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Millennials Are Less Likely To Be Having Sex Than Young Adults 30 Years Ago, Says Survey (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A survey of nearly 27,000 people suggests that millennials are less likely to be having sex than younger adults were 30 years ago. The Guardian reports: "The research, conducted in the U.S., found that the percentage of young adults aged between 20 and 24 who reported having no sexual partner after the age of 18 increased from 6% among those born in the 1960s, to 15% of young adults born in the 1990s. Published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior by researchers from three U.S. universities, the study involved the analysis of data collected through the nationwide General Social Survey that has asked U.S. adults about their sexual behavior almost every year since 1989. The results reveal that young adults aged between 20 and 24 and born in the 1990s were more than twice as likely to report that they had had no sexual partners since the age of 18 than young adults of the same age born in the 1960s. Just over 15% of the 90s-born group reported that they had not had sex since they turned 18, compared to almost 12% of those born in the 1970s or 1980s. For those born in the 60s the figure was just over 6%. The shift [towards increasing abstinence seen among all adults since the 1960s] was greater for white individuals, those who had not gone to university, and those who attended religious services. The trend was also greater for women than for men: the authors found that 2.3% of women born in the 1960s are sexually inactive, compared to 5.4% of those born in the 1990s. That, the authors suggest, could in part be down to a rise in so-called virginity pledges as well as concerns about social stigma. As for why this is the case, the authors of the study suggest it could have something to do with the fact that young people are living at home for longer, thus "stifling their sex life," and playing video games and consuming media in their free time. In addition, easy access to pornography may also be playing a role. A co-author of the research, Ryne Sherman, also suggests another factor could be that the way in which people interpret questions asked in the survey has changed. "Young people in the 1950s, when they were asked if you had a sexual partner, [might] say 'oh oral sex, that counts,' whereas young people today might say 'oh no that doesn't count because I didn't actually have sexual intercourse,'" he said.
each generation repeats the failings or Inadequacy of the last.
Millennials are fugly and self-absorbed and couldn't learn how to give some lip service to a woman if they googled it all their lives.
They are living at home with mommy and they are staring into their smartphone screens all the time. Rather difficult to engage in sex under these conditions.
Read. My. Lips.
They.
Have.
No.
Money.
Forget your bullshit socio-economic-policital-technobabble explanations. This isn't about cell-phones, or aids, or sex-ed, or work-life balances, or aids, or gender studies, or social media, or tv shows, or Donald fucking Trump!
It's the economy stupid.
Younger Millenials are fucked. They have less jobs, less stable jobs, less income, more debt, higher rents, etc, etc,... and most importantly less opportunity to buy a home. They cannot afford one, they will not be given a loan, they cannot hope to get the cash together to get on with their lives and pay for the dating scene. It's the economy stupid.
This happened in Japan. It's happenning here. The sexy-time rate, house-buying rate, and baby popping rate are directly proportional to the opportunity and stability on offer to young people in society. Millenials have been fucked over to pay for Boomer's plummeting pensions and guess what, the goose has stopped laying the egg.
It's the economy stupid.
And who on earth wants to hang around a moaning feminist? I'll just look at porn thanks and save my money.
Maybe they just feel less pressure to be sexually active. People are waiting longer to get married and have kids, and when you are taking on massive debts there is more inventive to work hard rather than screwing around at college. More over, less pressure on women to satisfy men, and less pressure on men to define themselves by the number of sexual partners they have had.
In other words it might be a good thing. Then again, it might also be due to bad things that the authors considered, like not being able to move out of their parents homes. Seems like more research is needed.
We must be careful to avoid ending up like Japan, with a rapidly falling population.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'm not sure the "that doesn't count as sexual relations" thing is the best explanation if this is a recent trend. I'd have expected it to show up in responses long before now, not just those who actively grew up after the infamous Clinton episode.
Compared to the 1960's? Sure. But that effect should have begun becoming noticeable pretty early in the 2000's, when teens old enough to be paying attention (somewhat) to culture and politics would have started becoming sexually active.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Drug use, alcohol use, smoking is in decline, not just in the USA but in most developed nations. Violent crime of many kinds is also on the decline in developed nations too. In some categories these stats are quite dramatic (homicide and drug use in particular have halved since all time highs in 80s/90s, wow).
In fact I am very genuinely concerned that kids these days don't party as hard as we did. In fact it's been years since I've had to tell any to get off my lawn!
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
it isn't because they don't have money, sex is cheap, it is convincing the girl to have sex that can get expensive.
It is because they have more things to do, the freedom to do them, and options.
50 years ago the average age a couple married and started popping out kids was 20.
30 Years ago the average age a couple married and started popping out kids was 22.
The last time I looked it was 28 and rising quickly.
18 may start your adult life, but you need 4 years of college to earn more than $50k a year for the rest of your life.(yes some exceptions are available but not that many)
Then you get to 22 and you need to start working.
50 years ago women were not even allowed to buy a car or home without a male cosigner. (Equal credit act wasn't passed until 1974)
We gave women freedom, they no longer need to be bound fiscally, physically,or socially to a man to survive. This is the natural result. Why people can't understand it or find it shocking proves just how stupid they are.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
"Young people in the 1950s, when they were asked if you had a sexual partner, [might] say 'oh oral sex, that counts,' whereas young people today might say 'oh no that doesn't count because I didn't actually have sexual intercourse,'" he said.
After all, the honourable residents of the White House never lie, do they?
One of the less discussed aspects of the 'whole millenials are poor' debate is 'Where did the grandparents' money go?' Specifically we need to recognise that the property does descend through families, and that grandparents should be giving it to the younger generation if their kids are well established. It's not the whole answer, but will reduce the pain for some - as long as the grandparents think this through.
There are many benefits to a smaller population. Rather than fearing a declining population it should be encouraged.
There is also a chance that the reason is that touching a woman (with words is sometimes enough) is considered by some gender warriors an act of violence and you cannot get out of perverts register once in. Then the other thing is: indeed as a male I see no point of running around. The bitches are ugly, most of them are fat, they have no reason and thanks to modern propaganda very conflicting goals. Their expectations are high too. Maybe it is my apserger or old age or maybe both but after all these decades on this planet I still get a hard on but have no motivation to run behind females. Fortunately in my jurisdiction escorts are legal and I still have enough to go for it. It is not so that I hate women or so - in sex life however they proved annoying, at work I value them as much as males i.e. not much. Politics I do not care - if people are high enough they become kings all the same - it does not matter what background, skin colour or gender they have - psychopaths or just opportunists.
As for your worries - Japan is doing just fine now. Think however about the success of your proposal - constant procreation and increase of population - I do not need to do 2+2 here I think - this will end up badly at some point. Humans are living creatures - they spread till they encounter a barrier to their progress - interesting things happen then. Not sure if they are much better than Japanese solution the way it looks like now.
Millennials: no, millennials parents: yes, millennials grandparents: no, .........
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We already have a rapidly aging population. in fact if it isn't for illegal immigration things would be a lot worse. Imigrants are what is keeping the average age of having kids under 30. By 2020 20% of our population will be retired 35% by 2030. Pensions, Social security medicaid, etc were all designed with less than 10% of the population retired.
50 years ago your retirement was 5-10 years long before you died, now it is closer to 20 and rapidly stretching to 25.
Now on the flip side people are waiting longer to buy the first home, and have kids, which means they will have less money for retirement when they get there. We have a massive bubble created by the 50-65 year old crowd that will screw up the economy for generations.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The results reveal that young adults aged between 20 and 24 and born in the 1990s were more than twice as likely to report that they had had no sexual partners since the age of 18 than young adults of the same age born in the 1960s.
Well, they obviously lying about their age, so chances are they are less than truthful about their sex lives as well.
The summary ignores the most obvious finding: Far fewer men are having sex than women. If the virginity rate is 15% in the 90's-born population as a whole and 5% among 90's-born women, the then rate among 90's-born men must be about 25%.
It also means that a significant fraction of the men are having multiple partners. The women may also be having multiple partners but the data doesn't necessarily demonstrate that.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
True. Porn was just recently invented...
50 years ago your retirement was 5-10 years long before you died, now it is closer to 20 and rapidly stretching to 25.
The average US life span has only increased about 9 years since 1960.
