Did Online Dating Increase US Income Inequality? (bnnbloomberg.ca) 235
With online dating apps, "Americans have increasingly been marrying someone more like themselves," reports Bloomberg, citing new research that says this accounts for roughly half of the rise in household income inequality between 1980 and 2020:
Using data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey from 2008 to 2021, when online dating quickly became prevalent, the economists found that women became slightly more selective when choosing partners based on age, while men became slightly more selective based on education. But when the researchers compared that with data on married couples from 1960 and 1980, they found that people in the recent period increasingly went for partners with the same wage and education levels...
Overall, the predominance of online apps to find a future partner has led to a 3-percentage-point increase in the Gini coefficient — a widely used measure of income inequality, the research shows.
The reseachers were from the Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and St. Louis, and from Haverford College, according to the article — which also includes this quote from their paper.
"We find that the increase in income inequality over the past half a century is explained to a large extent by sorting on vertical characteristics, such as income and skill, and their interaction with education."
Overall, the predominance of online apps to find a future partner has led to a 3-percentage-point increase in the Gini coefficient — a widely used measure of income inequality, the research shows.
The reseachers were from the Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and St. Louis, and from Haverford College, according to the article — which also includes this quote from their paper.
"We find that the increase in income inequality over the past half a century is explained to a large extent by sorting on vertical characteristics, such as income and skill, and their interaction with education."
Simple solution (Score:3)
Everyone should marry someone poorer than themselves... oh wait.
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone should marry someone poorer than themselves...
That used to be common.
Fifty years ago, a lawyer might marry his secretary, and a doctor might marry a nurse.
Today, a lawyer is more likely to marry another lawyer and a doctor another doctor, combining two high incomes in one household.
A relationship with a poorer subordinate is often seen as sexual harassment.
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone should marry someone poorer than themselves...
That used to be common.
Fifty years ago, a lawyer might marry his secretary, and a doctor might marry a nurse.
Even fifty years ago, a lawyer marrying his secretary was usually his second marriage, after cheating on the first with her, statistically speaking.
Today, a lawyer is more likely to marry another lawyer and a doctor another doctor, combining two high incomes in one household.
A relationship with a poorer subordinate is often seen as sexual harassment.
Yeah, and even if there isn't any actual harassment, any time that one person has power over another, you always have to worry that the underling is only doing things out of fear of losing his/her job, rather than because of legitimate feelings. That's why you don't see many first marriages starting that way. But second marriages by people who don't really care if there are legitimate feelings involved...
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Even fifty years ago, a lawyer marrying his secretary was usually his second marriage
Fifty years ago, the divorce rate was less than half today's rate.
Turned dating into online shopping for women (Score:4, Interesting)
Online dating has turned into online shopping where women have an ever more difficult set of criteria for a perspective date to get through. Net result, is that, combine with wage rates declining and inflation, that more and more potential daters/men are opting out of dating due to the lack of economically viable women.
The weirdest fact is that dating for a long term relationship and family with children has a low success rate. Women, by age 30 have less than a 50% chance of ever becoming mothers.
It's telling how hard this hits home when political parties at opposites: far left and far right, both are trying to 'shame' their populations into birthing the next generation of consumers, cannon fodder, killed in the line of duty first responders and take back the night protestors.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programm... [bbc.co.uk]
By and large, this is just the same 'economic slowdown by non-participation' which helped to dismantle totalitarian countries.
Duh! Kids suck!!! There are better things to do! (Score:5, Interesting)
Online dating has turned into online shopping where women have an ever more difficult set of criteria for a perspective date to get through. Net result, is that, combine with wage rates declining and inflation, that more and more potential daters/men are opting out of dating due to the lack of economically viable women.
The weirdest fact is that dating for a long term relationship and family with children has a low success rate
Kids suck!!!! There are better things to do with your life. I have 2 kids myself...my life is objectively worse. I love my kids, but.....I can't give you any objective reason why my life didn't get tangibly worse. Shitty policy choices over decades have drastically increased income inequality, which hits parents the hardest. So 50 years ago?...eh, there's nothing good on TV, let's pop out some babies. Today?...well, there are a million better things to do with your time and then you see your friends who have kids and see how they're ruined and turned into a shell of their former selves. That fun friend of yours is now poor with dead eyes and all they can do is complain about their choice to have a kid. Her peers who have no kids? They eat out at restaurants, have watched every cool show on the streaming service you both subscribe to, they go to concerts...including expensive ones like Taylor Swift that you hear about on the news.
