Demographic Risk

Brett Arends at Marketwatch.com has an interesting commentary on Ben Bernanke and Fed Policy and forecasting.  It is interesting enough in itself and can be found here.  But the really interesting part to me is the statistic that 81.2% of working age men (25-54) are employed, meaning that 18.8% are not working, for whatever reason.  What is disturbing about this is that men are, by nature, the more violent of the sexes and this age group is only second to the 15-24 age group in violent behavior.  What sort of social unrest is in store when one out of five men of working age are unemployed?  Some of these people are starting to run out of unemployment benefits after 2 years being without work.  What will happen if the unemployment problem gets worse?  Simple common sense would imply that having 1/5 of men sitting around doing nothing productive is a recipe for them to get into trouble.  A sensible society would investigate policies to get them working again.  Tax holidays, wage reduction programs for unskilled unionized workers, restricted immigration policies, pro-male hiring standards, tax incentives for expanded hiring, welfare reform, educational improvements, etc. are potential policies which could address the imbalances.  The society which encourages women to enter the workforce in unprecedented numbers and discourages men from working is courting disaster.