In the meantime, the official age at which you are authorized to start drawing from government-sponsored retirement plans without penalty has increased, thus pretty much destroying this notion that retirement is lasting 20 to 25 years. I expect to pay into Social Security for many decades. I don't expect to live long enough to see hardly any of it penalty-free. The concept of a pension being your retirement plan after a 30 or 40-year career has become all but extinct in favor of the self-funded 401k (which has seen SHIT returns in the last few years), so far more people today are having to work into their 60s and even 70s, which also decreases the retirement window.
And this is all before you attribute things like socialized medicine (Obamacare) having a direct impact on life expectancy rates, which it can and will. And likely not in a good way. Toss the obesity epidemic in there, and we'll start seeing average life expectancy rates decrease.
30 years ago, the median age at marriage was 4 years younger than it is now. 24.7 for men and 22 for women.
Everyone seems to have their explanation, so I'll give mine.
It is certainly a combination of factors, but I think mainly is that people are marrying later, a LOT later.
For centuries people got married as soon as possible, an unmarried 20 year old woman was probably something rare, now a big segment of the population is marrying for the first time in their 30's, because education takes longer, economic power of middle and lower class has degraded greatly, so having enough money to get out of your parent house takes longer, and if you get someone, it is socially acceptable now to have sex before marriage (specially for women, for whom it was a much bigger taboo), and also less pressure from the parents themselves to get their kids married.
And I bet the survey considers someone having a sexual partner if they are married, even if they don't have sex for long periods of time.
It's not money but oversocialization and overpopulation.
In the 1960s John B. Calhoun conducted extensive experiments with mice, examining changes in their social behavior in an Utopian world.
Calhoun gave the mice clean housing and unlimited access to food.
After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed "the beautiful ones." Breeding never resumed and behavior patterns were permanently changed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A documentary on the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
---
There's also a controversial opinion piece that partly aligns with Calhoun's scientific findings.
Theodore Kaczynski's manifest "Industrial society and its future".
http://editions-hache.com/essa...
That's bullshit!
It is like saying that sitcoms are poisonous to friendships because it creates in people a expectation that all their friends should have great one-liners every 30 seconds or so, and people are getting depressed because there is no laugh track in real life to your own jokes.
"We must be careful to avoid ending up like Japan, with a rapidly falling population."
Why?
I'm not being difficult, but I am challenging this assertion that everything has to grow all the time.
If you start citing the requirements of the economy, please reflect on the concept that the economy is supposed to be serving the needs of civilization, not the other way around.
Be confident in yourself and be confident in your future.
Just try not to be arrogant or entitled.
All of the above are hard to do all the time (unless you're so insecure you're incapable of being arrogant or so arrogant that you're incapable of harbouring doubts about yourself) so forgive others who get it wrong some of the time - and hope that they forgive you.
And if you want to get laid, find something cheap to do that you enjoy doing and that has people of the right sex there that you can talk to and don't hurry things.
I would guess that volunteer groups tend to have a reasonably equal gender balance and if you're doing something that you believe in then you're likely to meet people you can connect with.
Most of my time is already committed (not volunteer work) but if it weren't I'd probably start somewhere like here:
https://volunteerteam.london.g...
Probably something similar in your area of the world.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
1. So many people are over weight these days. Fat is unattractive therefore fat people will not have a lot of sex.
2. Rape hysteria and the associated laws act as a disincentive.
3. Men are being taught to be wimps, single mothers can't teach men how to be desirable.
4. Free, easily available online porn and video games offer men huge outlets for their energy that require no risk, all reward, no matter how fleeting.
5. Technology addiction via cell phone and "social" media are killing real-life social skills, increasing awkwardness around the opposite sex.
6. The economy is still crap, and dating/mating/having kids is expensive.
7. The globalist propaganda says global warming and overpopulation is rampant, discouraging people from having children.
8. Slutty women and their STD's, pregnancy scares and personal drama make a man think twice about chasing tail.
The bottom line? Dating is a buyer's market and the buyers are women. Men will need to work even harder on self-improvement instead of wallowing in the status quo if he wants to attract the opposite sex.
Maybe they just feel less pressure to be sexually active.
I very much doubt it. I don't think teen hormones have magically diminished. Mostly it is that the kids are monitored FAR more heavily than we were 30 years ago. I happen to be of the age that I was a teen 30 years ago. Parents gave us far more freedom that most kids get today. My parents were very involved but by today's standards they would be considered free range parents. (a term I absolutely can't stand)
Then again, it might also be due to bad things that the authors considered, like not being able to move out of their parents homes
Not being able or not being forced to move out? I'm sure there is some of each but let's be frank, a lot of kids are rather coddled these days. Remember we're in the "everyone gets a trophy" generation. I coach several sports teams and have for about 20 years and frankly a lot of the kids are a bit on the soft side courtesy of their parents. I'm generalizing of course but the difference from even 15 years ago is pretty noticeable.
We must be careful to avoid ending up like Japan, with a rapidly falling population.
Not really a problem. The US still has a lot of immigrants. Japan, not so much. A lot of people get bent out of shape over immigration but lots of people wanting to move to a location just means that there is good opportunity there. What should worry people is if the immigrants stop wanting to come. That means economic opportunity has disappeared.
As a late member of the boomer generation I was able to get a job as a computer programmer that 2 years in enabled me to buy an apartment at 3 times that salary.
25 years on I still live in the apartment. It's worth four times what I paid for it. If I was in the same job, I'd be on about twice what I was then. Therefore I wouldn't have a hope of getting on the property ladder, and wouldn't benefit from inflation to ensure that the real cost of my mortgage payments faded away. And that's before issues of exploding university debt etc.
It's therefore true that boomers like me have benefited from an opportunity that has now gone to gain prosperity, and so it's the next generation that should get the leg up from the grandparents, not the boomers who've already benefited.
It was at the beginning of 1967, first as a limited test market rollout in the Bay Area. So many people thought it was a big improvement over the cell division we had practiced up t that time that by April the press was already proclaiming a "summer of love." By fall, it had spread nationwide, and my generation became legend.
So apparently today's young people are going back to cell division. Who could have known?
Who the hell is having oral sex but skipping the real deal?
", and the meantime I have lived with 6 wifes (serial monogamy, not muslin)..."
If you weren't paying so much alimony, you could have afforded silk.
a lack of commonality between men and women of the millenial generation, as well as the generation before/after it (IE less millenials dating Gen-Xers or the post millenial crowd.)
I just got over a messy hookup this past weekend. A girl I met online who spent over a week chatting with me daily to bi-daily (for longer email responses) pestered me on a sunday to have sexy talk with her. Long story short, she was just really horny, convinces me to come to her place to hook up. Upon hooking up work related stuff comes up (which she'd blown off to hook up) resulting in me leaving early. So a week passes with only two interactions from her. That weekend she says she's going somewhere. Having asked me to phone her when I got home from her place, I thought it acceptable to ask her to do the same when she got back from her night out. No reply. So a couple days go by. I text her just to ask if she's doing alright and if her week is okay. Nada. Couple more days and I send her a message asking her to let me know what our status is and to at least clearly break up if that was her intention (girls and guys both appear to prefer passive-aggressive 'just don't talk to them until they go away' breakups, rather than clearly letting people know so they can move their shit on faster. Y'know instead of being the asshole playing 3+ different people to see which one works out, assuming they don't get caught double, triple, or quintuple timing.) So finally that saturday, exactly a week since I last heard from her I go and drop off some things at her house I'd borrowed for my sooner than expected trip back home. Turns out she's home. Not wanting to leave them to get dirty on her porch and be immature by just calling as I drove away, I knock. She opens the door, doesn't look too hot, but I figure it was just a long week at work. Hand her the items, answer her questions, then leave. Get where I am going and remember I left my cellphone turned off for the drive. Turn it back on to a bunch of texts cussing me out and how she never wants to hear from me again. Turns out she was in the hospital for a couple days. She made a big point of proving that she was *AFTER* saying she never wanted to talk to/see me again and that I was immature, clingy, and some other things. Normal to crazy in one misunderstanding. And this happens both ways, guys and girls.
The point of my story is: People don't relate to each other any more, especially members of the same generation (she was 2 months older than me), and prefer to throw away relationships over the slightest misunderstandings (and unstated boundary issues!) without being willing to try and resolve them before 'throwing out the trash.'