Picture a cohort of 35yo women. One portion is childless, living their best lives, showing off their pilates bod, following silly and pointless trends, up on all the pop culture news, has a million recommendations of fun things you should do, taking pictures of their avocado toast on Instagram, etc....the other has a kid or 2...and is tired, poor, fatter, and to be brutally honest, dumber, duller, and deader...they both started from the same place, but having kids does that...it makes you boring, drops your IQ, and makes you miserable.
So now that cohort...their younger coworkers and little sisters and younger cousins, etc...they see the divide and have even more hesitation....I can be poor, dumb, dull and miserable...or I not have kids and look better, feel better, and have a much more glamorous life....yeah, a lot of people don't want kids.
And remember, income inequality makes it worse every year. Every year a house within an hour of your job gets more expensive....because of deregulation, excessive tax cuts, and the wealthy figuring out that hoarding property has better returns than the stock market. So yeah, you're middle class, living in middle class suburb?...well, that middle class home that resembles your parent's house you put a bid on?...sorry, you lost to a tech couple, who were priced out of their urban neighborhood by a bunch of property hoarders on WallStreet...so now you need to move REALLY far away from civilization and compromise on every factor just to be able to afford a home similar to what you grew up with.
So...honestly...it's weird our birth rate is as high as it is....it's not weird at all people don't want to have kids...have some 20-somethings follow my family around...meeting my kids would dissuade a huge number of them from having kids of their own.
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Picture a cohort of 35yo women. One portion is childless, living their best lives, showing off their pilates bod, following silly and pointless trends, up on all the pop culture news, has a million recommendations of fun things you should do, taking pictures of their avocado toast on Instagram, etc....the other has a kid or 2...and is tired, poor, fatter, and to be brutally honest, dumber, duller, and deader...they both started from the same place, but having kids does that...it makes you boring, drops your IQ, and makes you miserable.
The third portion married an older guy who already had money, paid maids and sitters and nannies to help with the kids, and got the best of both worlds. It's not an either-or, necessarily. You just have to not be grossed out by the idea of dating somebody older.
Economically viable women (Score:3)
The "economically viable women" may be more important than it first appears.
Traditionally, men worked and women stayed at home to raise the children. The sole wage earner man could support a family, buy a small house (3x annual salary in 1970), and do OK. The financial non-contribution of a stay at home mother did not affect the computation much.
Forward to 2024, with inflation and homes costing 6x or more annual salaries, the financial liability of one spouse not working or working for much lower wages is
Chance of divorce with birth defects / autism / .. (Score:3)
Sad to see this stat:
https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com]
Surveys show that the rate of divorce in families with a child with disabilities may be as high as 87%.
The divorce rate in families with a child with autism is about 80%
--
That means, typically given the family courts, that fathers of children with disabilities or autism have a 80% chance of having to pay child support for the rest of the man's life and not just 18 years.
So, having a baby with a 35 or older woman is a quite risky thing for a man.
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Fifty years ago women didn't even have the right to open a bank account without a man.
Fifty years ago it was entirely legal to not hire someone simply because they were a woman.
Fifty years ago there were few states that allowed no fault divorces.
So yeah if you make women financially dependent on men an unable to escape, divorce rates are lower! Weird.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Fifty years ago women didn't even have the right to open a bank account without a man.
Do you even know how long ago 50 years is?
In 1973 women couldn't open bank accounts?
1973 wasn't the dark ages, and LOTS of women had bank accounts without their husbands "permission"(?) - during world war 2 countless women went out and got jobs in the defense industry, do you imagine they didn't have bank accounts? That was 80 years ago.
Fifty years ago it was entirely legal to not hire someone simply because they were a woman.
Pretty sure the 1964 Civil Rights act made discrimination based on sex illegal, along with lots of other thing, so it was NOT "entirely legal to not hire someone simply beca
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Informative)
In 1973 women couldn't open bank accounts?
Often yes. Some banks would allow them to, but that was at the sufferance of the bank, they didn't have it as a right. And many banks did not.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor... [forbes.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.justice.gov/crt/eq... [justice.gov]
Reasoned discussion (Score:3)
Once you see past the one-sided favoritism reporting on gender in the media, a reasoned discussion is possible.
