The idea that single people, or people who earn less, don't eat meat is not just a non-sequitur, it is also factually wrong. Poor people consume more fast food, which has an order of magnitude less preparation time (thus saving time when you're overworked with your several extremely high-stress high-stakes job), and an order of magnitude more calories per dollar[1], and the majority of fast foods on the market contain meat.
"Herbivore men" doesn't refer to vegans; it's a translation of the Japanese term 草食男子, the definition of which varies but which largely seems to refer to men who have no interest in romance or getting married. For more nuance, refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore_men
The other commentor has already pointed out how the phrase has went over your head, so I'll be picking apart your stats argument, to beat a dead horse.
You're going to have to qualify why "poor people" are relevant. Do you have a definition for poor people? Is it the federal (imo wrong) definition of some >$20k/yr income? Or perhaps one with more detail like people that work dead-end jobs, live paycheck-to-paycheck, and are saddled in debt?
Second, I'm not going to lambaste you for posting a journalistic summary of research (which in-and-of-itself is just a biased interpretation of many studies, which themselves are similarly biased interpretations of data -- hell, it's like a derivative), but I will lambaste you for picking an article that doesn't have any significant mention (at all) about food choices, much less what these "poors" actually eat. Or even the simple "fact" that I cannot find anything in that article about "calories" or "dollar" or anything more than a single sentence saying, paraphrased, "poors are more likely to be fat because healthy food is expensive."
And third, you're just conjecturing and jumping from point to point, without any real evidece.
Here's my take: poors eat a lot of processed food, because it feels good, saves time, and -- on the surface -- seems cheaper.
Do poors eat less meat, or no meat at all? I have known only a couple of poors to eat any significant portion of meat, and only because they were in the physical trades, where protein and creatine intake matter. The poors with less physical occupations simply subsist on processed foods rich in carbohydrates.
Get married. Doesn't work out? Divorced. Buried in debt for a decade or more, house gone, credit ruined, alimony indefinitely, child support forever, visitation up to a court. As a function of bad credit, impossible to ever get decent job, home loan, etc. ever again. All your insurance premiums get jacked. I could go on, and on and on.
They speak of advantages? At 50% failure rate in the US, with seemingly three disadvantages for every advantage, only the insane need apply.
Welcome to America.
* Student loans might almost be worse. You can dissolve a marriage.
Even that stat is a bit misleading, since first marriages have been almost twice a likely to last as subsequent marriages.
And even that is still misleading about marriage odds. Low income, teen or near teen women have a much higher rate of divorce than the rest of the population.
Many marriage stats are more measures of how marriage is defined by society than measures of how married relationships are going. People who would have gotten married just for show 50 years ago aren't getting married at all now, because various stigmas are gone. Same-sex marriages are counted now but weren't before. The average marriage in Utah is very different from the average marriage in Massachusetts, and neither one of them is your marriage.
I'm not sure about the U.S, but in some countries, like mine, some of the legal disadvantages of marriage start automatically after cohabiting for a period of time.
Why would divorce bury you in debt, take your house, and ruin your credit? You pay child support if you are married too, it just is called "parenthood" rather than child support. If you are paying alimony indefinitely, it indicates that you didn't damage your career when getting married, so the concerns about being buried in debt seem odd. And again, you pay alimony if you are married too. It is just called "supporting my stay-at-home spouse".
And divorce is not some random outcome with a fixed distribution. It is a specific outcome that involves you and another person. You can make decisions that control your future. You aren't flipping a coin.
> It is a specific outcome that involves you and another person.
That means a half of it is beyond my control. I can try to be a great partner. And I can find someone who seems like they would be a reliable partner. But no one can perfectly predict other people; sometimes people change. And if my partner happens to meet someone more attractive and decides to upgrade... there is not much I can do about it. I have seen people who seemed like happy couples, then one of them met someone else and decided they no longer felt happy in the existing relationship.