I know quite a few people of both my and the younger generation who are single for this exact reason. While the financial and living situations affect some of them, the majority simply cannot find partners they relate to, whether because of differences in sexual actvity, social activities, education, time available to spend together, etc. I don't have a good description of the difference between the older generation's relationship success/failures and the current ones, but these past few generations are definitely not providing the same foundation for the future that past generations did. Whether that will be a blessing or a curse is something only time will tell.
While just an anecdote, it's pretty clear from my life experience that men and women want different things in relationships, as do different individuals.
I'm 30 years old. I've had one 6 year relationship where I fell in love.
I've had then slept with 3 other women no more than 6 times each and wouldn't even call those "relationships" in the terms of partnering.
I currently do live at home with my parents after 9 years of having initially moved out, 5 of those single. 2 living completely alone.
Of the women I had "crushes" on, all rejected me. Or perhaps I screwed up and came across as too creepy.
The 3 women I slept with post the one I loved I found physically repulsive despite all of them wanting me.
All 4 women I have slept with initiated the relationships. All relationships I have tired to initiate jave failed.
The one I loved cheated on me at least 3 times and developed alcoholism. She was hot but pathetic. I still love who she was when I first met her deep down inside.
The last of those 4 women is one of the women I have been the most sexist and horrible towards women in front of, I have no idea why she likes me and I feel bad for her that she does because initially for a few years of knowing her I used that kind of behaviour as a way to try and make her not like me until we got drunk together.
I feel that society currently rejects genuine heterosexual male "love emotions" and the current media propaganda is strongly invested towards feminism and homosexuality.
I have a lot to offer women, traditionally. I'm average looking, I can cook, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy etc. I actually want children and apparently good with them, I'm not a sex fiend or a pervert etc. My mother can't understand how I'm not yet married.
But the prospect of emotional pain and compromise are just not worth a relationship. I am literally looking for a fairy tale princess. I am looking for a woman I can devote my entire life to. And that scares the fuck out if the modern woman.
I am also not your typical slashdot reader. I am not a programmer, engineer or scientist. I just like to read about that stuff because it's intetesting.
I did not have sexual relations with that woman
It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is.
I feel their pain. Even rape is being redefined. Best to play it safe.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
But for millennia it was very hard to get. No longer.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
There was an interesting article about Japan's increasing number of abandoned homes due to the contraction of the population. One problem that this brings is that people who do want to live in their ancestral home or move out to the country, may not be able to get utilities provided, because it simply costs too much to maintain utility infrastructure for so few inhabitants.
There is also the issue of finding enough caretakers for the increasing elderly when the workforce is ever smaller. Unwilling to invite mass immigration, Japan has tried to invest in robotics in elderly care, but these efforts might not be enough.
Do you enjoy your retirement years?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Despite? Because.
Now add that millennials are self-absorbed egomaniacs and consider Woody Allen's bonmot "Masturbation is sex with a person I really love" and I think you have your answer.
Why bother with all the difficulty of going out and meeting someone, possibly having to deal with rejection (that alone, a millennial getting rejected and having to deal with defeat, teh horrorz!) when you can get professional pussy to look at for free, wank as much as you like and after you're done, you can get back onto Slashdot and write... umm...
Damn, anyone got a tissue for me?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I beg to disagree. It's not like "the more you have sex, the more you make babies" ; more like the opposite (before any joke flourishes: it's not the number of times you have sex that matters, it's why you do it)
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Because someone has to wipe your ass when you're 80 and in the retirement home, and the 70 year old young'uns won't do it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Porn is poison for the mind.
Depends. If you are one of the actors playing in the porn movie, that's more than that.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Haven't studied much Greek, Roman, Indian, Central American or Japanese ancient art, have you?
Or Chinese, I missed the Chinese.
...they are simply more sincere :-)
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
30 years ago porn was mostly in special theaters only the perverts went to or you had to buy VHS tapes and risk having them found by someone. and they were expensive. Like close to $100 in today's dollars for a movie today porn is free and in that little pocket computer you carry everywhere
The previous generation defied their elders by having sex. Millennials are doing the opposite thing now — but for the same reasons...
Maybe, humanity was smarter about it in the earlier centuries — when the unmentionables weren't mentioned (as often) in the news and entertainment channels.
There is so much of it now, it must be turning some people off...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Haha. I'm afraid your post is insightful and funny.
in favor of the self-funded 401k (which has seen SHIT returns in the last few years)
If you've been getting shit returns in your 401 then either a) your company chose the highest fee, lowest yield fund company it could find or b) you don't have a basic grasp of index fund allocation.
For the last 8 years I've been getting returns in excess of the theorized average for returns (8%) and haven't changed my allocations at any time except to sell one underperforming fund. As history shows, Democratic administrations are better for the stock market than Republican.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It is like saying that sitcoms are poisonous to friendships because it creates in people a expectation that all their friends should have great one-liners every 30 seconds or so, and people are getting depressed because there is no laugh track in real life to your own jokes.
My generation (and the ones before it) slams each other hard. One-liner after one-liner. When we act the same way to these pussies of the special snowflake generation we would be called racists, misogynists, homophobes, and so on.
Even just pointing this out gets us labeled racists, misogynists, homophobes, etc, because apparently we dont know how to act in a civilized society. We are apparently filled with hate.
No, what has happened is that the media has become so extremely politically correct that 'micro-aggression' is now a thing and that we have let the radical feminists decide what social norms are for the rest of us. The system is rigged against men being men. Its not hate my generation is exhibiting, its masculinity. Any hint of masculinity in our youth and we give them Adderall, Ritalin, Wellbutrin, and a slew of other drugs that suppresses us precisely at the age where we are supposed to be finding ourselves.
The young men of the special snowflake generation are a bunch of pussies, and its not their fault. Its the misguided war on masculinity that is at fault.
"His name was James Damore."
Read "What to expect when no one is expecting" to understand the overall issues with a shrinking population. It is not just economics.
All the worries about China being the next superpower is highly unlikely with their shrinking/aging population. It is very interesting they have abandoned their 1 child policy.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
But then you need to stop importing immigrants to make up for the shortfall or you're just replacing your civilization with a different one.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
A recent survey found 40% of American women are now obese.
Of course this varies by region and demographics. To give an example, I came out of the grocery store behind a middle-aged white woman. She looked classy in her white slacks, strappy heels and light-beige top with white markings. Carried herself upright and walked confidently to her car carrying her one bag. A definite MILF.
Next to her waddled two younger black women (I'm guessing late 20s) whose literally could not contain themselves in their clothes. Muffin top doesn't go far enough. The woman behind the shopping cart was at least as wide as the cart itself, if not wider, slumped over shuffling along. The one beside her wasn't any better
I'm not trying to turn this into a racist thing because there are just as many obese white women in my area, I am only giving one data point to show the differences.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I think we are turning Japanese, I think think we are turning Japanese...
I really think so.
Seriously, if it were not for immigration, we would be Japan. Immigrants keep our growth rate at less than 1%, but the population would be falling without them.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Agree on most counts, but there are a large number of people retiring early for various reasons (unable to find employment being one). While Gen-X will likely have shorter lifespans, I'm not sure if that trend will continue with Millenials: from my bubble there seems to be a much better take on health and wellness, less alcohol consumption, and potentially lower suicide rates. The effects of all of the prescription drugs is yet to be seen though...
How well did that work out for the native americans?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Why is a study about homosexual and bisexual behaviour actually being on the increase (eventual source of the 'story',) that doesn't mention abstinence in it's heading or abstract being hijacked into a news story about something the study wasn't exploring?
(emph mine)
http://harridanic.com
Which idiot modded the parent as troll? I found it an interesting and insightful comment.
Sure, but as the other response (regarding empty houses, just demolish them and return the land to forest) conflated shrinking with small, I think I need to reiterate:
If your population is massive, then what is the problem with allowing it to shrink to a smaller size?
Economics aside: does our social structure only work when we have a typical demographic curve? If that is the case, then shrinking itself is not a problem, but the rate of shrinking. The end-member case of a sudden end to reproduction would indeed cause major issues once the remaining population reaches old age. But a more gradual reduction in population should not be a problem. If the demand is there for geriatric arse-wiping then wages will go up and more young people can fill that role, rather than make coffee.
You are right that it's interesting to keep an eye on China and their change to family planning. From these data it is hard to be convinced that the growth rate is slowing down by a significant amount. maybe the ruling party in China has decided to out-breed the rest of the world? Or they are planning to stage a hand-to-hand land-war with India?