Wage gap is reported as "Women paid less" when in reality they are reporting on "Asian/White males earn 15% more than women" and excluding the uncomfortable fact that "White women out earn black males and Hispanic males by up to 29%".
So, a reasoned discussion as to what companies and society is going to do to pay black men and Hispanic men as much as White women and what is going to be done to stop
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Even fifty years ago, a lawyer marrying his secretary was usually his second marriage
Fifty years ago, the divorce rate was less than half today's rate.
Today, almost all divorces are filed by women, something like 70 percent for normies, and near 90 percent by women with degrees.
A man with smarts simply doesn't get married. And if we are going to blame 100 percent of these divorces on men, are then not doing women a huge favor by leaving them alone?
Re: Simple solution (Score:2)
If it was a second marriage, then wealth redistribution had already occurred. ;)
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, and even if there isn't any actual harassment, any time that one person has power over another, you always have to worry that the underling is only doing things out of fear of losing his/her job, rather than because of legitimate feelings. That's why you don't see many first marriages starting that way. But second marriages by people who don't really care if there are legitimate feelings involved...
Almost every relationship has a power disparity. You can have a power disparity by simply being rich and the other being poor so the need the money. On the other hand you can have a power disparity of one person being more attractive than the other. You are a moron if you think keeping you job as a secretary is worth a lifetime of being with someone you don't like and having their children. While I am sure it happened sometimes I doubt it was common. Yeah you might sleep with them but marry them is a step t
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Everyone should marry someone poorer than themselves...
That used to be common.
Fifty years ago, a lawyer might marry his secretary, and a doctor might marry a nurse.
Today, a lawyer is more likely to marry another lawyer and a doctor another doctor, combining two high incomes in one household.
A relationship with a poorer subordinate is often seen as sexual harassment.
You do realize that, when person 1 marries someone poorer than them, person 2 marries someone richer than them, don't you?
If anything marriage has statistically become more egalitarian, from a financial perspective.
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I don't get the logic of this argument.
A doctor making $250K marries a nurse making $75K, how does that create a wealth gap? How does that bridge a wealth gap?
If a nurse making $75K marries a teacher making $75K, how does that bridge a wealth gap? Or create one?
If a doctor making $250K marries an architect making $250K, how does that impact anything?
If they both keep their jobs, nothing has changed, icon quits working to raise a family, nothing has changed.
Presumably when a doctor marries a nurse, the nurse
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My mother worked, and made almost as much money as my father - apparently that is a lie.
No, it is an outlier. Statistics in *EVERY* country, even the most progressive ones show that your mother is an outlier. Stop being so personally offended just because your life doesn't fit the statistics perfectly.
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Everyone should marry someone poorer than themselves... oh wait.
From the comments apparently nobody got it.
Or maybe, this being male dominated Slashdot, nobody considered the woman's view.
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Indeed, nobody got it. Well, you did, though :)
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Everyone should marry someone poorer than themselves... oh wait.
From the comments apparently nobody got it.
Or maybe, this being male dominated Slashdot, nobody considered the woman's view.
Seriously? The author noted his joke in the OP, why would anyone feel the need to comment on his closed loop comic statement? He made the joke, then pointed out the joke, no need to pile-on proving we too got the joke.
If the OP left off the "... oh wait" then I'd expect lots of people to acknowledge the joke, and some would think it serious and try to defend/attack the argument.
The proper response to ShanghiBill's comment (where he took the joke seriously) is, of course "Wooooosh!" As he completely missed t
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Or maybe, this being male dominated Slashdot, nobody considered the woman's view.
Considering the woman's view is really important.
My research has shown me that a lot of women are increasingly unhappy. And a lot are really unhappy that they are going to be single and probably childless.
The cause of all of this? Well, the idea that men are the cause of all of the problems for women is one. That a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. (Dunn and Steinham) And the inculcation of the infinite grievance, where indignities of the past are brought up as if they were happening now
Two things (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Post covid, the 18-30 crowd is increasingly rejecting online dating as being too hollow/inauthentic/whatever, so it's on a steep decline, I'm not sure how relevant this is for discussion
2) People getting married 1960-1980 (and really, any time before 1980) most people were under strict instructions to get married ASAP, to anyone, although preferably someone in the same church/town. Post birth control, the chances of having a child out of wedlock dropped by ~50%, so not getting married ASAP wasn't such a risk anymore
3) If you're waiting until you're 30+ years old, you can afford to wait a few more years to find someone you can actually tolerate, and yeah they'll probably be in a similar socio-economic group to you, since the incentive to marry, anyone, ASAP no longer exists.
