Love and the Recession

Okay, it looks like the subject is quickly becoming a fad. Half the articles on the recession that I’ve found have dealt with how it’s ruining people’s love lives. Starting with the US and Europe, Reuters India (wth?) reports what everyone already knows: relationships are under strain and couples expect to work longer to pay off debts and to retire properly. The survey being reported also showed that Europeans are more savvy about saving. Certain cultural differences are also elucidated – Americans see cars as status symbols while Mediterraneans view eating fine cuisine as one of life’s essentials.

Moving on to Japan. Remember my last few posts about Japan’s social issues? It’s apparently gone beyond corporate suicides, female cross-dressing hosts serenading other women, hikikomori, and male bras. A new phenomenon called “herbivore men” is rising. Perhaps this is actually in parallel to the trend of laddism in the UK and male delinquency in the US. In this state, men abandon traditional expectations of high achievement, ambition, and wealth in favour of slacking off and giving up on competing.

All this adds significantly more stress on a relationship, which is already on life support if the latest findings from Australia are to be believed. The misery also knows no class boundaries. Even trophy wives are learning to cut back.

From Runescape to… This

Online games are bad. WOW sucks up tons of time and ruins lives. Maple Story and Runescape have caused my brother to dip into theft and credit card fraud to purchase premium items. But worst of all is Jeff Atwood’s discovery of a game called Civony which slowly descended into pornography to attract players. Witness the disturbling evolution here.

Europe and the Recession

During my time in Europe this summer, I caught a glimpse first-hand of how the recession is affecting everyone. I noticed that in England, there were many youths laying about in parks and wandering the streets instead of working. The numbers behind the scenes are quite shocking as well. Britain is dangerously close to heading the way of Japan with respect to a lost generation of disenchanted youths. If anyone has forgotten what youth unemployment and underemployment can do to the social structure, just consult my previous post on the matter.

The rest of the Eurozone is just hard-hit, as Gordon Brown observes. Aside from the expected diminishment in tourism, there are quirks to each country that I will describe. My friends in France tell me that most young people graduating from universities can’t find jobs, so they try one rung lower by looking for service jobs in restaurants and hotels. However, they face stiff competition from those who went to trade schools and were trained for such professions. As a result, many just sit around on benches along the Seine looking glum or hang out in packs at crowded intersections smoking and harassing tourists.

In Germany, things were a bit better, but most nationals who still had jobs still looked a bit more frazzled as they try harder to keep their jobs and justify their employment. The happiest ones seemed to be  the self-employed people who manage their own time and career.

Gordon Brown is right though in that the EU needs to increase its cooperation to get through this. That means to resist the urge to enact protectionist policies that Obama is doing. Conveniently, such actions are against the Eurozone regulations, so while some countries may suffer greater unemployment as foreign workers flood in, recovery will happen faster on average. Europe also has the advantage of falling back on a strong education system and many creature comforts. Talented folks like Katie are thus enticed into staying and contributing to the local economy.

The Immigrant Experience for Men and Women

Reluctantly, I have added Marginal Revolution to my blogroll. One of the more interesting posts there recently caught my eye. Entitled “Predictions about immigration and attractiveness,” the article states that female immigrants do better in the receiving country than male ones. Not surprisingly, this has been my experience as well being part of the latest immigrant wave. Male immigrants, be they skilled East/South Asians or unskilled ones (primarily Hispanic) face similar degrees of persecution. Computer programmers or software engineers are accused of stealing jobs through undercutting the natives on salary and abusing the H1 visa program. Unskilled workers have faced the ire of think tanks and natives of border states. Although women do hold jobs in software and construction, the industry is male enough that the backlash against immigrants can be considered targeted in a gender-specific manner.

Women, however, are more easily accepted by the native population. The controversy at the University of Viriginia a while back involved the Facebook group ”Americans for the Increased Importation of Asian Women.” Notice that the group specifically singled out women. Another example showing the desirability of foreign women and the exclusion of foreign men is the movie 21, based on the MIT blackjack team, which consisted mostly of East Asian males. The film adaptation eschewed reality for fears of alienating a predominantly white audience and cast mostly whites “with perhaps an Asian female.”

Eric Cantor is My Kind of Politician

Previously, he was seen as Jewish, a smooth talker, and fiscally conservative. He’s just recently added the tagline to his arsenal. When whispers started in the Beltway recently about a second stimulus bill (shock, horror!), he replied:

“For the stimulus alone, Washington borrowed nearly $10,000 from every American household,” Cantor said. “Let me ask you: Do you feel $10,000 richer today?”

Succinct and direct. It really hits home, doesn’t it, how banks are raking in great profits, paying bonuses like it’s 2007, and the taxpayers get nothing. Dissatisfaction over Obama’s stewardship is rumbling through the heartland. It seems that the people really didn’t get the kind of populist change they expected by choosing the Democrats. The only problem is that the only feasible alternative is just as conservative. I doubt that Cantor, for all his rhetoric, would issue a $10,000 tax credit (not tax cut) if he were president. The sane policy with respect to the financial industry seems to be to cull risk (oversight reforms and reserve requirements), isolate the damage (Glass-Steagall, anyone?), and then do nothing.

If the BBC and NYT Both Say It, It Must Be True

BBC:

In China, there are far more boys born each year than girls because cheaper ultrasound scans available in private clinics have made it easier to choose the sex of your baby.

That sex imbalance means the odds are stacked against someone like Colin when it comes to finding a wife.

His family, like many others, needs to save as much as it can so he can compete with others when looking for a partner.

NYT:

In other words, parents want their sons to marry, and they figure that girls are more likely to want to marry rich boys.