I'm positing that a shrinking population should not be a problem.
In fact, I'm *hoping* beyond *hope* that it is not a problem. Otherwise we are doomed to fill the earth, destroy every last scrap of land, and then collapse as a population once we simply cannot expand any further. Seems pretty bleak doesn't it?
If the population starts to fall dramatically, while at the same time people live longer into retirement, there isn't enough money to look after the elderly and pay pensions. The tax burden on the young goes up, and they are forced to spend more of their own time and money looking after elderly relatives.
It's pretty hard to manage just with a stable population and people living longer. You can only push back retirement so far, or try to reduce the amount of time people live for (good luck with that).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Because there has to be enough younger people working to support the huge mass of people retiring.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Or they don't feel like having their partner's "consent to sex" form signed in triplicate, witnessed and signed off on by a Notary Public and three legal officers, then have videotaped testimony that the woman is actually consenting to sex and the associated "counselling" by "professionals" to make sure it's actual consent and not just secret force behind the scenes or peer pressure....
Mellenial's grandparents are just living how they thought live was becoming in their country. You can't ask them to predict the sell out that happened when the global economy came in.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The U.S. population is not declining. Immigration. Pay attention.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Yeah, but according to modern proaganda... errr, medicine, anything more that "skeletal" is "obese"...
Depressing but true...
I don't know a simpler way to put it.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
And I, among many others, will be working when we are predicted to be retired. Earning. Paying into the system.
I'm not sure that when I am forced to retire that anything I paid into will be paying out. And please, try really, really hard to avoid claiming Social Security is a a Ponzi scheme. It was a trust fund, properly funded pension scheme until Congress figured out how to steal the fund. 40%+ Voters are happy to live off of that (it's more commonly known as welfare) at the expense of both future retirees and current taxpayers, of which less then 50% of American can number themselves. The math is not favorable to anyone.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I'm 29, 30 in October.
I've not had sex, despite being in an area where the average person had sex around 14-15 region.
Why?
I had more fun doing other stuff.
Sex is good if you have a loving connection, or a fetish to share with someone, ain't going to deny that at all.
But I simply don't really care all that much about sex.
I'd rather be programming, drawing, making websites, making electronics stuff, little videogames, playing videogames, playing board games and hanging out with friends every weekend.
Equally, masturbation, if the urge ever popped up, is better than any other person could give you because you know 100% what you want whereas anyone else, no matter how long they have been with you, can reach that percentage.
If the chance came up? Wouldn't turn it down. But I won't actively pursue it, or a relationship. I don't care for having a child either.
I'd be in a companionship at the most, just people living together but not really in a relationship. (I see lots of people doing that over relationships these days)
I don't hate people, or children, or some bitter mad permavirgin writing on his blogs about how woman are cunts or something like that.
I'd rather create than procreate. That's all.
From what I have seen, the whole "push for a family" idea has lost a lot of steam over the past few decades, especially because nobody has the damn money to buy houses or get loans for houses. Thanks Banking System!
This is where you see things like the Right To Buy scheme in the UK trying to help people get on the housing ladder.
For me, I'd rather buy a trailer and build my own 8x15/20, 13 foot high home than buy a permanent home.
Being able to travel and live in areas for a while is far more attractive. (I've designed plenty of tiny home spaces myself, very space efficient and logical designs that aren't hyper-cramped like some I have seen in actual apartments in cities for 5 times the price!)
I've seen this sort of stuff become more popular in recent decades as well, the traveller generation. (mind you, it isn't just younger types, also a lot of older types in the 40+ region too, so not millennial only)
A common one is people doing Uni and having a gap year or 2 to travel the world before they finally commit to finishing off and then going in to the job market. Sometimes some people even settle in a region they travel to if they find something they love. (Japan is a regular one for that, and Australia, damn weeaboos and cuntboos)
Oh well, on to wizardhood, 3 months remain!
I've not found any of my expressions of masculinity have been criminalized. Perhaps you're thinking about expressions of extreme douchbaggery instead. If to you "being a man" means "being criminally assholey" then your idea of what a man is is fucked up.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I expect to pay into Social Security for many decades.
You don't "pay into" Social Security. That phrasing makes it sound like you're putting money into some kind of an account for you to withdraw later. That isn't -- and never has been -- how it works. You're "paying out" to support current retirees, and hoping that a future generation will support you in turn. It's not going to happen, though. Changing demographics are going to mean that there aren't enough people working in the next generation to support you.
I don't expect to live long enough to see hardly any of it penalty-free.
I don't expect to see any of it. I'm 47 and by the time I retire I expect that Social Security will either have been scaled back dramatically or gone bankrupt. The most likely scenario is that it will have been decided that anyone who carefully saved for their own retirement doesn't need it and so won't get a penny, and the retirement age will have been increased for everyone else.
Really, your only hope if you haven't saved for yourself, is that advances in automation will move us into a post-scarcity economy.
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Lucky you. In my youth guys and girls looked the same, just that the girls had shorter hair...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I get all the arguments about declining buying power, wealth disparity and our media/online culture turning everybody into aloof nerds with no time for sex and the successful social interaction that is required for that, and it could very well be that that all factors into this development.
However, I don't think that that is the sole problem. In Germany I observe the women of my generation and a decade or so younger caught up in demands and expectations that can only be called patently absurd. And I think it is very much the same in the USA, as in certain dynamics and structures in society these two countries are very similar.
There are a lot of factors playing into this, such as women not yet completely atuned to having equal rights vis-a-vis their male peers and not yet having fully adjusted their expectations and their true responsibilities and 'duties' that come with it. Such as carefully balancing resource acquisition, mating and active survivaly strategies - by evolutionary and thus old-testatment definition a classic "mans job".
There are studies that women are actually more unhappy today than they were back in the sixties, when they basically were second-class citizens. This could be due to the fact that despite all the media hype about women wanting to lead corporations and earn the big bucks, the vast majority of women would maybe rather have a guy doing all that annoying external survival stuff and rather sit at home with the tribe nurturing little humans.
I very much think this is also due to some choice-effect coming up with equal rights and an abundance of goods needed for pure survival. For the first time in this planets history more people are obese than hungry or starving and a woman doesn't need a set of leader-warshipping willing-to-die-for-the-honor men close by to survive the other tribe warriors or the sabretooth lions roaming the area. She is free to choose when and if she takes a man and doesn't even need one to reproduce.
That a modern society that succsessfully has decoupled sex from reproduction and moves everyting concerning mating and reproduction squarely into the domain of conscious decision shouldn't be too surprised about the development described in TFA.
I expect this development to get worse and only change once society has moved into some sort of utopian mating-and-reproduction ritual or mechanism that tries to mitigate the effects of humanity moving further away from their mammal originins.
Then again, statistical analysis of humanities gene-pool show that throughout the history of mankind, 4 out of 5 men never got to reproduce whereas 4 out of 5 women did - which very much fits the fact that women take 9 months to build a human but men roughly 20 minutes to squirt one into a woman. In evolutionary terms a male individual is measurably less worth than a woman, which these numbers, odly enough, reflect again.
It's complicated, but I defenitely observe first-worlds women, equal rights and a choice effect with women playing into this. Especially after just having visited a classic macho-culture the last two weeks and observing mens and womens behaviour there. I was in moscow and my fairly recent new sweetheart is a russian lady. A difference of night and day in some aspects of socialisation vis-a-vis German or US women. No doubt. I wouldn't say it's all good that way, but until society fully grows up about these things I'd rather go 'classic couple' than have no stable relationship at all.
Bottom line concerning this aspect of the problem:
Women in the west need to emanzipate further and need to notice what work comes with being more independant. I'm sure us men can help by keeping a wide berth around women who aren't quite there yet and who's demands and expectations reflect that.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
then your idea of what a man is is fucked up.
Yes, because anyone disagreeing with SJW idea of how a man must behave must be fucked up. After all, you all like your men barefoot and paying alimony.
Here are some specific examples of natural masculinity expressions that are being attacked in today's society:
1. Rough play and fighting (even is sports)
2. Risk-taking of any kind
3. Hunting (especially with guns)
4. Loyalty to your male friends
5. Tinkering and do-it-yourself culture
6. Self-reliance and individualism
I am 51. I was a virgin until I was 41. And that relationship that devirginized me, was the only relationship I've ever had that involved sex. Oh sure, I've made use of "services" since then, and I've had other GFs, but none that involved sex. In fact, I've now been dating the same girl for 2 years, and we've never had sex.
