OT: IDK if there is something to this or if they are reaching
Papi_Chulo
Miami, FL (or the nearest big-booty club)
America’s sex recession could lead to an economic depression
Forget the trade wars, automation, and even the skills gap. The real threat to the U.S. economy may be that fewer Americans are in the mood for love.
Well, not love, but sex. Enduring reports of America’s sexual recession are a sign of a serious problem for a wide-ranging list of sectors from real estate, to apparel, to condoms.
Before getting into why the falling sex rates, especially for younger Americans, threatens our GDP, it’s important to address why the trend is happening in the first place.
To that end, there’s a bit of a “chicken or the egg” question to ask here: is America facing economic challenges because younger Americans are having less sex? Or are younger Americans having less sex because of their unique economic challenges?
A 2018 Census Bureau report would suggest the latter, noting that economic security is a high priority for Millennials when they seek marriage or serious committed relationships.
Based on that data, it makes sense that the millions of Americans who entered adulthood during the Great Recession a decade ago are more skittish about marriage and sex. The Great Depression era saw the U.S. birth rate hit an all-time low in 1936. Since birth control was much less available back then, it’s fair to assume sex in America fell sharply during that time as well.
But the economy has been steadily growing for more than 10 years now, which encompasses most of the adult lives for Americans under 30. The enduring reports of lower sex rates despite the overall economic recovery have led to diverging explanations.
Some experts focus on the fact that Millennials are dealing with growing student loan debts, making their economic reality much worse than when previous generations were their age. But it also turns out that student loan debt isn’t the top source of debt for Americans aged 23 to 38; it’s credit card debt.
That fact shifts us to pinpoint the differences in millennial lifestyles, and that brings us back to some common sense wisdom about life, relationships, and sex.
Sex has always been a part of the human courtship ritual, but the widespread availability of birth control in America made it a more regular aspect of dating. Yes, there’s plenty of casual “no strings” sex available on Tinder and Grinder. But the drop in sex rates and marriage rates are clearly related.
Fewer people making adult connections simply leads to a decline in both, and you don’t need to be an economic genius to know that fewer marriages and children weaken economic demand overall.
A number of studies have recently blamed the fall in sex and marriage rates on technology and the new opportunities it gives young adults to withdraw from in-person human relationships. Everything from online porn to sophisticated video games, to social media is being used by many as a substitute for real human contact, especially for men.
The male tendency to seek these substitutes may be the biggest single reason why sex and marriage rates are dropping. A new Cornell University study shows that women are still likely to be more attracted to and want to marry men with stronger economic prospects.
In other words, despite decades of positive strides for women in the workplace and beyond, women still find a wealthier man more attractive. So men still have to work harder to attract women. But now they have porn, video games, and other technology to provide them with much easier to obtain substitutes for that gratification. Avoiding the pressure to earn more to get more is likely also behind the multibillion-dollar race to create a realistic sex robot industry.
Of course, there’s an economic positive to this trend when we focus on teenagers. Teenage sex and pregnancy are also continuing to fall, bringing relief to the economic and cultural devastation they often cause. Less teen sex is an example of increased national responsibility.
But for men in their 20s and beyond, the sex recession appears to be a symptom of a delayed entrance into the world of fully responsible adulthood. Beating the “failure to launch” trend isn’t just about moving out of your parents’ house, but it’s also about pursuing adult relationships and starting your own family.
No one is saying people should have sexual relationships if they have no real connection to another person. But declining sex rates are a sign of a corresponding decline in the adult relationships that stoke acceptance for the costs of dating to the costs of the trappings of domestic family life.
The sex recession seems like an even more menacing sign that technology, especially A.I. technology, is seriously weakening the primordial human desire to mate with other humans and do the work necessary to make that happen. That “work” has been an essential economic component since civilization began.
We’ve heard of the threats tech poses to job creation, but the drop in sex rates may be the clearest sign yet that tech’s challenges to modern love might be the biggest economic threat of all.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/25/americas…
Forget the trade wars, automation, and even the skills gap. The real threat to the U.S. economy may be that fewer Americans are in the mood for love.
Well, not love, but sex. Enduring reports of America’s sexual recession are a sign of a serious problem for a wide-ranging list of sectors from real estate, to apparel, to condoms.
Before getting into why the falling sex rates, especially for younger Americans, threatens our GDP, it’s important to address why the trend is happening in the first place.
To that end, there’s a bit of a “chicken or the egg” question to ask here: is America facing economic challenges because younger Americans are having less sex? Or are younger Americans having less sex because of their unique economic challenges?