6-6-6 relationship (Score:5, Funny)
6 figure income
6 feet tall or more
6 pack Abs
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Women are looking for a 6-6-6 relationship 6 figure income 6 feet tall or more 6 pack Abs
Hope they'll settle for 6-figure income, 6 extra inches around, 6-pack of soda.
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While I'm sure most guys would prefer to marry Jessica Rabbit, the reality is that most women are really just looking for someone reliable, kind, and honest. The rest is gravy.
The ones who are trying to date millionaires and the like are probably not the ones you want to marry.
Re:6-6-6 relationship (Score:5, Funny)
Re: 6-6-6 relationship (Score:2)
You havenâ(TM)t been online dating have you? Believe me, women are incredibly choosy, even if they have no ability to realistically be so.
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The criteria women list in their profiles are what they're hoping for, not what they expect.
If you send them a polite message, some will reply. But you need to be realistic. Women are flooded with messages, many of them dick-pics and other crude garbage, so response rates are low.
So find twenty women who meet your criteria, message them, and two or three will respond. Meet up at Starbucks and see if one is a match.
If not, try again next week.
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you need someone to swipe right on your profile before you can even send a message.
Tinder is a hook-up app, not a dating app.
If you want a real relationship, you need to pay real money to use a real dating app.
Re: 6-6-6 relationship (Score:2)
It's both, but most users are not open with their intentions in their profiles, and that's problematic.
Joke is too subtle (Score:2)
Everyone should marry someone poorer than themselves... oh wait.--
Perhaps the original joke is too subtle for everyone to understand the logical impossibility...
Re: (Score:2)
longer than 6 inch 'stick'
I fill that criteria if they use the metric system.
Re: 6-6-6 relationship (Score:2)
The system doesn't matter, you still have to fill in the box.
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The system doesn't matter, you still have to fill in the box.
Literally.
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Ehat about no credit cards (ok mayby one to actually build that score,byt carrying little to no balance) and a good fico, so when they need the debt, say for a house+car etc they can get it without paying insane indrest?
Seriously? You're trying to make sense of a meme?
Re: 6-6-6 relationship (Score:2)
She probably just isn't attracted to skeletons. Especially ones made out of linkedlists.
Re:Two things (Score:5, Interesting)
The divorce revolution is still in full swing. That means that marrying someone who makes significantly less than you do is a very high financial liability. The less your partner makes, the more your partner takes when they divorce you (regardless of gender).
Plenty of people have wised up to this fact, and so are seeking partners who not only make a similar income but are likely to continue doing so into the future.
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You are probably not wrong that that type of financial calculus is more present today than in the past and it affects thing but despite what the perception is divorce rates are actually declining, at least from this there was a big spike in the 1970's then a peak in 1979 at about 23 per 1000 women and has been declining since then, to about 15 per 1000 in 2018.
https://twitter.com/RyanRadia/... [twitter.com]
(summation, there's sources in there)
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Yeah but it kinda undercuts the entire premise no? You might be focussing on income levels because of this perception of divorce rates increasing but what if that isn't in fact the case?
Unless I am misunderstand by "divorce revolution", I feel like that realy happened whenever no fault or whatever you call it where you can just divorce for any reason became defacto and the risk has been fairly the same for a few decades now.
Re:Two things (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Two things (Score:3)
Iâ(TM)ll never get married again. Iâ(TM)m paying out a significant amount in alimony, child support, lost my house, incurred significant debt due to my ex stealing and hiding assets in preparation for divorce, lost 70K in legal fees to no positive outcome, have no cash while she will be flush with it from QRDOs.
Who the fuck thinks they should ever do this shit again? Seriously; why?
Re: (Score:2)
That's a rough road you've been on. Sorry to hear that. I know my next phrases are going to be stating the obvious, but I'm trying to offer you positive encouragement / support.
You can do this again. Two suggestions:
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According to this [forbes.com] site I just found with a quick search, 43% of first marriages end in divorce.
