Aye, exactly that. Even as someone who loves to do a dumb research project, it's starting to irk me how much funding can apparently go into essentially studying the various detrimental effects of poverty in exactly the same ways and concluding "well clearly poverty correlates with [broadly defined bad outcome] but there's no way to determine causality here"

If someone is not working because they received a windfall it's probably better to think of them as "retired" rather than "unemployed."

Definitely. To be classified as "unemployed" you have to be seeking work.

Your friend isn't unemployed by definition.

Keep in mind that they’re studying unemployment whereas your anecdote is about retirement. The article argues that unemployment leads to a loss of control which leads to certain significant attitude changes.

It would be quite irregular for someone who received a career ending windfall in their mid-30s to feel a lack of control. There is a whole other can of angry cobras for them.

what if chronic unemployment leads to poverty?

Clearly there's some correlation between poverty and unemployment, but since we didn't do an RCT there's just no way to tell causality here

No way to tell? Really?? It doesn't take a randomized controlled trial to know that there are more poor people who can't find work than rich chaps living on their savings or inheritance by choice.

Yes, in our population samples people who have income from a job report feeling like they have more money than people who have no income from being long-term unemployed. But due the cross-sectional design of our study it's impossible to determine causality

The point of my comment clearly didn't register. I'm not arguing any technical point about this study but the more obvious point that the more you work, the less poor you are. People who aren't looking for work usually aren't counted as unemployed, which would additionally contribute to the obvious outcome that working is inversely correlated with poverty. The causality (making money makes you less poor) is as obvious as rain causing wetness.

You're arguing with sarcasm.

Who knows, it seems equally plausible that the argumentation lead to my posts being sarcastic in retrospect. There's just no way to tell these things!

Unemployment is a specific term in economics which refers only to workers who don't have a job and are actively looking for a job. People like your friend aren't unemployed they just don't have a job.

Exactly. So the chronic effects that the study found are not linked to the lack of a job, but the lack of income that a job brings. Because people without a job but with money don't suffer those effects.

This isn't complicated. People like the feeling of doing productive work. If you are independently wealthy, you can do whatever you want. Hobbies or volunteering, among other things, fill that need.

If you are employed, you get that reward with your paycheck at least. Ideally the work itself is also rewarding, providing the satisfaction of doing something productive. This is why people can be happy doing rewarding work even if the pay isn't all that great.

If you are unemployed and looking unsuccessfully for work, you have no income reward and no work accomplishment reward. If you receive unemployment benefits or UBI of some sort in that situation, it's more of a reminder that "you suck, you can't even find a job, everyone else has to support you" than anything rewarding.

Throughout a lifetime of intellectual pursuits, I've found that being forced on to a UBI or disability benefit long term led to gradually building a life based around the things I truly value, and spending my productive time paying my way to society and the planet in the typically-non-monetary manners of my choosing.

It was hard to start off, of course, because it's unconventional. But now it is sweeter than conventional employment ever was for me, where I did not fit and caused issues for everybody involved.

That's not to say one or other is inherently superior. And that's the point, in a way. Conventional employment is only one of the possible means through which the claimed rewards of life can be had.

Beyond that, the reliance is only a function of social structure. That is, if we collectively choose to "look down" upon certain demographics, then those demographics will indeed feel perenially looked down upon! - because we've made it so.

> If you are unemployed and looking unsuccessfully for work, you have no income reward and no work accomplishment reward. If you receive unemployment benefits or UBI of some sort in that situation, it's more of a reminder that "you suck, you can't even find a job, everyone else has to support you" than anything rewarding.

So you're saying that you think the chronic long-term effects found in the study are not from having little money, but from the lack of rewards?

I mean, there's no data on that, so you could be right. We'd have to find a bunch of people who have little money but find their own rewards and see if they suffer the same consequences.

Possibly the "starving artist" folks - people whose motivation is their art but who earn no (or very little) money doing it. Anecdotally, the ones I've met veer wildly (almost daily) between euphoria and despair. But I think that's different from the symptoms the study is talking about.

I think there are at least some studies that show one aspect of well-being is feeling like you are a valued member of your society. You can be a relatively poor grandparent who is valued by your contributions to your family, or a volunteer, or whatever. I think for many a job becomes a unconscious proxy. You could probably also study people who are paid well, but in jobs that society doesn't generally hold in high-esteem. My mind goes to attorneys who have enough well-being issues that the American Bar Association issued a task force on well-being. I would venture a similar issue is what causes some veterans to struggle when they return to civilian life.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that a job is just a useful proxy for measuring how people feel they are contributing to society, but it's an imperfect one.

> People like the feeling of doing productive work.

No, societal conditioning from birth has taught people that if they aren't doing productive work, then they're worthless people who don't deserve happiness.