> You pay child support if you are married too, it just is called "parenthood" rather than child support. [...] And again, you pay alimony if you are married too. It is just called "supporting my stay-at-home spouse".
You are right that a married man contributes financially to his family. But he is also involved in the decisions. At the very least, after the children grow up, he can encourage his wife to take a part-time job again, and maybe a full-time job later. If instead, depending on the specific laws at given state, he is legally required to pay his ex-wife indefinitely, she has no reason to change the situation.
Also, it is cheaper to live together, and more expensive to live apart. Two houses are usually more expensive than one, even if they are small ones. You can save a lot of money by cooking together, sharing household appliances, maybe sharing a car, etc. So the divorce naturally increases the total costs of living of the people involved. Paying half of the increased costs is more expensive than paying half of the original costs.
Then there is also the fact that in marriage the man gets something in return. Like, he brings home the salary, but his wife cooks for them both. After divorce, he keeps paying, but now he is getting nothing in return.
tl;dr - divorce is more expensive than marriage, and it is partially out of your control whether it happens
People can change, but you might be underestimating the amount of control you have not only in choosing a person but building a relationship. It is very different than two independent people experiencing independent lives and changes therein.
> You are right that a married man contributes financially to his family.
I very deliberately left gender out of my post. I don't think it makes sense to bring it back in. A of the rest of your post is gender stereotypes and an unfortunately transactional view of marriages. This just reads as tremendously cynical and bounded view of what marriage actually is and doesn't reflect my experience as a married person whatsoever. In my marriage I want to give to my spouse because it makes me feel good to share love with my spouse. Not for any transactional reason. Not because I expect something in return. But because I love them.
Feel free to choose not to get married. It isn't for everybody. But I think you'll be a happier person by reorienting your view of the world here.
I faced discrimination for being single early in my career. I was puzzled why people I consistently outperformed clearly made more than me. Someone finally told me that the only way that I'd be paid closer to what I deserved is if I got married and started having kids.
Now I wasn't opposed to getting married or having kids. I thought once the greatest generation retired this process would end. Guess I was wrong.
>The growth in unpartnered adults has been sharper among men than women. In 1990, men and women ages 25 to 54 were equally likely to be unpartnered (29% of each group). By 2019, 39% of men were unpartnered, compared with 36% of women.
I'm really curious as to what's going on here. Do differing levels of partnering by same-sex couples account for this? Or more cheating by men? I assume there are more women than men in that age group, so I'd expect the opposite trend if anything.
The primary central banking mandates are global weather control and full tax cattle breeding capacity. If state property objects aren't breeding, then monthly tax stamps on breeding permits must be mandatory.
what should worry researchers is rise in people who don't produce an offspring despite being capable. Children take tons of money, blood, and sweat to bring to a state when they start producing net benefit to society. These people will eventually get old, and then they would be leeching off the productivity of my children, the one I spent all the work raising all while they were busy blabbering about social justice.
Childless people pay taxes that go toward the education, childcare subsidies and healthcare for your children.
Childless people often put more effort into their work or volunteering contributions which is of net benefit to society.
Childless people often help friends and family raise their children (free childcare/baby sitting).
Childless people also realise they won't have children to look after them in their old age and many plan to have enough in retirement to pay for the additional help they need.
Why do you think only childless people blabber about social justice?
I don't have kids, but I do pay property taxes, which largely contribute to schools. I also pay federal taxes that contribute to child tax credits, etc. So, my contributions are not offset by costs of children I do not have. I do not complain. If you've brought kids into the world, then you have a responsibility. I help pay some of those costs even though I don't have kids. I don't think that is unfair and I don't begrudge, because it helps raise a healthy society. But please don't cast my life choices as selfish just because I made a different choice.
It's not really a judgement it's just reality. Life / functional society at it's core is a pyramid scheme. If you don't have a downline your contributions are almost always dwarfed by your withdrawals. Parents pay all the same fees as you do now and in the future their children will pay them too, whereas at some point childless contributions stop.
