One weird trick to help men without hurting women
Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about human connection. To support my life’s work, upgrade to a paid subscription, buy a guide, follow me on OnlyFans, follow me on Twitter, support me on Patreon, or just share this post 🙏
~~~~~
I’ve always thought about men a lot. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how to help them. I think their myriad problems relate to and are exacerbated by their low and declining wage and labor force participation rates. I suspect that if we can get more men into high-paying work we’ll get closer to solving a lot of their other problems. These include, but are not limited to, loneliness, rolelessness, deaths of despair, and authoritarianism.
On the one hand, I applaud conservatives for actually seeming to notice and worry about men’s woes. It seems many on the left worry that trying to help men specifically may hurt women. It also just seems, rather unfortunately, to be seen as a bad look to care about men specifically.
On the other hand, the vast majority of their proposed solutions are… bullshit. Very little evidence suggests that oppressing outgroups like women and immigrants and doing a protectionism will help men. Evidence they will hurt everyone on net abounds.
So I was super excited to see Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro opening up thousands of Pennsylvania government jobs to people without college degrees. (Hat tip senatorshoshana. Check out our interview!).
I’d like to Ban All Licensure, Certification, and Zoning laws (BALCZ). This is a trillion-dollar idea. Cost disease? Vanquished. NEET men? Back on their bullshit with a vengeance. Housing crisis? I don’t know her.
But this is a great start!
Degree inflation is a huge problem in the US. Today millions of jobs require a four-year degree for absolutely no reason other than it’s an easy sorting mechanism for hiring managers. This locks millions of Americans out of employment for which they are otherwise absolutely qualified. It artificially increases the cost of college by increasing the demand for degrees. And the last thing this country needs is for college to get even more expensive.
And degree inflation disproportionately harms men. Richard Reeves has found the gender gap in college degrees is larger today than in the 1970s, but in the opposite direction.
Since the 1970’s we’ve seen, along with degree inflation and staggering growth in tuition costs, an explosion of licensure and certification requirements.
Apparently about a quarter of the American workforce is subject to state-level licensing laws, which impact student-debt, employment, compensation levels, and how much things cost. And as this awesome op-ed by Markose Butler points out, occupational licensure has racist roots and harms Black men disproportionately.
In this same period male labor force participation rates have declined.
Is it a coincidence that as joining the workforce has become harder and more expensive, fewer men have been doing it? I THINK NOT MY BABIES.
Now if only more electeds would stop banning trans healthcare and trying to send women to prison for reporting a rape one cop thinks is false while seeking an abortion and implement policies like this they could actually help men without hurting anyone else. A girl can dream.
This is an ad! ⬇️ Click on it to support me!
700,000+ Guys read ELEVATOR every damn day
The best eye and brain candy curated from all corners of the web
No news. No politics. No BS.
Just the good stuff
100% Free
Sometimes you can’t state the obvious often enough.
As a country in ways big and small we keep erecting barriers to employment and are constantly surprised that people, especially men, aren’t entering the workforce. It really is a form of madness.
As you make clear, it’s a complicated and multifaceted problem that can’t be solved with simple minded -- especially simple minded ideological -- approaches.
The same is true with college. Make it really expensive, increasingly irrelevant to employment, and then wonder why fewer members of a shrinking class of potential students are saying no.
On the bright side, I also see reasons for hope in changes like Pennsylvania dropping degree requirements where they don’t make sense.
Next, I hope we can start getting rid of licensing requirements whose sole purpose is eliminating competition for trades and professions.
I met Josh at Pittsburgh Pride last year. He's got the right ideas at the right time. Now if only our state legislature wasn't full of buffoons maybe we could get somewhere.