Thursday, February 16, 2017

"The long-held belief that each generation should do better than the last is under threat"

Dalrock has found an interesting report from the UK about the declining earnings of young men there. The gist of it is that an increasing number of young men in the UK are working in lower-paid industries, such as retail and bars and hotels. They are now earning significantly less in their 20s than did the previous generation. Women's wages have stagnated rather than fallen.

Some excerpts from a Business Insider article:
Men in their 20s are earning significantly less than the generation before them and it is closing the gender pay gap.

Millennial men have earned less than Generation X men in every year between the ages of 22 and 30, resulting in a cumulative pay deficit during their 20s of £12,500 ($15,638). However, the unit found that millennial women's pay is stagnant compared to the last generation.

This in turn means the gender pay gap is closing — but it's not good news. In fact, Resolution Foundation says "millennial women have experienced neither generational pay progress or decline. This has narrowed the gender pay gap for millennials – but for the wrong reasons."

"The long-held belief that each generation should do better than the last is under threat," said Torsten Bell, Executive Director at the Resolution Foundation.

"Millennials today are the first to earn less than their predecessors."

Dalrock connects this decline in male earnings to the decline in marriage. This argument is clear enough. If young men no longer believe that being a provider is a pathway into a happy and successful marriage, then there is less incentive for them to commit to a full-time career.

As for generational decline, that has been obvious to me for some time, but it's noteworthy that a business newspaper should acknowledge it. If you have a quasi-religious belief in progress it must be particularly challenging to have to acknowledge generational decline.

4 comments:

  1. The myth of progress is finally being shown for the falsehood it is.

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  2. Re your last sentence, no, because these people think globally. All the people in the wealthier nations are going to decline in wealth but this will be balanced by increased wealth in the poorer nations. There is to be a great leveling out but not all of the Left has caught on to this yet and so some still complain about less money for this or that when, if they understood what the ruling elite have in mind for us, they would know this is to be expected.

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    1. I gather the utilitarian calculus would figure in any potential net positive for other countries before passing judgement on declining wages. Besides, why don't these men just become IT experts or coders? They still have to compete with international applicants for those local jobs, but whatever...

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    2. This is the myth of the fixed pie and that wealth is a zero-sum game. However, the wealth of the West has been created by her greater aptitude for creating it. Once this aptitude is eliminated by the destruction of Western culture and civilisation, it does not seem likely to me that most other cultures, particularly the parasitic Islamic one, will be able to replicate the wealth creation of the West. Spreading wealth about is not creating it, not by a long shot. As the Left, with their envy, define poverty in terms of the relative kind, they will be able to claim that poverty is eliminated since all will be equally poor.

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