Having exactly two children per family isn't a pyramid scheme though.
The pyramid scheme is that automation makes us more productive and therefore lets us work less. When we have more children we get to work more. So full time employment basically requires us to grow our consumption exponentially. Either we consume ourselves or we let our children consume.
I don't think you realize how much it costs to raise a child. The property taxes are nothing compared to what parents are spending, and amount of work every kid takes is enormous. You have no idea how much it is
Notice: I am not saying you have to support other people's children. I'm just saying that when you grow old, you should make your own arrangements on how you fund your late years, because you probably count on "society" to support you, and this "society" would translate to "children of other people who I didn't raise"
> I don't think you realize how much it costs to raise a child. The property taxes are nothing compared to what parents are spending, and amount of work every kid takes is enormous. You have no idea how much it is
Yeah, except having a child is a choice (Disgusting laws in TX notwithstanding), I have no choice in paying my taxes. That said, I don't ever gripe (nor would it even occur to me to gripe) about paying for other people's children's education or other things like that that my taxes go to pay for.
> I am not saying you have to support other people's children.
Except that's exactly what all childless people do, how do you think schools, child tax breaks, etc are funded?
> I'm just saying that when you grow old, you should make your own arrangements on how you fund your late years, because you probably count on "society" to support you, and this "society" would translate to "children of other people who I didn't raise"
This is an outlandish and straight up insulting statement. I'm not asking for a handout in any way to fund my "late years". That's what my 401K, IRA, SS, etc is for (though I have no expectation that SS will still be around by the time it's my turn to collect it, despite having contributed to it since I was 14). Pretending childless people are a drain on society when they fund your children is borderline delusional.
Let me explain something to you, which you don't seem to understand. The way people's civilization works is like this:
1. people get born
2. people get raised
3. people replenish pool of people with new people
4. people die
if people don't complete your activity on step 3, they failed. It doesn't matter how must $$$ they got. 401k, IRA, SS, savings - they won't deliver you food, change your catheter, or comfort you when you are lonely. If new generation isn't born, the rest doesn't matter. Global warming doesn't matter. Gay marriage doesn't matter. Inequality doesn't matter. Cops wrongfully arresting black people don't matter. You're done, game over. You wasted your life, and didn't do the only thing which actually mattered.
To believe that our only, and highest, purpose is to create more humans is misguided and just wrong. We probably need less people (as things currently stand), not more, on this planet if we want to have any hope of continued existence. If you want to get into what's most important: what really matters is stopping climate change so that people have a place to live, not popping out more and more babies. Absolutely no one is saying "no more births" or "no one should have kids" but you are pretending that civilization is going to fall over because people are making informed decisions on if they should/can bring more life into this world, which I find reprehensible.
Well, you are entitled to your opinion. If you think reproducing is not your mission, don't. Albeit every ancestor of yours did successfully complete this mission, so take it for what it is. I guess they wasted their time and effort on you.
It's more of a generation-based complaint, however I would speculate that raising children puts a lot in perspective. You are forced to solve actual problems instead of caring about meaningless shit. For example my daughter who is a staunchy SJW is also vehemently against becoming a parent, and she won't see a contradiction in that. I guess it's just part of being juvenile.
gently remind her that if she doesn't have children, other people will, and they may raise them to have very different views than those she would share with her own children. families of culturally conservative parents also tend toward multiple offspring, with structural support from their communities and traditions, i.e. "go forth, be fruitful and multiply."
for her (and those taking a similar stance) to change the world, in this model, increasingly means changing the minds of other people's children. the odds of prevailing in this battle of value systems only grow worse with time for those who choose to remain "child-free."
Like part of the gender pay gap can be explained by different career choices, could part of the partnered wage gap be explained in a similar manner? If you're single, don't have children, and don't have a lower wage earning/stay at home spouse, you might not be motivated to increase your earnings. Partnering up can save money by sharing common household expenses but can also cause those expenses to grow, especially if both partners have different living preferences.
how can there be many more single men than single women ? seems to me that indicates either that.. more women have female partners, some men have multiple female partners or there are more men than women ?
