You’re probably right, but I’d be willing to try limiting immigration and some protectionism first. It certainly wouldn’t solve the problem, but I’d be willing to bet that it would diminish the magnitude of the problem.

In other words, if you tear away some of the ideological excesses and megaphone-preachings of you-go-grrl progressivism, the shifting nature of the global economy puts non-elite young men in precisely the same kind of fundamental — and worsening — predicament all over the world.

I don’t think he’s really thought this one through in terms of the kind of radical (and reactionary) social upheavals that would be required to produce the incentives that would motivate average young men to simulate a bourgeois lifestyle as best they could in this age of globalization and automation.

In particular, there’s probably no way to give good-natured guys on the lower half of the bell curve any kind of decent shot at affordable family formation (and stability) these days in any way that is compatible with sexual laissez-faire and the general ability of women to live financially independent from a male breadwinner.