DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

We have seen the future, and it sucks.

Escape to Another World

17th March 2017

Read it.

Over the last 15 years there has been a steady and disconcerting leak of young people away from the labour force in America. Between 2000 and 2015, the employment rate for men in their 20s without a college education dropped ten percentage points, from 82% to 72%. In 2015, remarkably, 22% of men in this group – a cohort of people in the most consequential years of their working lives – reported to surveyors that they had not worked at all in the prior 12 months. That was in 2015: when the unemployment rate nationwide fell to 5%, and the American economy added 2.7m new jobs. Back in 2000, less than 10% of such men were in similar circumstances.

What these individuals are not doing is clear enough, says Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago, who has been studying the phenomenon. They are not leaving home; in 2015 more than 50% lived with a parent or close relative. Neither are they getting married. What they are doing, Hurst reckons, is playing video games. As the hours young men spent in work dropped in the 2000s, hours spent in leisure activities rose nearly one-for-one. Of the rise in leisure time, 75% was accounted for by video games. It looks as though some small but meaningful share of the young-adult population is delaying employment or cutting back hours in order to spend more time with their video game of choice.

Think about it:

No fat ugly feminists screeching about The Patriarchy.

No welfare queens complaining that drinking milk is raaaaaaacist.

No nerd little shrimp of indeterminate sex complaining about what pronoun she/it is entitled to.

No minimum wage pricing out of the only jobs you’re qualified for.

No gangbangers whupping your ass because you looked at them on the street.

Just peace – and quiet – and fun.

What’s not to like?

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