A 2018 Census Bureau report would suggest the latter, noting that economic security is a high priority for Millennials when they seek marriage or serious committed relationships.
Based on that data, it makes sense that the millions of Americans who entered adulthood during the Great Recession a decade ago are more skittish about marriage and sex. The Great Depression era saw the U.S. birth rate hit an all-time low in 1936. Since birth control was much less available back then, it’s fair to assume sex in America fell sharply during that time as well.
But the economy has been steadily growing for more than 10 years now, which encompasses most of the adult lives for Americans under 30. The enduring reports of lower sex rates despite the overall economic recovery have led to diverging explanations.
Some experts focus on the fact that Millennials are dealing with growing student loan debts, making their economic reality much worse than when previous generations were their age. But it also turns out that student loan debt isn’t the top source of debt for Americans aged 23 to 38; it’s credit card debt.
That fact shifts us to pinpoint the differences in millennial lifestyles, and that brings us back to some common sense wisdom about life, relationships, and sex.
Sex has always been a part of the human courtship ritual, but the widespread availability of birth control in America made it a more regular aspect of dating. Yes, there’s plenty of casual “no strings” sex available on Tinder and Grinder. But the drop in sex rates and marriage rates are clearly related.
Fewer people making adult connections simply leads to a decline in both, and you don’t need to be an economic genius to know that fewer marriages and children weaken economic demand overall.
A number of studies have recently blamed the fall in sex and marriage rates on technology and the new opportunities it gives young adults to withdraw from in-person human relationships. Everything from online porn to sophisticated video games, to social media is being used by many as a substitute for real human contact, especially for men.
The male tendency to seek these substitutes may be the biggest single reason why sex and marriage rates are dropping. A new Cornell University study shows that women are still likely to be more attracted to and want to marry men with stronger economic prospects.
In other words, despite decades of positive strides for women in the workplace and beyond, women still find a wealthier man more attractive. So men still have to work harder to attract women. But now they have porn, video games, and other technology to provide them with much easier to obtain substitutes for that gratification. Avoiding the pressure to earn more to get more is likely also behind the multibillion-dollar race to create a realistic sex robot industry.
Of course, there’s an economic positive to this trend when we focus on teenagers. Teenage sex and pregnancy are also continuing to fall, bringing relief to the economic and cultural devastation they often cause. Less teen sex is an example of increased national responsibility.
But for men in their 20s and beyond, the sex recession appears to be a symptom of a delayed entrance into the world of fully responsible adulthood. Beating the “failure to launch” trend isn’t just about moving out of your parents’ house, but it’s also about pursuing adult relationships and starting your own family.
No one is saying people should have sexual relationships if they have no real connection to another person. But declining sex rates are a sign of a corresponding decline in the adult relationships that stoke acceptance for the costs of dating to the costs of the trappings of domestic family life.
The sex recession seems like an even more menacing sign that technology, especially A.I. technology, is seriously weakening the primordial human desire to mate with other humans and do the work necessary to make that happen. That “work” has been an essential economic component since civilization began.
We’ve heard of the threats tech poses to job creation, but the drop in sex rates may be the clearest sign yet that tech’s challenges to modern love might be the biggest economic threat of all.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/25/americas…
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22 comments
Student loans suuuuck. And so do credit cards. (Fuck my exes.)
This paragraph especially spoke to me:
"Some experts focus on the fact that Millennials are dealing with growing student loan debts, making their economic reality much worse than when previous generations were their age. But it also turns out that student loan debt isn’t the top source of debt for Americans aged 23 to 38; it’s credit card debt."
Unfortunately, that's the target age group of downtown Detroit. Thankfully, not the Miami area though.
Get off my lawn!
😄
________________
That's the truth; it's no exaggeration. That's why the pool of prostitutes...errr...sugar babies is so high-quality these days.
These two superstar economists, Saez and Zucman, pointed out that minimum wage workers in 2019 make about $15K/yr which is about 1/5 of the national average. In the 1950s that figure was about half. And adjusted for inflation, college costs are way higher than it used to be. Top marginal tax rates have gone way down since the 1950s which helps the wealthy, not young people starting out. It all adds to to misery for young people.
There's a wide variety of factors at play, but it really impacts our whole lives and can be seen as part of a lot of other factors that may largely explain a lot of the goings on in our world.
Men are settling for porn. #MeToo has scared a lot of them into thinking the fine line between flirting and harassment is too hard to figure out, so they'd rather just get off with porn.
