surfing, and some NEETs work for a couple of months during the year and then goof off, smoke weed, and play video games during the rest of the time.
Families have always been the nucleus that keeps men showered and shaved, but without them, men give up. It’s not like they can afford a family, either. Housing prices and interest rates are now high enough in most metro locations that most young families are effectively locked out of homeownership. The price to income ratio has doubled since 1985 nationally – homes are now twice as expensive as 1985 compared to median family incomes. Add in 7%+ interest rates, and you’ll see why the middle class has caused Red Lobster to go bankrupt.
In reality, there’s not a labor shortage – there’s only a labor shortage at the wages companies are willing to pay, and a ludicrous inflation of the value of women so that what they bring to the table (for kids) doesn’t equal what they have to put. NEETs don’t really care about either. They’ve got their weed, couches, and video games."
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