And it's like I'm some kind of hideous, obese monster. I'm very normal, polite to a fault, and patient. Perhaps too patient and too polite and women seem to key in on this and essentially "friendzone" me.
I used to get a little angry and frustrated about this, but now I pretty much do not care. It's not that important and frankly, now I'm getting too old to really give a damn anymore.I've gotten pretty much what I've wanted to out of life for the most part and I'm satisfied with where I am.
But yeah, I sometimes regret not getting involved with the ladies much earlier in life. But I played the cards I was dealt as well as I could. And that's that. As for the current generation having less sex than gen-X'ers, I stand as a proud example that this study can stick it where the sun don't shine. It's bullshit.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Yeah well, no one ever got laid in the back of an iPhone.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
It was a trust fund, properly funded pension scheme until Congress figured out how to steal the fund.
This isn't true, in multiple ways.
First, Congress hasn't "stolen" the money. The Social Security trust funds (there are two of them) have always been required by law to be invested only in securities backed by the federal government. Basically, that means Treasury bonds. What happens when you buy a T bill? The money flows into the general fund, available for Congress to spend. Where else would it go? Scrooge McDuck's mattress? The trust funds still hold all of those securities, whose value has been growing at low, fixed rates, and can redeem them when cash is needed to pay out benefits... of course, that presumes that the general fund has the money to redeem them.
Now, you might argue that the law requiring the funds to be invested in government-backed securities was the mechanism by which Congress stole the money, but that really wasn't its intent. The other options were to (a) just pile the money up without investing it in anything or (b) have fund managers invest it in open market securities (stocks, bonds, etc.). Just piling the money up would cause it to erode due to inflation and would have seriously distorted the economy by sucking a huge amount of money out of the money supply. Investing it in the open market would have made the trust fund manager the single largest investor in the world (it would be be managing in excess of $3T today), with all sorts of opportunities for dangerous market manipulation, and exposing the trust fund to the risk of significant losses during market downturns. Those were the reasons that the funds were restricted to government-backed securities.
The social security trust funds, BTW, constitute the single largest piece of the federal debt. They are about $2.8T of the $19T.
Second, even if it weren't an open question whether Congress will be able to raise the money to redeem the securities held by the trust funds, the system is still going to go bankrupt, because it is a Ponzi scheme, no matter how much you wish it weren't. Social Security always was a system where current contributors pay the expenses of current retirees. It was never a system where each generation saved up for its own future retirement.
Since its inception, the Social Security program has always had more cash flowing into it than flowing out, so the trust funds have been growing. But they're growing very slowly these days, and it's projected that 2019 will be the last year the OASDI fund (the retirement fund) sees a net surplus. After that, it'll start drawing down those trust funds (assuming Congress can raise the revenue, but we're ignoring that for the moment), and it's projected that by 2033 the OASDI trust fund will be depleted (see https://www.ssa.gov/policy/doc...).
That is not because Congress has "taken" the money. That 2033 date assumes that all of the money put into the fund, plus interest, is actually available.
Of course, what will happen in 2033 (assuming no changes, and assuming the federal government finds a way to pay the bills until then) is that we'll finally have to just admit that it never was a true trust fund, that we've always just funded current retirees with current tax revenues, and that there's no reason to stop doing it just because some fictitious account balance hit zero.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I expect to pay into Social Security for many decades.
You don't "pay into" Social Security. That phrasing makes it sound like you're putting money into some kind of an account for you to withdraw later. That isn't -- and never has been -- how it works. You're "paying out" to support current retirees, and hoping that a future generation will support you in turn. It's not going to happen, though. Changing demographics are going to mean that there aren't enough people working in the next generation to support you.
I don't expect to live long enough to see hardly any of it penalty-free.
I don't expect to see any of it. I'm 47 and by the time I retire I expect that Social Security will either have been scaled back dramatically or gone bankrupt. The most likely scenario is that it will have been decided that anyone who carefully saved for their own retirement doesn't need it and so won't get a penny, and the retirement age will have been increased for everyone else.
Really, your only hope if you haven't saved for yourself, is that advances in automation will move us into a post-scarcity economy.
I wholeheartedly agree with your statements here. Ironically it was estimated a few years ago that without reform, the Social Security program would be dead the very year I was due to qualify, so yes, while I will pay out for decades, I likely won't be able to have that same benefit when I retire.
Of course the only "reform" I see happening to save or extend the SS program is raising the qualifying age to 75 or 80 in order to force more retirees to not draw benefits until much older. Of course, it becomes a moot point if the qualifying age is "dead"..
1. Rough play and fighting (even is sports)
Are you talking about rough play, sports or actually fighting. They're not the same. I can't think I've ever seen anyone[*] claim that playing rugger makes you evil. Starting fights after closing time however, you can keep that.
2. Risk-taking of any kind
that's just stupid and you're making it up.
3. Hunting (especially with guns)
We don't have much of a hunting culture here unless you're a toff and even then it's with dogs, not guns.
4. Loyalty to your male friends
Again, that's just stupid and you're making it up.
5. Tinkering and do-it-yourself culture
Third time, you're just making shit up. No one's revoked my SJW license for owning tools and actually using them.
6. Self-reliance and individualism
Are you talking about actual self reliance, or going your own way on ot the internet where you grouse about women and SJW?
[*]The internet is big. If you can find one lone nutcase, that doesn't make it a trend.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Not being able to. Properly insanely expensive, as is renting. Unemployment is high among the young.
Property isn't insanely expensive by historical standards unless you live in a place like NYC or San Francisco. You can get a nice modest house near where I live for $90-150K US which is entirely reasonable. Renting isn't outrageous either adjusted for inflation outside of those same expensive cities. Unemployment is high but it's not like most of them cannot find jobs. While one doesn't want to paint with too broad a brush, a lot of this sounds like excuses to me.
Consider that you need two above average incomes to buy a small house in many parts of the UK. My parents were able to afford one on a single graduate salary.
I can't speak to the situation in the UK but in most of the US you don't need a particularly high income to afford a house or apartment. For perspective living in the midwest a modest 1500sqft house would cost maybe $100-200K. Near NYC it would cost 4X or more that amount for the same place. Young people with jobs can afford to live across most of the US with reasonable comfort even on a modest salary. Not luxury living but nothing worse than previous generations dealt with.
The biggest problem I can see is the amount of student debt many of our young people are burdened with.
Of course, what will happen in 2033 (assuming no changes, and assuming the federal government finds a way to pay the bills until then) is that we'll finally have to just admit that it never was a true trust fund, that we've always just funded current retirees with current tax revenues, and that there's no reason to stop doing it just because some fictitious account balance hit zero.
Well, of COURSE there's no reason to stop spending money when the bank account hits zero. I mean after all, it's not like the national debt actually means anything anymore, or that we're actually going to DO something about that debt someday. What's another $10 trillion? The last $10 trillion was piled on in the blink of an eye, faster than ever before.
The irony with this kills me every time. We teach our American kids to stay out of debt, and to buy when they can afford to. In the meantime, our government champions and continues to reward the concept of digging that debt hole even deeper...
Mod this up yo.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Just looking at time frames with the internet gaining wide spread popularity, faster bandwidth, search engines, and all that - porn became much more accessible in the late 90's. Just thinking, that kinda cuts down on the need for a guy somewhat to need a girl if he has a hand and much easier instant gratification. There are studies that show this as a result and effect of the porn industry. Not judging right or wrong - just stating that a few percentage points could definitely be caused by this especially noting the time frames of the studies.
Is falling population really a problem short term?
Yes. Sometimes very much so. Falling populations tend to cause a downward economic cycle that is hard to recover from.
Fewer people means fewer resources needed for infrastructure, should lead to lower unemployment (less people chasing the same jobs), more room for people instead of having everyone crammed together like sardines.
If the infrastructure is already built it means fewer people have to cover the fixed costs of that infrastructure. That's one of the problems a place like Detroit has - the city was built for a population more than double what it currently has and yet the infrastructure to support that larger population didn't go away and still needs to be paid for. It takes a long time to shrink infrastructure. Infrastructure grows and shrinks in large step functions whereas population grows and shrinks in much smaller increments. If you build a large water treatment plant, and the population shrinks rapidly you can't demolish it and build a new one easily.