So, technically, yes, "most first marriages do not end in divorce." But that is only barely true, according to this. 43% is quite close to half.
And given that the stakes are extremely high for many people (you stand to lose your house, your kids, most of your savings, and must pay your ex an ongoing salary for years or possibly for life), it would be outright irrational for someone to marry someone who makes sig
Re: Two things (Score:2)
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I don't know about that (Score:2)
What i do know is that online dating cannot be making women happy. They get to be minutely prescriptive about the guy they want and then get fucked and dumped at the same rate as before. Whereas for me it was a smorgasbord of women. If I was 20 again I would have loved it, I ran my number up 25 or so (serially) in the space of a year, and not because I was interested in that - they were. Most of them apparently thought that if they get a guy in bed then they had their hooks in him, or somesuch. None of
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Recovery has taught me the signs of unhealth in myself as well as others. Most issues have to do with control. We have no control over others. When we believe we can control others, then the unhealthy things happen - codependence is one, where we use control while convincing ourselves we are doing it for others' good. Also control figures into substance abuse and other disorders. Psychological and physical abuse revolve around attempts to control people. Even absent obvious abuse, the bottom line is th
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Just about everyone has control issues.
I'm not convinced that's the case.
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There is truth in your statement about your wife's niece. My own issues were created during my teenage years - a lot of divorce, abuse and the like created this fear of abandonment in me. My solution for this fear was to find utterly dependent women with the thought process that if they were completely dependent, they'd never leave me. Then, I could change them into the person I actually wanted. If this sounds dumb and unworkable, it's because it was. But this is a teenager wrestling with physical/emot
More interested in the small changes (Score:2)
Did women pick slightly older men, and men slightly better educated women? Or did it go the other way....
I'm missing the causal link? (Score:5, Insightful)
Know what else happened between 2008 and 2021?
--A housing market collapse.
--A pandemic.
--A 50% increase in average college costs.
--A 50% increase in average rent.
--A 25% overall inflation rate.
--The cryptocurrency boom/bust.
--Record low interest rates for a sustained period of time.
--A well above average amount of quantitative easing.
--Hundreds of thousands of mergers and acquisitions, reducing the overall number of high paying jobs.
There was a massive overall economic shift during that time period, one of the largest in US history. Dating apps and pervasive internet connectivity happened in parallel during that time.
If Bloomberg finds a causal link between the two elements, it's completely absent in the article. I'm sure there's a more causal link between this and, say the number of heavy equipment mechanics in Maine vs. Verizon customer satisfaction [tylervigen.com], but Bloomberg could have done a slightly better job quantifying it.
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Another comment I'd mod up if I had points today. This has been a quite high-value set of comments so far.
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fucking thank you for bringing some sanity to this thread.
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You also have:
- The gig economy
- Employment bust disproportionately impacting younger people
- Pronoun madness*
There are some very real changes in how the dating scene and marriage works today. I am actually more curious about breakdowns of how couples meet up today vs 20-30 years ago. My era was mostly friends of friends, school, co-workers or work-related, and bars. Dating apps existed then, but the success rate or percentages were pretty limited.
* I include that because it has shaped how a percentage o
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You're missing another causal link: Information. When you see someone walk down the street (in a general case, not specific edge cases), do you already know their job, their career, their likes, if they went to university?
It's all good and fine for external economic pressures to change, but that still largely doesn't address the issue of information availability. In the old days you had to put in significant effort to match someone for your desired economic / education position. Quite often that involved a
Vertical characteristics (Score:5, Funny)
"We find that the increase in income inequality over the past half a century is explained to a large extent by sorting on vertical characteristics
Is this a convoluted way to say tall people have more money?
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I usually chose my dates based on horizontal characteristics.
Nah (Score:5, Informative)
1. College fetishism (everyone must go to college!) - and colleges tend to sort people into like groups
2. The newfangled sexual rules ... believe it or not, the boss marrying his secretary was pretty good for social group mixing.
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You could say the same (#2) about typing pools. It's how my parents met, for instance.
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#2 was and s a good way to kill morale. "She slept her way to the top", though it shoudl really be, "The boss used his position of power to get sex from a subordinate".
Now turn it around. A female executive marrying her secretary would send people into a tizzy even though it is the exact same thing as above.
