Skip to main content

Quotation of the Week

Picture this: one in five less-educated young men are not working and not seeking marriage, and they seem happy about it. No one wants to see that, but we’re looking at it. According to University of Chicago economist Erik Hurst, young men between the ages of 21 and 30 without a college degree worked far fewer hours in 2015 than in 2000, and in 2015, eighteen percent of these men reported not working in the last year (up from eight percent in 2000).
Hurst describes this as almost one-fifth of the population simply being idle: not in school and not working. Seventy percent of these young men live with their parents (up from fifty percent in 2000). These young men are not married, not having kids, and not earning an income. They are young, single, childless, and idle.
What, then, are these young men doing with their lives? According to Hurst, they are playing video games. Leisure time, largely spent playing games on computers and consoles, doubled from the early 2000s to 2015.
When Hurst relayed these statistics to Econtalk Podcast host Russ Roberts, Roberts could scarcely believe the numbers or accept the idea that so many young men would choose to live with their parents, and not work, so that they could play video games.
In response to the incredulity of Roberts, Hurst pointed to “happiness data,” which indicates that the reported life satisfaction of these “less educated young men” has gone up.
These guys are not married, not working, playing video games in mom’s basement, and loving it.
Hurst speculates that if these young men were out on the street, they would be forced to work, even for relatively low wages. But because of what he calls “private transfers,” which refers to the way their parents fund their lives, they don’t need to work. So they don’t.
Jim Hamilton

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Families' Fridays

From Focus on the Family 10 helpful tips for single parents Imagine this: you’re the sole parent for your children. You get them up, get them fed and send them to school. You do the housework, maybe you go to work yourself, you get home and you’re still the only adult there. There’s no one to relieve you. No one to pass the baton to while you take a shower or take a few minutes for yourself. You make dinner and gather the family around the table to eat. You play with them, read to them, give them baths, get them to bed and there’s no one there to sit with and process your day. There’s no one there to laugh with you or pray with you. Instead you keep working. You clean up the house again. You pack lunches for the next day. And you eventually crash into bed, knowing you’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow. For many, this is not an imagined scenario. When you parent alone – whether due to divorce, the loss of your spouse or having a spouse who works away from home for long periods of...

Death For a Believer

We picture death as coming to destroy; let us rather picture Christ as coming to save. We think of death as ending; let us rather think of life as beginning, and that more abundantly. We think of losing; let us think of gaining. We think of parting; let us think of meeting. We think of going away; let us think of arriving. And as the voice of death whispers,  "You must go from earth," Let us hear the voice of Christ saying, "You are but coming to me."   Norman Macleod

Let Me Introduce

It is almost a joke to imagine I am introducing John MacArthur Jr. to you.  In our circles of evangelicalism his is a well known name.  He has spoken at the national convention of our Fellowship of Evangelical Baptists on at least three different occasions.  However, the last of these was almost twenty years ago.  I believe that is because we have changed as a Fellowship and have strayed from the message that Dr. MacArthur preaches.  Dr. MacArthur has served his congregation since 1969.  That, in itself, should commend this man's message to us. As a pastor, I appreciate his commitment to the expository preaching of the Bible.  He has published an entire New Testament commentary set based upon his faithful preaching of the text.  I have never met this man personally, but I have appreciated him laying down a faithful path which younger men, like myself, have been able to follow. Grace to You