Women are finding that vibrators give them just as good, if not better, sexual experiences than most men.
The economics of the present day for 20 and 30-somethings make having kids prohibitive. Wages have stagnated, plus you have added costs of student loans, phones and Internet to be competitive in the workforce. Plus, honestly, raising kids sucks, and raising them got a lot harder in the digital age, as you have to work really hard to make ends meet, which means you can't watch them like a hawk all the time, which means they'll find a way to see whatever they want on the Internet, which means you have a lot less control over what they'll become, which sucks even more.
Don't want kids? Don't have sex. Pretty simple.
Is it having a real impact? Yes. One of my IT clients works with student enrollment data for schools. They're anticipating 15-20 percent fewer kids enrolling simply because that's how many fewer kids have been born. You can't go back in time and fill in those gaps; the time is past and the kids don't exist.
I really don't think people realized how much of a societal sea change the Internet and the cellphone were. In 25 years, we've radically changed the way we interact as humans. They're inventions that are as impactful as the car and air travel.
Thing is, society is still sorting it all out, a lot of the impact comes from things very few understand like Facebook and Google algorithms, and the radically different way it results in people living their lives is straining societal bonds. Young folks speak an entirely different language (txtspeak and emojis) than the generations before them, communicate entirely differently, have a whole different set of priorities and resources, and so on.
And all of this is occurring while the huge Baby Boomer generation is reaching the stage of life where they're too old to comprehend and adjust and just get confused and angry about all the changes and simply want to assert their way is best ... and look who they turn to to lead them when they're confused and angry? A guy who is confused and angry a lot and just wants to assert his way is best. Also, they see no need to try and fix things for the future because they don't understand the present and they're not going to be around for the future. But, they're still here and just want it their way. So keep the different-looking people out and give me my social security, dang it.
Young folks just kind of know it sucks so they just spend on their phone, computer and Internet and delve into their virtual worlds of Fortnite and other immersive games. Ready Player One may have been more prescient than we thought.
The machines are taking over and, well, maybe we should let them because maybe they're better than us.
Also - it seems each subsequent-generation is more coddled and less able/willing to take on major responsibilities (home ownership, family, even car-ownership, etc); beyond their economic hardship.
The real lesson you end up having to learn is not to simply keep working harder at pushing a boulder that isn't budging but rather figure out if you can climb around it. Figure out where your efforts will actually yield the results you want and take that route instead.
You’ll never get anywhere if you quit at the beginning.
____
Refers to women who dislike parasitic insects?
Your post is so 1950s. Women have their own career goals now and they don't exist to trap a rich guy. Granted that's not true on SA. But SA is not really dating.
You know, I surprise myself sometimes. Not too long ago I started on a project, and one day. I literally spent 24 hours working on it. Sure I ate, I took showers, and I took short breaks. But still. If I really care about something I can hyperfocus on it. It's when I don't care or don't believe my efforts will yield any results that I do nothing.
Economic uncertainty is getting people right in their sex life.
Well correcting that is the main reason for my organization. We separate sex from economic concerns. We provide economic security, especially for the women. And we provide continuing educations and valuable work experience for everyone.
But the most important thing, especially with new comers, is to get them fucking. We set it up and make it happen, real sex, not talking about it.
We make it happen with them ASAP, and then regularly from then on.
We get the women dolled up to a stripper level.
And every candidate is screened and bedded by an opposite sex panel right off.
Everyone is then taken to lunch and interviewed by a panel of men and a panel of women.
We provide integration and balance in life, Work and Studies, but it is all built around a huge continual diet of sex.
And the idea is that everyone in the organization is equal. In the organization there are no rich or poor, or successful or unsuccessful.
Two things you would NEVER hear, "You need to be self-reliant" and "Get a job".
And for each men and women, they really get fucked as part of their initiations. For the women it is a Story of O inspired series of Sex Slave situations. For the men, they just get jumped by some of our women, and TLNed too. And once we have our sites on someone, our women never leave him alone.
In such counter culture environments, straight out bonobo behavior can be the norm. And this is the plan. Those women with strip club and AMP experience lead, but eventually it will also be people who have not yet learned this.
The women value all of our men, and the men value all of our women. So chances to fuck are not passed up.
Really Quite Simple!
SJG
IMO there is a war on men and normal relationships in this country.
When I was young there really wasn't all that much to do but think about sex all day. Now there is constant external entertainment mitigating those thoughts.
Young men are waking up and checking out. Fascinating social experiment we have going on. It will be interesting to see where it leads.
But women looking for long or longer-term partners aren't okay with that.