Fewer people also means that there are fewer qualified people to do any given task so those that remain become more expensive. It makes it harder for companies to grow and create more jobs. Fewer people means that there is a smaller base of workers to support those who don't work which is a particular problem with an aging population like in Japan. For stuff like social security the taxes you pay go to support retirees so the more retirees there are in relation to the number of active workers means that each active worker has to pay more per-capita to support them.
Sounds like a huge quality of life boost....
Quite the opposite I'm afraid in most cases.
From the Pew Research Center, slightly tangential, but relevant:
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/0...
The Future of World Religions: Estimated Change in Population Size 2010-2050:
Muslims: 73%
Christians: 35%
Hindus: 34%
Jews: 16%
Folks Religions: 11%
.
.
Buddhists: -0.3%
Full report here: http://www.pewforum.org/2015/0...
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
If you're still in equities, the smart thing would be to cash out while you still can.
No, the smart thing to do is buy more when equities go down. There's a reason Warren Buffet is as rich as he is and it's not solely because he runs an insurance company.
Constantly buying and selling stocks is a surefire way to underperform everyone else. Maybe for a short while you'll be ahead but in the long run you'll be behind, something numerous studies have shown to be true.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Well, mass production and fast, cheap distribution may have helped... Those bumperstickers are right "Porn! it's cheaper than dating!"
Well, of COURSE there's no reason to stop spending money when the bank account hits zero.
You seem not to have read the post you replied to. There is no bank account, and never has been. Social Security has always been a pay-as-you-go plan, barely pretending to be a savings account.
FWIW, I think Social Security is just a bad idea. Always was. People should save for their own retirements, or else we should re-establish the cultural expectation that children will care for their aging parents, as it has been done since time immemorial. But if we decide as a society that a government retirement program is what we want, we should at least be honest with ourselves about what it is.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Fortunately in my jurisdiction escorts are legal and I still have enough to go for it.
Where's that?
Rather difficult to engage in sex under these conditions.
Challenge accepted.
It's absolutely a regional thing, and race does play a factor because socioeconomic class plays a factor: poor people are far, far more likely to be obese, so of course black women are more likely too since they're more likely to be poor.
If you want to see a place in the US with almost zero obese people, take a trip to Manhattan and walk around. Good luck ever seeing anyone who's obese; maybe a some overweight people here and there, but no obese ones. For the opposite, take a trip to various cities in the South.
There is also a chance that the reason is that touching a woman (with words is sometimes enough) is considered by some gender warriors an act of violence and you cannot get out of perverts register once in.
This is false. This philosophy has existed for decades and has always been an excuse.
Don't date in the women's studies pool and you're probably ok. If you go to a school that has a women's studies program, you probably have made a number of fundamental mistakes in your life, prison will guarantee you 3 squares, exercise and a job... which is more than you may see with a degree in early french history. Weigh actions appropriately.
When we act the same way to these pussies of the special snowflake generation we would be called racists, misogynists, homophobes, and so on.
Okay...
No, what has happened is that the media has become so extremely politically correct that 'micro-aggression' is now a thing and that we have let the radical feminists decide what social norms are for the rest of us. The system is rigged against men being men.
So you are annoyed at people calling other people bigots, and then call other people bigots. You are annoyed that people feel upset about what other people say, and then get upset about what other people say.
There is a flaw in your argument.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This should come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about millennials.
Most millennials can barely look each other in the eye, have a conversation, or put down their phone long enough to take a piss, how could they possibly manage to meet someone and interact long enough to have sex?
Seriously, this doesn't surprise me one bit. I think a lot of millennials are social misfits, incapable of real-world interaction except under the most dire of circumstances. Ordering a pizza over the phone seems to push many of them to their social-interactivity limits.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Essentially it's a perfect storm of a lot of things (in no particular order) that are sometimes contradictory in nature.
1) Increased man-bashing. I mean, men aren't perfect, but when the women aren't helping you up but kicking you down, it's discouraging. It certainly creates a number of misogynists.
2) Feminism has, on the whole, freed women up from relying on men for financial support. Lesbians can get work, look after themselves, and have a relationship with their girlfriend without having to marry some "yucky" man... so less marriage is necessary.
3) Due to women's independence, this has freed men up from needing to be providers. Women complain that men these days are man-children, and this is the reason. Without a traditional need to care for women, men can do pretty well at extending our so-called "childhood" without having to "grow up" and "be a real man", (as women are mostly happy to define for us, despite not being men themselves). This reduces men's respect for women.
4) Contraception works pretty well. Less shotgun weddings
5) Fear of STDs makes people use contraception. Less shotgun weddings
6) Fear of supporting children in a bad economy makes people use contraception. Less shotgun weddings
7) Fear of divorce in a bad economy with laws that heavily favour women taking lots of money off a man in divorce - heavily discourages marriage.
8) Prostitutes are cheaper than getting married, with less hassle (Paid to leave!)
9) Given that contraception has been pushed pretty heavily by society for a great number of reasons, there are less shotgun weddings, and more careful men
10) deterioration of religious abstinence, and greater acceptance of single motherhood means less weddings, and what marriages remain - more chance for divorce to be acceptable
11) Easier access to porn. Porn will never nag you, or leave you.
12) Due to many of the factors listed above - men end up having less respect for women. As a result, services like Tinder flourish where the process of falling in love is reduced to a mechanical cold-call sales strategy whose sole aim is for the implementer to sleep with as many women as possible with the minimum money spent and time "wasted" on crank callers and non-buyers - completely deleting things like emotions from the equation because they get in the way of a solid strategy to game the market.
13) More men understand the Pareto principle on the dating world: 20% of the men are having sex with 80% of the women. Hence the quaint notion of there being a man for every woman is now commonly known to be a lot of garbage, whereas before it went on with everybody believing that there was someone for everyone. Men are realizing that if they are not in that 20%, getting married is just a one-way ticket to being cheated on. So why do it?
14) The poor sexual market and legal risks of the West has pushed a lot of men out where they have found happier hunting grounds in other parts of the world - typically places where the women actually like being feminine, who like men a lot, and are easy to get along with and who really enjoy sex without the ridiculous outlaying of capital.
15) Millenials are unable to handle rejection, or being offended, or being told that they aren't special/needed/wanted,... and those who aren't having success with women are probably giving up, and not getting rejected enough to cut through all the time-wasters to get to the perfect matches.
16) Increasingly poor economy meaning that a woman's hypergamous instincts are unable to be realized due to lack of "eligible" men. (and we all know who the eligible are)
17) Men just don't know how to turn women on, and had no instruction from their father -- because he is increasingly absent in single mother households.
18) Marriage is "for life", but with our increased life expectancy... that life is now too damn long to be stuck in marriage!
19) Men have greater access to literature like "the Anatomy of Female power" and other male-centric material on gender politics, and support groups have popped up via the internet. As a result, men have discovered that marriage is not very liberating.
I think that just about covers it. I may be missing a few points though.....
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Paying for retirement out of current tax revenues (as we do with Social Security) basically is children caring for their aging parents, just on a societal scale rather than a familial scale. The working young pay to fund the care of the non-working old. And doing it on a societal scale seems much more fair than every individual retiree depending on the fickle financial fortunes of their particular children.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
It doesn't help matters when your mother is a size 0. Average sized women seem quite large to me.
It is more than that, with a shrinking birth rate you get a bias towards higher average age.
Too many old people to try and take over the world, too many social programs for younger workers to support.
The US has the same problem but not as bad as the Boomers retire.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
And here's the other rub...
Those illegal immigrants are usually getting paid cash under the table..so, they are NOT contributing to the SS, welfare and other funds you mentioned.
But..they DO get the free benefits and stuff that we citizens still have to pay into....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
They are all too busy answering surveys on their iDevices to have sex.
Maybe if those Pokemon characters would hold still after they've been caught, millennials could get some.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's not "propaganda" to state that men are financially responsible for their crotchspawn.
Gotta love women's sizes "0", "1", "2"
What, women have no waists or ridiculously tiny 0-2" circumference waists?
But then you need to stop importing immigrants to make up for the shortfall or you're just replacing your civilization with a different one.