There's a reason for the phrase, Don't dip your pen in the company inkwell.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I do not know how accurate it is in our days, but when I was younger about 40% of all marriages happened between couples that met and worked at the same company.
There's a reason for the phrase, Don't dip your pen in the company inkwell.
Where exactly do you meet other people if not in college/university or at your job? Some countries have no "adult going out" culture like Spain or Italy.
So? The only other option to meet one is a sports club in the evening. Or do you blindly assume two girls together in a pub
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Where exactly do you meet other people if not in college/university or at your job?
Yes, exactly. Particularly for those who aren't slick extroverts.
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#2 was and s a good way to kill morale. "She slept her way to the top", though it shoudl really be, "The boss used his position of power to get sex from a subordinate".
Now turn it around. A female executive marrying her secretary would send people into a tizzy even though it is the exact same thing as above.
There's a reason for the phrase, Don't dip your pen in the company inkwell.
Anything can go wrong. The thing is that there was a baby in all that bathwater ...
So there's a couple reasons everyone has to go to (Score:2)
massive amounts of automation also have reduced amount of skill needed for the sort of jobs that high school graduates can do. we can't all be plumbers running our own successful plumbing businesses and everyone else makes about 20 an hour tops when to have a place of your own and enough money to raise a family you
Yes, that's the culprit (Score:5, Insightful)
Not decades of neoliberalism, union busting, free trade, and lobbyists and politicians using the revolving door to screw workers over.
No, it's the online dating you see. Your fault, not ours!
Is the inverse true? (Score:3)
If two poor people marry, does that reduce wealth inequality because they're now considered one household instead of two?
At the risk of going full XKCD here, it seems like all we need to do to reduce wealth inequality is get all the poor people to marry each other.
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Wealth is created through habits. The poor have a lot of drug/alcohol issues, more than the wealthy. Poor people who have stable relationships long term tend to become more affluent. Marrying all the poor people to other poor people would socially advance them *if* they avoided other habitual pitfalls that tend to depress household income.
Example: my ex-wife made about half what I did at the apex of her career. She's now semi-permanently unemployed due to drug addiction. Fired from her last 3 jobs due
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- Rent becomes cheaper or a mortgage more affordable.
- Groceries are cheaper in bulk and it can be easier to cook at home because it’s not twice the work and time to double portions.
- Sometimes it’s possible to share a vehicle if needed
- Utilities, trash, internet, any outside work like lawn mowing or snow removal
- Medical insurance can be chosen from the better plan (if both have them through work) and it’s
Weak link (Score:2)
When it comes to this cause and effect claim I am reminded of the ‘Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’ (Pastafarianism) claim that global warming is correlated with a de
Re:Weak link (Score:5, Funny)
Disclaimer, only read the Slashdot summary, not the original source.
Typically, a disclaimer is issued here for reading the article ... :-)
Pseudoscience nonsense (Score:3)
Obligatory (Score:2)
Women and children hit worst.
Half a century?! There was no Internet in 1974, much less "dating apps", what are we talking about?
What does this word-salad even mean?
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Shhhh.... they're trying to shift the blame from trickle down economics to dating apps. The wealthy LOVE stories like this and you're harshing their buzz.
Article written by a scrub (Score:3)
Mathemagical! (Score:2)
How does marrying in the same social stratum increase wealth inequality? Sure, it cements it in place, but 1 wealthy person plus 1 wealthy person equals the same two wealthy people we started with.
We're also talking starter marriages here. If anything, after the 2nd or 3rd divorce they'll just marry people who are hot and not rich . . . thus lowering overall wealth inequality.
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If the rich one would marry the poor one and the poor one would marry the rich one, you'd end up with two lower middle class families. But they'd be equal.
they'll just marry people who are hot and not rich
Prenups are a thing.
Never dated online, but... (Score:3)
Definitely selected for someone college educated, smart, eminently employable so we'd have a good life.
This has worked out.
However I'd attribute our income inequality crisis more to the hollowing out of the middle-class job market, from sending well-paying blue collar manufacturing jobs overseas, to moving corporate jobs to both on-site and offshore contractors, to the disappearance of many solid brick and mortar retail jobs (and their associated DCs and supply chains) due to Walmart and Amazon.
The "don't worry, you can get a gig job" economy is all hot air. There's nothing there for people. Nothing middle-class anyway.