We can break away from this nonsense. While the retirement age has indeed been going up lately, there are still older folks who could retire on their savings and 401ks and pensions, but they don't, because they can't fathom what they'd do in all the spare time they have. It's so incredibly sad! There's so much more to life and self-worth than a job.

I guess you can try to stretch "productive work" to encompass hobbies like creating art or playing sports or whatever other leisure activity, but I don't think that would be particularly intellectually honest about the topic.

> If you receive unemployment benefits or UBI of some sort in that situation, it's more of a reminder that "you suck, you can't even find a job, everyone else has to support you" than anything rewarding.

If that's truly the case, that's due to propaganda associating that sort of thing with lazy, entitled leeches who are taking what they don't deserve, taking from those hard-working people doing back-breaking work to support that laziness. Again: garbage societal conditioning.

(Also, unemployment benefits in most places in the US are barely enough to live off of, not something that you'd be comfortable staying on, for the most part, even though some do it. True UBI would presumably not only provide for basic needs, but also for the ability to spend a decent amount on leisure activities.)

My future utopia is a place run by benevolent AI where there's a surplus of everything, no currency, and no jobs. People do literally whatever they want, and want for nothing. (Want something? Ask the AI and it's provided.) Some people will do things that today we'd call "employment", but they'll do them because it truly brings them joy, not because their prosperity depends on it. And yes, I imagine transitioning into this utopia would require a lot of de-conditioning. Many people would reject it, and feel listless and disaffected. It's... super sad. Work culture is lame.

No offense, but while you're lambasting "garbage social conditioning" your perspective also reads as something from anti-work propaganda. Just look at how you contrast "productive work" and "leisure" with the latter being the more desirable end-goal.

I have a different take that doesn't necessarily put those in conflict. I think we are hardwired to have our status tied to our value to our tribe. When feel like we are no longer valued, our limbic system starts acting up. We feel anxious and stressed because our evolutionary brain is worried we'll get thrown out of the tribe. Unfortunately, in a modern society many have conflated value to mean a job. That's why I think some of those people who can retire continue to work. But the solution isn't to just replace "productive work" with more leisure time. I think that can also lead to bad outcomes when the other necessary parts of well-being are left unaddressed. I think people need* "productive work" that leads them to feel valued, but it doesn't have to be a wage/salary job.

* there's obviously large variance at the individual level, probably associated with certain personality traits. E.g., people who are high on the conscientiousness trait may need more industrious activities than others to have high levels of well-being

> not linked to the lack of a job, but the lack of income that a job brings

Or to the constant failure / hopelessness / whatever from a constant job search getting no results; if it was just money then the correlation would very obviously be with peoples monetary situation rather then their employment status.

good point, but hard to differentiate. How do we tell if the cause is the shitty grind of constant rejection from jobs, or the shitty grind of life with very little money?

We do know (anecdotally) that people with money (regardless of employment status) don't suffer the same symptoms.

>How do we tell if the cause is the shitty grind of constant rejection from jobs, or the shitty grind of life with very little money?

You could study the well-being of those with relatively low-paying "grind" jobs but whose jobs are also held in high-esteem by their society. E.g., junior enlisted in the military.

Sure, but I think the point is a little higher-level than that.

The reason people become disengaged and apathetic has nothing to do with employment. They become that way because they lack the finances to control their lives, and because financial instability causes stress and anxiety.

Let's change the study a bit. Instead of just watching and tracking these unemployed people, say the people running the study started depositing money into these people's bank accounts. And they just told them, "keep doing what you're doing in general, but you don't need to worry about paying your bills or feeding yourself or your families".

I guarantee you those unemployed people would start feeling engaged again. It's not the job, it's the money.

>They become that way because they lack the finances to control their lives,

Yes, autonomy seems to be a fundamental aspect of well-being.

>I guarantee you those unemployed people would start feeling engaged again.

I'm always a little hesitant when I hear someone say they "guarantee" something based on a thought experiment. But the little data we have, like the recent Sam Altman-funded UBI experiment, doesn't seem to back up this idea. While people said they were more open to thoughts of aspects like entrepreneurial activities and education, it didn't actually manifest in real actual engagement in those activities.

Yup, 100%. Certainly there are cases where people end up with some sort of windfall and retire early, and then end up disengaged and apathetic. I think those sorts of people have been so brainwashed by societal expectations that they can't imagine how they'd fill their days without 40+ hours of someone else telling them what to do all the time. Or, worse, they've bought into the idea that employment is some sort of virtue, and even though they don't need to work, not working makes them feel bad about themselves.

I think if you were to look at the disengaged and apathetic unemployed among us, more times than not you'll find that their finances are tenuous at best, and more often in complete disarray. No money, in our society, means no prospects, and constant stress and anxiety around how you're going to simply survive, let alone do anything that feels "engaging".

The problem is no money and lack of a social safety net. Unemployment is related, but it's far from the whole story.