Well, that's what we've been doing since before founding of the United States. There are several rants by Benjamin Franklin from the 1750's about how German immigrants are ruining the proper anglo-saxon culture as they are unclean, lazy, and fail to socialize to the current culture. The United States has always been about 10% immigrants (there was a dip to 5% in the early 50's). Our economy is based on growing and using cheap labor to do it. We've also complained about every new wave of immigration, claiming it will be the end of our culture, till the next wave comes and the old wave joins in the bitching.
Paying for retirement out of current tax revenues (as we do with Social Security) basically is children caring for their aging parents, just on a societal scale rather than a familial scale.
Fair point, but I think the dynamics are quite different. This becomes especially true when you get a population bulge (like the baby boomers), and that bulge retires. You get a situation where the elderly can vote themselves support beyond what the younger population can afford, enforced by armed police. That's exactly the situation we have coming; the boomers are the reason that the social security expenses are climbing dramatically and going to skyrocket over the next 15 years, but any attempt to scale the costs back to manageable levels is political suicide because the AARP will hammer flat anyone who even approaches it. In fact, promising increases to benefits buys lots of votes.
Of course the same problem would occur on a per-family basis, but the expectations would be different. Parents would be making demands of their own children, not the mighty and wealthy federal government... and the option of just shoving the cost off on the grandchildren and great-grandchildren simply wouldn't exist.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It's not propaganda to say fat isn't beautiful. When people are walking around with waists larger than 50" weighing over 300 pounds and can barely life themselves up a single flight of stairs, that is obese. When you have kids less than 10 years of age weighing 100 pounds, that isn't healthy.
Just because other people choose to live a healthy lifestyle, which means a lean body, does not make them skeletal.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Millennials are using as much as we did 30 years ago! We've also got a lot worse STDs than we had 30 years ago, so being more cautious about is sex a rational response to the current environment.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Based on the population numbers, I'd say you've got it backwards... Muslims aren't blowing enough! ;-)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So, does that make it right to Make America Mexico? If I wanted to live in Mexico I'd move to Mexico.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
5. Tinkering and do-it-yourself culture??? Quite the opposite, there is a huge trend in encouraging the "maker" movement, people building things for themselves. In many ways it is a reaction to both mass production and to the runaway protectionism that has gone on for decades, i.e. "No, we can't let kids play around with tools, it's too dangerous! Here, have a Barbie and a Hot Wheels to play with!" The other 5 are wrong as well, but I'll leave it to others to repudiate those unsubstantiated claims.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In contrast to Americans that moved to Mexico, and then moved its border a long way south and started calling it the USA?
In college, I remember a survey that claimed college men were having sex three times as often as college women.
We all got a chuckle out of this, since it was obvious (to us) that the results were wrong.
Either the men were bragging the numbers up, or the women were demuring the numbers down, probably both.
But I'm sure this time all survey respondents were perfectly truthful.~
What does that have to do with anything?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Add to that:
The fear of AIDS and other STDs;
Peer pressure ("she fucked 3 guys, she's a whore!");
Helicopter parenting ("send me an SMS every hour to know you're safe" et. al.);
Ease of access to porn ("why do the real thing when jerking off on Riley Reid videos has zero risk of being rejected?").
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Porn teaches an unrealistic view of reality... just like all other fiction. It also trains people to become sexually aroused by unusual stimuli, so one should probably be careful what kind of porn one watches. On the bright side, several orgasms a week are good for one's health, even if you have them alone (not sure about the sobbing uncontrollably afterwards, but maybe that's just me.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In my day both men and women had bell bottoms,hiking boots, and long hair, so you had to ask them to turn around so that you could tell whether they were male or female... and sometimes even then you couldn't tell!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The Future of World Religions: Estimated Change in Population Size 2010-2050:
Muslims: 73%
Christians: 35%
Hindus: 34%
Jews: 16%
Folks Religions: 11%
Newsflash: Old-Testament Reveletion Cults that put women squarely in the child-bearing slaves of reproduction department have more children. Film at 11.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It IS propaganda, they have people are not even 5-10lbs "overweight" that are labelled "obese"
Nice try though
The belief that we should always be moving is undoubtedly one of the reasons why our society is so messed up; we don't build communities any more.
For the record I've done a remarkable range of things whilst based in this humble apartment - though I will admit the carpet does need replacing... ;)
From the very first post on here in response to the article, you had someone on a rant about the economy hurting Millennials so much, they simply can't afford to have sex anymore.
Just based on history, that's a hugely flawed assumption because it's most often the very poor who wind up having a lot of sex and consequently, the most kids. When you don't have the money to find other ways to keep entertained or busy, sex is often the "trusty fallback" to escape the world for a little while. And even if you wind up having a kid, at least the kid is seen a valuable possession or gift, in a world where you don't have much of value.
To be fair, they called it Texas, first, not the USA.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Well, there are two different trends now affecting men. The first is that marriage is now all downside, no upside, but that's true only because it doesn't cause less sex. The other is that the traditional male theme of "put up with her, however crazy, because that's just how relationships work" is fading.
Men my age and older are used to resolving all domestic arguments and conflict of any kind by just letting her win. The new, far healthier IMO approach is "it's not worth the drama". Men less willing to put up with daily drama for sex are, of course, getting less sex.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
What's important is that you've found a way to be judgmental no matter what.
Remind me again what the benefits of marriage were and how they have gone in the modern age.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That won't happen. It's politically impossible to cut SS. Instead, the government will just print enough money to keep the SS checks coming, regardless of the damage to the currency. SS liability isn't so bad when measured against currency-collapsing events, so at 47 we likely won't live to see the inevitable fall.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The money is a bit of a distraction (or abstraction) from the actual problem: a very old-biased population put too large of a burden of care on the young. The higher the percentage of the working population providing elder care, the lower the remainder producing general goods and services everyone needs. Increased automation can make that a non-issue, but I'd rather not have a race condition there.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That won't happen. It's politically impossible to cut SS.
I think we'll eventually gather the political will to cut SS for the "rich", after the boomers are gone. By "rich" I mean those who have the means to live reasonably well without SS. Meaning those who have done the right things to prepare for retirement. Of course, the money printer will still have to run to pay for the rest, so devaluation will move some more people out of the self-sufficient category.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Porn.
I'm 47 years old. You are wrong. You are so wrong.
SS is already taxable (if you have non-trivial retirement income), so it already pays less for the "rich". Still, I could see it maybe happening after the boomers are gone, but since the youngest Boomers are 50-ish, I doubt it will have much impact for the 47s.
Medica*, OTOH, is a ticking bomb.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
More alive today then the day Columbus landed.
In the long run the germ theory of disease was more of a help than smallpox was damage.
Their culture lost.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You could not be a respectable part of middle class society beyond a certain age unless you were married. Heck, you don't have to go that far back until it applied to basically everyone. There was also a much stronger expectation of a stable relationship being a path to marriage, and the general sense that while sex before marriage could be overlooked, marriage and family was the point of it all (which, before the pill, was a reasonable idea). Sex was just a lot less available, for both sexes, unless you were at least pretending to be working up to marriage, and very often pretense would lead through inertia to reality.
Mechanically (so to speak) the pill changed everything, but society lags reality. From what I saw, it was only really in the 90s that it started to be OK to be in a long term relationship with no plans for marriage.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If we're lucky; if we're unlucky expect confiscatory taxes on our 401Ks, after tax savings and home equity.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So, let the Mexicans take over, and then American culture will die, but American genes will thrive thanks to Mexican Science?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The 3 women I slept with post the one I loved I found physically repulsive despite all of them wanting me.
Why bother? I did that once, back when I was younger, but never did it again. I'd rather sit at home with porn than try to get it up for someone I find repulsive.
I am also not your typical slashdot reader. I am not a programmer, engineer or scientist. I just like to read about that stuff because it's intetesting.
Well that's plainly obvious to me. You're not going off about how global warming is a liberal conspiracy, or how every women out there will cry rape if you even look at her, or how HOSTS files are the best thing since sliced bread. You're also not calling anyone an idiot. You definitely don't fit in here. :-)
We are beginning to go down the same road as Japan has. It's the economy, stupid.
Thirty years ago AIDS was on the news scaring the shit out of kids. Abstinence was recommended. Apparently, the scary news about getting AIDS and advice about abstinence did the job.
So, does that make it right to Make America Mexico? If I wanted to live in Mexico I'd move to Mexico.
