More Factory Jobs Won’t Fix America’s Unemployment Problem and Here’s Why

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Nilf, what’s a Nilf? Unemployed versus the Nilf. Nilf is not in the labor force. Why wouldn’t somebody be in a labor force? Why don’t I have to be? Because we’re giving away lots of stuff. years and years and years ago, I wrote a piece called Drug Pusher and took a lot of information from the Cato Institute, the studies that were done going all the way back to the 60s, great society programs.

And basically what I stated was that these great societies programs and all of the handouts and giveaways that we as benevolent taxpayers bestow upon the citizens can turn into a narcotic. And they have. They have that the same the same issues that one would associate social pathologies that one would associate with drug addiction.

can also be associated with handout and giveaway addiction. Right now, nearly seven million men, prime of their life, a tenth of the 24 to 54 year age group are Nilfs, neither working nor looking for work. Not working, not looking. Anyway,

Um, the Trump policies, and again, they think they happen to believe that, um, all of a sudden, uh, they’re going to bring factories back to the United States and the Nilfs are going to be jumping, jumping to get back in. That’s what they want. They want to be working in a factory. Right. No, that’s not going to happen. Um, for every prime age man who is actually unemployed.

out of a job, but looking, there are three. Three others not working, not looking. Nicholas Eberhardt had a piece today. And again, basically things that I’ve been talking about for years. The overwhelming majority of jobless men nowadays are nilfs. Unemployment, unemployed men differ.

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fundamentally in both mindset and behavior from Nilf men. The former consider themselves part of the labor force, the latter do not. The former respond to labor market incentives, the latter do not. Thus, while unemployed men tend to be out of work for just a few weeks, Nilf men are long-termers, often lifers.

Furthermore, only a tiny minority of Nilf men say they’re jobless because they could not find work. Even during recessions, most give other reasons. Millions of Nilf men live work-free existences financed by an array of disability programs and their associated poverty benefits. The disability archipelago incentivize helplessness and at a terrible cost human potential.

I’ve talked about that as well. I, I, you, you, you take away FDR talked about that when he was launching social security back in the day. said too much of this is, it’s against the human spirit. It’s a, it’s inimical to what’s right. You can’t just keep giving people stuff. America’s disability system is so dysfunctional that no one in DC can tell you how many people are currently getting benefits.

from its crazy quilt of subcomponents, SSDI, SSI, Social Security, Veterans Benefits, state-level disability programs, workman’s comp programs, and more.

Nicholas said, before the pandemic, I estimated that over half of America’s prime age Nilf men were getting benefits from one or more of these programs and that over two thirds lived in homes taking in at least one disability benefit. That would have been over three million direct recipients and over four million indirect beneficiaries, seven million between the ages of 25 to 54.

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Wow. And again, these numbers exploded from nine to seven times up seven times from 1965 to 2023. And you want to know from what most of the claims were for afflictions of nervous sense and organs or musculoskeletal system and connective tissue, which is

Medical gray areas. You see, doctors can determine whether a patient has got a whooping cough or if you broke your leg. But there’s no real test if you’re sad. I’m just sad, I’m depressed, I can’t work. Or if you’ve got back pain. my back can’t work.

Six decades of rising dropout rates for prime age American men attest to this. Unlike the employment rate, which follows the business cycle, the prime male nilf rate has risen with irregularity through boom and bust alike for decades, almost wholly unaffected by national economic conditions.

Anyway, I can go on, but…

How are you gonna get these people into the factories? you’re gonna start cutting off benefits? Right. Good luck with that. That’s not gonna happen. It’s not gonna happen. I’ve talked about this in the past when it comes to.

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You know, some some people, you know, you start with handouts, they get addicted to them, you know, trying to wean them off is one of the more difficult things in the entire world. And guess what? It doesn’t make for good politics. Doesn’t make for good politics. You know, you want these jobs, the future, you got to start in the eighth grade.

You gotta start in the eighth grade and you know what? The people that are on it, at this point in time, what are you gonna do? You’re not gonna be able to yank them off it. Again, new enrollees, that’s where you gotta start. You gotta say you put a stop to this. Conditions have changed. These are the new requirements. Everyone who’s grandfathered in is grandfathered in. That’s the only way I can see.

But you’re going to get these people to start working in the sneaker factory? No, not going to happen. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.