The study examines people age 25-54 (described as "prime working years").
The number of unmarried men in this age range may well be higher than the number of unmarried women if a sufficient fraction of women age 25-54 are married to men under 25 or (which is more likely) over 54.
45 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] thread[1] https://www.brookings.edu/research/weight-and-social-mobilit...
You're going to have to qualify why "poor people" are relevant. Do you have a definition for poor people? Is it the federal (imo wrong) definition of some >$20k/yr income? Or perhaps one with more detail like people that work dead-end jobs, live paycheck-to-paycheck, and are saddled in debt?
Second, I'm not going to lambaste you for posting a journalistic summary of research (which in-and-of-itself is just a biased interpretation of many studies, which themselves are similarly biased interpretations of data -- hell, it's like a derivative), but I will lambaste you for picking an article that doesn't have any significant mention (at all) about food choices, much less what these "poors" actually eat. Or even the simple "fact" that I cannot find anything in that article about "calories" or "dollar" or anything more than a single sentence saying, paraphrased, "poors are more likely to be fat because healthy food is expensive."
And third, you're just conjecturing and jumping from point to point, without any real evidece.
Here's my take: poors eat a lot of processed food, because it feels good, saves time, and -- on the surface -- seems cheaper.
Do poors eat less meat, or no meat at all? I have known only a couple of poors to eat any significant portion of meat, and only because they were in the physical trades, where protein and creatine intake matter. The poors with less physical occupations simply subsist on processed foods rich in carbohydrates.
t. a former poor
They speak of advantages? At 50% failure rate in the US, with seemingly three disadvantages for every advantage, only the insane need apply.
Welcome to America.
* Student loans might almost be worse. You can dissolve a marriage.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage-divorce.htm
Even that stat is a bit misleading, since first marriages have been almost twice a likely to last as subsequent marriages.
And even that is still misleading about marriage odds. Low income, teen or near teen women have a much higher rate of divorce than the rest of the population.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/common-law-marr...
And divorce is not some random outcome with a fixed distribution. It is a specific outcome that involves you and another person. You can make decisions that control your future. You aren't flipping a coin.
That means a half of it is beyond my control. I can try to be a great partner. And I can find someone who seems like they would be a reliable partner. But no one can perfectly predict other people; sometimes people change. And if my partner happens to meet someone more attractive and decides to upgrade... there is not much I can do about it. I have seen people who seemed like happy couples, then one of them met someone else and decided they no longer felt happy in the existing relationship.
> You pay child support if you are married too, it just is called "parenthood" rather than child support. [...] And again, you pay alimony if you are married too. It is just called "supporting my stay-at-home spouse".
You are right that a married man contributes financially to his family. But he is also involved in the decisions. At the very least, after the children grow up, he can encourage his wife to take a part-time job again, and maybe a full-time job later. If instead, depending on the specific laws at given state, he is legally required to pay his ex-wife indefinitely, she has no reason to change the situation.
Also, it is cheaper to live together, and more expensive to live apart. Two houses are usually more expensive than one, even if they are small ones. You can save a lot of money by cooking together, sharing household appliances, maybe sharing a car, etc. So the divorce naturally increases the total costs of living of the people involved. Paying half of the increased costs is more expensive than paying half of the original costs.
Then there is also the fact that in marriage the man gets something in return. Like, he brings home the salary, but his wife cooks for them both. After divorce, he keeps paying, but now he is getting nothing in return.
tl;dr - divorce is more expensive than marriage, and it is partially out of your control whether it happens
> You are right that a married man contributes financially to his family.
I very deliberately left gender out of my post. I don't think it makes sense to bring it back in. A of the rest of your post is gender stereotypes and an unfortunately transactional view of marriages. This just reads as tremendously cynical and bounded view of what marriage actually is and doesn't reflect my experience as a married person whatsoever. In my marriage I want to give to my spouse because it makes me feel good to share love with my spouse. Not for any transactional reason. Not because I expect something in return. But because I love them.