Talk to the conservatives who want their cheap labor. We could stop illegal immigration or reduce it with reforms to the SS system to prevent stealing numbers and actual punishments for people who knowingly hire illegals, but that would cut out the cheap labor just like reducing h1b visas would.
Which benefits do illegal immigrants get? They aren't going to get Social Security without paying into the system. (This applies to everyone; your social security benefit is based on, IIRC, your average income over your best 35 years.) For other benefits, accepting benefits requires some sort of government registration, and the typical illegal immigrant wants to stay off the system.
This is assuming that their employers are illegally paying them cash under the table; if they're getting something like normal paychecks, they're paying in without receiving anything.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It's the fat epidemic. The number of girls not having sex are over weight. Over weight girls are sexually unactractive and don't get any. That's it. Sorry about the reason being politically incorrect.
In the 1960's it was possible for most Middle Class people to have a child in their early 20's and go on to live a successful life. Today it's almost mandatory for Middle Class people to attend college to have any hope for good paying jobs with the ability to be promoted, and good luck being able to raise a kid at the same time when you're paying today's ridiculously high tuition rates. The easiest way to avoid this little complication is to wait until you're done with school to even have sex at all. Sad but unfortunately true for people with average means.
Ironically, for people who have no way to attend a good college today, they might as well have children because there is little or no hope for any kind of economic advancement anyway.
The 'maker' movement took the DIY culture out of those icky spaces and into clean ones where there aren't any hairy men using swear words and possibly drinking beer
See, now I know you're making shit up to support your position. The London Hackspace even sometimes brews its own beer. I, myself have had a few beers, some brewed locally, some from the nearby corner shop while there. It's very much not uncommon to see people there having a beer in the evening after a good hack session.
But go ahead and invent reasons why men are oppressed. Don't let actual real ife impinge.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The linked abstract on Springer is about same-sex experiences and in fact claims there's an increase in them. Does anyone have a link to the actual study?
I'm 31, and based in Melbourne, originally from Adelaide YMMV. I grew up in a smaller town. I noticed that many of the things which people are bitter about appeared to be true. But the reality is more complicated. When I was living in Adelaide, it was very hard to meet women and even harder to date them. Men outnumbered women by a large margin. After moving to Melbourne a few years ago I very quickly noticed that the gender ration has dramatically shifted. A lot of women had left Adelaide to move to Melbourne and I was finding myself surrounded by women, often younger single women. The social conditioning of the society is playing a role. In Adelaide the environment was very fishbowl-like and there was a really strong conservative vibe to the place. In Melbourne it's very socialist/egalitarian. People don't care if you're rich or poor. I have a car and I rent an apartment. Not a fancy apartment. Two bedroom and I spend about 1/3rd of my monthly salary on rent. This seemed to be enough to get interest. I don't think being wealthy is a criteria. I think it's more about the social circumstances and the economic circumstances that the couple find themselves in. Would you risk a pregnancy if you couldn't afford to raise a child? Probably not. The economy is crap at the moment. In Australia housing is ludicrous. $1 million is rapidly becoming the norm for house prices in Melbourne and Sydney. This hasn't affected the chances of getting sex, but has definitely changed how having kids and buying property operates. I can see how living at home with your parents to buy a house is going to kill your chances of sex.
The system is rigged against men being men.
So if a subset of men behave in a non-masculine way, are they not "men being men?" Why is "men being men" only defined as being outwardly masculine?
Its not hate my generation is exhibiting, its masculinity.
Social norms change all the time. If you don't follow the norms, don't be surprised when you are ostracized. If you expect others to have thick skin, you need to as well, and not be troubled when "labeled racists, misogynists, homophobes, etc." and accept the consequences for your actions.
we have let the radical feminists decide what social norms are for the rest of us
It seems like you yourself are trying to define your own set of social norms, by deeming non-masculinity in men as undesirable. The very same thing you seem unhappy with "radical feminists" doing. Why do you get to define what being a man means?
The young men of the special snowflake generation are a bunch of pussies
You make the assumption that non-masculinity is not a choice a man would knowingly choose, and only the result of drugs suppressing that aspect. Why is being a "pussy" not a valid choice? Why not let men decide for themselves who they want to be without labeling them "jocks" or "pussies" when they don't conform to our expectations?
Some a liars, but they self identify as native americans, so be it. (your rules.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
10 years work gets you maxed out SS. If you can work on the books for 10, off for 25 you're golden.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Nobody kisses each other's cheeks in Europe. They get close to touching cheeks and make kissing noises in the air. Sometimes once, sometimes twice, occasionally more.
If you accidently actually kiss someone's cheek, they look at you like you're a leper.
Only the Arabs like to hold hands among men, they also all subscribe to the prison definition of gay (only the catcher is gay). They also take glam shots of ugly dudes in robes lying in fields of flowers. Take if for what it's worth.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Pansy millennials getting drunk AFTER they finish in the machine shop...it's like they want to die with all their limbs attached.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Are you talking about rough play, sports or actually fighting.
Football (American) has been under heavy criticism due to the risk of brain injuries. However, there are schools that have banned tag for a variety of reasons.
We don't have much of a hunting culture here unless you're a toff and even then it's with dogs, not guns.
The US used to. In fact, in many areas, it's actually necessary to keep animal populations in check. Without hunting, the animals would overpopulate and starve. It is well managed by the various DNR agencies within those states. Students used to be able to bring their shotguns and hunting rifles to school since they would go hunting after school and before dinner. Now it just means they are expelled - assuming they aren't charged with a crime as well. Also, most states require you to pass a firearms safety class before you can get a hunting permit, so the students have to know what they are doing.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Nothing beats pushing a nice sheet into a bench saw with one hand while holding a beer in the other.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Your experience may differ, but I was ragged on for working on my own car. I don't have to, but I do enjoy it and have few classic cars that always require attention.
Actually, I also was chided by outsiders for having multiple sports cars (I race) and a motorcycle (I ride) for being wasteful.
I know you don't see it my way, but I strongly believe masculinity will be gone in Western culture in a generation or so. Even military going that way. This will have very negative effect on boys. Already feminization of learning spaces leads to girls getting better education and outcomes. Some boys will also rebel and go with the worst stereotypes instead of having positive role models.
Welfare for one.
Free schooling for their offspring for another...and pretty much any other social safety net program we have here.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Or, is it the later generation lies about having sex less than the earlier ones? If you believed some of the surveys done in the late 70s; there was an orgy at the disco every weekend. Reality, not so much by a serious margin.
Add in the later generation's propensity to actually make sexual escapades part of social media with the training that if you regret having sex you have been raped. Yeah, I'd expect the numbers to go down as the social repercussions of sexual activity can be socially damning.
It isn't private business as much as it once was. Now it is a community critique holding up points cards for performance.
NRRPT/RCT
Sounds like they have the situation well in hand.
Obviously they did this study exclusively with users of /.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
Football (American) has been under heavy criticism due to the risk of brain injuries.
Well yeah, it is actually causing brain injuries. That's hardly a "criminalization of masculinity" though. There are plenty of options available like rugby or hurling. And they don't feel the need to swaddle players in heaps of padding.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You chided someone up thread for using fallacies and now all you can come up is "this is stupid" and "you are making this up"?
Er, yes? Making stuff up is a logical fallacy. If someone makes something up, you're not required to argue as if their fantasy world is reality. Merely pointing out that it's made up is sufficient.
Clearly, you don't get masculinity, but that doesn't mean that any of this is wrong.
So, masculinity is making up shit on the internet and then getting annoyed about it?
Maybe talk to your doctor about low testosterone?
The amusing thing is that I don't subscribe to your silly notions of masculinity. Therefore your insults which are designed to cut people with the same insecurities as you have little effect on me.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Your experience may differ,
Yep, it differs very much.
but I was ragged on for working on my own car. I don't have to, but I do enjoy it and have few classic cars that always require attention.
Sounds like a fine hobby.
Actually, I also was chided by outsiders for having multiple sports cars (I race) and a motorcycle (I ride) for being wasteful.
Sounds like you encounter a lot of douchebags. Ignorant ones too, given the efficiency of motorbikes relative to cars.
I know you don't see it my way, but I strongly believe masculinity will be gone in Western culture in a generation or so.
Does that mean that the traditionally masculine pursuits like getting tanked up on lager watching football then starting fights and trashing the town centre will be gone too?
SJW n. One who posts facts.