thisisbadrealbad-blog

[thisisbadrealbad-blog]

don’t do this. 

this is bad, real bad.

This article is a classic case of torturing your data to make it say what you want. That is the first reason I am annoyed that the Times took the bytes and ink to publish it. 

The second reason is that, here you go white guys: pull yourselves up by your motherfucking bootstraps and stop whining. Okay, that was just for revenge, I don’t endorse that narrative necessarily BUT white men are ‘declining’ (e.g., dying of drug use, being unemployed, being imprisoned, not graduating high school, etc.) because they’re not adjusting to the loss of power that is happening to them. The rest of us have developed resilience mechanisms to deal with being shit on by the world, but these dudes haven’t. When other people gain power, white men lose power. That’s a good thing, because life should be more equitable. 

Third, if anything, white men are being fucked over by their own fellow white men. They just refuse to believe it--sorry, dude, your boss doesn’t give a shit about you anymore. Welcome to the club. Buck up and get some job training.

the article opens:

At one end of the scale, men continue to dominate.

You mean the end of the scale that has the money and the power and the freedom? No, but fr tho: the author briefly acknowledges that white men dominate the very rich side of the scale, then goes on to completely ignore that very important fact for the rest of the article. That’s one of the ways he abuses data, because everything he cites as evidence has a very different interpretation when you factor that in. 

The author’s first argument is that “non-college (sic, many times over, sic) white men” -- or men at the “low end of the scale” are faring exceptionally poorly because of the loss of the middle-skill (sic) jobs their fathers had.

But, the loss of these middle-skill jobs actually hurt women harder than men. Women just bounced back--instead of taking lower-skill jobs or dropping out of the workforce (like men tended to do), women got higher skills and better education and leveled up. No mention of the fact that there are wage gaps regardless of whether you level up or not.

His first graph presents data showing the following:

For men, from 1979-2013, wage inequality increased--in 1979, the highest-paid men made 2.2 times what the typical worker made. By 2013, the highest-paid men were making 3.3 times what the typical worker made.

Women saw the same increase in wage inequality--in 1979 the highest paid woman made 2.2 times what the typical worker made, and by 2013 that gap had worsened to 3:1.

So, yeah, just as we know, the rich are getting richer at a higher rate than the rest of us. But according to the author, men are losing out. He doesn’t engage the idea that higher paid men are just outearning everyone--even higher paid women. Because the data are presented as a ratio, with nary a whisper of raw numbers, the graph creates the illusion that men and women are working on the same scale to start with.

I’m not an economist, so I don’t know if this ‘wage inequality’ variable is commonly used--but to a data expert, this variable reminds me of what an intern might do when they really need to find evidence that men are being hurt by ‘the new economy’ worse than everyone else so they just keep making shit up until something comes out with a tiny difference. But like I said, not an economist.

 The author’s second argument is that white boys are more negatively affected by dysfunction at home. Try to follow along here, because this argument is especially convoluted: there is now a higher divorce rate in the white working class than there used to be. Marriages are dissolving because men are doing things like cheating on their spouses, using drugs, and beating their wives. But! It is not their fault because this is a result of their own family’s being dysfunctional. 

Why are we all fussing over what’s happening to white men? What’s happening to them is that *they’re losing some of their unearned power*. The rest of us have better resilience mechanisms, because we have to, or we will die, and that is not an exaggeration. It’s still wayyyy easier for white men than it is for anyone, to do anything, at any time. But it’s 2017, and your wife can divorce you if you hit her. You lost some of your unearned power. Develop better resilience skills.

You lost the job you assumed you’d be handed, because your dad had it. That’s called nepotism. That shit doesn’t happen to anyone else. It’s 2017, and we don’t use coal anymore. We have robots that can build shit. You need to develop new skills, like everyone else has. You lost some of your unearned power, the power to snap your fingers and procure a well-paying job. Develop better job skills.

This article is so long and he misuses so much data. maybe i’ll come back to it but for now i’m bored, and this is my blog

ETA: i’m definitely coming back, because i read ahead and he starting abusing developmental psychology research and you do NOT do this to me.

xo