Feel free to choose not to get married. It isn't for everybody. But I think you'll be a happier person by reorienting your view of the world here.
Now I wasn't opposed to getting married or having kids. I thought once the greatest generation retired this process would end. Guess I was wrong.
Kind of a paternal boss who thought regardless of your job performance you only needed more money when you had to support a wife and family.
>The growth in unpartnered adults has been sharper among men than women. In 1990, men and women ages 25 to 54 were equally likely to be unpartnered (29% of each group). By 2019, 39% of men were unpartnered, compared with 36% of women.
I'm really curious as to what's going on here. Do differing levels of partnering by same-sex couples account for this? Or more cheating by men? I assume there are more women than men in that age group, so I'd expect the opposite trend if anything.
1: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/10/05/rising-...
Childless people pay taxes that go toward the education, childcare subsidies and healthcare for your children.
Childless people often put more effort into their work or volunteering contributions which is of net benefit to society.
Childless people often help friends and family raise their children (free childcare/baby sitting).
Childless people also realise they won't have children to look after them in their old age and many plan to have enough in retirement to pay for the additional help they need.
Why do you think only childless people blabber about social justice?
The pyramid scheme is that automation makes us more productive and therefore lets us work less. When we have more children we get to work more. So full time employment basically requires us to grow our consumption exponentially. Either we consume ourselves or we let our children consume.
Notice: I am not saying you have to support other people's children. I'm just saying that when you grow old, you should make your own arrangements on how you fund your late years, because you probably count on "society" to support you, and this "society" would translate to "children of other people who I didn't raise"
Yeah, except having a child is a choice (Disgusting laws in TX notwithstanding), I have no choice in paying my taxes. That said, I don't ever gripe (nor would it even occur to me to gripe) about paying for other people's children's education or other things like that that my taxes go to pay for.
> I am not saying you have to support other people's children.
Except that's exactly what all childless people do, how do you think schools, child tax breaks, etc are funded?
> I'm just saying that when you grow old, you should make your own arrangements on how you fund your late years, because you probably count on "society" to support you, and this "society" would translate to "children of other people who I didn't raise"
This is an outlandish and straight up insulting statement. I'm not asking for a handout in any way to fund my "late years". That's what my 401K, IRA, SS, etc is for (though I have no expectation that SS will still be around by the time it's my turn to collect it, despite having contributed to it since I was 14). Pretending childless people are a drain on society when they fund your children is borderline delusional.
1. people get born 2. people get raised 3. people replenish pool of people with new people 4. people die
if people don't complete your activity on step 3, they failed. It doesn't matter how must $$$ they got. 401k, IRA, SS, savings - they won't deliver you food, change your catheter, or comfort you when you are lonely. If new generation isn't born, the rest doesn't matter. Global warming doesn't matter. Gay marriage doesn't matter. Inequality doesn't matter. Cops wrongfully arresting black people don't matter. You're done, game over. You wasted your life, and didn't do the only thing which actually mattered.
Only in the rarest of cases is an amount of individual effort going to out value the benefit of bringing another productive person online.
We really need some sort of immigration platform for sponsorships etc, like why cant I import a few domestic helpers and just feed/clothe/house them.
Basically the only legal way to do that is by having children.
Slavery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_takes_a_village
Is it a common stereotype that 'social justice' and DINKY (or indeed SINKY) lifestyles are linked, or is it just a general generation-based complaint?
for her (and those taking a similar stance) to change the world, in this model, increasingly means changing the minds of other people's children. the odds of prevailing in this battle of value systems only grow worse with time for those who choose to remain "child-free."
The number of unmarried men in this age range may well be higher than the number of unmarried women if a sufficient fraction of women age 25-54 are married to men under 25 or (which is more likely) over 54.