Likely reason (Score:3)
Feminism in its various forms nearly totally eliminated the main source of marriage post arranged marriages. Work relationships.
And in work relationships, it was almost universally boss marrying his underling. I.e. different income brackets. HR will hang the man by his balls if he tries anything with his underling now, to the point where you don't want to be seen alone with a female underling and door closer because she may want your job. Or she may want the job of someone who's next in line for yours. And all it takes is a single complaint, and women are thoroughly incentivized to use this power because HR people will conduct extensive briefings on these things where they make it clear who's side they will be on. Because that's what they earn their living on.
So with the main source of "rich boss marries his secretary who's in massive student debt" having been almost fully eliminated, you're going to have less opportunity for poor women to marry rich men. And that means they either go without a husband, or marry in their social class.
Re: Likely reason (Score:2)
Do you have evidence that this was the "main source" or even a primary source?
I understand you feel aggrieved, but my happiest relationships came from outside my own workplace, and some of the most miserable failures from within. My folks lived in the same apartment building, wouldn't have known each other from work. My in-laws never worked together. One brother married a friend from his 20s. Another an industry colleague (after a couple on again off again tries at dating), but not from the same company.
So
Re: (Score:3)
Everywhere where there is a boss-subordinate relationship. Want to find out how many women pine for these? Open up any women's forum. It's choke full of "oh this guy I really like is above me, how do I make him make a move on me". There are billion grade businesses built around coaching women on how to "drop the handkerchief" correctly so he gets the message of openness to relationship.
Were that is. Today, they're all basically dead. And women are so distraught by this, that they have to chug antidepressant
Horseshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Men do not select based on education. Male participation in dating apps has flatlined (Source: Pew Research), and women generally match with only the top ten percent of men anyway (Source: Science Direct)
Online dating apps have nothing to do with marriage. Dating apps have nothing to do with income. They are a total failure at their ostensible purpose because it is more profitable to prevent relationships from forming than it is to facilitate marriages. If a man gets married he stops being a customer.
You'll find the exact same dynamics in online job search. Big tech has found a way to monetize misery and poverty and they're going to fuck the entire country to death to make their numbers.
Wage gap was larger too (Score:3)
1. In the 60s through 80s the wage gap between men and women was even higher than it is now. You were almost guaranteed to be in another income range just by being a different gender.
2. It was most allowed to have relationships with your co-workers at different power levels. eg boss with secretary, CEO with intern, etc. These days that sort of thing is likely to get you a warning or a firing. Anyway, those sorts of power imbalances also meant income imbalances, so it's natural people would be more likely in the past to date someone out of their income range compared with now.
Obligatory XKCD (Score:3)
But let us not get distracted by important researc (Score:2)
There's still substandard bars out there, for the rest of us. Someone working, but not in an office per se. Yes, you're the one skewing the research figures, that's it
The math (Score:2)
So we're looking at a 40-year time span (1980 to 2020), during which online dating existed only since 2008, a 12-year time span, 30% of the total. And we're trying to blame online dating for 50% of the increase in income inequality during the entire time span? That would have to mean that, if *all* of the increase in income inequality since 2008 was due to online dating, we'd still have to say that the rate of increase was twice that of the first 28 years of that time period. That's a pretty bold statement,
We need the government to step in (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sigh, wish I had moderator points. But I can't decide if +1 Funny or +1 Insightful....
Re: Did betteridge's law increase income inequalit (Score:2)
40+ years of wages lagging behind inflation has nothing to do with online dating.
It has nothing to do with anything because it's a total myth. See for yourself:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... [stlouisfed.org]
As I had to remind another AC recently: Yes, "real median" means adjusted for inflation, and median means heavy concentration of wealth (or lack thereof) won't meaningfully move this needle. In other words, Bernie Sanders is about as honest as Donald Trump.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If we really want to get technical, few people even get a wage at all. If they're self-employed or even salaried, then that isn't a wage. The majority of the economy is in fact small business, and when you consider most higher earning workers are salaried, then what you're left with doesn't tell you very much about anything. But if we look at just wage and salary and ignore those self-employed, we get basically the same outcome as median personal incomes:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... [stlouisfed.org]
If wages and salarie
Re: Did betteridge's law increase income inequali (Score:2)
Armored against facts, as usual.
Re: Did betteridge's law increase income inequalit (Score:2)